Playing the field apparently…

   During a slightly heavy night out for a friend’s 21^st recently, I decided to take this as the perfect opportunity to meet new guys and see how they react to certain things. I can honestly tell you this experience was an interesting one. I met a guy who was very talkative in the sense he knew how to say the right things and came across as a very complimentary lad on holiday for a good time with the guys. However, I was later told by a couple of his friends he had a girlfriend which seemed pretty shocking to me in how flirtatious and close he had been getting so I proceeded to walk away and lucky for me a karaoke booth had been booked for me to hide aka deafen my friends in for the next hour or so.This got me thinking do guys and girls have different rules on what is acceptable and what isn’t in how we behave? Is it ok for a guy to hit on another girl knowing he has a girlfriend? Yes, he might have only been flirting and taking the odd phone number but is that really ok? Because honestly, I’d be pretty offended if I was someone’s girlfriend flirting with another guy for him not to react and think that that was ok?

    Anyway, after singing my heart out to the ultimate girls just wanna have fun classics “Barbie girl” and any other Spice Girls songs out there, I met another guy who was everything I didn’t expect from first impressions. He had a rather cheeky smile, was very good looking but surprisingly reserved in an oh so charming way. Although he seemed a bit quiet I’m pretty sure with me talking a lion would seem quiet so maybe that’s yet to be found out. Another thing to just add here is that by this point I’m pretty sure I’d reached that unattractive messy stage of the night where anything I did or said couldn’t have been attractive even I wanted it to be but yet somehow he was still interested and gave a friend his number for me to ring in the morning when I was a tad more sober. Oh and could actually see the digits. But I found that rather surprising considering I had the very awkward moment of accidently telling the guy I loved him within about 10 minutes of meeting him. Oh yes girls, it really can get that bad when we have a few too many drinks but somehow he found it hilarious. The only explanation I have is vast amounts of vodka and being in the I love everything phase of drunkness which included the barman who I most definitely blew far too many kisses to throughout the night.  At this point I’d also like to definitely advice drinking responsibly as yes it does lead to cringetastic moments you’d rather not remember in the morning. If it’s not the never ending voicemail you leave your sister or an ex, it will be the falling over in a club causing the “caution, this floor is wet” sign to come out that shows drinking too much is not a good idea. But anyway, even though this guy lives back in my hometown, I think I will see him again and who knows this could be the guy? The napkin trick was rather cute I have to say but we’ll have to wait and see what happens there.

  But I definitely learned something from this night and that is girls really are from Venus and guys from Mars. We think differently. Every person wants something different out of a relationship whether it be a friend, a onetime thing or the whole marriage and kids scene. That’s why telling each other from the off “what this is” is so important. And even then people change their minds so don’t expect someone to say they like you to then not be put off or for them to go from friendship to then seeing something more in you. But if people aren’t honest about how they feel it could lead to friendships being broken, love being lost or worse still unrequited love being the bane of moving on.  

 I later met this couple who had just got engaged over Christmas. The fiancé was all sparkled up with this gorgeous engagement ring which bounced off every glimmer of club lighting and was one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen. But seeing this happily loved up couple reassured me that love can be found, you just have to open your eyes and sometimes it can be right there staring back at you. It might not be in the perfect prince charming you’d hoped for as a teen but that’s the thing I’ve learned most so far from this little experiment is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist in how we look, in relationships and in pretty much everything around us, but yet we still aspire to find it so much. Why is that?

   Why does this guy have to be perfect? Why can’t he be the perfect guy for you… a guy who has his flaws yet we still love him just as much for those as all his other traits? And vice versa. Why can’t us girls be imperfect, wake up with our morning faces, sometimes say the wrong thing but still be the girl whom that guy loves? There’s nothing saying that we can’t be that girl, we just have to let go of our worries about relationships and most importantly fears of who we are and just be ourselves. It really is that simple and yet it’s something we are repeatedly told but choose to ignore. So if they don’t like the real you, then they’re not the one for you (excuse the rhyme) but there is someone out there who is and who will love everything about you. So, you just have to find each other and one day I guarantee you will. 

 The Love Experiment…

 Meeting the right guy and dating can be like deciding what to wear on a night out… you don’t just want to seem nice, you want to sparkle. You don’t want a dress to say you’re an easy to read finished book but you also don’t want the guy to leave thinking that you’re some over the top fruit and nut cake. So how do we meet in the middle? What is the perfect amount of “normal” mixed with the perfect amount of “youness” to make him weak at the knees? Well, after some much inspired film watching with the housemates of the chick flick “How to lose a guy in 10 days” I’m going to attempt a little experiment of my own and ask “How to make a guy fall in love in 60 days?"

