An Interview with Moi

Rob at The New Escapologist asked if he could interview me for his blog. I agreed and saw it as an excuse to have a little rant. It's up on his site now so if you want to you can have a little look here. He interestingly chose to post a picture of me in my underwear with it. Ha ha. You so can't take what I'm saying seriously when you can see me pretending to make tea in my under crackers! ;-)

This will probably be my last post until after Christmas. I would like to wish you all the most wonderful of Christmasses. Eat and drink lots, watch tonnes of telly, and try not to argue with your family before the Turkey's on the table!

Merry Christmas one and all!

Giveaway Results!!!

Hello there folks,


Well, lucky me! I am drawing this competition early because as it snowed heavily today in Old London Town, I got to leave work early! Yay for Mother Nature! Yay for Snow Days!

Anyway, enough chit-chat, I know why you're here......so the random number generate has chosen as follows...

In my calculation number 55 is.................................RETRO CHICK!!! Well done Gemma, you absolutely deserve it for all your dedicated blogging and tweeting!

 Happy Shopping doll!

Thank you to everyone else who entered the giveaway, I really appreciate you all!!! And of course thank you Fiona of Notorious Kitsch for sponsoring such a marvellous giveaway and being so utterly generous. Mwah.xxx

Jeni.xxxxx

The Pageboy, Revisited

I did a post about the Pageboy hairstyle a while ago. It's one of my favourite do's and I don't do it often enough. Last time I talked about it, my method involved pincurling, this time it's a little easier.

I set my hair two days ago with foam rollers, so this morning it has dropped a bit at the top, but still holds a style pretty well. I brushed it through and then placed a few Hot Sticks just around the bottom rolling them horizontally under, and towards the neck. You can probably do this with other heated rollers, but it will be easier on hair that had been previously set. After leaving them for roughly 20 minutes I took out the rollers and brushed the hair under all around, you may find it easy to use a round brush for this, I find my Mason Pearson boar bristle brush works well. It should all just roll under and upwards quite easily.

You can see how much it's 'jumped up' as my hair is now just past my shoulder when left to lie naturally.

I just tucked the other side behind my ear and brushed the curls inwards. You can't see it very clearly, but I purchased some really lovely art deco style green tulip slides by Babyliss at Boots the other day. Looked all over the internet but couldn't find them I'm afraid!

One last shout out for my Giveaway! You only have 2 days left to enter!

The Pom-Pom Dress Goes Out

I had a lovely night on Saturday at the New Sheridan Club Christmas Party. After the excesses of last weeks Chap Ball, it was nice to have a semi-sober evening, and enjoy fun, games and silliness in wonderful company.



Bethan and Minna



Fleur and Me



The theme was 'Back to the Futurists', however, I just wanted an excuse to wear my weird Christmassy pom pom 50s dress. So I did.

Fleur outdid herself, and us, and managed to light up the room with her cleverly placed string of snow flake fairy lights.

There was a raffle, entertainment from a lovely gold dancing lady, juggling from the aptly named Matt the Juggler, and a raffle....that I won! Yay, gin!

We played shoot the lobster off the telephone, and after many, many attempts and sheer determination, I finally did it!!

Another lovely night with the Vintage Mafia! Fleur has posted more pics about this here, and written about it more eloquently than me too!

I don't know about you but Christmas can't come fast enough. Am absolutely knackered and can't wait to eat my body weight in cheese, chocolate and goodness. Don't forget to enter my giveaway if you haven't already. You've got until Saturday!

A Notoriously Good Giveaway

Red BakeLike Alarm Clock £10.00

I am so thrilled to announce that in honour of having {almost} 400 fabulous followers, and of it being the jolly festive season, Yesterday Girl is hosting a giveaway sponsored by the brilliant Notorious Kitsch! Yay!

Fiona has been so generous and is offering £50 to spend at Notorious Kitsch to the winner! You have such a wonderful array of gifts to choose from, for your loved ones, or just for yourself!

Even if you don't enter/win the giveaway I suggest you head over to Notorious Kitsch for some Christmas shopping, as they really do have some great gift ideas. The giveaway will close on Saturday the 18th of December, just enough time for the winner to get their order in by the 20th in time for the post (dates for outside of the UK differ)! Or take your time perusing the store if you like....

To enter just leave a comment below, to enter twice re-post on your own blog, for a third entry retweet, but please a separate comment informing me of each entry as the winner will be picked by random number generator.


I've perused the goods in the shop and chosen some of my own favourite things to give you an idea.....

Editors Picks

I've had my eye on this since I saw it on the stall at the Rhythm Riot last year, the only problem is I don't have a dining table to put it on! But you might!

Vacationland Tablecloth £35.00

Nothing says kitsch like a set of flying ducks. Quack quack indeed

£13.50

I love this ashtray because it's sadly true..smoking does make you look 'hard' even gorgeous gals!

Ashtray £5.00

There is an excellent array of greetings card to choose from, including these brilliant B-Movie posters...

£2.50

Know anyone getting married? How about this for a wedding card....er...ok, maybe not

£2.50

 Stocking Fillers for the gals! I love the selection of little tins featuring posters from the 40s and 50s! Here are two of my faves. £2.50 each

 This polka dot rain hood is the perfect stocking filler! It's what every vintage girl needs in her handbag to protect her 'do from the horrible winter weather!

