The Alphabet of Abbie - D is for... Dresses!

...DRESSES

One thing that makes me very happy is a pretty dress. There was a time (not too long ago!) when I didn't own a single dress, I didn't know what would suit my body shape and didn't feel like I was "girly" enough to wear dresses. But after going shopping with my older sister who encouraged me to try on things that I would otherwise have walked right past, a whole new world of clothing was opened up to me. So thank you Jenny! She is The Style PA after all :)

In recent years my dress collection has grown quite a lot, I have an entire wardrobe dedicated exclusively to housing my many dresses and I'm at my happiest when wearing a pretty dress. Even when the weather is rubbish, I pull on a knitted dress and it puts me in a good mood for the day. One shop that I can always rely on to have a myriad of gorgeous dresses is JOY! My friend works in the Leeds store and whenever I go into it I fall in love with every dress in sight! So here are some of my favourite JOY! dresses currently on their website...

The Alphabet of Abbie - C is for... Cupcakes!

CUPCAKES!

I love cupcakes! It's something about their versatility in flavour and appearance, their cute size, the icing and the prettiness of it all! When it comes to cupcakes, what's not to love!? I came across something rather brilliant the other day... the Iron Cupcake competition. Originally a monthly bake-off in the USA where like-minded baking enthusiasts came together with their mutual love of cupcakes and battled for the coveted 1st, 2nd and 3rd prizes for best cupcake. Each month there is a theme or ingredient as a starting point for the cupcake bakers. I recently discovered that the concept has travelled across to pond to us in Britain and a monthly Iron Cupcake competition in held in Leeds. Below are some of the yummy looking entrants to the last Leeds-based Iron Cupcake contest!

1st prize - Raspberry Fizz Cupcakes
Raspberry and champagne cupcakes with white chocolate and coconut, dulche de leche ganache and a vanilla bean topping.

2nd prize - Mixed Summer Berries Cupcake
This delightful looking cupcake had a raspberry ripple style cake base, with a mixed fruit coulis centre, topped with fresh currants, strawberries and a drizzle of summer berry juice. Delish!

3rd prize - Summer Fruit Basket
Strawberry and almond sponge cake, with marshmallow icing topping and summer berries, all sat in a sugar syrup basket.

Twirly Swirly Berry Bun
Vanilla and raspberry sponge filled with coulis with a vanilla topping finished with a chocolate covered strawberry and a sprinkling of pretty edible gold glitter.

Tayberry and Raspberry cupcakes
Tayberry and raspberry flavoured sponge cake base, with a tayberry and white chocolate mousse, drizzled with chocolate and topped with a rasberry.

Starwberry pavlova cupcakes
Strawberry and meringue sponge with strawberry buttercream and a cute little sprinkling of meringue to finish it all off.

Berry and white chocolate cupcakes
Berry and white chocolate sponge cake base with marhsmallow buttercream and topped with a strawberry.

Very berry good cupcakes
Strawberry sponge cake, topped with strawberry icing, a fresh chocolate dipped strawberry and an adorable teeny tiny meringue!

Eton mess cupcake
Vanilla and strawberry puree sponge cake base, topped with buttercream, finished with meringue pieces and a huge juicy fresh strawberry.

Strawberry Fields
Chocolate sponge with strawberry cream mousse, chocolate fudge ganache and a strawberry buttercream icing.

Black forest cupcake
Chocolate and brandy sponge base, filled with a cherry conserve, topped with a morello cherry buttercream, cherry and white chocolate heart.

The Alphabet of Abbie - B is for... Books!

Books!

There is nothing I love more than to curl up on the sofa with a good book. I love books old and books new, and I read most genres too, if something is well written I can enjoy it no matter what the context is. I have a huge collection of books, I rarely like to get rid of them once I've read them, and I always have at least 5 books lined up ready to read at any given time. The trouble with my obsession with books is the storage... I have bookshelf upon bookshelf full to the brim, with boxes in the spare room and under the bed, so I really need some more book shelves to accomodate my collection. I love the bookcase staircase above. I think it would definitely solve my lack of book storage space issues... but I also found these sleeker and prettier bookcase designs as well...

Tangram Bookshelves

Ying and Yang bookshelf

Pink Lego-style bookcases

Swirl bookcase

Crooked Opus Bookshelf

Pacman Bookcase

Staircase Bookshelf unit

The Alphabet of Abbie: A is for... Ani Pipette!

I'm starting a new little feature on my blog called the 'Alphabet of Abbie'. Each week I will feature an A-Z of things that I love, things that are important to me, and things that inspire me. This week I'm going to start right at the beginning with...

Ani Pipette!

The Pipettes are brilliant, I'm most definitely a big fan: I've seen them three times, in Brighton, London and Leeds, and every time I've been to one of their gigs I've had oodles of fun, danced to and sang along to their catchy songs. I have always loved and been inspired by their sense of style as a band - being a bit of a polka dot addict (even if the polka dots are "on ice for a while") but in particular, and more recently, I love the style of Ani Pipette...

Ani's sense of style is really fun and quirky. It always find it inspiring when someone's sense of style is a little bit different and makes them stand out from the crowd. In a recent interview with TeenToday talking about the Our Love Was Saved By a Spaceman video, Ani said, "It's better to be interesting than boring!"... hear hear!

Love the cute bob hairstyle.

Ani on the set for the video for "Stop the music"

Earth Vs the Pipettes - The Pipette's new album in available from the 13th September and has been described as "what a 'disco in space' where 'all the genres and styles that have set the dance floor going for the last fifty years were loaded onto a rocket and fired into the stars' would sound like'..... sounds good to me, I can't wait for it to be released!