   Don’t get me wrong at this point I have no idea if it will work out or not… I’ve never been in love so this could be headed for disaster but I think it’s important us girls know what really makes guys tick and what boxes we tick off as we get to know them and they get to know us. Understanding how we go about not just being the perfect date but how to make him feel that warm, fuzzy feeling us girls experience oh too often when we fall in love is something many girls have asked me? How do we know when a guy is on the same page as us? Is he a flirtatious “friend” or is he really in to you? Or is there a third option where you’re both just as confused as each other about where the relationship’s going?

   So, I’ve set myself up for a challenge here which is great in the sense I get to go out meet new faces and generally do what I do best in talking but there is of course the slight feeling of guilt in me using this purely as an experiment and this guy not knowing my ulterior motive. They say you can’t plan to fall in love and I’ve always believed that to be true but maybe you can? Maybe, you are either someone who is going to let themselves feel those butterflies in your stomach or not? Maybe, you’re someone who, like me keeps themselves guarded and is afraid to let someone else in so falling in love doesn’t come as naturally to you as some? But, either way you can find love if you know how to play your cards right and deal the right hands and I’m hopefully about to find out what that is?

Wish me luck!

Kissing frogs, making blogs and finding Prince Charming...

Hey lovely girlies,

 Sorry it’s been a little while since I last wrote but what with the chore that is exams I became a bit of a hermit/ hibernating tortoise shelling myself out from the world of non-books and paper notes. But je suis back and am looking forward to a brand new year filled with lots of exciting up and coming trends to push my wardrobe to its limit and guy talk which I’m thinking about giving a little revamp to and opening up some questions from you guys on things you’d like posted on. After some brilliant responses from you all to what I should write about next I thought I’d talk about that scary root from date number 1 to having another half as it seems a lot of us get confused along this path.

 A one track race or an obstacle course? Is it a straight simple route down to a relationship or one night stand or are there bumps along the road where guys get stuck half way through between the friends zone and the relationship zone, the fling or the fling turned serious? It’s a rather tough decision to step into a relationship with someone and some may call it a rather nerve racking ride because you have to take a chance on that person and hope they feel the same or are on the right page as it were as well as hope things will take their own natural course with you both. It could be the case that the ride could come to a halt where you both find one of you is further down the page than the other or you could be lucky and find you both like each other in exactly the same way and want to share that rollercoaster carriage together. The most important thing I would say though is to clear up what you’re both really thinking from the off and although I could say guys are very confusing and avoid doing this a lot (which yes they most definitely are at times), us girls are also just as easily confused about what we really want and what we’re thinking.

   This mainly falls down to the games of dating, the obstacle course to a relationship. Although playing games seems rather silly when we could all just be straight with each other, the reality of telling a guy you really like them before they admit it to you first could be a jolt in your pace and lead to a case of minor heart injury.  And from my own personal experience there is nothing worse than liking someone and them not feeling the same and yes you will get over it but it could mean the end of a friendship or mutual friends you once shared or in more extreme cases the end of a job and career path. But ultimately we have to take this as a knock back and find the strength most athletes find when competing in Olympic Games and overpower these thoughts with the belief we’ll find someone else who is much better for us and that one day we will ultimately win the gold. And although not all athletes are lucky enough to win gold you may argue, I really believe every person out there can when it comes to love and relationships. Believe you can and it will happen for you. Don’t go searching and let love find you. And remember… Athletes don’t win gold straight away…they have to train hard, experience competition with others and most importantly experience loss. Just like this us girls sometimes have to kiss a lot of frogs to find our Princes’.

And they lived happily ever after…

 

Hey fashion treasures,

    I thought I’d hit the blogapshere again after an interesting day of male formed drama and ask the question whether we need a guy in our lives to make us happy, whether faitytales really do come true? And whether there is such a thing as living happily ever after? Maybe fairytales are beautiful to look at on the outside but in reality are rather dangerous and fill our heads with ideals, perfectionist hopes when really life just hits us as it comes.

   I mean we are introduced to barbie and baby dolls as a child which at the time playing dress up and cut the barbie’s hair was beyond exciting (not to mention dangerous sneakily stealing the scissors) but looking behind that is this telling us something about the woman we are meant to be? The woman we are going to be?  Are we meant to be moulded into the caring mother, the perfect housewives with all these mini cookery sets, crying babies that we asked Santa to bring once upon a time? Or are we to determine our own futures? Our own careers potentially? It’s always strange to think about how young girls are given dolls to play with as a mini statement of what is expected of them in the adult world… or is this not the case? Guys are given cars, (hence their fascination), footballs, train tracks… what is that saying about them? Is that saying they’ll be the traditional husband who drives a fast car, works hard all day and spends more time with the lads playing football than at home with us or have we moved on from this? Are we in a new age now?

