Philip Armstrong x Kellogg's

Kellogg's Frosties were forbidden fruit when I was a child. I grew up with a constant longing for the sugary breakfast cereal, mainly because I was only allowed Sainsbury's own brand cornflakes or similar. Thanks Mum! Well, Mr Tony the Tiger turned 60 years old this year! Now, he looks pretty cracking for his age but, to celebrate his diamond jubilee, he's undergone a little makeover. Philip Armstrong is better known for dressing ladies like Alesha Dixon and Ms Lady Gaga herself but he's responsible for TT's new animal print scarf.

500 of these limited edition scarves will be available to buy from 6pm on 2nd November (Friday!), priced at £6.99. All proceeds from the sales will be donated to Fareshare food banks, to provide 12,000 breakfasts to hungry schoolchildren across the UK. The scarves will be available from the Kellogg's pop up shop on eBay or you can like the Kellogg's page on Facebook for the chance to win one.

Disclosure: I was given a scarf by Kellogg's but I received no other compensation for this post

Sunday looks like...

A sickly rainy Sunday spent with Mr Elliot Stabler, a lot of ginger tea, plenty of cold-repelling lotions and potions, my favourite candle, Vogue and my new favourite snack, Special K cracker crisps (which Kellogg's very kindly sent to me).

Ten hours of rides in the freezing cold at Alton Towers yesterday has turned a slight Friday night sniffle into a full blown Sunday cold. Ah well, at least I've got plenty of Law & Order: SVU to keep me company. SVU Sundays FTW.

Sunday should be a little bit more exciting next week as it's my birthday! I'll be 31 years young and I'm off to Leeds to celebrate with The Soldier. Perfect.

Outfit Post: Swan

Please ignore my squinty face in the above photographs. Apparently my face cannot cope with late October sunshine. Anyway, this post is really all about this magnificent skirt. I lusted after pretty much all the swan print items in Topshop when they first came out but I was on a spending ban at the time. Then, on the first day of the Topshop sale, I had  a voucher to spend (courtesy of The Solider) and I happened upon this beauty. It was the only one in my size and we all know that when that happens it's basically FATE and it's the law that you must buy said item. And I'm not one to argue with either fate or the law.

The best thing about this skirt though? Besides the SWANS? It has pockets. Yes. POCKETS. It is the holy grail of skirts.

I have to admit that when the whole wedge trainer thing first appeared, I was sceptical. Very sceptical. But then time passed and I was broken down by picture after picture of the beautiful Isabel Marant Bobby sneakers (although the £390 price tag was ever so slightly out of my price range.) So when Zalando offered me an item for review I headed straight for the high-top section and picked out these Xti beauties. I have no regrets. They're comfortable, make my legs look longer (never a bad thing) and go with pretty much everything. Love.

Trainers - Xti

Tights - Unknown

Skirt - Topshop

Cardian - H&M

T-shirt - Jet by John Eshaya

Awkward Face - Model's own

Disclosure: I was given a voucher by those lovely folks at Zalando to buy an item of my choice

Progress

I don't intend on doing weekly or even monthly updates on how I'm getting on at Slimming World but, from time to time, I probably will mention it and let you know how I'm doing. So, I've been back on the plan for roughly 3.5 weeks and at my third weigh in last week I'd lost a grand total of 12 pounds, which I'm pretty pleased with. I know that a lot of people are sceptical of or baffled by Slimming World so I thought it might be helpful to show you what I actually eat.

Someone on Twitter asked me if I'd been living on salad and my answer was a resounding "no." In fact, I haven't had salad once in the past month. What I've been doing instead is cooking some of my favourite meals, but with a Slimming World twist. That twist? Basically adding no or very little fat to anything that I eat. The photos above are (from top left, clockwise) baked beans, fried egg and homemade chips; fake "doner" kebab made with extra lean beef mince, onions, homemade chips and coleslaw; spinach and king prawn curry and "sweet and sour" chicken made using Fanta Zero. Yes, really.

I tend to live on hearty, spicy, big-portioned food. I could never survive on tiny salads or without carbs. And by 'survive' I mean be happy. I LOVE food. It is my one true love. I read far more food blogs than I do fashion or beauty blogs (and the list of food blogs I love is growing weekly) and I have a list as long as my arm of restaurants that I want to visit, once I finally get to my Slimming World target. Life is too short, for me, to not enjoy what I'm eating and to feel hungry all the time.

