Going out with students for Halloween? Feeling a bit old? The best way to cure this malady is to make sure you spend the day where you lower the average age by quite a few decades. Battlesbridge is a little village in Essex, known for its antiques centre and weird sticky outy building, and OAPs can't get enough of it. The higgledy piggledy stalls are host to an odd array of anything you can think of, and I am rather a fan of the crap taxidermy you can find nestled in the back of a fair few stands. We came home empty handed this time, but I definitely had my eye on a few of the old bookshelves and cabinets, perfect for someone who's got plans and schemes for their room...
Some people like Christmas, some people like Midsummer, and then there are the people like me who bloody love a good Halloween-themed knees up. Maybe it's a rebellion against not being allowed to trick or treat as a child, but the last few years' Octobers have been focussed around one of the last days of the year you can go out without looking like the michelin man. Seeing as this post has been a draft since 2013 (!!! explains the odd formatting), I thought maybe it was about time to give it the time of night and have a lookback over a few of my getups from the archives...
knife party's haunted house - davy jones' locker
Oh, to plan an outfit on a hangover, with no foresight. Grab your most-worn wardrobe classics (stripy top, blue skirt), draw on a few nautical-themed tattoos and shove on so much make up your face can't move. Haunted House was amazing too, jealous if you've got tickets for this year's.
going 'out out' - max from 2 broke girls
On first thoughts, this one's a bit weird, isn't it? When you realise just how many people have said "you well look like that one off Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" this one's a bit of a no-brainer. And you really can buy anything from ebay.
#AsDarknessFalls - mermaid
Deep sea theme continuing, this year I opted for something inspired by Missguided's new-in section. Take a nude-coloured body (add seashells if you live near a beach/have time), velvet pencil skirt and 'oh my god these are so high I'd give anything to swim not walk home' lace-up heels for a simple costume with elements you can wear again. Because guess which girl still has a 2 broke girls waitress uniform screwed up at the bottom of her wardrobe...
I'd love to see what you guys are wearing for Halloween this weekend, so please pop a link to your instagram in the comments (or, even better, a link to a blog post!) as I've got 2 things to go to this weekend and 0 time to sort out outfits, so any inspiration will be much appreciated. Keep an eye on my instagram to see what I get up to, and have a look below at all the things I'm resisting* in the meantime.
*correct at time of clicking schedule. Things maaay have accidentally been added to bag...
Laura Ashley trench coat (old). Topshop print top: £24 (old). Vintage suede skirt: £8, charity shop. Bally bag: £9, vintage shop. Warehouse lace up flats: £29. Esie Belle necklace: £9.
There's just something about Oxford, isn't there? The city of dreaming spires is one that I don't visit all that frequently, but every trip leaves me feeling a little more relaxed and in love with this country. It may have its own tube (hoho), but this city is all about retaining its heritage and tradition, which comes as a nice break from fast-paced London's silicon roundabout, coremetrics, edialog and UAT. Of course, it did manage to tip it down for roughly 90% of our trip meaning that country air had a hint of raindrop to it (say hello to Yankee candle's new copywriter??), but in a ten minute break we managed to take advantage of smaller than usual crowds beneath the bridge of sighs. Oxford may be a far cry from Venice, but the eponymous (chicken? egg? Wiki'll tell you who came first, I'm sure) architecture is still pretty bloody beautiful, and it's almost enough to make me wish I'd tried a liiittle bit harder whilst revising for my A Levels and make it here to study full time.
As a hardcore His Dark Materials fan, we also headed up Carfax tower to experience Oxford from the rooftops. It might not have been a day for clambering across from building to building, but we definitely made the most of our trip among the spires. Spiral staircase aside (I'm writing this after a big bowl of pasta* - let's not think about all that twirling, unless it's spaghetti round a spoon of course), it's the best place to see the city from, and even better when the sun breaks through the seemingly impenetrable greys of a month's worth of rain in two days. We didn't head inside any of the colleges this time (remember when we bunked into Magdalen?), but from the little we could see from peeking in through the grand wooden doors there's plenty more to see inside. I mean, just look at the museum - and this is the new stuff!
*I'm currently oop norf and this post is scheduled, never quite managed to have pasta for breakfast. Yet.
