The Grove

What else is there to do when it's too hot to go to the beach? Why we go to the Grove and shop, of course! My bezzie mate Kathy and I went off on a spontaneous shopping trip to one of the nicer shopping centers in the area. It's a nice open plan outside and it was nice shopping with all the doors open in all the shops...although they were ALL wasting electricity which I hated but... America, eh?

Check out the random snaps of the afternoon.

How sweet is that!? Umbrellas for the public to take around when it rains! Aw!
And they match with the colour scheme of The Grove, yo!

We went to Anthropologie! It's kinda the way more expensive and whimisical version of Urban Outfitters. We could NOT afford anything in there, but Kathy did try on these fab shoes! How cute are they? I'm loving the wooden wedge and the assymetrical design! Nice nice! But at nearly $300, we thought they would look best on the display for now...

What a clever way of reusing wine bottles! They were filled with bubble bath soap. Mhmmm and the nice item underneathe was felted soap! They just put a nice knit around the bar of soap and felted it. ...simple but clever cos they you can reuse it and it lathers up the soap for ya! Neat!

More afforable wedges from Old Navy. Comfortable. As. Hell. Just sayin'. I usually hate anything with height to it, but these work for me. :) I want to wear them with over the knee socks and my new Terracotta paper bag shorts that I got on sale from Urban Outfitters! Woop!

I love shopping. Be smart and sensible with your money though, ya'll! x

P.S. Everyone in England stay safe with all the rioting going on! It's appalling that the youth feel the need to destroy everything in sight for no good reason...-_-

Shop at CLIC Sargent’s Shop on Gloucester Road!

Hello all! I thought I'd enlighten you with what I do with my free time.

Seeing as it's the time of year for students to be packing up their things to move to new accommodation or back home, what a better time to go through their wardrobes and see what things can go to the local charity shop!

Now since moving to England, the British have most definitely opened my eyes to the wonderful world of second hand clothing. Don't get me wrong, there are most definitely charity shops in America...we just call them thrift stores. Not nearly as an attractive name, but it's what you do; You thrift! And most of them smell vile. Anyhoozle...

I totally love charity shopping now! Especially since it's all about the recycling now and I've surrounded myself with people who really believe strongly in sustainable fashion in the past 3 years so it's only natural for me to jump on the bandwagon! I love that the money made in the shops go right to charity! Just amazing.

Bristol's quite good for charity shopping, especially Gloucester Road! Man, oh man! It's just shop after shop after shop and it's BRILLIANT! I found an absolute gem of a charity shopping partner and her name is Sarah Noon. She always finds the loveliest things and goes to the greatest places and that in itself is a gift.

One afternoon whilst making our way down Gloucester Road, she pointed out this one charity shop that she said was one of her favourite. If it's on Noon's favourite list, how do you say no? That's right, you don't! ...Especially if you're shopping with Noon.

What's the shop, you ask? Why, it's called "CLIC Sargent’s Shop on Gloucester Road" - clever, huh? This particular shop is part of the CLIC Sargent charity, which helps children and young people with cancer. Check them out! There are several CLIC Sargent charity shops around Bristol but this particular one is the charity’s first specialist shop Bristol. Oh yeah. Specialist shop, baby.

THEY SELL THE MOST FABULOUS VINTAGE CLOTHES AT THE MOST FABULOUS PRICES.

Walking in that shop just makes you smile because the atmosphere is so lovely! The decor inside is made up of the items they sell including a lovely array of teacups and all sorts of china, various hats, shoes, bags, paintings, oodles and oodles of vintage dresses and oh everything a girl (or boy!) could ever dream of.

My mate Charlie, who I recently found out works there, promptly whisked me around the shop to show me all the new additions to the rails, her favourite pieces and she also proudly showed off her window displays as well as others she had done around the store. She was even amazing enough to model some outfits for me!

As Charlie went between helping customers and showing me things, she managed to tell me a bit more about what she loves about volunteering there. She explained that Shop was really creative and different to all the other charity shops on Gloucester Road. She mentioned that the BBC had come round not long ago to buy some vintage things from the show "Casualty." Crazy huh?