And thankfully, on Slimming World, I can even still enjoy a few cheeky glasses of wine occasionally...

Amazing beef and bacon casserole with a new-to-me Marlborough, which was sadly disappointing

Sunday looks like...

Chilly temperatures in the garden, healthy breakfast, strong black coffee, amazing new onesie which makes me look and feel like the warmest Oompa-Loompa on the planet, films and Millie.

Pretty stellar line-up for a lazy Sunday.

New: September

Now that I'm ever so slightly better off than I was, money-wise, I'm actually allowing myself a few treats every month. I'm still well on course to be out of debt by February and, sometimes, life is too short to go without treats. So I thought I'd start a new monthly feature and show you what I bought in the month previously and what I'm currently loving. So these are September's newbies. The necklace above is from Zara and was a little payday splurge last Friday. I'm utterly in love with it.

Shoes - ASOS

Jumper & T-shirt - JW Anderson x Topshop

Dress - c/o Next

Jumper - Olivia Rubin

Nail varnish - OPI's Alpine Snow and Essie's Mademoiselle & Ballet Slippers

The detail picture of the dress above is the same dress that I was wearing in this post. Next isn't generally a shop that I gravitate towards. I love their homeware section but I just never seem to make it up to the womenswear. I was very kindly offered a voucher for a purchase so I decided to revisit Next and see what I could find. There were actually a fair few pieces that I would happily have taken home with me but this dress just won out. It's beautifully detailed and I think it'll be perfect for both winter, with a pair of thick tights and a cosy cardigan, and summer, with bare legs and sandals. I can't actually find it on Next's website but I only bought it a couple of weeks ago, so it should definitely still be in store!

I spent my final weekend in September with some of my favourite people. There was a night out with old work colleagues on Friday, a cocktail masterclass at Harvey Nichols on Saturday morning, a visit to the Manchester Food and Drink Festival for a cheeky pint of cider on Saturday afternoon and then, on Monday, I spent the day with my lovely friend B and her little girl. When I wasn't galivanting around the North West I was at home, catching up on recorded TV, sleeping and even finding the time to try out blinkbox and watch movies online. The long weekend (thanks to Jewish holidays) was magnificent. Bring on the next one! 

Disclosure: I was provided with a voucher code for three films at blinkbox. I can definitely recommend it though.

Going Forward

1) Amazing curry at Namaste Nepal; 2) Pulled pork sundae at SoLIta; 

3) Burgers at Almost Famous; 4) Bento box breakfast at Harvey Nichols

As some of you may know (if you follow me on Twitter), I rejoined Slimming World last Tuesday, after a few months away. If I'm honest, I haven't followed the plan properly since January last year. For those of you who don't know, I lost 5 stone 4lbs in about 11 months in 2010 by following Slimming World. Unfortunately I've regained rather a lot of that weight, although I'm still a hell of a lot thinner than I was when I first started, way back at the start of 2010. There are a number of reasons for the gain. I bought my own house in late 2010 and moved into an area with approximately one million takeaways. Takeaways test my willpower when I've had a long, hard day at work and the last thing I feel like doing is chopping vegetables. Also, the majority of last year was a bit rough for a number of reasons and, for me, food = comfort. Oh, and I kind of fell in love with a wonderful man. Which meant meals out (see above), cosy meals in and too much nice wine and cheese.

I've been pretty unhappy with my weight for most of this year but, a couple of weeks ago, it got to the point where I was avoiding looking in the mirror. Then I saw a couple of photos of myself that almost had me in tears. There's also the small matter of the wardrobes that I have that are stuffed full of gorgeous clothes. Gorgeous clothes that no longer fit me. So back to Slimming World I went and while I can't pretend that I'm at all happy with the number that appeared on the scale, I'm absolutely certain that I'm never going to see that number again in my life.

So, expect less photos of OMG!FOOD and more photos of me wearing the clothes that I haven't been able to fit into for so long.

Oh, and there'll be less photos like these too... 

Au revoir, boozy times! For now, at least.