AOW Hen Do!

I have had SUCH a wonderful weekend!  It was a much needed weekend away and I have just returned home and already bored the husband to tears with my excitable tales of new friends, food and tutus!  Now it's your turn!  ;)  The lovely Anna from Skin and Blister has shared her photos with me so I can post some here but I have only chosen a few (mostly for my outfit pictures) as I know Anna K will be using some for her write up on Any Other Woman and I don't want to ruin it!  I was also going to do a separate outfit post to the full run-down but it's all ended up combined!

I wore my super comfy new skirt for the journey down, paired with my new vest (post to come on all the geek/nerd style vests I've found, I love them and am obviously a proper blog geek too so they're perfect!)  This Supergeek one is my favourite though...

I arrived very late on Friday night (as I didn't want to take a day off to travel down as usual - mistake!  Never again!)  I arrived at Gemma's, extremely tired at around 12.30am (luckily she's a wonderful friend and didn't mind having to get up to let me in at such a ridiculous hour and take my frantic calls about how to get there from Euston!)  My bed was all made and ready for me so I quickly unpacked the tutus for de-crumpling purposes and went straight to bed.  The next morning I was woken by Gemma's shrieks of delight (may be an exaggeration but that's how it was in my head!) at seeing a huge pile or peach, navy, aqua, grey and turquoise tulle in the corner of her living room.  After a classic PrettiestHobo style scrambled egg breakfast with R, we got our outfits all packed up and headed over to Amy's (who was my delightful hostess for Saturday night) to get ready.

We were greeted with warm pittas and dips and a huge bowl of chocolate!  We had a bit of a rush getting ready, I was most excited about getting to dress Gemma in my imagined AOW uniform for the ballerina theme and getting to play stylist (all be it a rather OTT one)!  I painted her nails in navy blue with her ring fingers in peach with a blue heart gem, gutted I forgot to take a picture of these - hopefully she hasn't removed it yet and can send me one!  (Edit: She has sent me one!  See below!)  Her outfit consisted of the tulle skirt I made specially in the AOW colours of navy and peach (she luckily had a peach slip for underneath), a peach heart ring, a coral (almost peach) NERD T-shirt, the fabulous nails and her own wedge trainers, all finished off with a ribbon tied round her bun.

(Taken by Anna on my phone)

As Anna K pointed out, I don't do things by halves, especially when it comes to fancy dress!  I LOVE IT!  My own outfit was similar but with a slightly bigger tutu (I ended up choosing more colours and spotting a sparkly tulle after my other colours were cut but I couldn't resist the glittery one and I obviously had to use them all so it ended up rather pouffy!)  I also had a NERD T-shirt but in turquoise, did my nails in granite grey with aqua and a black heart gem.  I was going for more of a rock chick ballerina and paired it with my leather jacket and biker boots, I also spotted the fab grey tie-dye tights in the sale in H&M!  I wore my newly needle-felted heart elbow patch (#PinItDoIt coming V soon!) long sleeved T-shirt under my NERD T and my wedding sunglasses.

My tutu taking up the entire sofa when I'd finished!  Oops!

Tutus by olivedragonfly featuring heart jewelry

(Taken by Anna on my camera)

(Taken by Anna on my camera)

(Photo by Anna)

(Photos by Anna)

A few tutu wearers went marching across the road to get some photos outside, ended up twirling in Sainsbury's, posing and marching back again!

(Photo by Anna)

(Taken by Anna on my camera)

(Taken by Anna on my camera)

(Photo by Anna)

Becca made her skirt using one of the many tulle skirt tutorials I pinned!  :)

Amy looking like an ACTUAL ballerina!

We had SO much fun and there were so many new people there that I hadn't met before so had a fab time getting to know some more AOWers!  I even got to meet my lovely book swappee, Chirsty (who still hasn't received her books, oops, nail-biting pressure!)  I also finally got to meet the fabulous Siobhan!  Bizarre as I felt like I already knew her so well via Instagram and Twitter and she is by FAR my best commenter on the blog (even though I'm rubbish at returning the comment love)!  :)

(Photo by Anna)

I had to share this lovely pic of the gorgeous Chirsty because it looks like she has a mini Anna K on her shoulder whispering wise things in her ear!  Hehe.  There is also a rather fabulously amusing photo of me which Anna took but that actually deserves it's own post!

Anna let me wear her gorgeous peach flower crown she made specially for the occasion and I swapped her my sunglasses which she proceeded to pout in - she is SO stunning!

We suddenly realised we had to get to Ping Pong for our reservation for dinner and all ran out to catch the bus.  The food was so good and I was so hungry by the time it came I completely forgot to take pictures of most of it so you'll just have to trust me that it was delish!

Lara made a happy surprise (to me) appearance as she was in town from Edinburgh!

Prawn and chive dumplings
I didn't know they'd be green when I ordered them but I was obviously delighted!

Flaming passion fruit Martini - also delish!

We had a chance to mingle a bit more after dinner and I got to meet one of the Katys properly, KatyW who I had a lovely chat with :)

Rock chic mermaid ballerina wood nymph
(Taken by Amy)

The hard-core crew who went on to the next pub consisted of myself, Amy, Katy, Claire, Chirsty, Crysta (I always think of Fern Gully when I see her name!), Yanthé and Helena (listed as pictured)...

(Taken by random guy in pub)

Then the ultimate remaining 5 of Amy, Crysta, Katy, Claire and myself had one last cocktail in the last pub, discussing Hotness Pinterest boards, American TV shows and other pointless but fun things before heading home.

Classic Mojito

Maccy D's, gotta be done after a night of drinking, Amy and I rocked the place in our tutus and headed home where we succumbed to more naughty post-drinking treats and settled in our PJs with cookies and milk.

(Taken by Amy)

And I can't forget to mention the gorgeous little ballet bracelets Bex made for us all to wear!  

The next morning, Amy's truly lovely husband-to-be (she's one of the hens!) made us cheese croissants!!!  Perfect!

 

The rest of Sunday can wait 'til another post as I'm now knackered and need to sleep (clearly too high from the weekend to sleep now so must read to calm down!)