Valentine's Bae

For a special day, here are the looks to make you an ultimate Valentine's Bae.

As I have so many gorgeous red pieces in my wardrobe I thought I'd share with you a few of my clothes as inspiration for your valentine's day look; whether it be a fancy date or getting absolutely mortal with your friends (which I will be.) 

Valentine's Bae look #1

Floral Dress

I got this from Zara (in the sale!!) It's one of my favourites and depending on what you put with the dress, it can pretty much be worn anywhere. Except for going trampolining. If you go trampolining the dress will split and you will flash your butt to everyone.

If you're feeling sweater weather pair a baggy jumper or cardigan over it so the pattern cheekily peeks out from beneath. When taking photos, I unintentionally pulled the same pose twice so now I've got quite a cool collage of me being an American hard of hearing Southern Grandmother who has an ear horn to assist her hearing while she screams for her grandchild "Charlene!" to take the pie out of the oven.  On the other hand, a badass leather jacket will give you some punk rock brownie points if you stumble into a biker bar and need to hold your own. 

(Dress- Zara, Jumper- Urban Outfitters, Jacket- Topshop)

Valentine's Bae look #2

Midi Skirt

Ever since watching The Roman Holiday, I've always been in love with a wearing a gorgeous skirt for a classic silhouette. I originally bought this to wear to prom but I just had to bring it out of my wardrobe now as it's perfect for this time of year. Skirts are a pretty staple item in my day-to-day style but sometimes I do get overly panicky about the length of the skirt and if anyone can see my pants. So a midi skirt is perfect for those who want a panic and disaster free day.

My midi skirt is quite a bold colour and I didn't want to overly complicate with jewellery and patterns. Thus, I put on a basic black top with some little crystal earings. Tuck in your top though otherwise it will create an uneven sight line and just be genuinely annoying for your waist. Don't be like me in the photos with a half tucked in top! Maybe go for a crop top to add a cheeky bit of mid-drift, anyone can pull it off! A skirt is not just for Valintine's Day though!! It can instantly add character and woe to your daily style.

(Shoes- Topshop, Skirt- Topshop, Top- GAP)

Valentine's Bae look #3

Boots

I am tiny. All my friends are over 5'4, I am 5'2ish so am constantly dwarfed by them. But I can't wear heels all the time so boots are my go to shoe. These burgundy numbers I have are perfect for the person who has a 'get up and go' attitude, so you can be out doing all the awesome things you always do but in kickass boots. 

I'm the type that gets out of bed on the fifth alarm so ends up running to where I've got to be next, without much thought to what I'm wearing. I usually end up in a t-shirt and jeans to college, which after a while can be repetitive. Investing in some beautiful boots can add something special to the day. I literally just got these boots through the post this morning from ASOS, I love the fringe side and studs; stunning. 

(Boots- ASOS)

Valentine's Bae look #4

The Dancing Senorita Emoji

That's right, emoji fashion. Hell yes. What's not to love? The sexy red dress, the amazing ruffle, the fact this dress is wetsuit material and I can spill as much red wine down it as I like without a stain? 

I brought this number a year ago and though it's gotten bigger on me it still has the right cut. Wearing your red dress sings you are a Queen but also lights up any outfit malfunctions. So stick with simple cuts and a minimalist look elsewhere on you, let the dress do the talking. 

(Dress- Topshop)

Bonus! Valintine's Bae #5

Love is in the Hair

I have super thick curly hair, and though gorgeous, can be a pain. So tying it up and out of the way is a great relief. If you like cute hairstyles and are just as terrible as me copying the hairdos on Pinterest then try this.

1. Tip your head forward and take a section of hair from the bottom layer. Do it in a simple plait (or go crazy, depending on your hair abilities- mine personally is not very good.)

2. Take the rest of your hair and put it in a top bun.

3. Once your bun is in place slide your plait up the middle parting at the back of your head then wrap around the bun to secure.

I did this on my friend earlier so i could get a better photo of it than me bending round to get the back of my head.

All of you have a wonderful Valentine's day whether you believe it to be another corporate sellout of a Christian holiday or a wonderful celebration of love. 

I hope you all enjoyed my post and got some inspiration, honestly this Valentine's Day I intend to watch some Gavin & Stacey with red wine and my best friends <3 xxx

I'm back!!

