You might have noticed I haven't shared as many outfit pictures in recent times as in the past. There are various reasons for this but one being the fact that I find that my love for Winter and cold-weather outfits is significantly smaller than my love for Summer clothes. I just adore Summer outfits and find I just like sharing what I wear. Even if it's just a dress with little or no other styling, I still enjoy seeing and remembering them!
So, here are a few I've worn in recent weeks.
CBC and I went to the beach last Saturday after a wander in a town to get some essential refill items we had completely run out of.
The skirt was Monsoon, charity shopped, and beautifully light-weight cotton. The top is, also Monsoon and linen. It's a little awkward to style but I feel cool in it! The little cotton waistcoat is embroidered and I bought it recently from Vinted. It's a little big for me but I have seen Vix wearing so many pretty waistcoats like this and wanted to try it!
This dress is just F&F at Tesco, charity-shopped. It's a light cotton and I wore it on that hot Saturday a few weeks ago and perfect for a hot day where you want to be covered up. I wore it to go for a mooch around the shops when CBC was away and I added this Boden Cashmere cardigan I bought that day for £4 and this cute hat which I needed as I'd forgotten a hat! Plus my gold sequinned Tom pumps.
The next outfit was worn for church the next day and then school and features my Miss Patina sailor cardigan. I added my cats as mermaids skirt, also Miss Patina plus my Clarks Funny dream shoes. And the hat!
Another Miss Patina outfit. I tried this beautiful light-weight linen/cotton pinafore with lace trim and the cotton blouse. I actually ended up swapping it for a darker linen version. Now looking at these pics, I'm kind of regretting swapping it but I wasn't sure about it!
The final outfit was worn for Cultural Day at school. Last year, I wore a Greek dress (for my Greek grandma) and I did debate wearing the White F&F dress above as it has Grecian look and colours but also almost Scottish flags for some ancestors but in the end, I wore this beautiful Laura Ashley cotton lawn dress. Nothing screams English more than Laura Ashley, especially with roses. When I first wore it on this blog about 14 years ago, it was too big for me but now it fits perfectly. Soooo many compliments from staff, kids (all genders!).
I wore this hat with it all day.
I've got to talk about the Cultural Day.
It was, like last year, an incredible day!
Everyone was dressed in outfits which they felt reflected a culture they have a connection or background to.
Last year, the same week, we did three morning performances on 3 days in Mid-July to parents featuring songs from multiple cultures represented in my school.
This year, as it was May and we had only had 6 weeks to learn songs, we just did internal assemblies. Also, we have been having a focus on representing South Asian cultures. As part of this, I had sent out a request to staff to see if anyone was willing to do a short term club to teach some sort of South Asian dance. To my delight, 3 members of staff volunteered to run clubs for 3 different year groups and different types of dace- one Rajusthani puppet dance for year 1-2, another Dandiya stick dance to year 3-4 and another Bhangra dance to year 5-6.
In each assembly, all three dance groups performed, brilliantly.
In Year 1-2, I had taught them, and they sang 3 songs. Ghum Parani from Bangladesh, Anile, Anile O diva from Sri Lanka and Ali Baba from Afghanistan. They did such a sweet job of the songs especially the Afghan song.
In year 3-4, I taught them Khamma Mana Nanderji from India and Alef Ba (alphabet song) from Afghanistan and in addition , recorder club played a piece from Jamaica.
In year 5-6, they sang Alef Ba from Afghanistan and Eso Eso by Rabindrath Tagore from the West Bengal/Bangledesh and drumming club performed some Bhangra Chaal drumming rhythmson snare drums. The whole day was extremely joyful and I was so proud of all the children.
One lovely member of staff came and gave me a hug when she heard Eso Eso as she said she had sung that in school and loved it and was so glad I had helped her twin girls learn some songs from their cultural background when they had shown little interest when she had tried to interest them in it. This really touched me!
