Go shorty it's your birthday

 

 

 

 

WARNING: extremely long blogpost coming up, risks of death by boredom are exceptionally high. I have had the nicest weekend celebrating my best friends birthday - it was really different to last year aswell which she spent in Gambia and I spent preparing to book our girls holiday! On Friday us girls went out for a meal at a place in town called Rub smokehouse which is like a classic American BBQ - basically pulled pork on everything! (no complaints from me) They also had these cool napkins for anyone whose looking to eat pulled pork and then pull a girl (or guy). For the occasion, I wore these dogtooth shorts that I got from river island for £30 and paired them with this embellished white top which was also from river island, but quite a while ago - I'm enjoying injecting life into old clothes but it might not be so fun for you because if there's anything you like and want to buy then you probably can't anymore. Anyway, I'd worn my dogtooth coat in the day but I thought that along with the shorts, the dogtooth overload might be enough to blind someone so I opted for my grey faux fur one instead (new look £64.99) which actually isn't in the photo. I also wore my new favourite boots; these crocodile beauties from river island that I got in the boxing day sales! (*insert love heart eye emoji here*). Drumroll please... After spending the afternoon baking, this is what I came up with! It looked pretty spectacular although it did weigh the same as a small child so getting it to town and back was like high intensity interval training - not something I'm a fan of!

 

 

 

 

Then yesterday we went out for a night in town for which I wore another old favourite of mine (not because I had nothing new to wear but because the new dress I had bought for the occasion didn't fit me right round the bust and so I had to change my outfit last minute). This dress was from topshop about a year ago and I love this length of sleeve because I think it's really flattering. Seeing as my outfit was monochrome, I went with quite statement makeup - I did a kindof copper smokey eye (for which I used a mixture of bodyshop eyeshadows and my Naked palette) and then a dark nude lip using Taupe by MAC. I finished with lots of gold jewellery - earrings, watch and rings - and then my trusty black boots and bag.

 

 

 

 

We carried on with the American theme of the weekend by playing beer pong at our pre drinks (well technically it was mixed-drinks-pong but I don't think that rolls off the tongue in the same way). Despite the fact that our team was made up of 4 girls and the other team was made up of 3 lads who all play sports and 1 girl (considering the game's about throwing that's definitely important, if a little sexist), we still managed to win!!! Little Katie was our star shooter although we all managed to score (do you say score?) atleast one - who knew, maybe I am sporty afterall!!

 

 

 

 

We literally had the best night out and spent the majority of the night singing at the top of our lungs - not just along to the songs in the clubs but while we were outside queuing which I'm sure everyone loved us for! I also bought Lauren a birthday shot which was this cool smoking one! (she said it made her feel sick but it looked pretty so the good outweighs the bad). I'm sure she spent her birthday (today) hungover but I'm glad she had a good weekend! And now I can't wait to celebrate with her in Amsterdam in under a months time!

 

 

As well as Lauren, it's also time to say happy birthday to my blog - jenni from the block is officially a year old! Yes I know this wasn't a photo from my first ever post but it's the one I consider the start of my blog as it is today because it's the first I featured in (I can't believe it took me 3 months to actually be in my own blog!). And my photo style and my poses have changed very little since then - but the main thing that hasn't changed is my inventive post titles (which get harder to come up with the more posts I write), I even smiled to myself at some of them while I was scrolling through the archives (sad, I know)! As a little 'happy blogaversary to me', I thought I'd share with you some favourite posts, both mine and yours.

 

 

 

 

 

Okay so I don't know which posts you actually enjoyed the most because I'm not a mind reader, so these are the posts which I've assumed are favourites based on the viewing figures. Feeling fruity was a hit and it's still one of my favourite summer outfits - although I'm still sad that the new look watermelon bikini sold out before I got the chance to buy it. It feels so weird that bikini-buying-season is already upon us again, life feels like it's just flying by. Another one you liked was Clutch me, which was kindof a surprise because normally my wishlist posts aren't as popular. I didn't buy my favourite bag from the post, but I did get the phone case version for Christmas! Another popular one featured my fellow blogger Harley in Fashion blogger birthdays. It was also the first one that Mia got a mention in so she'll be happy to know it's one you all read! My most popular post to date though is actually a very recent one - Cocktail o'clock. I'm guessing it's popularity is down to me being featured in the Nottingham post newspaper (#claimtofame) just before writing it, aswell as it being the first blogpost that I posted on facebook. Seeing as it's one that you all saw, I'm glad it's one where my makeup was looking good.

 

 

 

 

 

The ones that I most enjoy doing are pretty much random - I could be really in love with an outfit but if i'm not in the mood to blog but do it anyway then chances are it wasn't one of my favourites. The first of my favourites was one of yours too - Crew on tour, which was the summary blogpost about my week in magaluf which was definitely one of the best weeks of 2014! I really love writing my lifestyle posts because I think it's a bit more personal rather than the more generic fashion blogger stuff that goes into a lot of my outfit posts. They're also fun to write because they give me a chance to reminisce and decide which were the best bits and therefore what deserves to go in the blog (although I often have to leave out best bits because my blogposts are long and rambly enough without boring you all with loads of private jokes and you-had-to-be-there moments). A lot of my favourite posts are also down to the title - I can't help but get excited by a blogpost if I've come up with a really good title. So Will you be my valentino is definitely up there with my favourites because not only does it have a good play-on-words title, but the playsuit that features in it is probably still my favourite thing in my wardrobe. My favourite title of all time though was Insblairation, although I'm not keen on the photos because I hadn't done my hair for them which is why it didn't rank high enough to earn itself a spot in the favourites. My favourite makeup post is definitely Kylie Jenner nudes because not only did I love the finished makeup look, but I also had fun experimenting and making it up as I went along as I worked off a Kylie Jenner selfie to try and copy her makeup. I think my favourite blogpost ever though has to be We're not living in paris in the 1920s because it was everything rolled into one - an inventive title, clothes that I loved and were really fun to photograph because of the swishy skirt and the hat which gave me loads more pose possibilities and a gossip girl reference, which is my favourite show of all time incase you couldn't tell by my obsession with it. I've loved all my posts though so choosing my favourites was really hard! - from my dogtooth obsession in the early days, through my Jenni goes Stateside series, right down to my reasons that 2014 was amazing - I've enjoyed writing all of them! I've now nearly reached 8,000 views and I've got readers in 31 different countries and I'm still loving blogging just as much as the day I started so thank you all for reading!