We really know how to have a good time in my house.

(By the way, if you're looking for some genuinely helpful photo tips, Lauren McGlynn has been doing an amazing series called Photography According to Lauren. It's brilliant and incredibly helpful. You're welcome.)

1. Belatedly notice that all the cool kids are wearing friendship bracelets. Decide you must have one immediately.

2. Go to John Lewis (other haberdasheries are available) and buy bumper pack of budget embroidery thread because you're too cheap to splash out on the good stuff.

3. Spend three days deciding which colours to use.

4. Realise you spent so long choosing colours that your only crafty friend has gone away on holiday so you're going to have to make your OWN FRIENDSHIP BRACELET. Cringe.

5. Find helpful tutorial online. (Not mine, obviously. I'm talking about an *actual* helpful one.)

6. Painstakingly make bracelet. Continually make stupid mistakes and have to unpick it. Curse the day friendship bracelets were ever invented.

(Pro tip: If you can, make the bracelet half a centimetre too long, but don't realise until after you've finished the bracelet and snipped all the end bits off and it's too late to change it. This bit's brilliant!)

7. As soon as slightly wonky bracelet is finished, log onto internet and discover the cool kids have officially declared that friendship bracelets are so over. Sigh.

8. Belatedly notice that all the cool kids are wearing [insert pretty much anything here]. Decide you must have one immediately.

[Repeat]

It's an arm party and YOU'RE INVITED!

 

Okay, team. Remember my great yellow skirt hunt? And the red jeans obsession? Well, you lot were so good at sending me suggestions - too good, in fact, which is why I ended up having to give one skirt away - that when my friend emailed me with a genuine fashion quandary, I decided to throw it out to you guys. There's nothing I love more than a good shopping challenge (just ask Linsey) and something told me you might be open to a little fantasy outfit planning on a Friday afternoon. Go on, tell me I'm wrong.

So, the challenge. It's a tricky one. I'm pretty sure my friend was joking when she suggested I do a post about it, but I honestly don't know where to start. This particular friend - we'll call her Priscilla, even though that is not remotely her name - is about to move to Palestine to begin a very important job for a very worthwhile organisation and generally put the rest of us to shame. It's all come about quite quickly: she's flying out next week and she has the small matter of a mammoth dissertation due today (you can do it, Priscilla!) so you can imagine that shopping is quite far down her list of priorities. Thus she finds herself in the position of being about to move to a Middle Eastern country in possession of a very European wardrobe, and she needs our help.

The Rules

♥ No leg on show.

♥ No arms above the elbow (below the elbow is ok).

♥ No cleavage.

♥ Tight as you like (the younger Palestinian ladies apparently exploit this to the full).

Other things you might need to know

♥ It will be around 40°C. That is HOT.

♥ Priscilla is fair-haired with a pixie crop, awesome curves and amazing cheekbones. Picture a juicier version of Michelle Williams and you've got it.

♥ When she was living in east Africa (this girl gets around), she wore linen trousers and tunic tops and claims she looked like she was, and I quote, "wearing a sack". Which is not the look we're going for here, okay?

I'm thinking maybe a maxi skirt (floaty ones when it's crazy hot, stretchy ones for practicality) and a loose-fitting shirt with a cinched-in waist to avoid any sack comparisons, but I'm turning this one over to you. I appreciate we might struggle to find online retailers that deliver to the Middle East, but she will be flying back and forth to London so UK-based stores would be good, or just general ideas and inspiration.

Think you can help a girl out? Okay... go!

 

P.S. I've had outfit quandaries of my own this week, as I'm heading down to Leeds this weekend for a little get together with some of my favourite bloggers. I may have purchased some leopard-print jeans. Wish me luck.

Images: Dakota & Elle Fanning by Mario Sorrenti for W Magazine via Fashion Gone Rogue

And considerably more willpower than me. I would never have made it past the AT-AT's feet.

