I know you're hoping to find someone who's gonna give you peace of mind

Hello again. I can't believe that tomorrow is my last day before the Easter Holidays...it doesn't quite feel Easter-ish enough yet, and I am quite definitely not ready to start my exams when I start back at school. They have always seemed so far away, and now suddenly they're here and I am supposed to be panicking but instead I feel vaguely calm and, well, bored.
It's not that I don't care - I've been revising solidly for weeks (three textbooks worth of science takes a hell of a lot of time) but for some reason, I just don't get the fear-factor associated with GCSEs. They are important, but I see them more as a stepping stone, a sort of conditioning if you will, to put you through your paces and work you down to the quick, so that when it comes to choosing further education you know which subjects you can handle under pressure and which you can't. It's a lot of effort, but everyone has to do them...and as long as you get the grades you need to take your chosen A levels, it's all ok really.

On Mother's Day, my Aunt and Uncle came over and we had a cute Sunday lunch in the garden, complete with tea, victoria sponge cake and strawberries on my vintage china cake stand from the Vintage Carboot. I thought I'd go for the ultimate afternoon-tea look, and wore my new dress from Blitz which I bought for £10 on Saturday. I loved the colours and the exaggerated collar, and felt it was the perfect granny dress to match my inner old lady aesthetic. I wore it with Topshop shoes and a belt from Beyond Retro. 

I have to admit this outfit is really inspired by the description of 1930's Maycomb Town ladies in To Kill A Mockingbird. I am studying the book for English, and it is one of my favourites. It makes me think of summer, and so I couldn't help trying to capture the feel of the women in Maycomb with this outfit. The aforementioned description is: "The ladies were cool in fragile pastel prints: most of them were heavily powdered but unrouged; the only lip-stick in the room was Tangee Natural. Cutex Natural sparkled on their fingernails, but some of the younger ladies wore Rose. They smelled heavenly." I even painted my nails for the first time in forever, and actually quite liked the look of a very pale pink, despite generally disliking nail polish on myself.

I have been really interested in nature recently. It was sort of my 'thing' as a child...I began watching Animal Planet at age 3, and since have dedicated hours of my spare time to studying animals and their environments, making files and research books (I was sociable, I swear), caring for my whimsical array of pets (fish, hamsters, rabbits, a dog, stick insects, even a crab and a dove), birdwatching, animal tracking and so on. One of my prized possessions is a shedded snake skin I found in France, complete - albeit without the head section. However, since starting secondary school, my time has been dominated by other work, and my spare time spent pursuing other interests that are more in-line with my friends. It's not that my interest dwindled, but more my effort to actively continue learning did. Now, though, especially as I have been looking at it in my art project, nature has begun to interest me just as much as it did when I first discovered it, and the endless summer I have before me has opened up a world of time and opportunity to continue where I left off. Some new discoveries that have come about because of this are second hand observer's guides, like the one pictured above, which are full of glorious illustrations, and National Geographic Magazine, which I cannot believe I have not been reading regularly before.

On a side note, whilst taking these pictures I met a really cute cat, and felt photographic evidence of the encounter was somehow relevant. I digress.

In other news, nominations for the Company Magazine Style Blogger Awards began today, and if you would like to, you can nominate me for 'Best Teen Style Blog' here. I know it is probably a little optimistic of myself to post this, as I doubt I will have many nominations up against some other bloggers, but as I put a lot of time and effort into the upkeep of this blog I thought it would be a shame not to try and go for something like this. Especially as Company magazine is one of my favourite magazines, and to even just be shortlisted for a competition like this would be absolutely amazing.

I hope you are all having a good week, and I hope you all have a good Easter Holiday...I'm certainly looking forward to the chocolate eggs, as always. If you could nominate my blog for the Style Awards by clicking here it would be really appreciated!
Hugs

Ellie xo