Bit of Shopping

A couple of weeks ago when ASOS first started their 70% off sale, I decided I'd have a little look at what was on sale. I'd browsed their site before, but I'd never bought anything. I looked through basically everything they had on sale and found two items I simply adored. Both were about $20, and since shipping is free, it was a massively good deal!



The first is this lovely, red peplum dress. I have to say, I'm not a big fan of most of the summer trends this year, but I do like the peplum dresses and tops in style this summer. Plus, red is one of my favourite colours!

It cost $22.59 CAD, and it's also available in a pretty teal/green colour. There aren't a lot of sizes left, but you can still find it on the site here!



The second is this cute little romper. It reminded me of the some of the dresses Amy Winehouse had slated to wear in his 2011 tour, which can be seen here (I definitely reccomend having a look at them, I think they're gorgeous!). I love the retro style of it and the pattern! I've not had a chance to wear it yet, but this weekend is supposed to be warm so I may wear it then!

It cost $20.86 CAD, and is also still available in most sizes.







x

Review - Rimmel 60 Seconds Polish in Deliciously Dark

While buying a pair of false eyelashes from a shop on eBay a couple of weeks ago, I decided to have a browse of their nail polishes and noticed this one straight away. It's a lovely, very dark shade of plum and dark polishes are my favourites, so I decided I'd give it a try.

The 60 Seconds line comes in a range of different colours, this one caught my eye since, as I said, I love dark polishes. I know this line of polishes is being sold in shops in the UK, but I'm unsure of the availability in shops in Canada and the US. That said, there are several listings for them on eBay in shops that ship worldwide for quite cheap.

Now, on to the proper review! As the name states, the 60 Seconds polishes are supposed to be incredibly quick drying. While I noticed the polish did dry slightly quicker than any other polish I have, it did take longer than 60 seconds following the first coat (I normally apply three, followed by a clear top coat). I wasn't particularly disappointed in this, though, as most of the 'quick drying' polishes I've used in the past haven't dried extraordinarily quicker than any of the regular ones I use. And I hadn't really expected it be some sort of miracle polish.

The polish wears quite well. I noticed after about 24 hours the polish on the tips of my nails had worn off slightly. Again, this is the case with most of the dark polishes I use, so it didn't bother me. Other than that, it wore as well as any other drug store nail polish.

When removing it, it comes off relatively clean. I've noticed with some inexpensive nail polishes, they tend to wipe the polish back on to the nail as you try to remove it. This did happen slightly with this polish, but not nearly as much as certain brightly coloured Sally Hansen polishes I've used.

I really love the colour, and, for the price, the quality is quite good. Overall, I would give this polish an eight out of ten!



x

All I Ever Wanted Was The World

This is the outfit I wore on Monday.

I've had this black and white dotted dress for aeons and it had been sitting unworn in my closet for ages. I bought it from a thrift shop years ago, and shortened it -- it used to be ankle length! It has a neat little drawstring at the back which I love -- meaning you can pull it in as tightly or loosely as you like. I haven't been wearing dresses a lot lately, but when I put it on a couple of weeks ago, I realised how much I still like it!

I paired it with a long, light weight, blazer-style jacket I bought from a thrift shop about three years ago. Similar to the dress, it also has a drawstring at the back. It's perfect for a cool summer day, and we've been having plenty of those this year. My pumps are from Aldo, my beret used to be my mum's, and my sheer stockings are Hue.

My lipstick is Rimmel's Rose Passion and my nail varnish is OPI's Glamour from their old DS Collection.

x

Duffy Inspired Hair Tutorial

It was recently requested on Tumblr that I do a hair tutorial video on how to do your hair like Duffy's in her Stepping Stone video. I put together a quick video, if you follow me on Tumblr you may have seen I posted it a couple of days ago, but I thought I should post it to my proper blog, as well! I hope I did the style justice, I think mine is a tad messier and more voluminous, but I still like how it turned out.



As I said in the video, if you have any questions about how I styled my hair, feel free to ask in the comments on the video or on this post!

