Congratulations, Carl and Jessica

On Saturday we celebrated the wedding of my cousin Carl and his new wife, Jessica. They were married in a very pretty historic hotel. I love weddings but I haven't had the chance to go to one for ages so I was pleased to have the opportunity to dress up, celebrate with my family and have a lot of fun dancing at the reception.

Dress - Collectif | Pashmina - Matalan | Fascinator - Claire's Accessories

Shoes - Deichmann (they have a matching bag not seen here) 

Umbrella - brolliesgalore | Pearl necklace - 50s vintage

Petticoat - self-made from this tutorial 

I'm pleased to be able to say that my hair stayed in place all day (with the help of plenty of hairspray and bobby pins). It's a little more vintage-inspired than it is vintage, what with the asymmetrical quality, but that's okay.  

Hailing frequencies open, Captain.

My latest museum visit was to the Space Centre in Leicester. 

I am a huge fan of science fiction and the lovely Mr Bowie, so I had a grand old time pretending to be a member of Star Fleet and singing all the space-themed Bowie songs.

Above: A tripod from War of the Worlds. The green laser fires and makes a sound as you walk underneath - I needed about 6 goes at walking underneath before I was satisfied that I'd seen it enough times!

Doing my best Uhura impression - "Hailing frequencies open, Captain"

And this outfit was good the last time I wore it sooo.... I wore it again.

The above image was taken in a small cinema at the centre where you could watch Le Voyage Dans La Lune ("A Trip To The Moon") from 1902. It's a film based on From The Earth To The Moon by Jules Verne, and The First Men In The Moon by H.G. Wells. I love H.G. Wells but I have never read any Jules Verne - I must get some sorted out for me to read. 

I found Le Voyage Dans La Lune in its entirety on Youtube, and you can watch it for yourself in the clip below. I highly recommend it - it's a charming film and I found it really interesting to see some of the science fiction ideas of the time rendered on film. In the story, some astronomers decide to take a trip to the moon in a capsule which is fired from a cannon. If you are interested, there are also several other versions of the film on Youtube which use different music, and there are some hand-coloured clips as well.

Above: this is the head from the Roswell Alien Autopsy. I am not sure if it is the real head from the film or if it is a reproduction, but you can watch the autopsy clip on Youtube here and read about the hoax on Wikipedia here.

As much as I enjoyed all the space things, I will leave you with my favourite photos from the visit. I was super excited by the 1969 living room, which they had set up to show how the first moon landing would have been seen on television.

So did I have fun playing with all the cool stuff in this awesome dream living room? You bet your buttons I did.

Don't forget you can also find me on Facebook, Tumblr and Bloglovin'! I have also added a tab to the menu at the top of my blog where you can view all the posts from all my days out. 

Save my set!

I am going to my cousin's wedding in just under two weeks time. I have my outfit sorted; I am going 50s style and I would like my hair to match, in order to complete the look.

If you have read anything on my blog before, you probably will have noticed that I complain about my hair with an alarming degree of regularity. I have very fine, very straight hair which is ridiculously difficult to curl. Of course, I would like my hair to look as good as possible for the wedding, but I am just not sure how to achieve that.

Recently I have been using a set which, on a good day, seems to produce nice results. On the other hand, the results are very hit and miss, and seem to look different every time even though my hair has been curled exactly the same way. These results were all achieved using the same set:

These are all fairly good results, and although they're not exactly the same, they all look at least vaguely similar. 

The most common bad result for me to get is one where chunks of my hair have inexplicably remained straight (or at least more straight than the rest of my hair), despite being treated the same as the rest of my locks. This results in this kind of half-straight/half-curly rubbishness:

You can tell by my face how unimpressed I am with my hair.

I wanted something for the wedding that might be able to guarantee me at least a halfway decent result, instead of taking it out on the morning of the wedding only to find it looks like my hair in the above picture... I decided to try the Marilyn set from the Style Me Vintage book, but I have found largely the same problems. 

I used it here and it came out okay (although they don't look like Marilyn curls), but I tried it again today and it came out looking somewhere between Kesha and an 80s poodle perm. There are some huge straight chunks and some very curly parts which just won't brush out no matter what I do with them. I have said screw it, and thrown it up in a ponytail for the time being. 

I have a good idea of what I want my hair to look like for the wedding and I am just really hoping my hair has a good day that day. If only I could make it look like this!:

[x]

[x]

[x]

[x]

[x]

[x]

Oh well. I can dream.

Side note: perhaps I should dye my hair blonde as I seem to be mostly interested in blonde ladies today. 

How about you - any good hair tips/ideas on what I can do with my hair for the wedding to overcome the problem? Who are your vintage hair icons?

Edit: I have had some great advice from Retro Chick in her hair clinic post and I am going to try an updo for the wedding. Any other tips or advice would still be gratefully received though as I am bad at styling my hair!

The weather was pretty good again for most of today. I think you can tell what country I'm from based purely by how much I talk about the weather.

Dress - Ahoy Sailer Vintage | Cardi - Primark

Bag - 50s vintage via Ebay | Shoes - Deichmann

Flower girl

The weather today was beautiful, so I was really happy to be able to get out and enjoy it, and also to be able to have some photos outside for a change.

I had to go out today to meet some people about doing some volunteering over the summer so I wanted to wear something smart, but not too formal. I love this outfit for the summer!

Top - can't remember 

Cardigan and shoes - Tesco | Skirt - Primark

The King

I mentioned in my last post that I've been having a clear and tidy up of some things. One thing I got distracted by whilst trying to do my clear out is my box of Elvis memorabilia.

Elvis has a special place in my heart as I'm sure he does for many people, but in particular I love him because he was probably my first serious introduction to rock and roll music, which in turn led to my current interest in all things vintage.

In addition to the contents of this box, I also own several other books and CDs. The box itself was one of these collectors things you can buy from the post office. I only ever bought the first issue because you know how it goes - the first one is 99p and everything thereafter is about £100, 000 plus your soul.

Well. Maybe not quite that much, but certainly too expensive for me to really bother collecting the whole series.

Nevertheless, the first issue did come with some lovely things for Elvis fans.

I am sorry that my scanner cut off some of the edges in the following images; I don't know how to  fix it so I hope it doesn't spoil your viewing too much. 

Copy of the birth certificate of Elvis Aaron Presley, born 8th January 1935.

Elvis was the second of a set of twins; his brother was named Jesse Garon and was stillborn.

Family portrait c.1937 showing Elvis with his parents, Gladys and Vernon.

Report card from 1943-44, East Tupelo Consolidated School. Elvis was 9 years old. I love the adverts on the back page, particularly the one for "Freeman Furniture Co.". In case the text is too hard to read, it says "You furnish the bride/ We furnish the home".

Letter from Dixie Locke, Elvis' first girlfriend. There are some great lines in this, it's so sweet. My favourite is: "It's so lonesome when I'm not with you, I could die". Her handwriting is quite hard to read (also small and slightly out of focus) in the image above, so I have transcribed it (spelling mistakes and all) here. It's too lovely not to share!

Fan club membership card for "The Nation's First and Largest Elvis Presley Fan Club". This particular card is an honorary membership card given to Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis' manager.

Memphis charity show poster, 1961. 

The magazine is also really interesting. I didn't scan the whole lot, but here are the front cover and three of my favourite images from inside: