Ducks and Boats

On Bank Holiday Monday, my Mum and I went to the Lowry Food Festival. It was an absolutely gorgeous day (remember when it was nice outside?) so it was the perfect day to walk around food stalls and sample delicious cheeses, oils, jams, spirits and much more! There were dozens of stalls and such a variety of different things; pink cheese with port, toffee vodka, spiced popcorn, chutneys, homemade macaroons, flavoured oils and "fuffle"-a mix between fudge and truffle, and this is just a small sample!

So we got there around lunctime (perfect!), sampled on some goodies for a couple of hours and then went to find out about the Paul Hollywood book signing. We found out the book signing would be at 3pm and were told to get there no earlier than about 2.30pm. I'd been to book signings before (ahem, Jeremy Kyle) and knew they sometimes cut the line if there are too many people, but we needed to have lunch. I wanted to just grab a slice of pizza from one of the stands, but my Mum wanted a proper lunch, so we went to Bella Italia. I was panicking a bit when it got to 2.20pm and freaking out even more by 2.40pm when we finally left the restaurant. By the time we got upstairs the queue was huge. We went to join at the back and.... they cut the line. Right in front of us. We moved out of the line and my Mum started to cry. So decided we should wait around the queue area just in case they let any more people in. We got chatting to the security guard and he explained that he obviously couldn't let us in, but he would let us know if the queue was moving more quickly than expected. However, when we turned around we realised people were queuing behind us thinking they were in the proper queue! We thought we were going to get thrown out of the queue but luckily the queue moved quickly and we were allowed to go through! We didn't get very long with Paul but we got a photo and he signed our book!

After we got over the excitement of meeting him, we headed over to his demonstration. It was really fun and interesting- he made a couple of different bread dishes and then did a little Q&A session. It was such a lovely day! Here's what we came home with...

paella seasoning, taco seasoning, herb oil , toffee vodka, chilli oil, aged reduced balsamic

As it was such a gorgeous day I decided it was time to break out the bare legs and boat shoes! I never used to go bare-legged because I hated my pale legs, but I got really into it while living in New Jersey last summer (I did have a ridiculously good tan then though!) and I'm just so over worrying about being pale. I mean seriously, who cares? We're English, most of us are pale! In NJ it was just too hot to not go barelegged (plus I had shorts as part of my lifeguard uniform) that I realised how silly it was to care! Plus these shoes were made for bare legs, a denim jacket and a summery dress.

Let's talk about these shoes. I've never had boat shoes before, but when Chathman Marine asked me to pick a pair from their website I knew they'd be perfect for summer. I was torn between brown and navy, but decided to go for navy as I don't have any nice navy shoes. I also decided to go for the boat-iest pair I could find. Go boaty or go home, right? I love denim jackets and casual shoes for the summer. This outfit is my favourite from last year.

ducky dress- c/o Lavish Alice

boat shoes-c/o Chatham Marine

denim jacket- New Look

necklace- Forever 21

sunglasses- H&M (I think...)

lipstick- Revlon Matte Lipstick in Really Red

I'm off on a spa day tomorrow, so have a lovely weekend! I'll be back with week two of my 15 for 15 on Sunday! 

Charlotte x

edit: Whoops apologies for the red leg splotches! I think I'd had my legs crossed...