One hell of a month

To say July was one hell of a month is perhaps an understatement. It has been a crazy, amazing emotional roller coaster that has hopefully set me on a path to my dream future.

It all started on the 29^th of June, I woke with a jump, shaking with my heart doing approximately 10 million beats per second (slight exaggeration has been used). It was results day and I’d just jumped out of a nightmare that I’d failed my degree, been forced to pay my £50,000 of debt upfront and had then been disowned by my entire family…it sounds crazy but I know all you other students know the kind of nightmare I’m talking about!

I threw myself out of bed and ran to my laptop to view my results, as they loaded I remember feeling insanely sick and wanting to throw my laptop out the window. As my transcript finally popped up on the computer I burst into tears – I was graduating Uni with a 2:1 BA Honours degree!

Thus began the start of my most successful month to date. Following my results I graduated on Monday the 13^th of July in Liverpool, I’ll be doing a separate post on graduation soon. It was one of the most amazing and exciting days of my life and I can't wait to tell you all about it! Then guess what happened - the day after I was offered a job interview.

That Thursday I travelled to Lancaster for my job interview with Netplay TV and, following a casual chat with my potential employers, I felt pretty confident on my return journey. About an hour after I got home I received a phone call from Netplay to say they wanted to offer me the job! Obviously I accepted!

I started the following week and have been there for about three weeks now! It’s such a great job and it’s so good to be working in a city again!

To top off all my amazing news I celebrated my 21^st birthday last week with all my friends and family, we had a garden party with afternoon tea and then a BBQ and cocktails later on in the day. I was spoilt rotten and got pretty drunk – a successful 21^st celebration if you ask me!

So hopefully my crazy month offers some excuse as to why I haven’t blogged much throughout July! It’s been one hell of a month indeed! I should be back to blogging as usual this coming week as I get used to commuting and working full time again!

I hope all your months were as successful, let me know what you got up to in July in a comment below!

Here's to us

Here’s to us, the class of 2015. The first class to deal with the dramatically increased tuition fees, the class who opted for an education when everyone ran for paid apprenticeships, the class who are now looking for jobs when unemployment is at its all-time high, but we are the class who, against all odds, will succeed.

Because we are the class that faced the most hardship when it came to university, we are now the ones most determined to succeed. I know my classmates and I will stop at nothing to justify the price we paid for an education and the work we had to put in to get our monies worth.

I graduated next to some of the most amazingly determined and brilliant people I have ever met last month and I wish them all the best in life. I hope they find amazing jobs as journalists, writers or whatever else they are inspired to be and I hope they are all able to sit back in fifty years and say “I did it, against all the odds I did it!”

We all worked our asses off to stand in the Liverpool Cathedral last month and shake hands with staff members and take pictures of us reluctantly throwing our over-priced caps in the air. The rain poured down on us but nothing could dampen our spirits.

You could sense the joy and relief all around you as students, friends and families celebrated three years of university coming to an end, knowing it was highly unlikely that I would ever have to sit through another politics lecture was a calming thought as I popped open a bottle of champagne.

As the celebrations began to draw to end that day the joy and relief from earlier was saddened as we said goodbye to friends made over the last three years. Tearful goodbyes to friends and lecturers who had got me through some of the worst times in my life, and had also shared in the highest, followed by promises to stay in touch and meet up regularly, and then they were gone.

Later on in the evening myself and Josh went to Jamie’s Italian to celebrate with food and cocktails, it was a lovely evening that finished off the day perfectly. We then went back to our hotel and passed out from exhaustion after an extremely long and emotional day.

So let’s raise a glass for the class of 2015, who were royally shit on by on their government, but despite all odds made it through. Will the fees and hard work pay off? Only time will tell. But here’s to us anyway for surviving the hardships we faced over the last few years. We made it this far, now let’s show them how much further we can go.

Matalan Graduate Design Project

Last week I was invited to an evening at the new Liverpool City Centre Matalan store to see the new collection designed by competition winners, Kerry Crone and Imogen Stubbs. It was a night of festive nibbles and drinks with competitions and collections for fashion bloggers to enjoy! Over all it was a really enjoyable evening and I met some lovely people.

The Graduate Design Project was basically a competition where young fashion designers were offered the opportunity to win their own range in the North-West stores and a £500 cheque! The winners were both challenged to create a collection that en-capsuled the punk era, and I for one would say they succeeded!

With Imogen's bold cross T shirts and Kerry's edgy safety pin prints the girls pulled off the perfect punk collection!

Above there's just a few snaps of the collections (both Kerry's and Imogen's) and some of the other fashion bloggers 'picks' on the rail. I though i'd share a few of my pictures from the night with you all below and then explain a bit more about the blogger's competition from the night!

Above, from left to right, are the gorgeous red velvet, Matalan cakes laid out for us, me and my plus one for the night, Abi, and the lovely goodie bags Matalan provided for all of their guests. The bags had tonnes of free vouchers and promotions for the store and a beautiful black, white and silver clutch bag worth £10!

Above is my outfit of the night which consisted of a Topshop cami, Primark leather look harem pants and my trusty New Look heels. I accessorized with white and fluro yellow baroque style jewelry from H&M and a fluro yellow clutch bag from ebay. The centre picture is me outside the Queens Square Matalan, Liverpool.

Above you'll be able to see all the bloggers tags that were there on the night. The idea was for each blogger to put their two tags on two items to make an outfit. The labels read 'Blogger <3's' and you can see a close up of my tag in the middle! We were given the oppurtunity to win whichever items we put our <3 labels on, the people hosting the night and Matalan designers will pick their favourite outfit and the designer of that outfit will win their selected items!

You can see all the items I picked above. I picked one of Imogen's grungy printed Ts and then in true form an extremely glitzy midi skirt from their 'we heart' section. I would probably wear this outfit on a night out and style it with some leather lace up boot style heels (think Jeffrey Campbell style) and an over-sized leather black clutch bag. I also think big silver statement jewelry would be necessary! Something grungy like thick chains would go well.

Any way I hope you like the outfit I picked, let me know what you think in a comment below. Also tell me what you love about the grad collections below! You can see a glimpse of the collection above but if  you want to shop the full thing click here. - Alice x