Got a wedding this weekend and as usual I don't have anything to wear, and as usual, due to my crappie job and student status, I have no money! Hence the trawling of supermarket clothing websites.

I unearthed this little gem from Asda:

It would fab with my big chunky wedged Aldo Boots

and my next hairstyle:



It would help satisfy my still lingering and unsatisfied lust for Matthew Williamson's pixelated tapestry dress from A/W 08. Ebay is offering me nothing, except all the H&M stuff, or the dreaded 'Butterfly' Debenhams range. Gahhhhh!

I felt that I couldn't keep this bargain (£16) to myself, especially when two of my friends and fellow Glasgow Craft Mafia members, We Are The Robots, are sooo obsessed with pixelations, so I facebooked the link to them. What a good soul I am! The dress would look amazing with one of their pixelated necklaces...

While adding all the Glasgow Craft Mafia members' blog links to my blog roll, I was delighted to be reminded of one of my favourite tops. Emma at Show Pony can be seen modeling some Pretty Raccoon tops and dresses for the new online (Glasgow based) store, Hannah Zakari. I bought my red antler sweater from Pretty Raccoon's etsy store a year or so ago, and wore it for about 7 days straight. Needless to say, after these photos were taken in The Buff Club on a bit of boozy night out, it had to be washed and rested for a while.

(Cheesy grin alert!)

I totally remember shouting at my mate, 'quick, take a picture of my top!' lol.



I hope that Hannah Zakari stocks the fab super-low-v-neck Bow Tops soon as I am too tight these days to pay for the super-high-delivery from America!

When my sister and I were younger, we used to look longingly through my mother's catalogues which included Freemans, Empire, Kays, Brian Mills and Next. My mother never used to actually order anything so it was always a complete mystery as to why the things kept being delivered to the house every season. Anyway, we used to look at each and every page (yes, this activity occupied us for hours), including boring items like lawnmowers and cutlery, and we each had to choose one thing that we would buy from the page.

I still do this sort of thing now. I don't subscribe to catalogues, (in teh age of the internet, do they even still exist?), but only last night I had Topshop.com and Net-a-porter open in my browser, and said to myself 'right, if you could choose any amount of items, at any cost, what would they be?' I then proceeded to go through each category, adding things I liked to the online baskets. One of the rules of this hypothetical, pointless nonsense is that the items 'bought' have to be things that I would definitely buy and wear normally. No room for frivolity. This was serious.

Anyway, after all the items were added, I noticed something rather odd. My lala-land bill for Topshop was almost double than the Net-a-porter one. Scanning the Net-a-porter basket, there were only five items, yet in Topshop, there were 50. I had anticipated, given free reign, I would have went mental in a high-end designer shop, yet I had not. Don't get me wrong, there were loads of things that I loved on the site, but I guess the 'sensible' side of me was subconciously trying to get more bang for my buck!

Needless to say, this was a complete waste of 2 hours that could have been spent studying.

Here is some of my Topshop basket:

I have just realized, that this is probably why Topshop added a wishlist feature to their website. Doh!

The Topshop Sale launched today and I didn't find one single thing that I was even remotely interested in purchasing. I don't normally shop in the sales, I avoid the shops like the plague in January. The mess, the crowds and the bitter dissappointment brought on by a wrongly priced item, is all too much to bare! I normally prefer to do my sale shopping online, but even today, the first day of the Topshop sale when, stock is still plentiful, and not many items in my size are sold out, I cannot find a single item that commands purchase. I think that working as a sales assistant in Topshop has traumatised me. Sales Assistants everywhere dread The Sales as it means one thing - staying in store later than normal to tidy up after all the messy shoppers! Obviously I am a considerate and tidy shopper and I am no longer contracturally obliged to tidy up other people's mess, but still...the feeling of dread continues.

The two things that I did momentarily consider buying (but didn't) were not by Toshop but in one of their concessions called Rare. As a Topshop employee, my fellow workers and I used to mock Rare as being a bit tacky, cheap and of low quality, and above everything else, not exactly fashion forward.

However, Rare, all is forgiven. This hot pink tulip skirt and grey jersey tulip dress are perfect and very reasonably priced considering these are first reductions. I have always loved this shape, and I will happily continue to wear it long after VOGUE deem it to be passe. I think it is flattering and reminds me of a Vivienne Westwood dress that I nearly  bought about three years ago on eBay.

I also found a wicker Fez Hat. When was this even full price? lol.

I went on a special shopping trip for this outfit...I had a grand total of £60 to spend. I bought the purple dress with lace insert from Miss Selfridge for £38 and the belt for £15. I also bought a cameo necklace for £10 and two strands of extra long flapper style beads for £10. I was going for the look that SJP does so well...loads of tangled necklaces and beads. It didnt look quite right when I got home, so I just wore the cameo. I teamed the dress with black tights and also wore my Topshop frilled heels that I wear everywhere. They are the only heels of this size, that I can walk confidently in. Over this, I wore my faithful vintage baby blue with Mink trim princess coat. This coat always makes me feel special and I always have to get some vintage in my outfit. I crammed all my crap...camera, phone, cash and make up that I was too hammered to re-apply and for some reason, a small photo frame, (I dont know how the last item got in there...or why), into my vintage tapestry hand bag.