Shabby Chic for a Shabby girl...

I've Dared to blog for a second time! a few days later than Thursday as it will also be next week because this week is the big play week! All will be told on how that went next weekend! :-) but for this week you can expect, some furnishing customization, life failures blamed on the weather and some happy talk of books, songs and kites...

Craft Corner;

I wanted to share a little customizing I did lately;

I have been redecorating my room a little at a time over the past few years really, as I'll be buying my Dads flat soon, so it is worth redecorating what was once a lilac room with silver skirting boards and a pink ceiling!?! (When I was about eleven, my Dad gave me a little too much freedom in decorating). My most recent project are my curtain poles; they used to be those awful cheap silver effect swirl ended things (to match the woodwork, and when I say silver I don't meana nice chic chrome I mean actual painted silver) as pictured with their first layer of spay paint below.

So instead of buying some new ones for around thirty quid, I thought I'd update them in keeping with the shabby chic look I am aiming for in my room (I recently got a bedside table in cream, with that worn down look at the edges). I bought some 'antique white' spray paint from Hobby Craft for under a fiver, and some sheets of glasspaper from asda for 50p and hey presto! After a few layers of spray paint I used the medium corse glass paper to rough up the edges back down to the silver enderneath, and it is hard to depict on the photo far away from it but I'm quite happy with the result!

I had a wobble after spray painting as I was worried they would look a bit naff once up on the wall but now I'm happy, they may not look expensive but if I spend money on expensive things to put in a house I'll never actually own one and I'll be 30 and living with my Dad before I know it! So for now, cheap works for me.

Song of the Week: Alt-J 'Matilda'

Oh I just think this is a lovely song, I have a niece called Matilda who I sadly don't see very often so it has sentimental value too because it makes me think of her. Its a crime that I don't yet have Alt- J's album, maybe it will be my last ever purchase from HMV! I'm old fashioned and haven't gone digital yet with my music purchases but having been reassured several times that if my laptop breasksI do NOT loose virtual song purchases, I might just jump into the 21st century soon... but to be honest I think I want a record player more I love going to my Mums and having a sing along while baking to her Beatles LP's (I may have been born in the wrong decade).

The week of the bad pretender...

This past week has been a bit of a failure if I'm honest. I blame January and all that comes along with the single worst month of the year; Firstly, I got the Norro Virus- bleugh! I know pretty much everyone has had it now so it cannot be avoided, but it meant that I missed a rehearsal for the play (which is this coming week, so no pressure there then! I'll be blogging about that next weekend.) As well as loosing a days pay at work I also was ill for my day off which was that gloriously sunny day- that one day all on its own before the bad weather hit- but I kept looking on the brightside and thought 'well at least I may have lost a bit of tummy weight for the play!'
Any way (touchwood) rehearsals have been going well since and I'm really excited to put it to an audience because we've been rehearsing that long its great to hear the audience's laughter at bits that we have forgotten are funny!

So all was well after that set back- then came the snow. I was driving to the train station after work on Monday to get to my second ever Acting class and it was gridlock- I couldn't believe it! I mean I don't even think the roads themselves where that bad, it was just the amount of people on them. I mean I know it was rush hour but not theat many people in Hull even work to all be going home at such a time! Anyway the story ended in me epically missing my train and my class which was so frustrating because the trains were actually running fine, sod's law eh? So I'll be itching to get back to class after play week, but it will be strange because I'll still be the new girl when others will have settled in. I will have to be on top charming form first week back :-).

Photo of the Week;

This was the London New Years Day parade, a photo I took when all the amazing kites where in the air (it has been 'instagrammed' of course). I was lucky enough to start 2013 on a high note as I went to visit my Landan friend. It was much more exciting than spending the first day of the year in bed in Hull with a hangover!

Favourite Famous Figure;

For this week I choose the author, Sophie Kinsella, as I have just read her book "Twenties Girl" which had me in tears at bedtime when I finished it the other night! It's about a girl who meets the ghost of her great aunt and follows their journey together to get back her Aunts necklace. The ghost, Sadie is in her prime at 23 in the twenties and all the references to twenties fashion, make up, slang and lifestyle really fed my fascination with decades past (I'm definatley on the 'Downton Abbey bandwagon). I was already a fan of Kinsella; her books are so uplifting and her characters so likeable and I'm still ploughing through the 'shopaholic...' series. It makes me laugh because the thought process of Becky Bloomwood is just like mine, the way she reasons her purchases, but I suppose that must just be a girl thing, right?

Lifes Ramblings...

You know when your friends (or sometimes creepy weirdo's) have clearly been having a browse through old photo's and decide to 'like' one of you all from years ago, when you were younger and thinner? Well, that happened the other day and it got me realizing how much I have actually let myself go! I'm only 23 so there's hope for me yet I like to think, I might always be just half a stone away from my target weight and my nail varnish will always be just a bit chipped and my hair always just a bit past really needing doing, but none of these things are new to the past few years- I've always been a bit of a shabby girl. The real difference is confidence, and while I am glad I am no longer going to seedy clubs in bodycon dresses- I like to think I am a bit classier these days- I wonder if I have gone too far and grannied up too much just lately? I mean, this may be why I am in an eternal state of singledom (I have recently accepted my fate and joined the group 'crazy cat women unite' on facebook) because I do not have a 'sexy' bone in my body. The weather doesn't help, through the winter months I live in bedsocks and my thick knitted cream cardigan, sometimes I layer cardigans too, not to mention my apitite increases ten fold this time of year! So bit by bit I am going to try and be a bit more, well, I wouldn't go straight to sexy, but a more youthful and glamorous maybe? wish me luck with that one 'cus I'll need it!

Tarra for now,

Snuggles and shiggles!

Charlotte xx