Releasing my inner child at The Fling Festival

This weekend, some friends and I took ourselves in to our local town centre under the premise of "releasing our inner children" at The Fling Festival.

I'd heard good things and was excited about the promise of just being silly and having plain old simple fun in the sun. I like a good cocktail bar, a pretentious venue, a swish restaurant, the next big thing on the club scene and a dressy night out more than most (if I can afford it!) but I hate the "too cool for school" mentality.

I like to go out and have fun for having fun's sake, and not to have fun because someone else thinks it might be cool. I'm a geek, a goon and a bit fat goof.

I like fancy dress. I like cheesy tunes. I like being silly. I like hanging out with people who think the same.

Turns out The Fling Festival is my new silly happy place (after Disneyland and Vegas) and I fitted right in.

We turned up, collected our wrist bands and did a quick reccie of the site to discover, amongst other things giant water lilies, a chaise lounge set up for sung riverside therapy sessions (Melodies for Maladies anyone), an interactive metal "tree" and an army of moving bins that squirted water at passers by, a Human Juke Box (pay 10pence and Juke Box Jenny'll sing for you!), a story telling tent, a debating tent (I had to stay away from that one), a stand for checking in your "emotional baggage", an interactive puppet show with a full whizz-banging Roald Dahl style chemistry set and puppets, a skating rink, a school sports day arena (5-legged race? girls vs boys tug of war?) faery wand-making workshops, a tent teaching different styles of dance (from burlesque to hip hop and everything in between), a Bollywood tent (with food, music, stories and dance), body painting (both painting for your body and using your body to do the painting), a party bus (complete with conductor and tickets), a silent disco and a giant sandpit with buckets and spades in amongst your usual festival stands, stages and tents offering an array of food, drink, cocktails, music, comedy, cabaret and burlesque.

My favourite area by far had to be the Rubbish Area. On first look it gave me shivers as it reminded me way too much of one of my recurring nightmares about the junk yard witch from Labyrinth, but after a few Pimm's Slushies (yup, you heard me) I was brave enough to face my fears of piles of other people's junk and got settled on a floor cushion with my glue gun and did what my inner child does best... making silly costumes out of crap I find laying around!

After that I spent the rest of the day trying to keep it on my head and telling people I bought it at M&S.

I'm saving it for next year so I'm ahead of the game!

Hat and a mask

The Human Juke Box



Chemistry and puppets

Treasure from rubbish

Skating!

Wand-making



Dancing... silently

posing... stupidly



The beach



The Forum



The End!

A girlie weekend

Where last weekend was full of colour, this weekend, although also full of colour, was full of girls!

My Friday night humbug outfit

We kicked off on Friday night with a girlie dinner date to celebrate Caroline turning 30. We all got dolled up, and headed off to Zenxi in town for cocktails, fizz, Chinese food, cupcakes and presents!

Pre dinner cocktails

Saturday was mainly spent sewing my costume for Caroline’s big Story Book themed birthday party that night. I love a bit of fancy dress, and if I’m doing fancy dress, I do it properly – face paint, sewing, accessories, the works!

The Birthday Girl

On this occasion I was dressing up as Jadis, The White Witch from The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe. I mentioned my costume inspiration here, but, due to unforeseen circumstances (i.e. me forgetting that I’m not a Hollywood costumier) the costume took a slight detour and I ended up re-using the corset that formed the basis of my Katy Perry costume from Katie’s 30^th in October.

Cutest ever cupcakes

Mr G got all over-excited (he’s probably the one person in the world that loves fancy dress more than me, so I’ve recently discovered) and dressed up as an Oompa Loompa, and I’ve been finding orange facepaint all over the bathroom ever since…. I know I’m from Essex, but still, I don’t want anyone thinking that’s my make up everywhere!

After a night of dancing, singing, stuffing ourselves with fairy tale themed cupcakes and admiring each other’s outfits, we rolled home, scrubbed off all our facepaint and I tried to comb out the backcombing and various “pouffing” products out of my hair (unsuccessfully) before collapsing in to bed. Fancy dress is so tiring!

Tinker Bell, Dorothee, The Frog Princess, Wilma, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood,
a Disney Princess and White Witch!

An Oompa Loompa and The White Witch - a good match!

Sunday morning we got up early, and did our best to make ourselves presentable (removing the last traces of face paint, we missed in the small hours and trying to get my evil witch/crazy candy floss hair in to some kind of human style) to pop back to see the house we’re in the process of buying. I was super scared that I wouldn’t like it as much, now that we’ve done the deed and committed to buy, but on seeing it again I loved it and I can’t wait to get the ball rolling and move in! Perhaps we should have facepaint and crazy hair themed housewarming party!

After that, we did a spot of shopping and I managed to pull together an outfit for the second of the three weddings I have coming up with a lucky spot in Warehouse, and then I took myself off home to get ready (my "Malibu Barbie" outfit of pink jeans, green shoes and a spangly jumper) for a lunch date at TheBlue Strawberry with my Luvvies… which, as per usual, resulted in us being ushered from the restaurant half an hour after closing time, at 7pm. Only the Luvvies can make lunch last until 7pm!

My Malibu Barbie Sunday lunch outfit

A busy weekend often equals lots of mess, and a fancy dress weekend means even more mess so this evening I spent a good hour packing up my dressing up box and sewing kit and returning everything to its rightful home, Mary Poppins style (how appropriate) before settling down to some blogging, a cuppa and some Sunday night telly (Harry Potter, Titanic, Homeland) while I wait for my orange-tinged boy to come home from work.

What a weekend! And to cheer me up about it coming to an end – a short week at work, a Hunger Games date with Laura and Game of Thrones starts Monday... YAY!

A colourful weekend

I mentioned on Friday that I was having a traffic light shoe issue, but eventually I managed to pull together some seriously bright, colour blocked outfits for a super sunny weekend and I managed to use two of the three pairs. Not bad going for a March weekend, as normally we're still in Uggs and cosy socks... aren't we?

yellow, pink, green and blue

Saturday saw me don a pair of yellow chunky-heeled shoes (after a small Facebook/Twitter poll), a fuchsia pleated midi skirt, a sea green tee, and blue accessories: a royal blue shoulder bag, pastel blue nails and a baby blue Swatch, all topped off with a twinkly jumper for when the evening chill drew in. I took off to Drink Shop Do in Kings Cross (using no less than a bus, a coach, an overground train and two tubes to get there) for a afternoon tea, truffles, macaroons, fizz and cocktails with the ladies from Florence Finds and spent a wonderful few hours chatting, drinking, gossiping and making new like-minded friends. Perfect.

scrummy afternoon tea

Sunday morning was spent whizzing round a few houses, and then pulling together another outfit, using the same colours, but in a different combination for a special little boy’s christening. I felt that as he’s such a cheerful little boy I should wear an equally cheerful outfit, so I opted for green shoes (only fair after I picked yellow for Saturday), a yellow dress, a hot pink bag and a multi-strand, multi-coloured necklace to tie it all together.

green, yellow and pink

rainbow necklace

I love when springtime arrives and, after a long season of dark colours and only the odd occasion to cover an outfit in sparkles, all the colour in my wardrobe comes back out to play. The only trouble is, I often get a tad over excited, like this weekend, where I go a bit OTT on the colour and end up looking a bit like a CBeebies presenter.

But nay matter, the sun really did have his hat on this weekend, and so did I!