From crazy coursework deadlines to writing and directing a play I've been very busy! But I'm back and more than eager to vomit my vocabulary into your lives!! I hope you've all been well and have had a fantastic pancake day. If you don't celebrate pancake day, I suggest you eat one.

Go on, have a pancake.

I'm pretty sure there is like 1% more woman than there are men in the world so if you are in that 1% like me and are spending valentines day alone, then there are no excuses for not making pancakes.

Also, the perfect anti-valentines day film has recently been released. Pride and Prejudice & Zombies!! What better than a Lizzie who can cut through men with her tongue just as fast as with a sword.

Seriously; I read the zombie version of the book before I read the original Austen novel. Growing up in England you live near all these gorgeous Georgian houses that it's so easy to be engrossed in one of the best romance novels ever. I'm super excited for the film and live near some of the filming locations. Thankfully, no zombies escaped during the making of it.

I'll try to be updating weekly from now on (with a kick up the backside from the beautiful chloebee for motivation) so come back for more skewed views and awkward attempts at wit!

Love,
Pabelle

P.s. Here's a little collage of what I've been up too! I'll be explaining in later posts xx

Porked by the PM

When I decided to become vegetarian, the first thing I considered was why? What is the point of discontinuing my consumption of meat in protest to animal cruelty when it is a natural part of the food chain? (Phew, I sounded reasonably intelligent there.) I think the fact that as meat is a part of the food chain in the first place puts me off, sounds crazy I know. But the wet slap of uncooked meat on a chopping board to handling the icy slivers into a pan...Kinda grosses me out. It's like with any food processing if I don't like how it's made, why the hell should I eat it? Just think of all the fast food horror stories (and all the dodgy kebabs that result in food poisoning,) you could have avoided if you would just stop eating random crap.

But hey, let's not go crazy here. I'm not obsessed with food. Not a raw vegetarian here (though if you are, How can you live without ice cream??), I just feel I'm making my life, and a few piglets lives, easier if I don't constantly crave a bacon bap. Embarrassingly enough though, the real reason I became a vegetarian in the first place was because I was too awkward to say I wasn't.

Last year I went on the most amazing holiday ever to Canada. I lived with my cousins for a long hot month in Ottawa, often described as the armpit of Canada. Charming, no? Luckily for me and everyone else in Ottawa it's an amazing place and home to the nicest people you'll ever have the pleasure of meeting.

On the phone to my Aunt she asks me what I like to eat, proceeding to tell me that both my cousins are veggie. Not wanting to make her go out of her way to cook for me (after all I am staying with them for a month!) I say "Aw that's good, I'm one too!"

Fuck.

I tell you one thing if you are still in school and have the option to do it TAKE DRAMA LESSONS. IT TEACHES YOU TO LIE. YOU CAN CREATE A THRONE OF LIES AND SIT ON IT! AVOID EMBARESSMENT BY PRETENDING YOU'RE A NORMAL HUMAN BEING AND WEREN'T CRYING THE NIGHT BEFORE OVER THE NEW GAME OF THRONES BOOK NOT BEING RELEASED AND IT WAS JUST A DICKHEAD ON REDDIT SPREADING RUMOURS.

Pleasantly enough, I have been an avid drama geek since I was 6 and a Christmas tree in the school production, I skilfully bullshitted my way through that conversation.

"Of course I love halloumi (wtf is halloumi?), I don't mind what type of vegetables you cook (I do, boiled and green YUCK), I'm actually not that big of an eater, just a little bit and I'm on my way. Pudding? I don't often have it at home..."

Why did I do this to myself???

My mum said the second word I ever said was ham. I loved that stuff so much my baby carnivore brain let me learn all the barnyard animal names, without making the connection that my beloved oink oinks were also the beloved ham I munched on. Horrifying. So the idea of putting myself through a month of carrot snaking, in BBQ season was a nightmare.

Fortunately, becoming vegetarian was a blessing in disguise.

