Books of the Month - August

Another good month for books, I read 7 and enjoyed all of them.

The Boy Who Killed Grant Parker by Kat Spears. This is about a boy who moves to the edge of nowhere and becomes popular at school. My in depth review is here. 

The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths. I love the Ruth Galloway books and find Ruth a really likeable protagonist. This one was quite slow, but I still liked it.

As I Descended by Robin Talley. I've really enjoyed all of Talley's books and she's definitely one of my favourite current authors. This book is a queer retelling of Macbeth set in a private boarding school in America. It's really creepy and fascinating, I loved it. My in-depth review is here. 

Keeping Her Secret by Sarah Nicholas. This is a cute f/f romance set in a summer camp with a bisexual, multiracial main character who I really liked. Very sweet book. My review is here. 

The Lost and the Found by Cat Clarke. This is about a girl whose sister was taken when she was six and the protagonist was four. Now she's back. It's really interesting. My in-depth review is here.

The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill. This is one of her crime novels and I liked it. It wasn't perfect but her main characters were likeable, if a bit posh.

Local Girl Missing by Claire Douglas. This was alright, not amazing and I guessed some of the plot. I liked it well enough though.

What did you read in August?

What I Wore 4th September and a trip out

Recently, with sorting out my dresses, I came across this dress again, so when Lee asked one Sunday morning if I wanted to go to Elsecar Heritage Centre to look at the record shop, I pulled this dress on for a simple outfit of the day. I haven't worn it in ages; in fact looking at the blog, I think this might genuinely be the only time I've worn it.

Elsecar is one of my favourite places to visit, it's a conservation area of a 19th century village, and there's lots of little shops and a visitor centre and an antique centre. It used to go through phases of being fantastic and then being a bit disappointing, but the last few times I've been it's seemed like it was really full and being well used. There's sometimes train things on too, which I'd like to see some time, and if you have time I fully recommend going to Wentworth Garden Centre too as it's nearby.

We arrived to find the place absolutely rammed as there was a craft fair on! We managed to find a parking space and then went for breakfast at the cafe. It's not a bad cafe, but the service can be terrible, so if you are heading to Wentworth I'd recommend going to the cafe there instead. Then we wandered round all the shops and the craft fair. We bought a few bits, and finally went in the record shop. It's called Vinyl Tap!

I bought Lee a record player for his birthday because I thought he'd like to start collecting vinyl, and I wasn't wrong! He bought this Clash 7" and this Off With Their Heads album, and then he also bought me the Springsteen one. I think we'll definitely go back!

It's a very cute little turntable

Look at Bruce's beautiful face

Here's the red dress. I really like the 3/4 length sleeves. Very comfortable dress to wear!

Camping in Denbigh with my family

Over the August Bank Holiday weekend I went camping with Lee, my mum, stepdad, my aunt, uncle, cousin Peter and my other cousin's fiancee Beth. My other cousin Rob was off with his historical reenactment group, so he couldn't come. I booked us into Caer Mynydd Caravan Park near Denbigh which turned out to be really quiet and peaceful. We were in the middle of the permanent caravan field and we set up quite a nice camp with our three tents.

My mum and stepdad made a lovely barbecue on Friday night, my aunt and uncle made curry on Saturday night, and Lee and I did chilli on Sunday night. Perfect camping food, all of it!

I got to spend time on both Saturday and Sunday with Lee and Peter, who are two of my favourite people in the world. On Saturday we went for a drive around St Asaph, Bodelwyddan and Kinmel Bay. Here's some photos:

St Asaph's Cathedral

Some yarnbombing in St Asaph

Marble church at Bodelwyddan

I loved this doorway, the marble felt so cold too

This model of the church was made out of over 11,500 matchsticks!

Peter took this of Lee and I on the beach at Kinmel Bay

Peter collected a bunch of stones to go and skim them on the water. The tide was well out!

I love taking photos like these. Beaches soothe me. 

On Sunday Lee and Peter and I went to Prestatyn while everyone else went to Rhyl to watch an air show. We first played minigolf...

Then we had lunch and played in the amusements 

This was a monument to Offa's Dyke, apparently.

Then we went a bit further along the coast and played tenpin bowling. Peter beat us both times! 

We were all sad to be going home on Monday, so we asked people in the tent next to us to take a group shot. 

And here's one my mum took on Friday when we arrived! Our tent is the one on the right and I love it!

What I Wore August 21st

August the 21st was Lee's 34th birthday, and he woke up in Wales in a tent, bless him! I wanted to take a present or two with us, but he wasn't bothered, so instead everyone wished him happy birthday and then we packed up our stuff and came home.

