Love Letter #6

Hey guys, it's time for another one of my weekly(ish) wrap-ups of awesome stuff!

All the sunny weather lately (now sadly gone!) has got me thinking about getting a new swimsuit - I love all the ones in this fancy 50s ad!

This cabinet set, found via SF Girl by Bay, is just amazing.  It would instantly make any home look unique and beautiful!

As much as I love the Harry Potter series, I've never been the biggest fan of the British covers - these covers of the Swedish editions by artist Alvaro Tapio are probably about 200% more badass!  It was hard to pick a favourite but Buckbeak and those super-creepy dementors give this one the edge over the other six.  See the rest here!

I couldn't feature Harry Potter without linking to one of my favourite artists, Brittney Lee.  This adorable owlery scene and most of her other pieces are made entirely from cut, folded and multilayered paper, it's a pretty incredible style!

I probably talk about Modcloth too much on this blog, but I couldn't resist sharing this - the fitted shape, the peter pan collar and the cute apple print means that it ticks all my boxes for a perfect dress!

These deer-shaped pylons make structures that are usually seen as an eyesore into awesome art.

I would love to have these cute 1960s illustrations, found via Fawn Gehweiler, framed and up on my wall!

Finally, I can't stop laughing at this photo of Steven Moffat and Benedict Cumberbatch visiting the Marvel Studios, they're so adorably nerdy...  I really hope that the rumours about Benedict being cast for a future Marvel film are true, that would make my life!

On that rather fangirly note, I'll say goodbye!

Faye

xxx

Enchantment Under the Sea

Sorry about the few days of silence here on the blog -  it was my birthday party weekend, plus Scotland has apparently been hotter than Spain this past week so I haven't been spending much time in front of my computer...  It's been such a lovely few days, so I'm going to share some photos before heading back outside again!

On the day of my party, my friends from Aberdeen came to stay and we spent the day having lunch and drinks in a beer garden followed by some boy-watching in the park!

I painted my nails in sea-inspired colours for the party. 

I'm not the biggest fan of this photo because I look pretty red in the face after being out in the sun all day, oops!  It does show my whole 50s inspired outfit though which is the most important thing, as well as an in-process shot of the party decorations going up!

The prom king and queen. ;)

We dressed our mannequin Steve as a 'beautiful' mermaid.

Opening my presents - as well as some nice and thoughtful presents, I got these questionable books...  

I made a blue cocktail for the drinks fountain with blue curacao, Caribbean Twist, pineapple and coconut juice and lemonade, it was pretty tasty!  The pineapple is a vintage ice bucket that belongs to my friend Malik.  Here's a few of my favourite pictures from the party, although the quality of my photos did deteriorate somewhat as the night went on!

My flat is way too small to hold 20 people so some of the party moved into the bathroom...

I feel that I should have made a better effort to get a few group shots as most of my photos are of individual people or couples, I need to make that a priority for the next time we're all together.  Hopefully I've managed to capture something of the atmosphere of the night though, I had such a great time and I think everyone looked so lovely in their fancy clothes! We spent the whole day after the party lying in the park which came as quite a welcome rest, I'll leave you with a picture of our giant daisy chain:

I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend too!

Faye

xxx

Safari Park!

Yesterday, Tetley and I took a trip to Blairdrummond Safari Park with our friend Homer.  I'd been to the safari park last year with the Brownie Guides group I help out at, but it was pretty rainy that day, so this time was much better as the weather was glorious and all the animals were out and about!  I spent most of my time screaming about how cute the animals were and taking an embarassing amount of photos, so I thought I'd share my favourites on here!

 When we arrived, the elephants were being led across the road into their enclosure right in front of our car, I like how this one looks like he's waving with his trunk!

We saw a fantastic sealion show, the sealion on the platform dived down into the water and jumped up out of it to hit the ball.

 

 Here they are balancing balls on their noses. Apparently sealions can control their whiskers like little fingers to make this easier to do, not sure whether that's creepy or awesome!

We were jealous of this guy's amazing-looking pool - it was so hot!

A little heap of meerkats.  We felt sorry for the meerkats because literally everyone who looked at them was quoting the meerkats from that annoying Compare the Market advert, I bet the meerkats get sick of hearing that...

The only penguin who was out and about on such a hot day!

Two little otter buddies!  I think they were due to be fed because they came over really close to us and kept making the cutest noises.

I love this one's expression!

This was probably meant for children but it didn't stop Tetley and Homer.

There was a little farm area where you could feed the animals where I fed this massive pig.  I felt sorry for him because everyone else was favouring the 'cuter' animals, but feeding him was quite a bristly and slobbery experience! :(

I love how Homer is apparently really astonished by this donkey.

The boys were a bit scared of this big horse, so I fed him for the same reason that I fed the pig, I should probably stop feeling sorry for these animals as presumably they have grass and other food as well to eat!

This baby goat was so adorable, he was so small that I could literally have put him into my handbag and taken him home!

