Love Lambeth Country Show

Dress - Topshop, Sandals - Dune, Sunnies - Vintage

Love Lambeth Country Show

The Lambeth Country Show is becoming an annual tradition for me, it is the highlight of the South London summer calendar (yes, even including you Brixton Splash). For the past three years, as soon as that LCS weekend hit, I have donned a fancy outfit and marched myself straight to Brockwell Park and then, almost immediately to the Chucklehead Cider stand.

This year, the outfit choice was this seventies vibing, shirt dress of dreams. This dress was the dress that you buy despite it possibly wiping out your finances for the rest of the month, just because you can't live without it - having the dress counteracts the hardship... not a massively healthy view on clothing items as saviours of the modern day, but anywhoo...

I'm not sure I have ever explained my love of dogs to you, if I haven't, I have probably saved you a good few hours worth of gushing. Just so you don't feel left out, I will touch on the subject now. I ADORE dogs, I want my own as soon as I am a capable enough person to look after something other than myself. LCS always gives me the perfect opportunity to indulge from afar as dog spotting is rife. I'm not usually a Chihuahua fan, but we were ransacked by three of the lads and were fully won over.

Usually, I make time to take in the all the sights and sounds the show has to offer, including big veg, camel racing, delicious food, haystacks... (you know the country show drill) but this year, it was about cider, dogs and good company. I was fully content sitting, having a little tipple, talking and swaying to the wonderful music that is always hanging in the air.

Safe to say my head feel rather flat the following day, but as always - completely worth it. Until next year my friend.

The Weekend Vlog 04

The Weekend Vlog 04

This particular weekend was a Bank Holiday, Thursday night lead me to Euston for a weekend at home, in Manchester. This weekend in the North included a family trip to Blackpool, beautiful shop oogling, fish & chips, vintage shopping, lots of lunches, friends, cider and Sunday dinners.

Nadia from Nadinoo has just opened her first shop in Manchester's 'Craft & Design Centre', it is beautiful, obviously... more on that soon!

I have a few blog posts and a video to follow, but in the meantime you can hear more of me waffling on my YouTube channel.

V&A Italian Glamour Exhibit

V&A Italian Glamour

I had a visitor from the North (what is a blog post without a Game of Thrones reference?...) so I planned a full day of Southern activities, first up  the V&A Italian Glamour Exhibit.

I am always the annoying person at an exhibit who has to read every annotation and whilst being annoying I discovered a pair of kindred spirits in the form of two older, ridiculously cool ladies. I began to lurk where they were looking because their insight into the exhibit was fascinating.

Videos featuring glimpses into catwalk shows dating back to the fifties were located around the exhibit and I was interested to see the models used were shapely and looked 30 - 40, I wonder when the change to young / teen models happened, and why? Google surely must know... Fantastic exhibit anyway, I could have just stared at all the beautiful outfits all day - if you are in London you must go and witness the growth and boom of Italian Fashion.

I felt completely smug about my outfit choice when a well-dressed gent approached us to tell me I was fabulous and looked like a walking part of the exhibit... he must have been mad or not looking at me obviously... but I felt vainglorius nonetheless. Deserved.

This dress is perfect, there is always a story but I will save that for another post.

After we had soaked in our fill of culture and beautiful fabrics our stomachs directed us to Jackson + Rye for butter chicken (BUTTER CHICKEN) and cocktails. Jackson + Rye has been on my list of places to devour everything for a while and I was not disappointed, everything was beautiful down to the awesome illustrated menus designed by Bjorn Lie. His work is pretty brilliant all the time but I think his style fit so easily in with the Jackson + Rye brand.

Chicken was shortly followed by cocktails / cider at Harvey Nichols.. we were rolling big time.

London is awesome, but it was especially awesome this day. We both decided we wanted cheese and we both decided we wanted champagne - I typed these stipulations into google and London delivered. Fromage and Cheese in Covent Garden. The champagne was reasonable and oh so tasty and the cheese was just ridiculous. The waitress found out what type of cheese we most loved and designed our board around that, I cannot gush about this place enough - maybe a whole posts worth??

Anyway after eating everything, all day we slumped home to drink prosecco and eat take out pizza - a luxurious and well needed / deserved day I say.

I vlogged the while weekend on my YouTube channel so if you are remotely interested in hearing / seeing / witnessing more that have a look at that HERE!

I have just opened a Depop account and listed my first item (username - ashleyfauguel) I can see this app becoming and addiction!

Dress - Toujours Toi Family Affairs

Eat The Weekend

Eat The Weekend

I don't think I had ever properly realised the excitement Easter can bring - two days off work and it is perfectly acceptable to devour your body weight in chocolate? WHAT? The Easter arrived... along with the typical English 'let-down' weather. Allan was staying in London with me over Easter - days of food, beer and Game of Thrones followed.

Opening the curtains on Bank Holiday Monday pushed my bank into the confines of my warm duvet watching videos on YouTube and listening to the rain trying to enter the house. Opening the curtains for a second time was a lot more pleasing - SUNSHINE.

Me and Allan immediately leaped into the shower / clothes and in the space of 30 minutes we were out the door to make the most of this peculiar turn around. There were rumours of a Street Food Festival at Queens Walk along the Southbank so we set off in that direction, willing to take solace in a pub if the taps turned on again.

We hit the Thames, still sunny - so sunny in fact that we actually sat on a boat OUTSIDE with a beer before continuing onto Queens Walk. The food festival looked (and smelled) incredible. After runnin around all the stalls wanting to eat everything - I settled for a home brewed cider, the best hot dog in the whole world from ' The Polish Deli London', followed by a pot of churros from 'Churros Garcia'
Whilst walking along the Thames feeling that ' London in the sun feeling' I thought it was time to take a few snaps of what I was wearing - you can see under the rain mac my choice of outfit was slightly more optimistic.

The Weekend Vlog 01

The Weekend Vlog 01

I am going to attempt to make the 'weekend vlogs' a more regular occurrence over on this here section of the internet. YouTube is something I am enjoying much more than I thought I would - it is still a rather foreign concept but I'm learning the language, FinalCut Pro is my dialect of choice.

Anyway this particular weekend was spent staring open mouthed in delight at The Grand Budapest Hotel, having an outdoors picnic, indoors and generally enjoying being 27 in London. Hope you enjoy!

Potter World

Potter World

I managed to live in London almost seven months without visiting the Harry Potter Studio Tour, as a die hard Potter fan that's pretty disgraceful. The constantly sold out tickets didn't help exactly BUT we finally went and it was magical... obviously (and yes the use of 'magical' was most definitely necessary)

Walking through the doors of the great hall into the world of Harry Potter was excitable shake inducing. The aspect of the tour I enjoyed most was being able to see the crazy amount of detail that went into every inch of the films. I would have loved to have been the designer creating the spell books that lined the classrooms, the portraits of the past headmasters hanging in Dumbledores office were literally incredible!

I rode a broom!!! Although being the only person over three foot high in the queue was eye opening... butterbeer wasn't the taste explosion I was hoping for but I feel part of the Harry Potter club for drinking it.

I sometimes wish there was somewhere in the universe where Harry Potter actually existed, although if it did I would be devastated not to be one of the 'chosen ones' being a muggle in that world just doesn't cut it.

This may be the geekiest post but who cares, go to Harry Potter world - ride a broom and have a bloody good time kids.

Wearing pretty much all Topshop... Boots - Dune, Bag - Debenhams

Tapestries created especially for the films, Grayson Perry eat your heart out.

PRIVET DRIVE!