I have been prone to week long benders eating only chocolate and pasta risking scurvy. Whoops. So going vegetarian last year was my way of saying that when I up and move to university I won't drop dead from starvation and type 2 diabetes. My superior green eating skills have let me rise above that of my counterparts who are laying on the ground inflicted by freshers flu to gain a 1:1 in my degree. ~hopefully~

The twisted moral of the story is that panicking and saying something wrong can sometimes be a good thing. You may end up becoming a better person. Not to say that becoming a vegetarian will instantaneously make you have your feet on the moral high ground but health wise your body will thank you for it. Even if it is the odd day you substitute your cheeky Nando's order for a Mushroom and Halloumi pitta. Also you never really know where your food has been do you? I mean if you were in WWII and you were on porkier rations than the rest of your neighbours, at least you know it was from the black market and probably had some human residue in it.

I'm not sure even today you would imagine a pig that was dead gave David Cameron head.

Coincidently, that is why I turned veggie from horse meat scandals to blended chicken feet McNuggets. That should be crazy people at PETAs new argument for turning us vegetarian. How do you know the burger you're eating right now hasn't been porked by the PM?

Your next show addiction

Since some of you haven’t ventured from the safety of your home since Game of Thrones season five’s SHOCKING ending, still frozen in terror from the quite frankly cruel, pure coldblooded evilness of THAT, I have just the remedy. Yes, they’ve beheaded Sean Bean and let Joffrey live for too long but by god this is an outrage....

Anyway, before I let my tears blur my writing I’d like to bring to your attention a safer substitute for your addiction, that won’t leave you crying over your favourite character dying. And it comes flying in to save the day in a Kilt.

Based on the international bestselling books by Diana Gabaldon, Outlander is the GOT alternative. A historical romance about a kickass no shit taking WWI nurse Clair Beauchamp who ends up in 1743 Scottish Highlands via some magical stones.*

Encountering dastardly cads and swashbuckling red head Scots within the first few hours of her displacement Claire survives on her wits and luck. But, like GOT there is gore, the opening scenes show Claire covered in blood repairing a horrific leg wound behind the Front Lines. Then there’s the romance, the cheeky scenes are definitely more….saucy? Well, so graphic that when I started to show my mum it I had to leave the room from embarrassment at forgetting it and having to suffer from the awkwardness. Yet, she still watches the show. Now that induces a shudder of yuck through me.

Anyway, the adaption from the books is just so beautifully crafted, and I can promise the long-suffering fans of franchises who are emotionally distraught over the murder of beloved characters as a plot device Outlander is a safe blanket to wrap yourselves in. It has all the excitement of Game of Thrones and adventure of Russell T Davis era Doctor Who, but, unfortunately, no dragons. Unless you count Claire’s fiery relationship with a certain tawny lad…

My advice, watch Outlander before a tidal wave of kilts explodes everywhere. That way you get the smug satisfaction of saying you watched it first. And won’t get any spoilers. For people who like reading the books beforehand the first book published in the English edition is called “Cross Stitch,” and if you’re not normally a big reader try it anyway. It has enough drama and dramatic twists to give Corrie a run for its money.

Now go forth in your tartan pyjamas and whiskey fuelled drunkenness and rebound from Game of Thrones like the hot piece of ass you are.

*Disclaimer: No whiskey or disorderly Scots were involved in the transportation of person from time A to time B

Pretty.

If anyone ever wants to commit a robbery, you can always hire me as a distraction. I’m so good a disturbance I can trick myself into doing the completely opposite thing I set out to do. I get distracted by pretty things. So if it’s a jewelry heist and I’m your getaway driver please keep the rubies and diamonds out of site till you know we are not being followed. Otherwise, I will stop the car and demand to see the little beauties.

 In the same way a dog lover believes every dog is a puppy, no matter how big, ugly, fat or old, Art is that puppy for me. Art can be horrific, it can make me want to run away, yet still enthrall me. The piece can be completely awful, yet if powerful enough I will apply the word “pretty.”

Yes, pretty.

Which seems utterly ridiculous when I happened to be doing all essay based subjects which involve a slightly more advanced vocabulary. Somewhere in me, my 4-year-old self-squeals in delight I still use the word. I’m sure if my English teachers found this they would groan and throw a thesaurus at me. Whoops.

