life lately... London Fashion Weekend

just before I succumbed to a nasty bout of what turned out to be tonsillitis and had to essentially retire to bed for four days, I did manage one outing...

London Fashion Weekend is the commercial shopping little sister to the industry show that is London Fashion Week. I say little sister, but sometimes I'm not convinced they are that close. Cousins maybe. I tried explaining how divorced they are to Marto, but he said, clothes, London, same venue, same week. How far apart can they be? Anyway, Pip and I headed down on Friday afternoon to check the place out, courtesy of Propercorn (who make my favourite Sweet & Salty Popcorn) along with my friend Miss L. Sadly our tickets didn't include either a goody bag or entrance to the catwalk events, which was rather a shame, so we wondered around the shopping instead. Pip and I had fun posing with the diet coke hunk, pouting in the Benefit photo booth (and getting a sample of their new mascara to see just what Jo sees in it - I will report back) and eating free yogurt. Maybe it's because I don't have much spare cash, or because my tastes have changed, or because I had a baby with me, but I actually found the show a little disappointing. Whilst Somerset House *is* a beautiful venue, it also has a lot of doorways, which isn't always the most pleasant in a crowd. I also felt that the selection of designers was tired and that they were selling any old stock, rather than this season's wares. It also felt very cliquey and full of people looking like they'd dresses in an effort to be shot for a street style blog photo. Rather false, perhaps. That said, I enjoyed my eyebrow wax and the coffee and chorizo I ate at Fernando & Wells and Somerset House is just stunning.

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Propercorn sent me 2 tickets and a bag of my favourite popcorn after I won a competition on their twitter feed. This is not a sponsored post as such although details of my sponsorship policy can be found here 

Photo taken by the Benefit photo booth but I paid for my own eyebrow wax.

Weekend

I'm back. Briefly.

Spent a wonderful weekend on the Devon/Dorset border at my sister's hen party with my two sisters (we were all wearing mad sunglasses) and a bunch of the bride to be's friends. We drank lots of champagne, ate many cakes and sat down to a Mad Men inspired afternoon tea, laughed lots, told tall tales and ate a picnic lunch at the beach. We made A a veil which made her look like a nun at a rave and I won the hula-hooping contest.

Photos to follow soon but both my camera and my phone batteries are dead.

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Photo via East Side Bride (it reminded me of a *much* better dressed version of me and my sisters this weekend) of Cacharel Spring 2011 via Sara Williams via seesaw via The cherry blossom girl)

Yurting in the South West

One of the duties of a bridesmaid generally seems to involve hen party organising of some sort. It is a path to tread (and I mean no offence whatsoever to either A or T who might read this!) which involves a great deal of guess work, a decent amount of research, a juggling of diaries of a fair number of people - some of which you might know and some of which you definitely don't - which may include different ages/stages of life and wealth and a limited window. But when the bride-to-be turns up, has a wonderful weekend with her closest friends and everyone enjoys themselves, it makes the organising well worth it.

{Images by hen party guests; food, crockery and decorations by Iced}

My biggest advice in the earliest stages of planning is communication. Make sure the researcher and the bride-to-be are on the same page in terms of a basic outline. I spent time researching yurts today and fell in love with the idea of a glamping, yurting, meadow based hen party. Turns out bride-to-be saw it more of a cottage on the beach type affair. Sounds wonderful, I just misread it. Communication people. Always remember the communication. But in the interests of my research being useful to someone, I thought I'd post what I found.

So I can get on with researching coastal cottages. Unless anyone has any recommendations?

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Somerset

The Yurt Retreat - photo via Go Glamping

The Yurt Retreat - this is a new-ish venture from brother's Andrew and Paul and sounds lovely. Andrew was especially helpful when I spoke to him over the telephone. 4 yurts sleeping 4 people surrounding a communal kitchen/lounge/shower area. Based within driving distance of the Jurassic Coast as well as The Wild Garlic restaurant and the River Cottage Canteen. (Crewkerne)

Cornwall

Photos by either Botelet or me

Botelet Smaller yurts of 2 so less good for hen parties per se but I couldn't leave these from the list as this is where we spent our honeymoon (Herodsfoot, Liskeard)

Cornish Tipi Holidays  A village of different sized tipis. I personally of 2 different hen parties which have taken place here, both sounded lots of fun. (St Kew, Nr Wadebridge, Cornwall)

Pencuke Farm Yurts 3 yurts looking over meadowland to the North Atlantic with a guest barn with communal kitchen etc (St Gennys, Bude)

Cornish Yurt Holidays via Go Glamping

Yurt Works (Cornish Yurt Holidays) 2 yurts in more separate fields (St Breward, Bodmin)

North Wales

Cae Wennol Yurts 2 yurts, billed as a real retreat (Hen Efail, Conwy)

I also found surf shacks, lots of lovely campsites and vans, so if you want to know, let me know.