Tetley posing in front of our future stately home and future pet.

This giant tortoise was walking past the lemur enclosure and they were either very excited or very scared, they kept running over to get a look at it and then running away!

I've saved my favourite animal for last, this adorable bear cub.  I was excited to see him before we even got to the park because 1. bears are awesome, and 2. we discovered on Blairdrummond's website that his name was Loki!  So cute!

Sadly I wasn't able to get great photos of Loki as he was quite far away from his enclosure's viewing platform, plus there was hardly a moment when he wasn't running about!  He was chasing his mum around and play fighting with her, it was pretty amazing to watch.

I'll finish up with this photo of Loki on a log - his mum was swimming around but he seemed a bit more wary of the water!

If anyone lives in or is visiting Scotland, I'd really recommend Blairdrummond. It would be even better for people with children as there's lots of fairground rides and a huge playground as well!

Faye
xxx

Thrifted Finds: Tiny Charm House

Yesterday was a pretty sad day for me - it started off well with summery weather and a trip to the beach, but when we got home I discovered that my camera was broken.  The screen still works but I think sand has got inside the lens because it won't focus or go back in to the camera - sad times!  Until I can attempt to fix it/get a new camera, I'll be using Tetley's old digital camera which I tested out today on these Thrifted Finds photos:

I'm not sure what the official name for these little display cases are.  My friend Laura once referred to my other one as a 'Charm House' though, which I think is a pretty adorable name, so we'll go with that!  I picked this charm house up at a bootsale a couple of weeks ago, and I'm looking forward to the challenge of finding cute things to fill it with - my other charm house which I'll probably share here soon has much bigger compartments so I feel that it'll be difficult to find ornaments that are small enough to fit!

One of the only ornaments I have that's the right size for the tiny charm house is this little owl, I think he looks perfect reading his book in the house's roof compartment!

I picked up this round owl in a charity shop in Perth the other day, I love his cute little feet!

At the moment, the house is also being used to store broken jewellery, like this swallow brooch, so I don't lose any parts before I eventually get round to fixing it.  Instead of ornaments, the house could be used to display pretty brooches and rings, seems like a pretty good excuse to start expanding my collection...

At the same bootsale stall, there was an even tinier charm house that I didn't buy with 'Thimbleville' written on its roof.  While that was pretty cute, I think that thimbles would have practically been the only items small enough to fit into its compartments. Although I've already embraced old lady decor in my flat to quite a scary extent, I feel that starting a thimble collection might be taking it a bit too far!

Do you have any cute display cases for your collections?

Faye

xxx

22

Although my party is next weekend, yesterday was my actual birthday.  It feels so odd to be 22 - I know that 21 is meant to signify becoming a 'proper grownup' but it didn't seem like that for me at the time as I still had a whole year of university ahead of me. Now that I've turned 22 and I'm about to graduate, I feel like I've crossed the boundary from the 18-21 'student' age-group into scary adulthood!

Despite this newfound fear of responsibility, I still had a lovely day, starting off with breakfast in bed as made by Tetley!

Tetley told me that this year, he attempted to include every single one of my interests in his set of presents, resulting in a somewhat bizarre selection.  We have the Game of Thrones cookbook (love!) to cover my enjoyment of both Game of Thrones and food; a book about Corbin Bleu to cover my 'love' of High School Musical (which is actually more of an inside joke as that book has been in our local Home Bargains store for about 4 years and we were starting to feel sorry for it); Legend of the Guardians in reference to my love of owls; War Horse as fuel for my love of Tom Hiddleston and Benedict Cumberbatch; Watership Down which is really a horrible present as Tetley has never seen that movie but I've often told him how traumatising it is; everyone's favourite Star Wars character, Grand Moff Tarkin; a cute little Tintin Beanie Baby and a Russian knockoff of My Little Pony!

I came to appreciate the Corbin Bleu book a lot more after coming across this fantastic image.

We spent the afternoon having lunch with friends and then going to Abertay University's Degree Show.  All of us except Tetley and Ruaridh coincidentially wore bright coloured trousers/tights - this photo is clearly destined to be the cover of our debut album.

Laura made me this awesome Love Owl cake!

Love Owl cutting the cake version of himself...

We spent the evening playing games and watching cartoons - as I may have already mentioned, I am a 22 year old with the interests of a child!  Our homemade Jenga drinking game made an appearance too.  All of the blocks have a number written on them and each number corresponds to a drinking rule or a challenge written in my notebook.  This time there was the added danger of having to do a shot of Tetley's 80% chilli schnapps if you knocked the tower over, which made the game ridiculously tense!

As much as I enjoy having a party on my birthday, I think I probably prefer more casual birthdays like this one with just a few close friends and no pressure to be a great host.  As Tetley tells me though, having my party on the weekend following my birthday also means that my birthday gets to last for a week, and that can surely only be a good thing! ;)

Faye
xxx