I love the song, but I'd forgotten about how much I like this video, Duffy looks so glamourous in it!



x

Sugar Pink, Liquor Liquor Lips

This is an outfit I wore week or so ago, as you can probably tell it's one of my more casual looks. When I'm in a more casual mood, I like to do either some sort of creative look (such as this outfit), or a very simple, classic look (such as jeans and a cardigan).

In this look, I'm wearing my old thrifted high waist jeans, a thrifted translucent black top with velvet floral detailing, and my floral platform heels from Forever 21. My earrings are from Ardene, and my ring is an old one from Claire's. My lipstick is Revlon's Sweet Tart, and my nail polish is OPI's Greenwich Village.





I've never worn these platform heels much, but I really love them and they're incredibly easy to walk in (and they make me almost 6 foot!).

x

Graduation Gift

I don't usually like posting about things that I haven't purchased myself, as I don't want to sound braggy and such, but I really wanted to do a post on these heels my Mum gave me as a graduation gift. I absolutely love, love them! They're Steve Madden's Intrude heel and I think they're just amazing.

They're surprisingly comfortable and beautifully made. I love pointed toe heels, and I know I'll get loads of wear out of them.










xo

The History of Makeup

I recently stumbled across these two videos on Lisa Eldridges's YouTube channel and found them so interesting!

The first one focuses on the Victorian Era to the 1930s, and the second on the 1940s to the 1970s. They feature interesting facts about make-up and fashion trends throughout the years, and you even get to see some neat, old vintage products!

I absolutely loved watching them, and thought you guys may find them interesting!





xxx

Black, White, and Red Lipstick

This outfit is from the day after the one I posted yesterday. As you can probably tell, it's another 'fifties inspired look.

I bought this little cropped, button down shirt two summers ago at a thrift shop and it's absolutely one of my favourite retro pieces. I don't believe it's actually from the 'fifties, but it reminds me of the era quite a bit! I teamed it with my thrifted high waist shorts, Aldo pumps, Le Chateau cat eye sunglasses, and a pair of sheer tights (it was freezing out whilst I was taking these photos!).

This is another example of how I like to mix retro and modern fashions. The shirt, shorts, and sunglasses are 'fifties inspired, but the platform pumps are modern.

xxx

Pretty in Peach

I wore this outfit almost two weeks ago (been awful with staying up-to-date with my blog lately!), and it's one of my rockabilly inspired looks. It's not completely full-on 'fifties, as you can probably tell, but it was heavily inspired by that era.

I wore my thrifted white shirt with this pretty peach skirt I bought off eBay last year, and teamed them with my Ardene pointed toe heels. It was still fairly cool out when I took these photos, so I wore my little denim jacket when I went out. That said, I preferred how the outfit looked without it, so no photos with the jacket.

The 1950's are a huge fashion inspiration for me, as I've mentioned before, I just completely love old Hollywood glamour. One of my favourite things to do is to create a retro look, yet keep some aspects of it somewhat modern.

For example, for this look, I curled my hair and styled it in a slightly retro style, but kept it looking messy and imperfect. If I had wanted to have it look properly retro, I'd need to have styled it more cleanly and perfectly. And while cat-eye eyeliner was popular in the 'fifties, it wasn't nearly as thick or dramatic as I've done mine in this look! Additionally, I thought the pastel green nail varnish I was wearing at the time added something sort of interesting to the overall look, and is another example of mixing in something modern (I don't think pastel green varnish would've been very common back then!).

xxx

Life Update

• I officially graduated in May (I'd completed my courses last spring, but had two exams left to write which I hadn't written until April this year). I graduated with honours, and won a district scholarship. I never even thought it would be worth it to apply until one of my school's counsellors suggested I do -- I feel so fortunate and flattered to hav been chosen as one of the recipients!

• I'm going to Victoria's Pride Parade for the first time ever this weekend which I'm very excited for!

• I'm going to be starting a medical transcription training course in the coming weeks, which is also exciting. I have bigger aspirations as far as my education goes, but I've chosen to start with this in hopes of working as a trained medical transcriptionist whilst going to post-secondary.

