#56

Weekly round up: part 1

Happy Friday everybody! Here's a weeks worth of sensational street style snaps and inspirational images to get you in that autumn mood. You know, the one where walking through your door is the best feeling because the warmth hits you like a big hug, where your outfit has kept you cosy and warm and you're ready for a toasty hot chocolate. NOT the one where the wind and rain have ruined your hair/make-up, you've forgotten what it's like to be warm and you want to assassinate every spider that enters your home looking for warmth! 

X

#55

Hello lovely blog readers! Exciting things are happening in the world of Elise; 1) I'm writing this on my iPad (so sophisticated right?!) 2) I made a new twitter! @with0utacare

I will still be using my current account, but less and less as I shift the focus onto the old blog and the fashion/journalism industry. I'd been considering having a separate twitter account for my blog for a while but didn't know whether to simply turn my current account into the new one or create a new one altogether. I went for the latter, I liked the idea of having a clean twitter slate, if you will, and keeping it separate from my social site. Anyway, the price I have to pay however is the fact my follower count is rather minuscule (I think so far I have one spam follower!). So please please please check out @with0utacare and give me a follow-I aim to use the account to make people aware of sales/discounts, give-aways, fashion news, trends and blog posts, but it'll also double up as a slightly personal account inevitably. Depending on how it goes it may well become my regular account, so hit that follow button okay? Okay!

xxx

#54

Just a super quick, bad quality post for you guys today. I was in a mad rush when I took these so I apologise in advance-they're really not great. I wore my sleeveless check shirt under the jumper, styled as an 'off the shoulder' jumper (although I stupidly did not take a photo that shows this!), but basically it was my attempt at the cut-out trend. I Added my favourite shorts, tights, Chelsea boots, key-chain necklace and waxed jacket and ta-dah, this outfit was born. I thought the way the layers, textures and colours worked together in this outfit sort of epitomised autumn as well as being very much in my comfort zone, I just hope it looked better in reality than in these photos!

x 

#53

OOTD

Well, well, well, look who's decided to make an appearance...yes I'm talking about the sun. After a completely miserable spell of weather over the last fortnight I am more than grateful to the sun for gracing us with his/her (is the sun male of female?!) presence. However, as other fashion/style bloggers will know it can make the photography side of things quite difficult! I couldn't get the lighting right inside so decided to take this little shoot into my garden. As a result of this, the photos have a much nicer backdrop, and in some ways are more vibrant, but I must apologise for any photography let downs caused by a) the sun or b) my mum's photography skills (yes I am a blogger without a tripod, but Christmas is coming!).

I haven't done an 'outfit of the day' post for a while on here, purely because of the amount of time it takes up, but make sure you're following me on instagram (search elisemckeever) to briefly see most of my ootd's!

 

Today I teamed my favourite new-ish Zara zebra print shirt with my ASOS staple winter skirt. I belted it and hung the shirt so that it fell down further on the sides than in the centre (above the belt buckle) to create a nice shape within the outfit, although this is a little more noticeable in real life than in these photos as I had no mirror to do arranging/composition during the shoot :-(

I always feel a little pretentious calling it a 'shoot', but what else can I call it? I wonder if other bloggers have this problem...

Anyway back to the outfit, um, yes boots. I bought these on Thursday for £30 from h&m. I thought they were a bit of a bargain so even though heeled boots weren't on my shopping list, I had to snap them up (oops). I do think they were a good buy though because they can be styled casually and smartly, and the extra height is a bonus for me being a short-ass! I'm still unsure as to what people's reaction would be if I wore these to sixth form though, as in, are they acceptable for school wear? I like to think so but we will see won't we!

Have a great weekend and enjoy the sunshine!

x

#52

AW12-OUTERWEAR

Every year I seem to forget just how cold our British winters are! I am most certainly never, ever prepared for the colder months. That said, yesterday I had my first Starbucks hazelnut hot chocolate of AW12 and thoroughly enjoyed it-HURRAH! On top of that, I've enjoyed indulging in some new clothes and shoes for winter (yet I still don't own a winter coat...) which I hope to show you over the course of the weekend.

So this week my friend has asked me to track down a winter coat for her after giving me a few specifics of what she was after, which got me thinking about this years winter coats in general. I quickly realised there was a huge emptiness within my blog just itching to be filled with a post, this post in fact, all about the outerwear of AW12-the title gave it away didn't it?

I am loving so many trends regarding outerwear this year it's making it impossible for me to choose one for myself, and I emailed about 17 options to my previously mentioned friend! There's the long, thick coats with the designer vibe and the near designer prices (most seen at Topshop, Zara and Mango), the khaki parkas which you're never really sure will keep you warm, the always trendy duffel coats and recently, I've been seeing more of probably one of my favourite outerwear themes ever, shearling!

Here's a short-list of my favourites anyway at a range of styles and prices, with the links below!

x

P.s.I found some pretty good bargains on boohoo.com and am in love with this fearn coat by Dahlia, but their images are unusable!

