Retro swimwear

In February I made a promise to myself. I told myself that this year would be the year of the bikini for Le Nom, that for the first time ever I would kick my ass (actually, I have no quibbles with my ass, it's the tummy area that I'm not speaking to) into a bikini-worthy shape and parade around scantily-clad loving myself to the max.

It's now late June. I've been forgoing a social life for ridiculous amounts of exercise involving numerous squats and 6am bootcamp-style classes in parks across London, so my body isn't in a shape which makes me want to scream, but I won't be wearing a bikini on a beach this year. This is partly because I have no beach holidays booked and partly because I have discovered this:

This navy polka dot layered swimsuit is simply scrumptious. The fifties-inspired design is super flattering and means that if people are looking at you on the beach it's only because you look incredibly different from everyone else (that's a good thing!). This would look great with a huge pair of sunnies, a little headscarf or a giant staw hat and a 99 with a Flake. Modesty is underrated anyway.

The swimsuit costs £40 from Laura Ashley. I'll be buying this and changing my name to Dita. Or Marilyn. Actually, I like Nom, so I'll just stick with that.

I originally wrote this post for About Your Dress Blog, you can still find it amongst heaps of other posts by me and two other talented ladies there if you'd like to go and have a peek.

Homophone wallcards

I love a good pun, me. There is quite simply nothing I find more delightful than a game of words; English is a language chock full of interesting little quirks like seemingly insane spellings, irregular verbs and homophones.

We learn about homophones in primary school, nice and early on so we can spot them coming a mile off. They're those tricksy little words that sound the same, but are spelt differently, like 'made' and 'maid' or 'pear' and 'pair'.  There Their They're confusing even for grown ups (see what I did there? HOMOPHONEJOKESLOL). Which is why you might want to have a few of these wall cards from Present and Correct scattered about your abode to help you remember that the homophone is constantly lying in wait, ready to trip you up at any given moment in time.

I love the nice, clean typography, which is aesthetically pleasing and helpful for learning. Did you know that teachers often favour the sickeningly friendy font Comic Sans because it's one of the few sans serif fonts (essentially this means it doesn't feature curly tails or hats on the a) and that makes it easier for children with dyslexia to read. Unfortunately, comic sans makes me want to simultaneously scream, vomit and tear out my eyes every time I see it, particularly as it's usually plastered all over some form of passive-aggressive note in a toilet or kitchen, so it makes me really happy to see this pretty little font featured on these wall cards.

Additionally, each card has a great set of homophones on both sides, so if you get bored of 'piece' and 'peace' you can flip it over and give 'hole' and 'whole' a turn.

The Homophone Wall Cards cost a mere ten of your English pounds. I was duped into spending more than that on a vodka, lime and lemonade on Saturday night in Soho. One of these would not only be better for my general behaviour in public places, but it would also be, like, totally helping me learn more stuff and that.

For anyone who is interested, here's a list of homophones. I don't know why you would be, you're here to kill time on our lunchbreak presumably, but if you do happen to be a little bit bored and interested like I was, you can have a nosey there.

I originally wrote this post for About Your Dress Blog, you can still find it amongst heaps of other posts by me and two other talented ladies there if you'd like to go and have a peek.

Swanky accessories

Do you ever have one of those days where you're just insanely busy and nobody is adoring you and everything is going wrong and you're pretty much just like AAAARGH? Of course you can't actually scream that out loud, because people might think you were unhinged or something, so maybe you just stick to thinking it or tweeting it. Or maybe you wear it around your neck to subtly remind people to give you a freaking break:

This AAAARGH necklace costs £22 from jewellery designer Swank, aka Becky Wignell. Based in Otley, Becky's designs are often made from recycled material (the chain on the above for example and her range of recycled Lego-themed necklaces are pretty squiffy geek-chic too), which means you can feel happy about what you're hanging round your hooters.

Also worthy of note are her really cool plane-related necklaces, which come in silver, gold or black-backed perspex. You know me, I love black and gold, it's so opulent and trashy:

Seriously cool, non? The F1-15 Fighter Jet necklace costs 30 smackeroonies and can be located by clicking this link here.

And then there's the Grumman Wildcat necklace, which also costs £30.

Lastly I want to show you my favourite, because it's named after a song which never fails to make me giggle and it's also AWESOME:

The Rock Lobster necklace costs £18 and comes in red, pink or gold perspex. Seriously cool. Which one should I choose, red or gold?

I originally wrote this post for About Your Dress Blog, you can still find it amongst heaps of other posts by me and two other talented ladies there if you'd like to go and have a peek.