£1.50

My absolute favourite things have to be this amazing reproduction bakelite jewellery. They look so real!

Red fakelite hoop earrings 

£25.00

And how beautiful are these red and butterscotch bangles?

£25.00

£25.00

This gorgeous reproduction red phone is perfect for putting in a last minute call to Santa!

£49

I have shown you just a snapshot of what the shop has to offer, I do hope you will go and visit them yourself. Click here to visit Notorious Kitsch!

Hope you are all as excited about this as I am, and I wish you the very best of British!

Jeni.x

The Chap Ball, Part Deux

As a typist I was in charge of the Jeeves Dating service. The premise for said service was that anyone at the ball who had spotted a potential beau or belle among the crowd could dictate a short note to me, professing their love/lust for said beau/belle. I had a beautiful Victorian typewriter to work on, which was easier than I thought it was going to be to type on. I remember using a really old typewriter when I was little, and the keys were really stiff, though probably just because my hands were smaller!

After I had typed the letters of love, a butler, Jeeves, then swiftly delivered them to the object of desire. I was given some pretty weird/pervy/cheesy things to type, but was told that it was working pretty well, with punters coming back to me saying 'Thanks, that worked a treat!' *wink*  Glad to be of service.

After a couple of hours people were happy to have a go on the typewriter themselves and I was relieved of my duties, and free to change into my frock, and to enjoy the rest of the evening with the Vintage Mafia.

Vintage Mafia Line-up

 L-R Bethan (ball organiser extraordinaire), Gemma, Moi, Fleur, Lisa and Margaret

 

A beautiful array of frocks were worn

Lots of drinks were consumed

We were entertained by the marvellous Mr. B, Gentleman Rhymer, who entertained us no end and got us all dancing wildly. Here's an example of his work for those of you who haven't seen him before:

Well I'm going to be honest and say that I got roaring drunk and had a fabulous time! I'm sure you will read more posts about this from other bloggers, and hopefully they will have a wider array of photos than I do (they are all of me and my pals!).

TTFN! X

The Chap Ball Part 1

I'm breaking this post up into two parts, because I don't want to bore you with a picture heavy post in one go. So consider this the pre-ball post.

On Saturday, in preparation for the Chap Ball, my darling friend Bethan and I headed to Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes to see the Lipstick and Curls girls who had a pop-up salon at The Vintage Fair. As you may have noticed, I'm not particularly adventurous with my hair, enjoying my routine of simple set followed by a vigorous brushing out and that's about it. However, we both wanted a suitably elegant updo for the ball. I went for a centre parting with victory rolls, with the back delicately pinned into little curls at the top. Here are some pictures of my freshly coiffed do:

I have only just taken it out today, it lasted very well indeed, and the only reason I took it down was because the build-up of hairspray was starting to look a little bit dandruffy, which I think we can all agree, is not a good look.

As I was working as a Typist for part of the night, I had two outfits planned. The first of which consisted of 1950s blue silk blouse, with wool skirt and my 'new' ahhhmazing 1940s cream woven platforms from Ms Vintage Gal's lovely shop here on Etsy. Swoon. I ended up actually wearing 3 outfits, as I sensibly predicted that I was going to sweat in that blouse, also not a good look, and took a stripy short-sleeved sweater as well.

I think I made a pretty convincing looking typist if I do say so myself ;-)

Ok, so I will leave it there for now, but just wanted to let you know that I have a fabulous giveaway coming up very soon too! Stay tuned folks! x

Judy, Judy, Judy

Last week I was invited to a preview night of the new show about Judy Garland, End of the Rainbow at London's Trafalgar Studios. I was a little sceptical at first as I wasn't sure what to expect, and sometimes watching someone else pretending to be someone so spectacularly famous and iconic can be a little disappointing. However, I couldn't have been less disappointed!

The website for the show describes it as such,

It’s December 1968 and Judy Garland is about to make her comeback… again. In a London hotel room with her young new fiancé at her side, Garland battles with a tornado of drugs and alcohol as she undertakes an exhausting series of concerts at the Talk of the Town to try and reclaim her crown as the greatest talent of her generation. Despite a series of failed marriages and a wrecked Hollywood career, Judy remains a tough, compelling, remarkable woman always armed to the teeth with her legendary razor-sharp wit.

Judy and younger husband Mickey Deans

Tracie Bennett as Judy is utterly breathtaking, and definitely what makes this show so charged with emotion. For the first ten or so minutes, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't actually watching the real Judy, so good was her likeness of voice and character. The show brings to light again, the true dependence that Judy had on alcohol and drugs, and how it began tragically in her youth as a young Vaudeville performer. In these last years Judy was obviously tired of being thought of as the eternal Dorothy, who could perform to command, when in actuality, she was a women, old beyond her years, riddled with drugs and alcoholism, and being used by people who she depended on to feed her habits. It is such a sad tale, but when I think of Judy, like you probably do,  I do think of that talented young woman, full of charisma with an incredible and unmistakeable voice. I don't know about you, but I will be watching a Judy film this Christmas.

So if you are in London and want to watch something marvellous with a fabulous six piece band, hip-swinging soundtrack, that will possibly make you cry, go see this show!

Watch this clip from End of the Rainbow.....