I think, the way I just used pretty can be encompassed as a watered down version of passion, the attachment you get to the art is a special connection, individual to each piece. Pretty, my pretty is a shovel into understanding art. My way to scratch the surface of a piece, in order to think as the artist, to understand what they want to me to feel. If you want me to get all philosophical about it I feel like it was that way Plato or Aristotle who tried to understand the universe through the eyes of a creator. Which I guess when looking at art, is essentially what you do.*

*If you’re playing pretentious teenager bingo you can go ahead and tick off “insinuating deep inner meaning”.*

I used to be completely confused by art, I didn’t really understand why people claimed a picture spoke 1000 words. Reading books was my way of understanding the world, still is. But paintings and sculptures are visual literacy, they encase hours of writing and redrafting (which artists do too) into one virtual object. Like from one painting by Edward Burne Jones who painted dark romantic worlds of Pre-Raphaelite knights and mysterious women, can tell me more about the political and cultural turmoil of the industrial revolution than a three-part documentary on the BBC.

Pretty fascinates me, I won’t go into the gender minefield of the word’s history because as I’ve used it so much I’ve created an offshoot meaning of the word that is special to me. The way I use pretty is a distilled version of my passion for construct. Not order, order can be terribly boring, but the conception and evolution of something unnatural yet completely accepted and painstakingly crafted. I use pretty so much I’ve made up a new way to use it. Which is unfortunate for all you other English speaking people out there.

When looking at the brutal torture of Bacon [Francis] or the theatrics of Rossetti [Dante Gabriel] I start a timeline in my mind of my feelings, reactions and knowledge of the pieces presented. I take my first impression of it, find how impassioned I am by the work to use the word pretty, in accordance to its name and discover what exactly the artist is telling me. Whether I just have to look into my copy of Gombrich (I hear the screams of art historians, and with this say “Don’t fret my darlings, for I have other books in which I use to further my knowledge of art!”) or just make something up in the moment. It’s a bit like story telling when you delve into art, so when you say a picture holds a thousand words you couldn’t be more correct, and every story needs a beginning.

My once upon a time is pretty. A springboard into history and imagination, from which the prose I produce in conjunction to Art is almost lyrics as a result of instruments. A beautiful compliment, but not necessary as everyone else’s feelings are evoked differently. So, if you still don’t understand pretty that’s fine. But please, if anything, get out there and find your own way of experiencing art. You’ll find it resonates through all structures within society, the temples of Greece? Look at the grills on the front of the Rolls Royce parked in the street, think pretty, and then say “why?”

Credits to the photos and paintings go to Paula Rego, Claude Monet, John Singer Sergent , Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Francis Bacon, Edward Burne Jones, Wikipedia, Saatchi, francis-bacon.com

If I have miss represented anything/ anyone or have used your image without your specified permission please email me (address can be found in contact me at top of page) and I will happily correct it or take it down.

Introducing...

It’s the summer holiday and like any true teenager born between the 90s and Generation X, I am in a committed relationship with my laptop.

Now, let’s just assume I’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of years, which basically, is me avoiding further internet embarrassment from my pre-teen years and only now have decided to start blogging (and the award for longest sentences and shitty grammar goes to….)

My name is Belle and I live a 40 minute train ride from London.

Let’s face it, if I said where I was from most of you would have no idea. So I won't say specifically. Also, internet stranger danger ya know? My mother would be proud.

Being English if you can’t pinpoint the whereabouts of your home in relation to the nearest city (or landmark) then you should just hang your head in shame give back your passport to the Queen right now. I mean it. 

Go on then, bugger off to Buckingham palace.

I’m 17 and read more than I speak. Which is ironic considering I’m a wannabe drama student and have a long list of tried and tested swearwords that have got me in trouble more times than I'd like to admit. 

If you ever want to spot me in a crowded room I have a tendency to contort my face to the music I listen to, in practice for when I go onto win my BAFTA. So if you see a curly haired, emotional looking girl on the 10:35 southbound Bakerloo tube from Waterloo on a Saturday, it’s likely me listening to the Fray’s “How to save a life.” Because I’m just that cool.

I hope you like babbling of an inexperienced blogger who on the side takes advantages of having very talented friends who photograph her *cough* Ella *cough*, tries and fails miserably with makeup tutorials, and has a deep love for Pride and Prejudice.

 

*For super secret internet safety reasons here's a picture of me disguised in a blue wig pretending I'm Coraline