Well, I couldn’t let it pass without a mention on here!

On Monday night Ree Ree Rockette of Rockalily (see lipstick review here!) held a bloggers meet up as a launch party for her new limited edition lipstick ZOMG (which I think it pronounced ZO-EM-GEE, like OH-EM-GEE but with a Z. No one seems entirely sure!)

Instead of just going along for the party we offered to help out with the evening and thus I spent Monday afternoon dragging a suitcase full of beauty books onto a train.

The Historical Sauces manned the testing table, giving people tips on what colours were likely to suit them from the Rockalily collection and hosting a lipstick history table with a few select books on beauty and cosmetics and some samples of vintage lipsticks dating back to the 1920s.

Sadly, until March at least, the last train back to Norwich is at 10:30pm, so we had to scoot off early and missed the burlesque shows at the end of the evening. We did get chance to pop over to Tigz Rice Studios Pop Up Photo booth to have our photo taken though.

I didn’t take any proper outfit photos, but my dress is an ASOS one I bought in the sale just after Christmas. It’s knee-length with a little peplum at the waist (Still there at £18, but only sizes 6 and 14 left in the black!). Our Sauces hats, of course, were custom-made by the brilliant Betsy Hatter of Sugar & Hatter.

We’ve more photos of the evening over on the Historical Sauces Facebook Page, or you can read a slightly more detailed account of the evening on our blog!

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Well, it’s the long slippery slope to Christmas now!

I hope all your thrifty gifts are wrapped and under the tree and you are relaxed and feeling festive. If not, then why not? Seriously, don’t stress, it’s only 1 day and enjoying the run up is half the fun!

People often tell you that one of the trials on being self-employed is you don’t get a Christmas party. Well, I managed to prove everyone wrong by having 2 in one week this year.

Last Monday Glamourologist and I dragged ourselves onto a train and down to London for the WWMOOB London Christmas Party. WWMOOB stands for Wonderful Women Minding Our Own Business and is a women’s networking group set up by Ree Ree Rockette of Rockalily. It was at the Drunken Monkey in Shoreditch, which served many lovely cocktails, and a really horrible espresso martini. Dress code was Christmas Jumpers, and I did have a Christmas Cardigan, though it was too warm to wear all night. My tights make up for it though right?

❤ Jumper - Oasis via eBay ❤ Belt - Vintage ❤ Oh Gosh! Pencil Skirt - Lady K Loves ❤
 ❤ Tights- Red or Dead ❤ Shoes- Faith ❤ Hair Clips - Sugar & Hatter ❤

This is the only full length photo I have, and I look a bit shifty eyed. Suffice to say many cocktails were drunk. I got a lovely Secret Santa necklace from Pip Jolley and then I made a new friend on the train, drank some more vodka and woke up in surprise at Norwich Station at 2 am.

I’d barely recovered from Monday, when it was time for the Norwich branch of WWMOOB to have it’s own little celebration. This time there were rum cocktails, Christmas socks, and mini snuff bar courtesy of Reginald Spleen. Also, none of us took photos as we were too busy drinking rum, so I took a quick outfit snap when I went home so I could share the festive look!

❤Dress- 40s Vintage ❤ Tights- Pamela Mann ❤ Shoes - Primark via a Bootfair ❤
 ❤ Hairclips - Sugar and Hatter ❤ Necklace - Christmas tree baubles ❤

Yes, I am wearing Christmas tree baubles as a necklace, they were scavenged from some wrapping paper at Mondays party. Those Christmas tights are the ones I wrote about and bought last year.

This years favourite Christmas accessory is those hair clips though, here’s a closer look. There’s 2 there, a Holly one and a Mistletoe one, handmade by Betsy Hatter! The Holly was £4.50 and the Mistletoe is £2.50. There’s still some mistletoe in the Etsy shop, but I think the Holly is being made to order now!

My final pre Christmas celebration last week was a little more low key. Mr Chick and I took a flask of mulled wine and a flask of chilli to the park for a festive picnic, before retiring to a near by pub to warm up and drink mulled wine by the fire.

I have more festive things planned for this week. Including a probably not very festive at all trip to the supermarket to stock up on things like Advocaat and other things you only ever buy at Christmas.