Who's having pancakes for tea then? I use the pancake batter mix from my trusty old Be-Ro recipe book. My mum has an ancient copy, all floury and falling to pieces. Mine is new (only £2.50!), but it's degenerating at an alarming pace. Probably due to my habit of dropping it into bowls of cake mix and spattering it with bits of Yorkshire pudding. I'm not the most graceful of cooks.

One Pancake Day, Fin and I made an entire pancake-based meal. The pudding was delicious: sliced banana wrapped up in pancakes and drizzled with golden syrup, baked in the oven and served with ice cream. YUM. The main course, however, was less successful. Apparently Peking Duck doesn't really work with chicken. Or satay sauce. Or thick, rubbery pancakes. Blergh.

I can't help thinking that the true meaning of Shrove Tuesday has gone worryingly awry when I actually have to go out to the shops and buy pancake ingredients. It's not really the point, is it? I should probably be scraping together a meal from the random contents of my cupboards, using up all the unhealthy things we're meant to be forsaking for the next six weeks.

I wonder if I could create a scale replica of the Millenium Falcon out of supernoodles and cheese?

{Images: Jim's Pancakes}

It started off grey. Low-lying clouds drifted up from the valley, seeping between the trees and into our bones. We moved carefully through the murky half-light, our bodies slowly remembering how to do this thing.

All was well, for the first two hours. Then came a phone call, tears, an ambulance. Sa clavicule, elle est cassée. Fin and I looked at each other and looked away, heartsick. Glad it wasn't us, guilty for our gladness.

We awoke on the third day to fat snowflakes fluttering down, filling the air like confetti. It fell, and it fell, and it fell. We bounced and tumbled and whooped through knee-deep snow. Our car got stuck. We retreated, gratefully, to the hot tub. I cannot overstate how good it was to sink, groaning, into that steaming pool at the end of the day. A drink didn't hurt, either.

Finally the clouds parted. The snow of the previous days had been bullied into submission and the pistes were all but empty. The only sound was the thrum of our skis trembling over the grooved surface. I swished and swooped from one run to the next. Even my mum took to the slopes, for the first time since she left France to come home and begin cancer treatment three years ago. She skied cautiously, carefully, but still - she skied.

That's 9.30 in the morning, just to be clear. And it got colder. So cold that the very air around us seemed to freeze. Tiny particles shimmered in the sunlight like glitter. Every breath chilled me to the bone.

When we stopped at lunchtime - in a hilarious café where the electricity went off every time they used the putain micro-onde (the "fucking microwave"), so that Fin had to continuously flick a switch in the fusebox above his head - it was so cold that the water in the toilet bowl had frozen. Yowza. When I took my glove off to try and take a picture, I lost all feeling in my hand within about ten seconds and didn't get it back for an hour.


This is me. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Hey, Kirsty, maybe you should have laid off on the cheese fondue". And you would be right. But as well as the thin layer of fromage that congealed around my body over the course of the week, I am also wearing:

A thermal vest
A thermal base layer
Another thermal base layer
A fleece
Another fleece
A ski jacket
Thermal long johns
Salopettes
A scarf
A hat
A balaclava
Goggles
A hood
A smile (you'll have to take my word for that, though.)

That's six layers just on my top half, and three on my head. Like I said. Very, very cold.

[EDITED TO ADD: If getting out of bed in the wee hours of the morning  - twice - to take your dog and her upset tummy outside, while your wife dozes blissfully on, isn't romance, then I don't know what is. Fin, I take back every word.]

If I hadn't already done the maths last year, I'm not sure I would have believed this was our tenth Valentine's Day together. 

Ten? Already? 

Fuck. We are old.

Happy Valentine's Day, Finster. I love you more than Smidgen loves sleeping. (A lot.)

Print from Not on the High Street. I wanted to get Fin this card, but I couldn't bring myself to look at it without mentally pencilling in an extra "U". Seriously, it's like a curse.

"So, what should we play?" my friend asks, as the door to the mysterious grown-up world of coffee and gossip swings firmly shut behind our mothers. 

