Halloween Cupcakes by The Lily Pink Bakery

Thanks for your lovely comments on my last post guys, I am determined to try my best to share outfit posts with you and not let this pesky darkness get in the way!

As it's Halloween tomorrow, I thought I'd share some snaps of the Halloween cupcakes I baked and sold at my weekly market stall at St George's Belfast for my business The Lily Pink Bakery. I love Halloween! They went a treat and I sold out. It doesn't look like much, but baking and decorating close to 400 Halloween cupcakes takes a lot of time *_* Tomorrow Ali and I are having friends over for a scary movie night and drinks, and I'm going to cook a big yummy dinner!

(little home made meringues)

Disenchantment

Warning folks, this may be a bit of a rambly one...

 
Top - New Look (actually a peplum top)
Skirt - River Island
Boots - ebay 

It's been a little while since I posted. No complicated reasons or anything, only I work a lot and am having difficulty finding time to take photos and do outfit posts. It's kinda getting me down. I used to be proud of having a blog with good quality photos, and regular content. I used to love sharing outfit posts but now it has become a bit of a chore.

This is mainly because of circumstance, I moved over a year ago and love our flat - but there's nowhere decent to take photos with good light, except in the garden which is overlooked by other houses and flats. This might sound stupid coming from someone who obviously regularly takes self portraits - but I hate people seeing me take photos of myself. It completely makes me cringe! My neighbour's flat looks right over the only decent photo spot and the garden is shared so I never have any privacy. I hate the thought of someone seeing me take a photo of my outfit and think to themselves oh how vain is she thinking she looks like a model or something. Well I don't. I like style and I like clothes and bags, but I still feel really self conscious about how I look a lot of the time. This has made me too nervous to go and take photos really.

Another thing is the damn time of year, I work all day (and often most nights - joys of self employment), so I only really go out in the evenings and I'd rather have no photos at all that darkly lit rubbish ones like those above. I'm a perfectionist and it pains me to post them. I have nobody to take photos of me even when there is good light as I work on my own during the day. I had rubbish luck today with my cameras, no focusing, ISO button on my Canon breaking, certainty that the neighbours were watching me look stupid. 

Any advice on how to get back into outfit posts? I have nobody to take photos of me even when there is good light as I work on my own. I keep finding amazing clothes and outfits and wanting to share them, but I feel just totally disenchanted after a string of bad luck, self consciousness and irritating cameras.

When all else fails do as I do and read A Feast for Crows while listening to Halcyon which I adore.

Apart from that silliness everything is good, work is good, love is good - life is great. Also my new boots are very good. They're from ebay.

High Street style at Belfast Fashion Week

 

Dress - Sienna Couture
Shoes - Topshop
Jacket - River Island
Necklace - Bad Passion
Bag - Topshop

 

I was lucky enough to be invited to Belfast Fashion Week to see their High Street picks tonight. I don't often get the chance to go to events like this because work keeps me busy, so it was a really nice chance to get dressed up and have a drink with the other lovely FABB bloggers! I wore this peacock dipped hem dress from Sienna Couture. I often get emails from plus size retailers but get totally turned off by their collections, however when I got an email from Sienna there was actually a bunch of stuff I loved. I had a hard time choosing (almost went for an amazing waterfall cardigan with studded shoulders!) but decided to go for this dress. I don't usually wear sleeveless things because I hate my arms but I loved this dress so much I couldn't resist.

The show was wonderful, great music and the models were gorgeous. I loved the eye make up, and all the sequins, velvets and studs made me so excited for this season's fashion! I took a few snaps of my favourite outfits which you can check out below! 

 

 

 

Thanks to Cathy Martin PR for inviting me along! It was a wonderful evening!

Accents of Gold

My love affair with gold is long documented on this blog. I can't be having silver, I just can't rock it! Give me gold over silver any day. I have a feeling this love affair may have spawned from my love for anything tacky, but occasionally I pick much classier items ;)

 

(Please excuse the bad quality photos, had my camera on the complete wrong setting and didn't realise until later!)

Dress - ASOS

Jacket - River Island

Boots - Primark

I'm wearing a lot of deep jewel colours now coming into winter - emeralds and rubies like the dress above. I find gold accessories go wonderfully with these colours - even gold nails and eyes! I was sent this watch in the summer by the lovely people at French Connection. I actually never thought I'd be a watch wearer (something my mother has tried to instill in me was to always wear a watch, but I found them so fiddly!) but with working so much now I have to keep a strict timetable. What do you think? I think I might be a convert.

Vancouver and San Francisco

Hi all! I thought I'd finally share the photos from my trip on here. Ali and I spent 2 weeks in Vancouver visiting my brother, his wife Shauna and their lovely little boy Finnegan. My nephew is the cutest. We also went to San Francisco for a few nights, I'd been before but I love it so much I can never resist a return visit. Mostly we hung out with family, saw the sights and ATE. 

Ali was really excited about trying Jappadogs!

It was good!

 

My lovely nephew and sister in law.

Can you see a racoon in there?

We went to see Kimbra one night, she's my fav. She was wonderful. My brother and his wife were going to see The Shins the same night right beside us so we went out for nutella and strawberry crépes and stood drinking cinnamon liqueur from a coffee cup in the street. So much fun! Then Ali and I went off to Kimbra, danced and danced and drank many drinks then came home with food and passed out. 

A lumberjack show (seriously) on Grouse mountain.

This was like the best thing I ever ate ever.

On to San Francisco now...

Amazing Alcatraz.

We met up with our friends Chris and Anne for 2 nights in SF. They are big foodies (Anne runs a cookery blog called Waffle Hearts) and any time we meet they take us somewhere amazing (like when we went to Ninja in NYC). The first night Anne just told us "wear something you don't mind spilling food on". Hmmm! Turns out we were going to Opaque, everyone keeps telling me they have seen it on CSI. It's basically a pitch black restaurant, you order before you go in and then you dine in the dark! So surreal, it was so much fun! Pouring water was....interesting. And I definitely dropped a green bean in my cocktail at one point. Eventually I just gave up on cutlery and used my hands...what? Nobody could see! I mean you honestly couldn't see one speck of light. The servers are all either completely or partially blind and try to guide you through the experience. I felt so full leaving, but had no idea how much I'd actually eaten as I hadn't seen any of it! 

The second night we went to this amazing thing called Off the Grid. There's a real culture of food trucks and street food in SF, and I don't mean messy kebabs and burgers - I mean real good food, there was even a creme brulée tent! Basically on Fridays they all get together in one space and you can eat whatever you want! We had pulled pork sliders (called Pork Floyd), Indian food, mango and sticky rice popsicles, cupcakes and kettle corn. So good! There was live music too, it was such a lovely evening. 

Lovely Chris and Anne, Chris is from Norway and Anne is from Washington. We just got the invitation to their wedding in Italy in June - can't wait! 

The cupcakes from here were GOOD. I had salted caramel, so yummy!

Sorry for bombarding you with photos, but hopefully you enjoyed them! I love sharing my holiday photos. It was so lovely to see my brother and his little family. I hope I can go back and visit soon. It really struck me on my trip how lucky I am to have so many people around me that love me, and how much I love my family. I go to Vancouver and get to spend time with amazing people, I get to live with someone I love completely, and when I'm not at my own home I get to be with my brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents and my little nieces and honestly - there's never a dull moment with them all around.