  Are the toys we give children now outdated? Where is the girl’s football? The guy’s baby doll? And if being a mother and a housewife is what I am to be by the power of cultural expectations then surely my degree means nothing… Of course,  I do hope to be a mum one day and a wife but does this mean us girls will have to give up our careers and interests in order to do so? Can we not have the best of both of worlds? Or maybe society is changing and moving away from the traditional value of a family unit into the life of a singleton.Tables for one, movie nights in alone… maybe that’s where society is headed? It seems rather sad when you put it like that but maybe it’s a case of we are content with ourselves and happy living our own lives that we don’t need someone else to complete it.

   I was recently told by someone that life isn’t always perfect and that we can’t have expectations for meeting Prince Charming and living happily ever after but I disagree. I truly believe that people can make their own happy endings and that part of the journey of a fairytale is finding your Prince. Yes, fairytales have some flaws in reality but I assure you girls they can come true. You only have to look at that cute old couple sat on the bench overlooking the beach to see that it really can happen. I think a lot of the reason that sometimes it doesn’t is because people have lost this belief and as I was always taught it is better to see the glass half full than half empty. There is someone for everyone out there, it’s just the matter of finding them and we do live in a rather big world so bumping into Ryan Gosling is rather slim but you’ve got to rely on chance and luck a little as well as venture on out there; go through break up, heart ache, numerous dates to find that person. But ultimately you can find Mr Right (sometimes he’s right in front of you) and you can live happily ever after, you’ve just got to believe you can.

  Muchos love,

Partnered with a friendly sole

Happy New Year lovelys,

   Blog time has arrived and I’m feeling the need to talk about the two most important things in my life at the moment as we enter the new exciting year of 2012… my awesome friends and my other equally awesome friends of the foot style kind, shoes. May I start off by filling you all into a little shoe success secret of the Louboutin kind that if any of you have any Christmas money left over or want a buy when your student loan hits the bank this month these are definitely needed to fill that gap in your wardrobe…http://www.mall4louboutin.com. Classic and beautiful!

   As well as these little stunners another great purchase this month is these beautiful Vivienne Westwood Melissa heels which if I’m honest are beyond beautiful and have definitely made my life complete for the small sum of £80 at www.cruisefashion.co.uk - all the result of some hard working revision online or should I say neglection of revision ha.

  Besides these shoe filled treats, I wanted to take the chance to reflect on some incredible people in my life, my friends who whether an outfit disaster, guy inflicted tears or an exam pained stressy fit are there for me no matter what. These amazing people know who they are without me having to name them and most definitely deserve a big shout out of some kind if not a glitzy style award for their awesomeness so I thought I’d take a second to mention them and dedicate this post to them as we enter a new year and reflect on the kindness and love of those from the previous one.

Now I have a question, a rather interesting one which I’m pretty sure every one of you girls will have asked yourselves or come in to the situation of at some point in time of whether it is ever ok to see a friend as more than just a friend, whether you can ever cross that boundary without it leading to something similar to that of a natural disaster. It’s like when we make the bold decision to put on that disco styled mini dress from the fashionably colourful age of the 70s in a time where eco-friendly designs and recyclable clothing is fast becoming a way of life in today’s culture, where fashion is constantly evolving, constantly changing and moving forward with the times. So is this the same with friendship? Is it sensible to make the decision to be more than just friends with that guy in your life who makes you happy or is it part of the process of an evolving friendship? Questions like “what if this ends in tragedy” are similar to the question of  whether this outfit has the disaster potential of being a fashion choice gone wrong (not to mention any names but you only need to look at the standard copy of Heat magazine or Ok to find your answer there.)  And what if it ruins the friendship you once had with that guy?  And what will other people think, the rest of your friends?

   An important thing to mention here is that just because someone makes the wrong fashion choice in a certain era, it doesn’t necessarily mean that that style won’t come back in fashion one day soon? And so is this the same with an evolving friendship? Maybe a friendship can never truly be ruined by taking that plunge in to a relationship but only really has the potential to be a fashion style disaster if you’re not careful with the clothing (relationship) choices you make. Maybe, if it feels right it can’t be wrong. Similarly to these fashion casualties, these felt like the right decision for the people who chose these outfits at the time so maybe it might not be the right choice for those reviewing them but it is the right choice for the person wearing it. Maybe we shouldn’t care about people judging our decisions on the clothes we wear or the relationships we form, maybe we should just take those risks anyway. Finding a relationship in a friend can be like finding a pair of manolo blanik strappys in a sale. Maybe a friendship becoming more than a friendship is like the ultimate shoe sale…  It kills two birds with one stone and makes you more than happy that you found something so beautiful in something just as great. We take risks in what we wear all the time so why not take risks in our relationships? Why not do what we feel is right and forget the potential consequences?

Heels v Flats, Lad v Gent

Hey lovelys,

  It is currently 3am in the morning and after a good rom com classic Pretty Woman  I suddenly feel the need to go on a write-athon so here goes… just a pre warning though the spelling and punctuation may not be so great as my eyes are slowly but surely closing the more I type haha!