We are at her house. I, therefore, am a guest. We all know the golden rule, the one unbreakable commandment that spills in urgent whispers from our mothers' lips in that final moment before the doorbell rings. The rule is this: Put The Guest First. 

In other words, what we play is up to me, and we both know it.

"Welll...", I say, casually tracing a finger along the perfect cheekbone of Joey from New Kids on the Block, whose glassy-eyed grin beams out at me from a torn-out page of Smash Hits magazine. "We could play... dressing up?"

With the quiet sigh of someone resigned to her fate, my friend reaches into her wardrobe and for the thousandth time pulls out a box brimming with feathers and hats and too-big high heels. I pounce on it, plunging my arms deep into the tangle of fabrics until my probing fingers find what they have been seeking: the cold slipperiness of overpriced polyester. I curl my hands around the fabric and pull. A handful of white skirt emerges, followed by a row of tightly-curled pink rosebuds. One perfectly spherical sleeve. A flurry of lace. I keep tugging until, finally, I am cradling it in my arms - the most beautiful dress I have ever seen.

Eagerly I poke my skinny arms through the armholes and begin to wrestle the dress over my head. My tropical-fruit-themed t-shirt bunches up around my shoulders. I tug the dress down as far as it will go, but still I need to roll my cycling shorts up my legs to stop them ruining the effect. I squeeze the matching satin slippers onto my feet, toes crammed together like socks squashed into a drawer. The dress's label says age 3-4. I am eight.

I stand in front of the mirror, and I don't see the satin straining across my chest, the faint outline of a pineapple visible under the cheap white fabric. I don't see my arms turning blue as the elasticated puff sleeves slowly cut off my circulation. I don't see the hideous 1980s confection of a frock that one day I will ridicule. 

I see something beautiful. I see something special. I see something loved. 

I see a bridesmaid.

I have never been a bridesmaid before. My mum was a bridesmaid multiple times (seven, eight?) and it has always seemed to me a rite of passage, an essential stop on the coach trip to womanhood. So much so that I even put it on my life list. But, not having a sister or a sole all-consuming Best Friend, I secretly suspected it might never happen. Even though I have skills, contacts, so many ideas, maybe I'm just not bridesmaid material.

Except, apparently, I am! YESSSSS!!! Thank you Blonde Bridesmaid. It's a pleasure and an honour.

I am already taking my duties very seriously, spending Saturday afternoon reading my long-awaited copy of the APW Book (which, by the way, is excellent so far. Where the hell was it two years ago when I was tearing my hair out over the cost of hiring a wedding car for a three-minute journey?) and searching for pictures of weddings with fifteen bridesmaids as proof that a mere four is not, in fact, too many, and any friend of the bride's mother who says otherwise can just bugger off.

I don't want to speak too soon, but I think I'm going to be good at this.

{Top image: Lichfield/Getty Images. Bottom image: Lillian and Leonard}

Or like sick leave! Everyone wants to hear about what I've been doing on my sick leave, am I right? Well, I'm so glad you asked. In between sleeping, sweating, shivering and sweating, I managed to engage in the following mindless activities:

Oh dear, looks like my cough hasn't quite disappeared yet, after all.

Happy weekend, peeps. Any exciting plans, possibly involving wafting around parks in full-length orange skirts?


{Images: 1. Atlantic-Pacific 2. Hello Sunshine print by Yoke 3. Illustration by The Grey Earl, photography by What Kristen Saw, jewellery by Jane Gowans 4. Amy Merrick}

1. It was -21°C where we were in the French Alps on Saturday. MINUS TWENTY-ONE DEGREES. Otherwise known as Too Fucking Cold.

2. The hypothetical farm wedding is no longer hypothetical! Blonde Bridesmaid is getting married! Woohoo! (On which topic, if anyone else ordered Meg's book on Amazon UK and keeps getting emails from them bleating on about delays and suppliers and bla bla bla, The Book Depository apparently has some in stock. Don't say I'm not good to you.)