#62 - Fail

Well, I've officially failed no shopping month. In my defense, I did start it in late April, so I've probably done it for about a month by now anyway. I bought these Miu Miu shoes:

They're such a pretty pink colour, but the silver studs on the bows make them slightly less girly. They were on sale! And I'd been admiring them for so long, waiting for them to go on sale. They were also the last pair in the store (and a half size smaller than I usually wear, but they fit), so I had to buy them, really. I still feel bad, though. I've decided I'm going to be better with spending money from now on, and try not to use my credit card and to stick to a budget (ugh, as much as I hate the 'b' word).

I felt a bit better about today's outfit than I have done about some of my other recent outfits. Probably because it's a new flowery dress, and I can never have too many of those! My sister bought this for me for my birthday. Dress by Review, cardigan & belt by Alannah Hill, shoes by Asos.

I love this bow belt - so cute!I was going to wear red shoes with this outfit, but it did look a bit too red overall, so I opted for these simple white flats from Asos instead. I have to make the most of fine days by wearing satin shoes, because we don't get a lot of them these days!

#60 & #61 - Cherries & Mice

Ever since I got my Melissa/Vivienne Westwood cherry shoes, I've been trying to think of a way to wear them. I suppose green plastic heels aren't really the easiest of shoes to match with an outfit. I ended up with one of my usual matchy-matchy outfits, which I wasn't really happy with, but at least it didn't contain any black! I've discovered it's hard to put together a Winter outfit without at least one black item of clothing, but I'm trying to avoid it as much as I can.

These shoes are adorable! I love them, and will definitely have to work out ways to wear them more often.

I wear nail polish all the time, and I buy new nail polish quite often too, even though I usually only wear shades of peach & pink. I'm always looking out for the perfect shades, and I think I have finally found the perfect shade of peach (Chanel Miami Peach).

This outfit was based around my nail polish, which is Max Factor Angel Nails - I'm loving this one at the moment! It's silvery, but with a pink/purple undertone.

It wasn't a terribly exciting outfit, but I figure I can't wear pink every day. Dress from Ojay, cardigan from Alannah Hill, & shoes from Marc by Marc Jacobs.

More mouse flats! I bought these sometime last year. I've always wanted some of the black pony hair ones with beige accents, but I suppose these are in a more practical colour combination for me.

Here I am with my baby Nemo outside that afternoon. Poor Nemo had to go to the cat dentist recently and get 2 teeth taken out, so he's been acting like more of a baby than usual!

I feel like I've been in a bit of a rut lately with my outfits, probably because I'm not buying anything new! I love shopping. Not just buying, but browsing and comparing, and trying clothes on, and getting good deals on purchases. So I am really looking forward to being able to shop again next week!

Winter Coats

Winter has come early for us this year, so I think it's definitely time to start looking for some new coats. I'd like to get a couple of new coats that are fitted and in pretty colours, but probably nothing too 'frou frou', as I have enough of that with my clothes and shoes! Here are some possibilities that I've found so far.

Alannah Hill pink coat

This coat is perfect, but unfortunately, I think it's sold out already. I'll check my local store soon, but I may have lost out on getting it because of my no shopping month :( I just love the shape and the colour, and the rose buttons are so cute.

Alannah Hill navy coat

The neckline of this coat is really interesting, and I find that navy is a very practical colour for me. My sister and I both want to buy this one!

Karen Millen red coat

I'm not sure if this is exactly the same red coat from Karen Millen that I've seen in my local store, but if not, it's very similar. I'm told that the top part zips off so it can be worn as a short jacket, too. I'm not too sure how I feel about red, but the style is lovely.

#58 & #59 - Wintery

I need to find a new place to take my photos. My regular place isn't working for me anymore, as it's too dark, despite being the brightest place in the house! My outfit wasn't nearly as dark as it looks here - you can't even see that my shoes are purple! Anyway, this is part of the reason why I didn't end up submitting any photos to the shoe challenge this week (aside from the fact that I just didn't get around to it), because they all turned out looking so bad!

I noticed that this dress looks almost exactly the same as the one I wore in my last post, but it is actually different! I bought this (purple) one before the other (pink) one, but I liked the pink one better, so I ended up with two very similar dresses.

My shoes are purple suede, from Milana.

