This week has had two date nights. On Tuesday we went to see The Lovely Bones at The Coronet, which is an awesome cinema in Notting Hill which does £3.50 movies on a Tuesday. The movie was weird but it did have lots of crafting at the start. On Wednesday we went to see Youth In Revolt, an awesome film with Nick from Nick & Norah and Juno in it, at the Trocadero.

After the movie we went to Ben & Dave’s new house for a pre-housewarming / goodbye party for Mel. As always, the food and cocktails were amazing and I was taught how to make a blackforest cocktail, which tastes like cake in a glass.

I had an amazing fabric shop on Goldhawk Road this week. I found the perfect waterproof fabric for my Burberry mac for £6.50 a meter (quite a saving for a £1000 jacket) and some awesome black check silk for the lining (it’s the same design that I made my dress with). I also got lots of silk for making two other dresses, but they’ll have to wait until I’m finished with my coat.

After one day of sewing, this is how my mac is shaping up. The forecast for the weekend is rain, so I shall fill mine with sewing, movies, brunching with friends, button buying and hiding out indoors.

CO+K is in the latest issue of Sew Magazine and Clare posted a lovely little post about us on her amazing new blog, Pass The Pattern.

Although we’re still recovering from jet lag, this week is London Fashion Week, so we had to be up super early for fashion shows this weekend.

Luckily having breakfast at Fifteen perked us right up.

On the subject of fashion, I got Tom this awesome Vivienne Westwood shirt, which has a tie buttoned down the front. It was on sale but they didn’t have it in his size, so I’ll have to re-tailor it when it arrives.

Last night was the Central Saint Martins catwalk show (ohhh how I wish I had went to fashion school) and here were some of my favorite looks. It turns out someone I went to high school with was in the show last year. I’ve been inspired to take a trip to Goldhawk Road this week and make some more dresses and maybe start my Burberry mac.

Tonight we decided to sample the Spanish absinthe that I got on holiday. These ones actually have thujone in and the black one is 85%… it burns!

On a whim yesterday, I decided I’d have a go at sewing a Vivienne Westwood style dress. I finished it today and, as this was the first dress I’ve ever made, it went really well. It ties around the middle and has pockets at and flaps that fold around.

The design is based on an Anglomani dress but as it cost over £300, I couldn’t afford it, so I took a trip to Goldhawk Road and for £5 worth of fabric + a £3 zip + 2 days of sewing, here’s my £8 dress, just in time to wear to New York!

It goes really nicely with my Lady Dragon shoes and my new Vivienne Westwood necklace, which Tom surprised me with when I got to the airport after my trip to Tenerife.

Tom also got himself some socks and a set of offensive coasters.

My next update shall be from NYC, so in the meantime, keep yourself busy by watching the Whip It! movie, which is so awesome.

I’ve been working super hard this week because I’m not really going to be around for the next two. The bad weather has stopped us from doing too much, though it has encouraged me to finish knitting my scarf, which now has pockets as well as a hood with cat ears. I really can’t wait until the end of the week, when I’ll be relaxing in the sun of Santa Cruz, Taco & La Laguana – frozen margaritas ahoy!

We did a best projects of 2009 list for CO+K. There were so many amazing projects last year, the site is growing so fast.

My Lady Dragon shoes arrived last week and I love them so much but I’ll have to wait until the weather improves before I can wear them out.

This weekend we hung out with Lynz & friends and met up with our old high school friend John, who’s living in London now, and catch up on the past 6 to 7 years. Also, the ladies at Plan 9 wrote us a big checklist of places to visit while we’re in New York, I can’t wait!

Yesterday we headed through to a very snowy and cold Edinburgh.

We went to see Joey D in his shop and took him some mince pies. He was very sweet and told us lots of stories about his wedding, fashion week and said that we’d convinced him to open a store in London and that he’d come and visit us.

Tom got an amazing Irish policeman’s jacket which is made from super soft moleskin and has a leather collar and back. They had some amazing skirts and wellies that I want to go back and try on. I’m tempted to ask him to make me a dress out of neckties.

Afterwards we went for a meal at our favourite Italian restaurant, Vittoria on Leith Walk. It has become a Christmas Eve tradition to go their after we finish our xmas shopping.

We went down to Alistair’s house to give him his Christmas present, which is a Worn Again wallet made from recycled Eurostar uniforms. I got one for Tom too.