Topshop

Topshop

River Island

Miss Selfridge

Urban Outfitters

ASOS

ASOS

#51

Today has just been one of those days. Let me talk you through my tale of woe...

I woke up happy, I'd had an okay-ish night sleep but was enjoying a lie in because I didn't have any lessons before break. So off I trotted at about 9am to get the public bus, the bus usually arrives at about 7 minutes past (I got there at about 9.03) anyway, I waited until 9.15 and it still didn't come. On top of that, the short walk had allowed me to notice that my jeans don't fit me any more and they would not stay how I put them and that my shoe lace would not stay done up; so essentially my well thought out outfit wasn't looking so well thought out after all. I was also becoming increasingly more self-conscious about a spot that had developed on my face which I would compare to the grand canyon-don't ask. 

Anyway I went home and spilt chicken soup on my top, so had to change. Watched a bit of Jeremy Kyle and 'towie' (SOUL DESTROYING STUFF) and went off to get the next bus. If I'd been able to get this bus I'd have only missed one lesson, however it turned out to not even be going to where I needed to so I went home...again with zero transport options left. This resulted in me missing another business and politics lesson (I missed two last week because I was off ill) and an English lesson, as well as a much needed catch up with my friends. 

Because I have Friday's off, when I have a day off I end up only doing three days a week, which always results in me feeling like a bum! I always work at home on my days off but my cats being super needy at the moment; you try revising with a kitten trying to get as close to your face as humanly (or felinely) possible!

Wow it sounds even more pathetic now I've written it down. Apologies to the people who have had genuinely bad days today, you are probably finding me infuriating. I can't actually complain too much anyway, I got some work done, have the time to blog and a day inside is probably better for my on-going cold/flu anyway. 

I'm going to stop rambling now. I am not sure how I wrote four paragraphs about my incredibly boring day...probably all the cat company making me a little crazy.

I did come here with a purpose...oh yes, ASOS's new curve collection! I've read many an article where women who aren't thin/slim have stated that they simply avoid fashion. I once even read "I thought that fashion wasn't for people like me", which I think is really sad because fashion is for everyone! Fashion is in all areas of culture and life, not just clothes. Everyone experiences a form of fashion every day in one way or another even if they don't realise it. 

On top of this, no matter what shape or size you are, there are certain items women have to avoid. There are loads of things I can't wear because I'm too short to pull them off. On top of this, I am grateful for being naturally slim but I have often received judgement and criticism for my size, and often wish I had a different figure. My point being, no matter what size you are, you can make fashion work for you and no matter what size you are, there will be times when you hate it and feel as though it's 'wrong'. I believe that as long as you're healthy, weight and size do not matter at all.

Enough of my philosophical outlooks on life though, check out the collection here: ASOS CURVE COLLECTION and see my favourites below.

x

P.s. If the sizes are a little too big for you, but you'd still describe yourself as a curvy girl, simply take note of the styles, cuts and shapes used as they have all been chosen in order to flatter curvaceous women!

#50

Hello everyone :-)

I hope you're all enjoying the wet, cold and windy disaster that is this week! The weather has made me uncomfortably aware of how few warm jumpers I own, although I inherited one just a few moments ago from my brother, who I managed to convince that he looked a little bit 'unmanly' in it due to it's small sizing. I mean, I didn't lie just to get a new jumper...that would be mean. It was for his own good, okay? 

On top of that, I should be getting £30 back from Zara.com over the next week so maybe I'll invest in something warm and cosy with that. Every cloud and all that. 

So basically you may or may not be aware that I have been awaiting a delivery from Zara for the last 5 days (when they say standard delivery, they really do mean standard don't they?). To buy these clothes, I had to make debit card changes just to fit their website, paid nearly £60, waited for 5 days and then guess what? Only one of the items was okay to keep. The clothes are absolutely beautiful, the packaging divine and the return system wonderfully simple, but the XS trousers I ordered were definitely not extra small! They must have been at least a size 10, if not a 12, and I don't mean to sound snobby at all but that's more 'small' than 'extra small' no?

The only thing that made the order a pleasant experience was my beautiful new shirt, which I honestly had to force myself out of after trying it on to make sure it fitted. It's ridiculously silky and is an absolute delight to wear, although, the stitching was not exactly perfect and their were a few threads that needed chopping off.

None the less, I adore it. So, when the clothes look that good, are delivered wrapped up and in a perfect box, and cost the amount they do, is it just bad luck that made my Zara.com experience a bad one?

I definitely won't be ordering trousers from them again, but I'm interested to know if anyone else has ordered from them and what their experience of it was like?

I better head off as the season finale of New Girl is on shortly (so sad) and I want to try and get some work done before then. I'm not quite sure what I'll do without my weekly doses of Jess and the gang now! I hope you all have a lovely rest of the week! Ciao 

x