Mazing, aren't they?





My mate Stacey also came along to try on some things too. There's nothing quite like playing dress up!

I even tried some stuff on, but shh. I don't usually do the whole "lets model clothing thing" But I happened to like the casino inspired playsuit, I had to have it and at £15? Bargain. Oh I can hear the taunts from my mother now on how she used to have something like it and blah blah blah. But that's what vintage stuff is all about right? Riiight!

So after spending a nice time browsing and stuffing my guilty (but awesome! why do I always spend money though!?) purchase of my new playsuit into my bag, Charlie pointed out that everyone should be buying picnic hampers* at the moment. Go on picnics in cut-off dungarees* or 70's maxi dresses*, people! That's the fun thing to be doing this summer, trust me.

*all of which can be purchased at Shop! Quick, go get em before they're all gone, ya'll!

So when you do that whole thing where you make those charity shop piles, why not donate to CLIC Sargent? Every donation helps children and young people with cancer, so trust me, they and their families will thank you. Oh and all vintage-mad, charity shop people who shop at Shop will thank you too. I know I will, blates.

Peace! xx

Home and behind!

***Post written in Heathrow Airport on 22/07/2011 without internet access. Read up, catch up!

Why hello world. What a time these past few days have been! I managed to snag myself an amazing bloke (Right before I leave the country amazing timing, let me tell you...), I've had such emotional goodbyes, I could give a freshly spanked wailing newborn baby a run for their money, and oh yeah, I graduated.

I say graduated, but I actually mean I just became a graduate. I was rebellious and didn't actually do the whole ceremony thing. It's such a novelty in England to throw their caps in the air and wear the gowns and stuff...but seeing as I sported gowns every time I left a school, it didn't appeal to me much this time. Saved a bit of dollar too. :P Oh by the way, I got myself a prize for being radical at pattern cutting! Yay!!!! Good things happened!

I was even taken out to dinner! I was not expecting that at all. I originally didn't want to do the whole graduation thing because I knew I wouldn't have anyone to dine with after the ceremony. Everyone had family or significant others to go out to dinner with and I didn't. Why put myself through the loneliness, yo? But things change when you meet new people so I ended up having a lovely evening over some steak and wine. Mmm. Win. Plus having nearly half a bottle of wine to myself made me all tipsy and made me want to run away from saying my byes to people.

But alas, I still had to say goodbye too many times. I usually am hard as a rock when it comes to feelings but because the girls I met on my course are amazing and reduced me to tears at the thought of not spending every waking moment with them anymore. Ah...ohhh the tears are welling up again. Composure, Holly, composure...Calm. Good. No tears. I refuse to cry anymore! Haha.

I even cried saying bye to people I know I'll see again in two months, I swear I'm just a big ball of hormones at the moment. Grahh. Such a nuisance, trust me. I was escorted to the Bristol bus station to catch my coach to Heathrow by my lovely mate Ella (check her out, her illustration is amazering). She bought my a cupcake from the Hummingbird bakery. Oh my goodness it was delish. Thank you, Ella! As I got on the bus, I immediately got leaky eyeballs and then tried to distract myself with music on my ipod. In theory that would work, but EVERY SINGLE SONG reminded me of someone. Chase and Status = Stacey, Beyonce = Charlie, Foster the People = Snoon, Crystal Fighters = Sioban...the list goes on! Its nice, but it sucks if you get me.

But the good in all of this is that once I manned up and stopped feeling so weepy, I listened to the music that made me think of my brother and my girls back home. I'm actually quite chuffed that D&B and Dubstep are getting more recognition in America, I'm going to have a banging summer. My sister is getting married tomorrow...so that's a fun way to start the holiday off, right? Right!

