The Glasgow PR Girl – Working Saturdays

The Glasgow PR Girl – Working Saturdays by mariaure featuring blue jeans

Alice Olivia sweater, £240 / Frame Denim blue jeans, £145 / Valentino shoes / Michael Kors handbag, £135

Holiday shoes

Booking a holiday is definitely exciting. No question. However, with that comes all the rigmarole of trying to establish exactly what to do with the shoe situation – taking in to account the severe restrictions posed by the Ryanair baggage allowance.

I was chatting to my neighbours Mum the other day – her and her husband are at the retired ‘7-holidays-a-year’ stage. She gave me some interesting tips on packing for a full holiday with 10kg of luggage. Now whilst I was suitably impressed with her knowledge (and unlike most other people she wasn’t suggesting cutting down on the toiletries, because seriously life without Piz Buin Allergy sun tan lotion poses a whole load of prickly heat issues). Anyway, her advice posed a number of problems:

1. I am a self-confessed shoe-aholic.

2. Ben and I are going together and so packing naturally becomes a sort-of joint venture: he has size 12 feet (have you ever tried to pack shoes of that size?) Its not so much the 10kg that becomes a problem and more the size of the case you are allowed to take on board.
3. If I am only going on one holiday – I don’t really want to have to scrimpt on outfit/shoe choices.

This is my solution to that problem and for all the other shoe-a-holics out there, how many pairs are absolutely necessary?

Commonwealth Games Legacy – Are we ‘gimmickly Scottish’?

On Wednesday we saw the opening ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games. This was the first real indication of what Glasgow’s legacy for it’s games would be (minus the ‘lets knock down peoples homes on live television’; lets dress our athletes from the 1970’s and, if you want a ticket to the games: forget it. Or queue for 20 hours.)

I am being more negative than I mean to be. Four years ago I stood in New Dehli in a stadium of 60,000 people to perform at the closing ceremony of the 2010 games. I have never felt so proud to be Scottish, afterall we have a lot to be proud of. The question of what leagcy the games will bring really rests on a wider and more pressing question of the future of Scotland. It’s no coincidence that the referendum happens right after the furore of the Commonwealth Games where Alex Salmond clearly anticipated we would all be shouting ‘FREEDOM’ from the rooftops like that American, or  Australian – or whatever he classes himself as.

The question I would like to pose is, ‘are we gimmickly Scottish’?  I think the creative heads behind the opening ceremony certainly decided yes, but I am not convinced that those people were Scottish. In fact, the distinctly patronising tone of the first section would definitely suggest they weren’t.

image: smarter cities challenge

The media have been reserved on making comment, ‘colourful’; ‘a spectacle’; ‘it wasn’t the Olympics, but the Scots did it in their own way.’ The problem with all of this is that these are niceties for the real truth that it was a massive disappointment. The BBC started their commentary with excessive attention to the fact that the Games don’t have the budget of the Olympics; they were setting up peoples expectations for something below par – and wouldn’t it have been a fantastic political message to surprise them with something tasteful and unique, in celebration of the culture of Scotland and of Glasgow – that we are our own country: we are beautiful, diverse  and we have a bright future. The message we got was Scotland has nothing but gimmicks: a massive kilt; some punk-rock tartan outfits; large tunnocks teacakes and the best one of all: an inflatable Nessie. One twitter commentator from Dundee summed it up perfectly: ‘it was like a 1960’s Albanian entry to the Eurovision song contest.’ Essentially, they accepted that it would be terrible and so they embraced it.

Grey and Blue Livingroom Inspiration

I thought I would start off this mid-week morning with a little inspiration for brightening up or overhauling your living space. Grey is a great base colour for changing your look; it charms itself to being teamed both with cool blues for summer and warmer berry tones for winter. To keep your look in fashion, team the cool blue with a mix of prints and metallics.

 A few fun facts about the colour blue:

• It makes eating very unappealing, so its a great dieting color for plates.
• It is a color shown to help you solve creative problems.
• Blue can help you stay physically calmer, regulating heart beat and breathing in studies of video gamers!

 

Michael Kors Summer LOVE

A little lunch-time loving. I *LOVE* this bag – the summer colours are fabulous and who wouldn’t want to be carrying this round the French Riviera *sigh*/ HINT.

Buy it here.

Have a lovely sunny afternoon!

M x

A Parisian Style Party

In a similar way to myself a year ago, and my proclamation: ‘I’m definitely not having a 21st’ (I had visions of the local village hall, a terrible DJ and 1970’s-style volovant’s.) My gorgeous friend Kirsty and I spent a few cups of tea (okay, let not lie, and gins) agonising over what she should do for hers? Incidentally, by the way, I did have a 21st; I loved it and it was absolutely everything I wanted it to be – without a volovant in sight.

So with the ‘older and wiser’ knowledge that I possessed, I suggested that she should definitely take the plunge and celebrate this momentous occasion, because in all honesty (I’m echoing the advice of my mother here) after you have had a 21st, you feel like you never need any big party again:

‘And, you know Maria, celebrating your 21st and having a big ‘do’ when your young is fun… by the time you get to 30 your stretching it a bit.‘

Thanks Mum. I’ll bear that in mind. 

Now I love a themed party. Apparently this is very ‘middle-class’ of me, or so my reading up about Carole Middleton’s planned themed first birthday for Prince George tells me (from this point forth, this will officially be called ‘George-watch’). But themed in a classy, I-like-everything-matching-because-of-my-OCD- kinda-way.

We decided that Paris was the way to go. Kirsty loves Paris; it has the aura of chic sophistication and everyone, we hoped, would have a stripy t-shirt. And so the Pinterest board/ let’s procrastinate from studying for exams commenced…

                                        

Welcome to ADAGIO!

Welcome to Adagio, the blog dedicated to bringing everything stylish into one place.

The inspiration for this came from my lunch-time trawls in the office for some creative, fun and inspiring content to pass the time. Except I found myself reading through numerous blogs of the different elements of life that I love: from fashion, to home; engaging opinion to the best places to eat.

So here we go then, Adagio: stylish, inspiring content in an attempt to bring all of the above into one place.

              

  Images: Etsy.com & Pinterest

I want to bring together excerpts of fashion; from the latest bargains (I am renowned for those) to whats inspiring the greats. Home inspiration boards and styling; things for the foodies: reviews of where I have been/ what’s hot and what’s not in the places I am in the world. I want to share thoughts and talking points of whats going on: I am definitely not the only person out there who mixes fashion, home styling and current affairs in their day-to-day reading!

So hopefully (if anyone is out there) this will be a fun journey mixing up the boundaries of categorised blogging – I am always up for a suggestion of what we can do next.

       

  Images: a1 pictures, theruffledlace & Pinterest

On that note, I suppose I should tell you a little about me.

I’m Maria. 22. Graduate in Politics. Works in communications. Dancer. Wanna-be Future Prime Minister. Lover of Travel. And Shoes. Recent Handbag Obsession…Friend to Many Fabulous Girlies. Crazy But Loving Girlfriend to (long-suffering) Ben.

I think that should do for now…

M x