    Firstly, Merry Christmas to everyone and I hope you all had a lovely one. I know it was soo good to see the family and consume all those mince pies and masses amounts of chocolate.

  But as we are in this great season of good will, we are also in the season of a good amount of spending so I thought we could take a few minutes to step outside our materially beautiful world that we love oh so much and imagine a world without any clothes stores, online shopping, catalogues to pick from or materials to sew from.  Scary I know, but imagine we couldn’t spend our days shopping, meet up with our girls in town for a shoe session or pass that manikin with that gorgeously fitted dress we will inevitably buy. What would we do with ourselves? And yes some may say that it’s a tad dramatic and untrue to assume we would have nothing better to do with ourselves if there were no shops around to consume us but I think it’s very safe to say shopping must mean something to us or else we wouldn’t love it so so much! So why is it so important? Why do we buy buy buy to the point that our hands can’t physically carry anymore? Why do we spend on the latest killer heels when rationally it doesn’t really make sense to pay for something which is only going to cause us ankle injuries and are indeed killer?

  It is at this point I would like to ask whether we ultimately invest in things that we know are only going to hurt us? It’s the same with the wanting what we know is bad for us scenario… like when you’re eight years old and your mum tries to explain to you that you cannot have a horse like in that book The Chronicles of Narnia (not that it would physically fit in your garden anyway) but yet you still continue to want it and put it on your Christmas wish list to Santa. And then you grow up and like that guy you know is bad for you, you know will cheat on you or tear eye you up but yet you still continue to like him anyway.  It doesn’t really make sense when you think about it or does it? But I guess maybe it isn’t meant to make sense, it’s just meant to be a learning curve… we are all meant to be attracted to the bad thing in order to find the good thing or the things that make sense.

    So maybe we have to wear a pair of shoes which are beautifully glittered on the outside but bad for us and our feet in order to find that it makes more sense and is less painful to wear a pair of flats which we feel much more comfortable in. Maybe it’s like that with guys. Maybe, although we fancy that hot yet arrogant rugby player who you know is a massive player, we should really be looking a little closer to home at the guy who treats us right, who doesn’t love himself more than he could ever love someone else and who we ultimately know deep down will take care of us. And ok, he might not have a photo shopped body or an eight pack; but he is the real gentleman, the real prince charming!

  So after my mini essay there, maybe Prince Charming doesn’t have to be gorgeously handsome on the outside, maybe he is an average guy who likes average things but is amazing none the less. Maybe guys are like shoes and we shouldn’t settle for a beautiful pair if it is only going to hurt us, when we could be happy with the ones which make us feel comfortable.

 

Dress Persona

Ok so it’s about this time of year when we all get that giddy feeling in our stomachs of excitement or in some cases a last minute panic over the presence of Christmas in the air. But one of the things I love most about this time of year (besides the monstrous dinner I’m headed for on 25^th) is the chance to dress up and wear a new glitzy purchase.  But the question is what dress will I choose? It is funny how every time the girlfriends and I head for a night out I open my wardrobe only to reach the conclusion “I have nothing to wear” yet in reality there are a stack of dresses staring back at me. So when the words “I have nothing to wear” come out what we are really saying girls is that we have worn this dress before and that we need to whack out our credit cards on another Lipsy find and head to town.

    One thing that does become very apparent this time of year though is that we have this massive endless list of things we need to buy… “A dress for new year, meals with friends, presents for our friends and family”… I could go on but that in order for this to happen we need some serious injection of cash. If only our student loans would come in that little bit earlier ha! But I figure taking my usual attitude of “living life to the full” and giving “money no value” is definitely the right approach even if some may say I have my head in the clouds. So yes I’ve decided to treat myself to a dress this new years and what a beaut it is too.

       A dress isn’t just a dress… it is telling the world something about you. Whether it be vintage, retro, Valentino, black, red…you are saying something to the people around you about yourself. Now this dress, the mother New year’s dress is telling me (besides buy me) that I will sparkle on the dance floor (even if I’m swaying in to people through intoxication); that I will look sophisticated drinking my cosmopolitan (even if I miss my mouth and spill it all over me) and that I will pull a gorgeously handsome young man for that inevitable midnight kiss. Whether these things happen or not are yet to be told but is this actually something us girls think about when we buy our new year’s dresses?

Well before we go spending here’s a little summary of what your new year’s dress says about you?

Bolder, brighter colours say you are confident, willing to try new things, adventurous and creative.

Nude pale colours reflect a timid innocence, maturity and elegance.

Strapless dresses show fearlessness.

One strap indicates a colourful yet complex personality.

Two straps illustrate organisation and wisdom.

Long dresses reflect hidden depths to a person.

Short dresses show passion and ambition.

Patterns/stripes/dots indicate a sense of humour.