In the evening Grant, Nathan, David and Duncan joined us at Tom’s house for drinks before we headed back to my house in the early hours of the morning. It’s a Canadian tradition to open a present the night before Christmas, so my Mum and Dad gave me a book by Debrett’s I was wanting about Correct Form – I’m such a geek for etiquette.

We launched the Christmas mini issue of Snippets this week with the adorable Twinkie Chan on the cover. She also shared a how-to for crocheting a super cute lollipop brooch.

It’s been another busy week, mostly filled with xmas shopping, movies, eating in diners and pub quizzes. We’ve been going to a pub quiz at Gordon Ramsay’s pub in Chiswick with Ben and Dave. It costs £2 to enter but they give you lots of little snacks from the kitchen – we had pumpkin soup, scrambled egg with truffle on toast, pork pies (not me) and really tasty mince pies. Our name this week was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Fire Hydrant, which we felt was nice and topical. We’ve been spending a lot of time over West recently, on the previous Sunday, we were at a mini Christmas for Mel at Ben & Dave’s with mulled wine, yummy food and generic presents to open.

I’ve fallen in love with Forever 21 - they make such nice clothes and our first order arrived this week. I got a couple of dresses, skirts, belts, a pair of boots and Tom got lots of cool t-shirts. I can’t wait to go on a spending spree in the shop when I get to New York.

On Wednesday we went for a feast at The Diner, complete with hard shakes and Tennessee Toffee Pie for dessert. Afterwards we went to see a midnight movie and Tom lost his wallet but I found it again, after a steward let me back in and we hunted for it in the dark. Speaking of diners, we have our American rail trip all booked for February. We start off in New York for a week, take the train down the east coast (we get beds and our meals on the train) to New Orleans, where we meet up with Emma and Raven for Mardis Gras. It’s going to be so much fun!

At the start of the year, Tom set himself the mission of going to the end of every tube line on the underground map and he only has a couple left to do, so I’ve been keeping him company. Lynz has lent me her Twilight book, so I’ve been reading that.

I’ve also spent a lot of the week wrapping presents, writing cards and doing some Christmas crafting. I can’t post most of the things I’ve made until after xmas, but I did make some geeky Gameboy keyrings, which I think are safe to show off now.

On Friday, we signed up to the DVD store at Maida Vale (the same one Kate Moss goes to, I’ll have you know) and had a girly movie night in with Emma. We watched St. Trinian’s, which is an odd film, and Josie & The Pussycats – I’d forgotten how awesome that film is!

When we got Tom’s pick of film home, we noticed someone had scribbled “worst film ever” on the DVD. We’ve still to watch it to find out.

On Saturday, we ran in to a Santa convention at Trafalgar Square, where there must have been a thousand people in Santa Claus outfits – apparently they were trying to raise awareness of Christmas. They all seemed quite drunk and were handing out chocolates and sweets to everyone.

Tiffany are sponsoring the ice skating at Somerset House, so they have a huge Christmas tree covered in Tiffany charms.

They also had a tuck shop inside a Tiffany box, where you could buy sweets and jewellery.

Tom bought me a cupcake, though I would have settled for a key necklace or this ring.

We had dinner at the Eagle Bar Diner and then went to see Law Abiding Citizen at the big Odeon in Leicester Square. We had went to see a movie a month ago, which had really bad sound, so we were given complementary tickets. Our seats would normally have cost £20 each, because we were in the Royal Circle, which is where all the stars sit during premiers and they had awesome leopard skin seats. That reminds me, Tom’s boss Malcolm had his moustache shaved off by Hugh Grant last week.

This morning we had breakfast at Fifteen. I highly recommend scrambled eggs & mushroom on toast with a side of baked beans and a tasty smoothie.

Afterwards I had a haircut at Taylor Taylor. This time I was at their Commercial Street shop, which is so pretty. Upstairs is all fairytale with chandeliers and stuffed animals for Christmas and downstairs is like a dungeon. They give you special Christmas cocktails, tasty coffee and a head massage before your chop.

I’m going to have to get use to having much shorter hair, but I think I’ll treat myself to some ear muffs to keep warm.

That was a super long post, I’ll update more regularly from now on.

Today was the Estethica press day at the Mayfair Hotel, so Emma and I went along super early for a snoop around. It’s a showcase for designers who work with sustainable products, including Christopher Raeburn from Project Catwalk. I had already seen most of the designs at Fashion Week but Junky Styling had a really pretty skirt that I want. It didn’t take as long as we were expecting but we did get goodie bags when we left.

