Crazy hair shots!

Today I am actually out swimming the Scilly Swim Challenge 2015, which some of you may be following on my blog. Yesterday we had a warm up swim (yes you may well laugh at the idea of the cold Atlantic ocean and our warm up swim) and were placed in our groups according to speed. I will be swimming in the slow group and may well have the honour of being the last woman out of the water at every stage. How many stages I manage is yet to be seen given that the first stage has been predicted to be the most challenging with head on winds creating lots of sea chop (prone to making me panic and breathless). On writing this I wonder what on earth got into me the day I signed up for this! However, here I am making the final preparations and wanting to keep you all informed. Kate and I will be on Bar Point beach, St Mary's at 8.15 this morning ready to give the swim our best shot. Wish us luck! In the meantime...


I promised you a few crazy hair shots the other day and here they are. Over the months since I launched my blog the wind has been a pretty constant factor governing our shoot location.  As you can see the island breeze is a challenge for Polly to contend with most days, but we do have a laugh along the way.  It's great fun to run a blog and as you can see I don't take myself too seriously. I hope these crazy hair photos brighten your day. Enjoy!

Paisley prints and pongs

Today's shoot started out so well with this lovely paisley print shirt and these fab palazzo pants making a stunning debut. However, Polly's ever ambitious need to add a touch of authenticity to our photo shoots led us to relocating beside these newly stacked lobster pots. Smellyvision might have been useful here to let you share the experience. Fresh from the seabed where they had lain, baited up with rotting fish, these pots were rank! My face tells it all I think. The things I have to do in the name of fashion!

Clashing and mixing prints is a somewhat new and joyful discovery for me. I think it was a couple of years ago when this trend hit the fashion scene and I've dabbled with it on and off since then. It seems to work best when you have a thread or story running through, such has the floral theme I wore the other day. The size of print pulls this look together plus the muted colourway. I love trying things out to see if they work and that's how this outfit was created. I'm happy to say that I'm no longer the slave to fashion which I used to be when I was younger. Age has taken away that need to be bang on trend, but I do still enjoy seeing what the magazines are touting. I'll often see a certain item which will inspire my own take on something. What's brilliant about being in your 50's is that most new trends are merely re-hashes of a fashion from years ago. I remember reading some fashion tips recently and one piece of advice was if you wore the trend the first time around then you're too old to wear it second time. Sorry, that's not a bit of advice I'll be following. If you'd like to wear a mini skirt/hot pants/flapper dress/oxford bags or whatever you want to revisit, then I say go for it. I won't be having the fashion police dictate to me nor should you!

Trousers: Tesco. Blouse: Top shop. Sandals: TK Maxx. Handbag: charity shop. Liberty doll pendant: Charlie Dodge. Turquoise ring: old. Blue ring: charity shop. Turquoise bangle: old. Green pearl bracelet: old.

Hurrah for the maxi dress!

Hurrah for the maxi dress! It's just the simplest of summer dresses and yet makes me feel lovely. I have a few maxi dresses, but this is my favourite. I love the empire line for those days when you don't want any restrictions around the waist. The material is light and floaty making it the perfect holiday dress too - this one has been to New Zealand, Morocco and the Canaries when we went for a cruise and it has earned it's keep wherever it's gone. Today I've picked out the orange as my highlight for the accessories which won't surprise you - orange is a popular choice with me as you'll know. 

Today's thank-yous go to my sister Sandra who donated this rather fabulous necklace which she found in a local charity shop on Orkney recently. What a brilliant find for both of us! It sits at just the right length and offsets all of the key colours in my dress. Thanks also to Bo Lemm, my dear friend who lives in Portugal, for giving me this zingy orange bag which is the ideal match for my sandals. The bag can double as a beach bag or is smart enough for a city shopping break, how clever is that!

Dress: TK Maxx. Shoes: New Zealand. Bag: gift. Necklace: gift. Blue ring: charity shop.Yellow stone ring: Martin James. Rose gold bangle: Kate Spade New York.

Chanel trousers - what a gift!

These amazing Chanel trousers turned up in the post just the other day and were a gift from my dear friend Bun Matthews. Brand new, in pristine condition and begging to be worn I had a lovely evening trawling through my wardrobe to find the best separates to showcase them. I'm not very tall and the trousers are mega wide so I thought I needed to highlight the high waist and have a fitted top half to offset the voluminous bottom half. My initial thought had been to pair the trousers up with a cropped, frilled blouse which also had brass buttons, but when I put it all together the top was too boxy and I looked swamped. My other thought had been to go all out with the nautical theme and add a Breton striped tee shirt, but again that was just too boxy to be flattering.

So here we have it, fab Chanel pants with a beautiful shoreline backdrop - what a lovely start to the bank holiday weekend. My daughter Sasha is home for the long weekend and we are all heading out for a lazy lunch today. My next challenge is to find something to wear given that it's a half mile walk to the beach bar and it's currently tipping it down with rain. Wellies and wet gear are more de rigeur here than a fashion statement so I will be trying to find something practical but worthy of the occasion. Watch this space...