If you’re waiting to hear the giveaway winner, then check your emails! I’m waiting to hear back before I announce the winner!

How is your festive planning? Are you suffering seasonal stress?

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On Thursday night I mentioned I was headed to 7 Dials for a blogger reception and Christmas Shopping Evening.

Seeing as my posting schedule is all messed up this week I thought I might as well tell you about it now! Prepare for a post quite heavy on festive photographs full of twinkly lights!

The evening started at the rather lovely Dial Bar in the Mercer Street hotel. It felt all warm and Christmassy inside, and the festive cheer was much added to by a 7 Dials Cocktail, allegedly it is inspired by the unique flavours of each of the streets of the 7 Dials, which sounded a bit risky to me, it wasn’t always such a lovely area! I didn’t catch what was in it, though I think I heard mention of sloe gin and juniper berries. It was delicious either way!

The other bloggers invited along were Fritha Louise of Fishtank Fashion and Frankie of Swell Vintage, Frankie I’d met before, but Fritha I hadn’t so we browsed through the list of events happening at the areas stores that evening, generally got caught up and tucked into yummy mini mince pies.

Please try and ignore that mans bottom in the background, I have no other pictures. I think he was picking something up rather than deliberately trying to moon my photograph.

My memory of the 7 Dials area is from back in the 90s when I used to get my hair cut at Stuart Philips in Neals Yard. I thought it was a fabulously quirky area and I used to enjoy browsing the shops after my hair cut. They were always the kind of shops that sold those brands that were a bit unusual, cutting edge, and achingly trendy. Like that Hard Candy nail polish that came with a ring and was so popular in matt pastel shades in the 90s *cough* showing my age *cough*

Well, it’s nice to see that nothing has changed. The shops are still upmarket, cutting edge and fashionable, and the area is still way less packed and touristy than neighbouring Covent Garden.

Absolute highlight of the evening was a trip to one of my old favourites – Neals Yard Remedies. They were celebrating their 30th anniversary in their very first store and the staff were astonishingly friendly and accommodating! I had a lovely glass of champagne under twinkly lights in a packed courtyard while I listened to a talk by the founder, and was even treated to a free massage (apparently I’m very tense!)

It was somewhat rainy last night, but the rain didn’t seem to be dampening anyone’s enthusiasm as many of the shops were packed! We popped into a few more stores like Urban Outfitters (bit loud for me!) and Bare Escentuals (gorgeous). Organic Pharmacy had been promising “vintage glamour makeovers” on my program, but when we arrived and asked about it we were met by slightly bemused faces, so I had to make do with my own brand of vintage glamour for the evening.

Eventually the rain began to get to me a bit, so I abandoned the Adidas bavarian lodge and Santa in the Two Brewers and headed off to catch a tube to my second appointment of the evening, which was a German bierkeller called Katzenjammers where I, along with several others, had arranged to meet Miss Matilda of Able Grable who was paying a visit to London. We were all in Dirndl, but sadly I was far too busy enjoying the beer and sausages to remember to take any photos, so I hope someone else will blog about it soon!

We were given a lovely goodie bag of little gifts from the stores in 7 Dials and St Martins Courtyard to take home. Highlights of which for me include a game of fashion top trumps from MAGMA and a hilarious wooden ruler with “spank you very much” written on it from high class erotic boutique Coco De Mer. I was also lucky enough to manage to win an Orla Kiely bag in a lucky dip, so all in all a successful trip! I had been a little unsure about going along, there’s nothing more depressing than looking around expensive shops full of things you can’t afford, but actually there’s quite a nice range of shops in the area. All quite quirky, but not all super expensive. I genuinely had a fantastic evening, so I’m glad I made the trip.

From my perspective there were also 2 or 3 really good pubs, with real ale on tap, in the area. I’ll definitely take a trip back there on one of my rare trips to London when I’m not rushing around to things. It was quite nice to reminisce about the times when I was a trendy cutting edge 17 year old apart from anything else!

If you’re a Londoner then I expect you know the area, but you can apply for a privilege card on the Seven Dials website that gets you discounts off some of the shops, which you might NOT know! If you’re not and happen to be paying the city a visit before Christmas then I recommend you pay it a visit, the lights are really pretty and there’s some nice cakes!

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