Afterwards we went for a snoop around Vivienne Westwood, Emma fell in love with a pair of £500 boots and I got tempted to try on the horns. Emma still couldn’t work out what a Shawshank Redemption was.

Afterwards we went to the Tatty Devine press day at their new (not open to the public yet) store in Covent Garden. The Summer collection has a seaside and tearoom theme and there’s an awesome bunting necklace I want. They gave us red doily-inspired rings in our goodie bags and I couldn’t resist buying a 3D glasses necklace with the 20% discount.

It started raining, so we went for an educational trip around the Science Museum, where we discovered that Emma has a woman’s brain. Apparently you can have sleepovers in the museum, so we want to have an all night birthday party there.

After stopping off at Hummingbird, we headed home for lunch, where Tom and Sean (the no.3 person under 30 to watch according to The Sunday Time) were hard at work on Drowned In Sound. We may have annoyed them by watching Limmy and Adam & Joe, while eating cupcakes (chocolate & chai = yum!) and offering everyone beer.

In the evening, Tom took me to a Facebook Developer Garage, which was quite interesting but after getting up at 6.30 with only 3 hours of sleep, I started dozing off.

I’m happy because it’s October, which is my favourite month of the year. I love Autumn and Halloween is just around the corner.

After work today, we went for a walk around Holland Park. The leaves were very crunchy.

There was a super cute baby squirrel, which we fed peanuts to. It had a really fluffy tail and kept hopping about.

Afterwards we headed down to High Street Kensington, where I went on a bit of a spending spree and bought two new tops and a skirt.

When we got home, the shoe fairy (aka Raven) paid us a visit. We’d been wanting a pair of Raven designed shoes for ages and today ours arrived.

I got a pair of super cute star shoes, which make me feel like a superhero. They’re really comfy and come in gold too. She was going to make them in red and blue as well, which would have been especially superhero.

Tom got a pair of boots. On one side they have a tiger with wings and on the other a flying shark with guns. I think he understands why girls love shoes so much now.

Raven also designs the boxes, which are so awesome. My one has drawings of all the people who work at F-Troupe on it, Raven is the butterfly in the middle.

I ordered a Lego Poison Ivy to go with Harley and she arrived today. They’re so cute together!

1. Take photos of your clothes.

To make your clothes look their best, snap them against a white background with good lighting (preferably during the daytime). If you can, use a mannequin or ask a friend to take photos while you model.

2. Edit your photos.

To make your photos look even better, you can touch them up using a program like Photoshop. First, level them to make the colours nice and bright. Then cut out or paint the background, so that it’s completely white. Then rotate and crop, to get the clothes nice and straight. Do this for all your clothes, bags, accessories and shoes.

3. Organize your photos.

Once you’ve snapped all of your wardrobe, it’s time to organise your photos. You can do this with an application for your computer (just like in the movie Clueless), or get an application your phone. Here are a few you can try out:

• Stylish Girl is the one that I use for my iPhone. It’s completely free and lets you store, organise and mix & match outfits. It even has a wishlist section, so you can put together potential outfits using items you don’t yet own.
• Dress Assistant is a program for your computer that lets you organise your pieces and pull together clothes, like you would on a paper doll. It’s free and available on Mac and PC.
• My Closet is a website, which lets you upload photos, organise and share your outfits.

4. Mix & match outfits.

Now it’s the fun part – mix and match your pieces and pull together interesting outfits. If you’ve got a big occasion coming up, you can plan your outfit in advance and relax on the day.

Had a lazy weekend shopping and drinking coffee. On Saturday we were at Westfield for their catwalk show. We got free hairspray and there was lots of black, leather and sequins.

We’ve been having “drive in movie nights”, where we pump up the air bed, put it on top of the sofa bed and watch movies on the big screen with poptarts.

We watched The September Issue (which is a documentary following Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue), I Am Legend (a rubbish version of 28 Days Later) and Batman & Robin, which I haven’t seen in years. I still love Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy.

Emma brought home my Bourjois order yesterday, I love all the colours.

Also, I’ve been using my new sewing machine quite a bit and my latest project was transforming a large Auld Reekie rollergirl’s t-shirt into a girly vest.

Sean posted a word cloud of his blog and I couldn’t resist doing one for mine too.