• I haven't mentioned it lately, but I've been having some odd health issues and have had a test for Lyme Disease done two weeks ago. I haven't yet learnt the results, I have to wait another week or two, still.

• I've gotten completely hooked on Murdoch Mysteries (again). I'd been watching since the beginning but had missed the fourth and fifth series, so I've been getting caught up and it's reminded me why I used love that programme so much! Anyone else familiar? I understand it's fairly popular in the UK, as well as Canada.

• Another thing I'm excited about is The Killers new album that, yes, won't be out until autumn, but I'm still excited! I've been a massive fan since their first album came out, so I'm absolutely looking forward to their first album in almost four years!

• We've been having really shite weather in Victoria this summer, I'd say we've had about 4 or 5 warm days in total this spring/summer. The rest of the time you're stuck wearing a light jacket or cardigan and running your heater every night, it's ridiculous!

• I've discovered an amazing vegan berry muffin recipe in one of my Mum's recipe books, if anyone wants the recipe, I'll put a little recipe post together as I've done for some of my other favourites!

I have two new outfit posts to put up, and a shoe post, so those will be up soon. Hope you're all having a pleasant day!

Abbey

Recipe: Fave Bread Sticks

This is one of my favourite recipes -- it's incredibly simple and wonderfully versatile. One of the best things about it is that you can put whatever you like on top of the bread sticks. I normally put a bit of cheese and rock salt, but I've also used cinnamon and brown sugar to make a sweet alternative!

Tools You'll Need

Breadmaker

Measuring Cups

Grater

Knife with a Serrated Blade

Parchment Paper

Baking Pans

Ingredients

1 cup water

2 tbs margarine/butter

2 tbs sugar shake of salt

3 cups flour

3 tbs dry milk

1 1/2 tsp yeast

Toppings

3/4 block of cheese

sprinkle of rock salt on each stick

These are all the ingredients needed for making the bread dough.

Place all ingredients in bread maker bin in the same order as listed above. Make sure to cover the water with flour entirely. Once you've added all the ingredients, programme your bread maker and let it do the work of mixing, kneading, and rising the dough.

Whilst the dough is being made, I grate the cheese and line the baking pans with parchment paper so I'll have everything ready for when the dough is finished being made. Parchment paper is incredibly helpful to place on the pans, as the bread will not stick to the pan as it may otherwise.

I normally use about 3/4 of a block of cheese, but how much you use (or if you use cheese at all) is completely up to you! As I said above, you can experiment with different toppings -- sweet, salty, whichever you like!

Once your dough is made it should look something like the photo above (often it looks a little nicer, but on the day I was taking photos for this post it turned out less than perfect looking -- typical!).

Using a knife with a serrated blade cut off pieces of dough roughly as large as you'd like the bread sticks to be, and shape them into long, fairly thin shapes. Keep in mind that bread expands and rises slightly in the baking process, so you may not want cut pieces too large or else you could end up with them being huge once they've been baked!

Once you've got all the dough cut and shaped, add your toppings. I carefully sprinkle cheese and a bit of rock salt on each bread stick, and then push any cheese that's fallen between the bread sticks to the side of one or another. I do this to avoid having too much cheese be wasted by melting in-between the bread on the pan.

Cover the bread sticks with a tea towel or paper towel, and let rise for 15 - 20 minutes.

Place the breadsticks in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

Once the bread sticks have been baking about 10 minutes and the cheese has melted, I usually take a fork and separate any melted cheese that remains between the bread sticks. I do this to avoid having cheese melted in-between the bread sticks and effectively cause the bread sticks to stick to each other via melted cheese on the pan. If this happens, though, no fear -- just take a knife and cut the melted cheese on the pan to separate the bread sticks once they've cooled.

You will be able to tell they're done when they are a nice, slightly golden brown colour and sound hollow when tapped on with a spoon.

Let them cool on the pan for about 10 - 15 minutes, and they'll be ready to eat! This bread freezes very well, so if you have leftovers (which you very well may, since this is a fairly big recipe) you can simply pop them in the freezer for a later date!

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!
x