Mini haul from Deer Arrow

If there's one thing I really love it's brooches, metal, resin and wooden. It's a shame there's not as many in the UK as there are in Australia but longer post times and the occasional customs charge aside I'm more than happy to put in an order with Deer Arrow as I just LOVE them!

 Look how cute the packaging is!

I've been wanting some wooden ones from Deer Arrow for ages. So payday came and the bank card came out! There's so many that I want but I restrained myself to only three, but I think I chose three really good ones!

So, I bought:

Mixer brooch ($18.00 / Mint)

Vintage Chevy brooch ($15.00 / Red)

Bowling brooch ($15.00)

I love them all! Given my blog/Instagram name I couldn't resist the mixer brooch, and I really want one in real life and the mint matches my car and I'm a consumer like that so I had to have it.

They Chevy is a car I'd love to have, and in red of course so I couldn't not but this brooch in my shopping cart, cute no?

Who doesn't love bowling? This is super vintage looking and I love going bowling so I can't wait to take it out for a proper spin next time I go. 

They're all painted so well and I've had so many compliments on them. I think my next order might be the milkshake and the record player brooch, love these guys so much. To be honest I want all of them so it will be hard to choose...check out the Toucan.

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Norway's National Day

The 17th May is Norway's constitution day, in the past we have celebrated it in Oslo in full national dress stuffing our faces with waffles and ice cream, at Thorpe Park throwing ourselves down roller coasters and log flumes but in the last couple of years we've celebrated at home with huge Norwegian feasts. 

 Out comes the dress, a blue sailory Hell Bunny one. I should make one with a flag on it shouldn't I? This year I'm wearing a white Lindy Bop underskirt with it for some extra oomph. I went all out with the rockabilly hair and victory rolls, they came out pretty good!

And by celebrating we of course mean - making lots of food! We're also not very good at scaling down so there's always loads. 

So on the menu we had:

Open faced sandwiches

Whole baked salmon

Potato salad (with homemade mayonnaise)

Krumkaker (vanilla cripsy cones)

Norwegian flag cake

Open faced sandwiches are their own food group in Norway, on ours we decided to have sliced boiled egg and prawn, Jarlsberg cheese, roast beef and ham. I also thought it would be a great idea to make the mayonnaise for the potato salad, all of the recipes said to do it by hand...so I did. It took FOREVER! But it tasted soooooo good and my bingo wings got a good working out. 

We loves us some salmon us Norgies, especially a whole baked one. Whenever we buy on we always call him Herbert, and then shove him in the oven. But the good news is, that he tasted delicious! So he did not die in vain, we ate every last bit. 

For dessert I made a batch of Krumkaker, very crumbly light vanilla cone biscuits. I used my nan's iron, she bought me my own but on special occasions I like to use her cast iron one from the 60s, isn't it amazing? I love the floral pattern. 

Magazines in Norway coming up to the big day always show huge cakes decorated with fruit to look like the Norwegian flag so I wanted to recreate it. I also wanted it to show a flag when you cut it..which it NEARLY did! But I messed up and forgot the top blue bit so there is no picture evidence...it's better this way.

I love the 17th May, I love the food, the family and the fuss and I hope there's never a year that passes that we don't celebrate it.

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A Cheeky Weekend In Brighton For The Mothership's 60th Birthday!

We like to go big for birthdays in my family, not like fly to Vegas big BUT we did hope in the VW and head to Brighton for the weekend for my mum's 60th. It's one of our favourite places so it first on her wishlist for places to celebrate the weekend.

 Staying in the same hotel as last time was a no-brainer. We loved Motel Schmotel last time so there was no other option. We had the same room as last time and it was just as great, they're really lovely there and the rooms are nice and comfy and we had a cute little balcony overlooking gardens in the square and a stones throw from the sea and town center, perfect. 

They also do a cracking breakfast and I love the little personal touches they do - check out the eggs! Soz eggs, I'm gonna eat you!! They died. Couldn't resist a few selfies in the HUGE mirror, be rude not to.

A trip down the pier is a must, I know some same it's tacky but I couldn't care less. BRING ON THE TACK! It was nice and sunny so I got all the usual pictures, I love seeing the carousel as the Spice Girls went on it, yes, I'm sad. Get over it.

 We ate ALOT, one of the perks of being away. One night we ate at The New Club, great food, excellent drinks, bearded chef. What more do you want in Brighton? I ordered the pulled pork and some mac'n'cheese. So good, the drinks were on point and it wasn't far from our hotel so we could waddle back nice and full to watch Gogglebox in bed. 

 The Saturday we spent shopping, hitting many, many fabric shops - Brighton is full of them. We also found the new Choccywoccydoodah shop and even managed to get a table in the cafe, it's always full apparently. We had a nose around the cakes and treats..and loo (they have a disco ball! Of course) and then we got a seat right by the action to stuff our faces.