We went out in the evening with my mum, stepdad, and grandma. We went to Cubley Hall near Penistone, a pub that I'd highly recommend because it's all homemade food but is really cheap. We sat in the conservatory at a really comfortable table. We each had two courses and a drink and the bill was less than £80!

I wore this new green dress from the Lollidot collection at Scarlett and Jo. I love the 40s feel to it, even though it's a comfortable dress to wear. It has shoulder pads and a waist tie. It has the keyhole detail on both the front and back, and the one at the front wasn't low enough to worry me; my bra couldn't be seen.

Sorry the colour isn't showing well in this photo - the nights are drawing in already!

Camping chic

As I said last post, Lee and I went camping in gale force winds and lots of rain in the middle of August, so I thought I'd give you a very special edition of an outfit post and detail what I wore then.

I packed thickish cotton dresses which helped to keep me warm, as well as long leggings, socks, and jumpers. I genuinely don't care what I look like when I'm camping - I want to be warm and cosy and that's all that matters. I'm one of those people that goes to the loo block in the morning in their pyjamas and with no bra on! I just need to wee!

I'm wearing a Scarlett and Jo dress with cherries on, a stripy cotton jumper from Crazy ClearanceI  think, leggings from George at Asda, hoodie from Evans, socks with Christmas decorations on, and blue shoes. I ended up borrowing some socks off Lee and putting my Dr Marten boots on later in the day! 

Shell Island Camping

Three years ago Sam and I went camping with my friend Amy and some friends, as seen here. Well this weekend Lee and I returned to the same place with Amy and friends. Lee hadn't been before but I think he enjoyed himself. We had pretty terrible weather; it was really windy through the night on Friday night, and it rained quite a bit too. On Saturday morning loads of campers just abandoned their tents and there was a queue to get off the island as there was a flood on the causeway! It was like an apocalypse!

We had a group shelter for sitting in which unfortunately got broken, so we moved our communal area into the woods which was cosy, but still a bit wet. Much less windy though! We take it in turns to cook for each other which is so lovely. Lee and I did chilli and bread, a beef chilli and a veggie one, with cheese and homemade salsa and sour cream. Perfect for camping as it warms you up!

During the day on Saturday we went up to the tavern on the site and played Articulate, and then we had a bit of a wander on the beach. It wasn't freezing, but the wind was blowing so hard.

Here's some pictures Lee took. The tide was far out, the waves were huge, but yes, two of our group went swimming...

I got 99 dresses and, like, maybe a problem

I think I've shown before that I have a lot of clothes. Too many hanging ones to fit in my wardrobe, so we bought some hooks for dresses to hang on. This was fine, until the weight of the dresses caused the hooks to bend, which meant some dresses fell and it was just such a mess. So we bought some more sturdy hooks and then we've had to move all the dresses so that we can change the hooks over.

I was careful to check which dresses I still actually wanted and I chucked some straight away, mostly on to the 'selling' pile which I'll do at the beginning of September (ooh, I could do it on here in fact!). I had a pile of twelve to try on, and those with the ones which I knew I wanted took up the entirety of the back of the bedroom door and a curtain rail.

So I counted them.

And there were ninety nine.

I just don't believe I actually need 99 dresses, but I also didn't want to get rid of any, either.

There were half a dozen that still had their labels on and had never been worn, which is shameful and which I'll try to rectify immediately.

There were some that I don't wear anymore but which I wanted to keep for sentimental reasons.

And of course there were my very favourite ones, the ones that make me feel really pretty or cute or powerful when I wear them (and sometimes all three).

I've decided I'm going to write a zine about my dresses. We haven't swapped the hooks over yet, and we haven't been through my skirts and tops, which are both things we need to do soon. In the meantime, all my gorgeous dresses are on display, and I kind of like it.

This Scarlett & Jo prom dress is one of my favourites. I love the skirt pattern.

Here's 35 dresses hanging on the rail into the back bedroom (which is tiny and which is also basically a library [I also have a lot of books]).

New shoes from Simply Be

I bought these in the sale the other week from Simply Be and although I'd have preferred them in black, this was the only colour left so I went with it. Why NOT have patent baby blue pointy t-bar shoes? I wore them the other day for work. They're a wide fitting so pretty comfortable. The ankle strap is really generous too, I have them on a tight fitting so there's loads of room for fatter ankles than mine.

My tattoo is a Libertines lyric, I've showed it here before. I've been having some problems with the red and purple inks in my tattoos, so I've got some cream for them now which is slowly helping!