How lovely it will be to see family and friends back home! I just hope my jetlag doesn't mess my face up. Need to look fly when I step off the plane, don't I? Yes, yes I do. :) Although I feel like I look awfully British with my Brogues, denim shirt and my headscarf. Here's to a good flight. x

Hello all! Terribly sorry I've been MIA for the past few weeks. I've arrived home safely in New Jersey as you can tell by this post. Home's been way too hot! :( Who woulda thunk it? Complaining about the heat?!) I got off the plane in Montreal, stepped outside and had a panic attack whilst furiously tearing off my clothing. The heat was unreal. You know what it's like when you open a hot oven and for some reason you're standing directly over it and you get a horrible wave of heat? Yeah, it was like that.

No matter! I will put the CLIC Sargent post up within the hour so you lovely people can read that as well. Sorry for the delay all, but Holly is back. x

I feel the urges steaming already.

Hello! I was meant to have posted a nice little diddy about CLIC Sargent's nice vintage shop on Gloucester Road, but the photos are on my hard drive and I can't use it without my travel adapters. As they are in storage while I prepare to go back home to America for the summer, I can't post until I'm by some good ol' America plug sockets . Nice. My bad, so that will be up right after my sisters wedding...so...sometime next week! Trust me, it's a good-un!

I have finally moved out of my third year house and I am technically homeless until I go home on Friday. Now, I've been staying at a friends house and as I'm home alone while they're all at work, I go into housewife mode. I've been cleaning and cooking just for things to do (because, between you and me, I've become a bit of a bum. Not working, just relaxing, which is well nice!) and I've just finished ironing a bunch of shirts and I've felt a bit of inspiration brewing.


I don't normally iron shirts, because I go out of my way to buy things that don't need to be ironed, but doing it this one time makes me want to either jump right back into menswear or maybe make some really cool drapey shirts for when I eventually get into some field where I need to actually dress in proper workwear attire *shudder* Something a bit All-Sainty like so:


Oh yeah. I feel like designing again


...right when I get back to America. x

The Secret's Out!

Ahhh...A very good morning to you all! Guess where I am? Well how would you have an inkling of a clue? I'll just stop your guessing and tell you.

ALICE'S SECRET EMPORIUM
(The website is still under construction at the moment but its up! Still have a look around!)

I was asked by my darling friend Tom, the genius mind behind this awesome little shop, to man the fort for a few hours. This totally beats packing, trust me! I am absolutely delighted to be sat behind the til eagerly awaiting customers. But seeing as it's Saturday morning...oh let's just hope not too many people are hung over! I thought I might do a little bloggity whilst it is quiet!

Alice's Secret Emporium is nestled downstairs of BS8 on Park St. (34, Park Street, Bs1 5JG Bristol, United Kingdom to be exact!) . BS8 is actually really a lovely place to shop! There's clothing, fragrances, accessories, a little stall completely dedicated to designs made from driftwood (really cool stuff, mind!) and all the vintage things your heart desires.

Now ASE's is Just. Too. Cute. It's vintage heaven! So many of the items have been sourced from all over and you've got a lovely array of chine, jewelry, ribbons, buttons, brooches, old Singer hand sewing machines!!! You don't even know! The list goes on and on, trust.



I'm a huge fan of the decor (I've been really big on decor lately, making mental notes on my own place, I suppose!) Everything is displayed in bookshelves and in vintage shelves and dressers. The till is even hella old school, but I shan't tell you more about that!





All I'm saying is that this place is awesome. The people in the other bits of BS8 are really sound as well so if you're wandering on Park St anytime soon, come on down and get your hands on some amazing vintage stuff. You'll love it. And Tom's an absolute doll, so do say hi!

Check out the facebook page too! Totally like their page too. Ooo looks like potential customers are coming over. That's my cue! Ciao ciao!

P.S. She was lovely! She's getting married and bought a glass cake stand. Adorable! I wish her all the best for her special day!

Messy, messy.

Ugh.
My life is basically all over the floor. I am a messy bugger.

I need to get on with with tidying and packing, but the thought of food seems so much more appealing, don't you think? I'm thinking homemade bread yet again with a nice selection of spreads. I feel as if I should start a food blog as well. Would people enjoy that or...?

The work paid off.