My sister always borrows my clothes. She likes to buy completely impractical clothes for herself, like capes and bandage dresses, so she hardly has any clothes that are actually suitable for work. Lately I've started borrowing some of her clothes too, like this Zara skirt which I've seen a lot of bloggers wearing lately.

I had to wear a coat with this outfit, as it was freezing! (Well, not 'freezing' exactly, but probably under 20 degrees, and that's cold for us here!)

This is the second-most boring pair of shoes I own. I bought them in Canada really cheaply, because I thought I needed a plain pair of black shoes. Buying shoes because I think I should never really works out for me, as I don't end up wearing them because I don't really like them. These are quite practical though.

#56 & #57 - Nothing but problems!

As many of you would know, Blogger has been having some issues lately, but it appears that things are back to normal for most people now. I haven't been able to post lately as I still can't log in to my account! Whenever I try, it takes too long and times out, so now the only way I can post is to use a different browser!

I already submitted the pictures in this post to the shoe challenge round-up last week, but I'll post them here anyway. Better late than never! I have to say that I'm sick of Winter already, and it technically hasn't even started yet. Every day I have outfit dilemmas, and I either end up looking completely dull, or ridiculously colourful. I also need Winter clothes - I hardly have any boots or coats - but because of my shopping ban, I haven't been able to buy anything. This month seems like the longest month ever, and I can't wait until it's over!

This is a skirt from Kitten D'Amour, a local store which I think I posted about last time. I love this colour (coral red); it's pretty much my favourite, so I wear it a lot. Isn't my kitty Nemo cute here? He just walked into the photo and flopped on the floor in front of me :)

I think he wanted a pat... So cute! Anyway, I was wearing these snake-print shoes, which I think I bought these because I wanted some neutral-coloured shoes (I don't have a lot of those!).

The next day, I re-wore a dress I'd already worn in one of my earlier shoe challenges, with a coat I borrowed from my sister. Again, my cat has somehow appeared in the photo...

These are my Louboutins. I don't know what to say about them, other than that. I remember the first time I tried on a pair of Louboutins. They were this same colour, but I can't remember what style they were. I couldn't believe that a pair of shoes could make me feel so much more confident and attractive, and I knew right away that I had to get a pair! There's just something special about Louboutins.

I'm so behind with my posting, but I'll try to post my next few shoe challenge pictures over the weekend.

#54 & 55 - Bad Kitty

On Saturday afternoon, I set the timer on my camera to take a photo of my outfit/shoes for the shoe challenge, and just when the timer was about to go off, my cat walked in the photo (and in front of my shoes, I might add). So this was the result.
Apparently I have a cat who likes photobombing. He does seem to end up in quite a few of my photos, and most of the time, I haven't put him there! Just to prove I was actually wearing shoes, here's another photo. These are from Melissa, and they're one of the 'flocked' varieties. They're a bit of a different style to shoes I normally wear, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about them. This was a dress that I had been admiring on Modcloth for a while, and I unexpectedly found it in a store in Canada last year. It's simple and casual, but I like that about it.

On Sunday, we bought Mum some tulips for Mother's Day, because she loves tulips. So does my cat. (You might be able to see the bite marks in the leaves on the bottom left of this photo).

I spent some time on Sunday googling "are tulips poisonous to cats", but he seems to be alright, and he's still trying to eat them, so I figure they can't be too bad for him.
I really love this dress. It's from a local store, Kitten D'Amour, which sells retro/pin-up style clothing. A lot of the dresses aren't really conservative enough for my tastes, but I'm very happy with this one. Here's another photo my sister took of me on Sunday (although it's a terrible photo of me, you can see the dress a bit better!). I was also wearing my Melissa tinkerbell shoes, which I wear all the time because they're cute and comfortable.
Mum, my sister and I had fish & chips and went for a walk by the ocean on Sunday afternoon, which was very nice, although it was rather cold and windy.
I hope all the mothers out there had a lovely Mother's Day :)

#53 - Birthday Dress!

This is the dress I wore on the day after my birthday, from Betsey Johnson. I think it's actually the only Betsey dress I own, even though I love them all! I keep looking at the website and wanting to order things lately, but I'm going to have to wait until my shopping ban is over next month...

Here is a close-up picture of the print, although the colours didn't turn out quite right. So cute!
This was the first time I'd worn this dress, and as much as I love it, I really wish it was more comfortable! I don't like wearing strapless dresses, so I always attach the straps, which helps from a modesty perspective but not a comfort one, as the boning still digs in horribly.