 The cafe is stunning, bright and vibrant and cakes just everywhere. Wherever you go the smell of chocolate engulfs you, but not in a horrible way. Ever seen 'Chocolat' ? It smells how I image that film to smell...if a film could smell. I've had a piece of cake in here before and it's HUGE, so this time I opted for chocolate dipping pots which came with lots of fruit, sweets and a couple bits of cake so a perfect portion really all finished off with a bottle of pink lemonade. 

More shopping had to be done, I found the mothership, Collectif and couldn't be happier really. I got a cute skirt in the sale along with an Erstwilder brooch and saw a couple of faces I've seen on the Instagram scene so a pretty good visit all round. I also sneaked in a Banned cherry cardigan from Snoopers Paradise.

For our last meal we went to Terre a Terre, a vegetarian restaurant which we visited last time. I love me some meat! So it would never normally be my first choice but their food is amazing and you really don't leave dreaming about chicken. I ordered the Lemony Yemeni Relish. 

"Better Batter and Lemony Yemeni Relish 14.95
Soft buttermilk soaked halloumi dipped in chip shop batter, served with vodka-spiked preserved plum tomatoes, bright fresh pea mint hash with pickled quails egg, sea salad tartar and chubby chips, finished with lemony Yemeni relish. Delish with fresh young leaves companion!"

It's just so good, no words. They do incredible desserts too, not to be missed and 

I couldn't resist the churros. 

"Churrosimo (vc) 8.50
Cinnamon sugar spice dusted doughnut straws served with vodka cherries, chocolate and salt caramel sticky dunkers and dippers."

The vodka cherries are gorgeous and leave you with a nice little shot at the end, the salt caramel I would probably eat using my fingers if I was at home it was so good and chocolate, who doesn't like chocolate? God, take me back!

Our last foody stop before we left was Cloud 9, seriously check them out. It's like a unicorn threw up happiness and dipped it in sprinkles. It's how you imagine the inside of Barbie's mind to look - but you can eat it! Their rainbow cake looked amazing but I chose a peanut butter caramel cupcake to takeaway and I ate it at home when I missed Brighton already.  

I love our weekend in Brighton so hopefully we'll be back again soon, so much I 

still want to see, eat and drink!

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Home Made Ursula Outfit and Hairstyle

We love organising charity events at work, the most recent was Red Nose Day. We thought it would be fun to have a Heroes & Villains theme, I have dark heart so any excuse to dress up as my spirit animal - a villain, and I'm happy.

One of my favourite baddies is Ursula the sea witch, she's big, she's bold and she's badass, who wouldn't want to be her? So I of course took to pintest (feel free to follow me by the way 'Rockabillynikki') and I found loads of make up tutorials, some totally unrealistic but one within reach. But first I had to make my accessories. The most important were her eels, I'd seen a few versions online but I decided to go with the eels boa. I bought some fabric online and made a rough pattern, filled the eel with wadding, stitched it up, gathered some fabric on top and added the eyes and teeth. Then all I had to do was sew over the mouths for a bit of detail and it was good to go. I made it in one evening and although it's a bit rough around the edges it worked really well.

The last thing I had to make was her shell necklace (poor unfortunate souls!). I bought some Fymo clay and rolled it into a trumpety shell shape and indented some line to make it a bit more shell like. Creating a hole for the leather string and baking it until it's hard. I then covered it with gold food paint and sealed it all my nail polish to make it super shiny. Tadah!

I did play with face paint but honestly I looked like Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to the point where my mum took one look at me and we laughed to the point of tears for ten minutes straight.

So I ditched that idea, as the thought of walking around walk like a blueberry constantly having to touch it up made me want to die, so it went straight in the bin. And the make up came out! I used this Pintrest image as inspiration. I wasn't able to get mine this bright but I think I did an OK job for doing it myself. For the colour shadow I used Makeup Revolution, the palette isn't available any more but all of theirs are high pigmented and they have loads of bright shades. 

I stuck to blues, purples and white and I used a liquid eyeliner for the tentacles and for the power brows. It lasted all day too so I was really pleased with that. I always feel that I can go bigger but I couldn't have been happier really.

 Right. The hair. THE HAIR. I did think about getting a wig but hello?? I love playing with hair so I decided to give it a go. Turns out, two cans of white hair spray is not enough to cover bright red, it does every give you lilac hair. Spoiler alert - I now want lilac hair. I did think I looked a bit like the Fairy Godmother out of Shrek in the end, that might be my next one? I basically just victory rolled it all up, I don't often do the back so it was a challenge but I'm pretty pleased with the final result.

 The next thing I had to do was to choose my outfit. I played with the idea of making tentacles but it was a lot of effort for a work event when I was also organising the bake sale I just didn't have enough time. And I wear a lot of black so I had plenty to chose from. In the end I went for a black pencil skirt from Primark and a black lace Bardot top from Very. The boa I ended up having to safety pin to my top so I didn't have to worry about carrying it around with me.  I didn't get a good picture but I also teamed them with some red glitter Irregular Choice shoes. And I'm not gonna like I felt pretty epic. To be pathetically honest I was so sad to have to take it all off when I got home. When can I please be Ursula again next?

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