Trousers: Chanel. Tee shirt: Top shop. Cardigan: TK Maxx. Shoes: Topshop. Handbag: charity shop. Liberty doll pendant: Charlie Dodge. Rose gold bangle: Kate Spade New York. Brass cuff: Rose Cecil. Turquoise ring: old. Yellow stone ring: Martin James.

Bloomin' lovely

I'm don't really see myself as a floriferous type as a rule, but these flowery purchases seem to have made their way into my wardrobe with this explosive result. In fact the supermarkets have come up trumps as the trousers were from Sainsbury last summer and the top was a recent purchase in Tesco. I found the bomber jacket in a charity shop a while back, the brand was Zara which means great styling and fabric, so another winner.

I think my main motivator when getting dressed in the morning is not to look boring, predictable or like an old fogey. I don't mind in the least being middle aged, but it doesn't mean I want to look as if I've lost my fashion mojo. Clothes have been my passion since I was about 13 starting with when I knitted myself an amazing turquoise skirt. The majority of you probably won't remember, but there was a trend at the time for these massive plastic knitting needles where you used 8 strands of wool and the stitches were huge, but meant you were able to knit and finish your project really quickly. I knitted these two rectangles which I then sewed up the side seams of, and then lined with a lovely turquoise silky material (all hand stitched), finishing with a tube of elastic at the top. Et voila, a fabulous mini skirt! I remember the thrill of creating something original. It was a Saturday afternoon when it had it's debut, which at 13 was only a trip along the high street and back again, in the hope that someone would clock this fantastic little gem. Since then I've dabbled with customising clothes and recently have taken a couple of sewing courses and hope to do another. I'm greedy to learn more so that I can do more sewing, but actually you can apply that greed to living generally. I'm nearing 60, but there's so much I want to learn, so much I want to do. There's still a whole lot of living to be done!

Jacket: charity shop. Trousers: Sainsbury. Top: Tesco. Shoes: Office. Yellow stone ring: Martin James. Brown stone ring: East.

Liberty print Vans

Some days it's all about comfort and today was one. For me comfort starts with the shoes and these Liberty print Vans are perfect and so pretty (am currently having a bit of a Liberty print crush). That shopping urge got to me recently when I heard the news of Office having a sale and it was too much temptation. These flats are just what I need when I'm hanging paintings and have to climb up and down a ladder all day. I've teamed them with wide loose trousers and a jeans jacket for a casual look which is functional. The necklace was a gift from my daughter which she brought back from her travels in Thailand earlier on this year and it's neutral colour is great to wear with lots of different outfits.

As far as style goes I'm a bit of a chameleon never wanting to be pigeon-holed as one thing or the other. I'm happy to mix it up from an elegant dressed up look one day to a bright and bouncy, casual look the next. When I was younger I worked in a bank for a couple of years and remember the constraints of the formal dress code. For the majority of working women I know this is the norm, and there's probably room for a bit more flair now seeing as that was about 30 years ago. I'd love to hear from you if you have to wear a uniform to work or just have to be very smart every day. How do you express your own personal style? Is that something you have to keep for outside the workplace? I'm interested to hear about how you cope with the restrictions of working clothes.

Jacket: Benetton. Trousers: H&M. Shoes: Office. T-shirt: charity shop. Handbag: NW3 (charity shop). Necklace: gift. Sunglasses: Quay Australia. Pearl bracelet: old. Green bracelet: Magpie and Butterfly. Blue ring: Primark. Yellow ring: Martin James.

Summer exhibitions: 6 of 6

I can't quite believe that we're at the end of our summer exhibition schedule. It seems to have gone by like a shot, and tonight was tinged with a little sadness that the fun is over for another year. We've hosted 6 shows in 60 days with 7 artists attending their opening night and 18 artists being represented by the gallery in total. It's a terrific challenge to make it all work: for the art to arrive safely, on time and without incident, for the weather to be kind enough for our parties to spill outdoors and most importantly for the customers to come, enjoy and hopefully spend. I would like to declare the whole thing a resounding success and say thank you to the final line up.

My thanks go to Wendy McBride, attending artist for the evening, who charmed her clients and was a pleasure to have in our company. And a huge thank you goes to the support team, back to their original format of Julie McMurray, Polly Edwards and Bethany Inch. They were a dream to work with all summer and I couldn't have held it together without them.

In the flurry of our last night my fashion shoot seemed to be forgotten, but I will briefly mention this beautiful jumpsuit, yes jumpsuit not maxi dress, which hails from the alter of the mighty H&M. Purchased in their sale only last week I'm thrilled with the fit and colour and am hoping to conjure up a reason for it to be worn again soon. The flat sandals are ancient, but so comfortable and ideal at the end of a very long day, and Jessica my new and already much loved pendant is proudly accessorising this sensational outfit which adds a bit of flair to the whole shebang.

And in case you're wondering why the big cover up with the arms tonight? I have to explain that it's the low cut back of the jumpsuit and slight underwear malfuction that required the modesty layer - the arms are good!