I probably would've worn pink shoes if it hadn't been for the shoe challenge, but I think I'm almost out of pink shoes already! So I wore these white satin shoes, which have quite low heels. It's stocking weather at the moment, so I was wearing my toeless stockings with these (they are so useful! I get a lot of use out of them, considering that most of my shoes are open-toe). I've had these shoes for a while, and I didn't realise at the time of buying them that they are probably supposed to be wedding shoes! (It's hard to find white shoes that aren't!) But they are pretty all the same :)

#52 - It's my birthday!

These are my outfit/shoe challenge photos from yesterday. It's actually my birthday today, but as I had to go to a funeral this afternoon, I'm trying to think of yesterday & tomorrow as my substitute birthday. I went out to dinner with my family last night, and am going out with friends tomorrow, and hopefully I'll be able to wear the birthday outfit I had in mind tomorrow! Anyway, this is another River Island dress, which you may also have seen Shoeperwoman wearing recently! We had a public holiday here yesterday, and I went shopping (although I didn't buy anything - I'm still on my shopping ban), took my cat outside, and went to dinner at a Thai restaurant.

When I'm searching for shoes at my favourite sites, one of the usual searches I do is for 'multi-coloured' shoes. I love anything with colourful prints, but that often means that I have shoes and clothes that are difficult to match with anything else! These striped shoes don't match too badly with this bird-printed dress, all things considered :)

The shoes are from Nine West. I actually walked a kilometre or two in them yesterday, and they were comfortable! It was amazing, as they are slingbacks, which are usually the worst type of shoes to walk in.

I got some lovely birthday presents, including a camel-coloured coat which will be making an appearance here soon. But I think my favourite thing was this snowflake necklace from my mother. Here are some beautiful cupcakes that my sister got for me. They're almost too cute to eat!
When I got home today, I found my bedroom full of balloons! My brother-in-law and his friend spent hours blowing them all up, which was really nice of them. There must be hundreds in here! (Unfortunately, my poor cat is terrified of them, and won't even come upstairs while they're here!).

#49, 50 & 51 - Long weekend

It's been getting cooler lately, but I hope this weather isn't here to stay as I'm having trouble with my Winter outfits already! I've realised that almost all of my heels are open-toe, so that's going to be a problem! I'm grateful to Prada for making it okay to wear sandals with tights, but I'm not sure if I could really pull it off... Anyway, I do have lots of flats I can wear in Winter, but as I discovered last week, wearing dark tights with light/bright coloured shoes can look a little strange. Maybe I just have to get used to it. I can't help but feel a bit like a clown though!
I wasn't really happy with this outfit, but at least I got to wear these cute red shoes that I hadn't worn in a long time. There's something extra-special about red shoes...
I hadn't planned my outfit for Friday, so I was expecting to be digging through piles of clothes trying to find something suitable. But when I got up on Friday morning and checked my email, I got an email from Irregular Choice suggesting their 'Patty' shoes (which I happen to have a pair of) as appropriate to wear on the day of the royal wedding. So I took them up on their suggestion, and luckily managed to find a pink outfit to match. I was really looking forward to the royal wedding, and I wasn't disappointed - it was beautiful.
I bought this skirt from Alannah Hill recently, thinking that it was red (and I 'needed' a red skirt, as I don't appear to have one). I have since discovered that it is actually pink. Still, I love it, and it may even be a contender for my 'favourite skirt'. Super cute Irregular Choice shoes above, with the Union Jack on the front (although it isn't particularly noticeable in this colour variation). Well, today I went to brunch with my sister and her boyfriend, and we had lovely cupcakes.
We have another long weekend for Labor Day. My birthday sometimes falls on the holiday, but not this year, unfortunately. Anyway, this was my brunch outfit (which may look similar to a dress I've worn before, but I haven't worn this as part of the shoe challenge yet. I think I am going to have to start repeating some outfits soon, though!)
That's a bag or something hanging on the door behind me. I really should try to go outside for photos, but it's difficult as it's always raining lately, and I have nothing out there to rest my camera on. I actually like photography and have an SLR camera, but it's too difficult trying to use it for self-portraits, so I don't use it very often.
Here is one pair of my adorable Marc Jacobs mouse flats :) I just love these shoes. I know they're not for everyone, but they're so cute and quirky, and I'd happily buy them in every colour available if I could (including the slippers with sleepy mouse eyes, aww!).