Getting high on flash fumes...I wish!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, winter comes back like a fierce predator and nips you on the neb.

I kick started my spring cleaning this week thinking that spring was here to stay,

how wrong was I?!

I managed to completely gut the kitchen and scrubbed all those manky surfaces that I never normally get around to doing. 

The top of all the cupboards, skirting boards, ceiling, walls and underneath the fridge, washing machine & cooker.

Spring cleaning is the proverbial can of worms, cleaning one corner makes the rest of the room look even more filthy and there's no bleeding end to it either.

After five hours of almost scrubbing your fingers to the bone, you think it's all done, so you boil the kettle to make a cup of celebratory tea, sit down to admire the fruits of your arduous toil only to find that the underneath of the blinking cupboard needs a jolly good scrub too, argh!

The skirting boards laugh in your face and the knobs of the cooker flip the bird in your general direction..."Hehehe, missed a bit!"

We've lived in this flat for over ten years, we rent, so in all that time it hasn't been decorated and it is really starting to show now. 

Everywhere you look something is flaking, corroding, peeling, cracking, breaking or is already broken.

I try to make it look nice but it really needs more than me donning marigolds for a week on a cleaning mission, it needs money spent on it.

It needs new carpets, new kitchen, new bathroom and a proper decorator coming in and giving the place a long overdue face lift. 

This is the big draw back when renting, you are having to wait until your landlord sees it fit to do something about it, which in my experience tends to be NEVER or just after you've moved out! 

It may sound as I'm making excuses but it is truthfully nigh-on impossible to get this place looking clean even if I spend days on my knees scrubbing till my hands are almost falling off and my lungs are getting sore from breathing in flash fumes.

You do what you can and that's all you can do, eh?!

It was drizzling all day today and even though we made our daily jaunt up to feed little Lilo and the other birds it was just way to dreich to get the camera out to shoot some outfit pics in the park.

We quickly nipped out onto the balcony when we got back home to snap a couple...

Vintage 70s lurex leaf print kaftan dress, vintage boots, Ankh earrings & gloves.

I bought this Miss Jeannie dress from a market in July last year and today was its first outing.

I used to have one in teal blue that was sadly a bit too big for me so I sold on eBay back in 2005. 

These were  the auction pics...

Wearing this frock with my Ankh earrings today made me think of Egypt. 

It is almost a year since we went there now.

I totally fell for the place, the lovely people, the awesome diving  and the totally amazing scenery.

Here are a few of the pics from the two little desert photo sessions that Mark and I did. 

If you want to see more you can either go back and check my April posts of last year or have a peek in this folder that I made on facebook :)

Hope that the start of your weekend went off with a bang and that the rest of it will be fantabulous too :)

Lot's of love,

Jennie

xXx

Far from the Madding Crowd

As I mentioned in the previous post hubby and I did three early morning photo shoots out in the Egyptian desert and here follows the first out of ten frocks that we shot, hope you enjoy :)

The Frock:

 This is a fabulous African hooded Dashiki kaftan labelled 'Twentieth Century Costumes' which on googling I found out is a company specialising in supplying period costumes for films, television and theatre. 

I bought this frock from a car boot sale here in London before we went on holiday and decided that it would be the perfect thing to bring especially as this was my very first visit to the African continent.

The Location:

We stayed at the The Gorgonia Beach Resort which is set in the stunning surroundings of the Wadi el Gemal National Park south of Marsa Alam on the Red Sea coast of Egypt.

You really get the best of both worlds here with an impressive desert landscape creating a stunning backdrop and the wonders of underwater world just a few footsteps away from your hotel room.

The Shoot:

We shot this frock twice as you can probably figure out from the two different hairstyles I'm sporting. 

Hubby and I would get up whilst the vast majority of the resort residents were still sweetly slumbering in their beds and traipse out into the desert with our gear and set up a little shoot camp at a spot that we liked.

Then we would wait for the dawn to break and once the sun hit the horizon we'd start our desert photo sesh. The sunlight got too harsh after about an hour or so and the wind picked up as the air started to heat, so you had to work fast to get everything done.

The highlight of the shoot:

Spotting a sand fox spying on us from behind a dune.

**********

There you go the first of ten frocks ;)

Much more to come but first I have to get down to some serious holiday snap sorting. 

I'm exceedingly trigger-happy when it comes to shooting with my beloved camera and I took over two thousand photos over the two weeks we were there and that is not including the three early morning photo sessions...so I've got my work cut out to put it mildly!

Back to work tomorrow, right now it feels like I've been away for ages cause of all the amazing stuff I've seen & done but I bet it won't feel like that once I return to the ol' grind!

After enjoying the serenity of the deep blue sea and the quietness of the desert, it's quite hard to return to the madding crowds of the big shitty.

Lot's of love,

Jennie

xXx