Dressing up.

I love any excuse to dress up. Seeing as i'm not working a the moment I spend a lot of time in trackies, hawaiian shorts, or scruffy jeans and t-shirts. I've been out with friends and family a few times recently, but the weather is too unpredictable to really go all out on dressing up, mainly because I don't want to be too cold, nor do I want to have to lug around my winter coat in the sun.

Yesterday I threw caution to the wind and got dressed up to go to the V&A with my lovely bf to see the quilts exhibition. We've wanted to go for a while now, but it's been difficult with being out of the coutnry so much recently, but he's leaving for Italy on Tuesday so we made a last minute scramble out the door yesterday afternoon and trotted down to south kensington.

Tights and jacket from Primark, Dress from Peacocks, Necklace DIY

The quilts exhibition was really nice, but me and the bf both felt they could have had a little more variety. There weren't any vintage/antique American quilts and that would have been nice. I didn't take any pictures at the V&A, we went quicte late in the day and I only just managed to get in to the gift shop (it's full of wonderful and terribly expensive delights). I'm really glad I did, I ummed and ahhed about this rig, but decided to buy it in the end because it's so damn pretty. I've been wearing a lot more jewellery recently and I'm enjoying changing it everyday and this is perfect for all my sumery outfits.

It's absolutely huge, it's about 2cm tall and it's beautiful laquered wood. I'm totally digging it.

It's really hard to...

...take pictures of jewellery without an SLR.

I said I would get pics and that is exactly what I have done. Although they are not very good pics. There are a few reasons for this:

1. There is terrible natural light, so I had to rely on the daylight lamp. Not ideal
2. As I have said many a time, my camera is dying and isn't good at the auto focus it's supposed to be good at.
3. Taking pictures of a ring leaves you with only one hand to balance camera and said daylight lamp which was misbehaving and not staying still.
4. These rings are small, detailed and have sparkly details I just can't seem to capture on my rubbish camera

That being said, here are the rings (which I am wearing as I type) I promise to get new ones as soon as I remember to hijack someone else's camera.

My great-grandmother's opal ring. I'm not sure when she bought this but it's at least 50 years old. Opal was her birthstone. It's not mine, but that's ok, I'm not supersticious.

Those last two show you some of the awesome qualities of the opal. It's quite a pale stone, not as
firey as some opals, but I love it and the setting, because it's been in our family for 4 generations now.

(and hopefully many more to come!)

My Nanny's engagement ring (Nanny as in grandmother, not aupair (: ) I'll have to ask my mother if
she knows which year it's from, but it's definitely 30's, so 70+ years old.

I found it really difficult to capture the details of the ring and the sparkle of the diamonds. I'll
have to look up how to photograph rings properly and then comandeer a decent camera!

So I have learned several things today. Apart from the above I've also realised that I really don't like my hands :( But that's ok, they'll look better once I've lost some more weight (21lbs down people!)

Ciao for now xx

Awesome vintage jewellery.

I went for a meal with my family on Easter Sunday. I wanted to wear my grey dress, but seeing as it's too big and I haven't bothered to exchange it yet, I settled for my flowery one. I wore my great-granny's opal and my mum gave me a pair of earrings to wear, which I totally creamed over. Have a look...

After the meal and a few extra drinks, my sister wanted to go through the jewellery in the safe. So we dug everything out and went through it all. I absolutely love my nanny's engagement ring, it's fabulous and I took it out to clean and then promptly stuck it on my finger, when my mum said that if I really like it that much that I can have it. I can have it? Seriously, this made my day :D There are two rings that I have lusted over ever since being a tiny girl playing with my mum's stuff and they are great-granny's opal ring and nanny's engagement ring, and now I own them both! I'm so happy and will definitely get some pictures soon.

Also, I was trying on some pearls, which actually really suit me, and my mum gave me a string of pearls too! So I'm super duper vintage/antique jewellery queen. The best Easter EVER!