Happy New Year! The Last Dress of the Year, and 2015 in Frocks

Happy New Year!

I hope you’re not nursing hangovers too bad this morning, and you make the most of the nice long weekend to recover before that depressing return to normal life next week!

My New Years Eve plans this year were once again pretty low key. I never thought I would want to stay in on New Years Eve. I really must be getting old, but that 2am desperate attempt to find a taxi home, the lost coat in the cloakroom and the 2 hour bar queues have started to seem less appealing after 20 years of New Years Eves. I’m sure I won’t spend every year for the rest of my life tucked up in front of the TV, but for the last 2 years, that’s exactly what happened. I mean, we put some effort in, without that cab money and inflated bar prices there’s M&S party food and Aldi Champagne, that makes spending the night under my fluffy throw watching Jules Holland pretty good fun.

To end 2015 I did pop out to the pub for a quick drink in the early evening, so there is a last dress of  2015 to share with you this year.

This is a terrible picture, in which I appear to have no legs as I blend into the fireplace behind me, and if it hadn’t been the last dress of the year I probably wouldn’t have bothered sharing it at all. I also wanted to share it because this dress was a feature on the incredibly long list of “reasons Gemma can’t have nice things”. A list that just in the last week includes walking off and leaving £50 in an ATM, accidentally booking a hotel for the wrong night that they then refused to refund and spilling a glass of coke down the front of my vintage night dress (don’t worry, I saved that one!).

This dress came courtesy of Boden back in 2014. I loved it, I wore it several times, then I put it in the washing machine without checking the washing instructions, because, well, why would I do anything so obviously sensible as check washing instructions? When it came out the dress was at least a size smaller and the lining showed by at least 2 inches. I was heart broken. Well, that might be an exaggeration, lets just say I was upset, and annoyed with myself for being the sort of person who just flings her nice things in the washing machine without checking for the dry clean only tag.

I followed lots of advice from people on Facebook, soaking it in fabric softener and stretching it back into shape while wet, and while I managed to make it a bit longer, I didn’t manage to make it any bigger and I just couldn’t zip it up around my rib cage. So it joined my disturbingly large pile of “things I’ve ruined but can’t quite bring myself to get rid of” (which was where the pink dress from this post used to live)

Then, much like the pink dress, I randomly tried it on again about a month ago, and it FIT ME! Now, obviously the dress didn’t magically get any bigger in the intervening months, but I did get a little smaller. So remember folks, next time you accidentally shrink your nice clothes, the only solution is to hit the gym until they zip up again.

And on that happy tale of the saving of the last dress of 2015 from the disaster pile, it’s time for a little look at some of my favourite frocks of 2015.

Jan – March

Those dark, chilly wintery days that are all a bit depressing and in which I desperately look for anything to celebrate. I started the year with those amazing Irregular Choice moustache shoes worn with a body con dress, which is still a favourite, for a trip to the pub. In February I got all dressed up for Valentines Day in a jewel trimmed shift (that sadly no longer fits and is in my Depop Shop!) and in March I glammed up another body con dress with the fur collar from my Collectif Dress.

Jan / Feb / March

April- June

Look how nice the weather was in April when I wore that Love Ur Look Flamingo dress! That’s not far away, the sun will return! Mays dress is the outfit I never get to wear, maybe 2016 will be its year? In June I could barely stand up for most of it because of back problems,  but being a true pro I managed to put on a fancy Collectif Strawberry frock and do some posing.

April / May / June

July-September

Ah, the lazy hazy days we call Summer. Julys frock is an old favourite 50s wiggle dress, and you can tell I need a hair cut because I’m wearing my hair up. In August I hit the Boden sale, I’d planned to wear this with coloured tights and a cardigan in Autumn, but I never got around to buying any coloured tights, so that outfit is still on the planning pile. Septembers LBD is one of my favourite ASOS basics, worn for lunch and Cocktails with a friend, later that day it started to rain so hard that I had to call Mr Chick to come and rescue me and my expensive suede shoes from the downpour, which also happened when I wore those shoes on Christmas Day come to think of it, next time I wear them I’ll take an umbrella and wellies.

July / August / Sept

Oct- Dec

And then we made it to the end of the year, which I appear to have spent mostly in fancy dress, but hey, whats new? Octobers dress was fancy dress lite with a Pumpkin fascinator to wear to a beer festival. November is NOT fancy dress, but it is A fancy vintage dress that I wore for our Wedding Anniversary, and in December, well, it’s a dress with a penguin on it, one of many Christmas themed outfits!

Oct / Nov /Dec

And now, onwards into 2016, may it hold many more frocks!