Champagne in a tea cup... Well it can only be the Vintage Patisserie

At the end of last year and beginning of this year I bagged myself a placement at the fabulous Vintage Patisserie: Angel Adoree and her tremendous team turn dreams into realities with their vintage tea parties they put on in and around the London area. During my time there I did a lot of researching and bits and bobs here and there towards the then up and coming Vintage Tea party book and I learnt a lot about myself and about the Vintage Patisserie and all in all had a top notch time!
A lot of time had passed and before I knew it I saw plugs for the book being released on Amazon and I was pleasantly surprised when I got an invite through the door a few weeks back saying that I had been invited to Angel's Vintage Tea party book launch, even though I was stuck in the middle of nowhere in deepest darkest Lowestoft, I made sure that I managed to get my backside down to London for the party of the season!

I wish all invites looked like this!

 I wasn't really sure of what to wear as this was my first launch party (oh I felt all grown up!)  so I decided on something simple yet glam, a vintage black velvet pencil skirt and a peach embroidered blouse with heels, unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of my outfit because I was in too much of a rush!  (my feet felt like they were likely to drop off after getting back to my friends). But I trundled along to 93 feet east in Brick Lane and was greeted by one of the ladies from the Patisserie straight away.

Lauren and another beaut from the Patisserie

As I wandered around I was glad to see friendly faces who I'd worked with all those months ago and also saw other faces I recognised such as Gizzi Erskine, the TV presenter and chef and the Vintage Socialite Fleur De Guerre. The girls from the Patisserie were gliding round keeping the guests happy and making sure our cups were full of Champagne or Gin, yum yum  I was more than happy sipping taking the enchanting atmosphere in. I got talking to the lovely Gerado of Vintage Victory, what a super Gent! and looking very dapper I must say! By the looks of it everyone was having the time of their lives,women walking around with Victory Rolls in their hair and Angel was kept busy socialising with everyone, which must have took a long while because it was absolutely packed!!

There was a 40s style french swing band on who really got the crowd going and there were some great Lindy hoppers dancing along, this was Lindy hop at it's best, I'm not usually a big fan of it but I was in aw of it! This really livened the party up and everyone was dancing their socks off, it really was the perfect Vintage tea party.

 These two were fantastic, I really enjoyed watching them! I'd love to give it a go but I think I'd end up tripping over my feet, I'll stick to jiving I think!

I didn't stay too long but had a grand time when I was there and it was really great to see Angel and her ladies again, I do miss them all very much, so I'm hoping when I graduate she will have me back!
I even managed to wangle a goodie bag and it sure as hell lived up to it's name!

Look at all the goodies I got!! I was getting a bit low on stocking and nail polish so I was more than happy with these!

A little chocolate, it didn't last long trust me, it looked too good to eat!!

The book and goodie bag!!

Lookie look!! Angel mentioned me in the book for helping out! I feel honoured!

This really made me smile, I have to say!

I managed to have a look at the book when I was on the tube and it is truly an amazing book, there has been so much thought and effort into it, it's beautiful, the design, the recipes, everything about it, I can't wait to read it properly and try out (well attempt) some of the recipes, ha me and cooking, I should be so lucky!!
So if you've not picked a copy up yet, buy one because it is worth every penny!

Angel and the ladies of the Vintage Patisserie

Until Next Time

Toodle Pip

xxx

What a Hurly burly Time

Last Tuesday evening a friend and I took a trip up to London to our first "official" burlesque show, I have always seen little snippets of some burlesque shows at weekenders such as Hemsby and the Rhythm Riot however never stuck around to see the whole shbang generally because I always thought that five minutes of  boobs is enough for me, but I was in need of a night out as Chatham does fairly grind me down ,so with tickets at a bargain price of a mere £10 I couldn't really turn down a night out for that kind of money. So off we went to see Miss Polly Rae's Hurly Burly Show at the Garrack Theatre in Charing Cross.

Directed by William Baker this was a magnificent modern take on the kitsch kooky performance of Burlesque, helping it hit the mainstream that little bit more it  was open to women and men of all ages and looking at the crowd there was just as many women as men so this wasn't your average strip show. At first I have to admit I did feel slightly uncomfortable because I hadn't really seen this many women in so little before and it was all slightly crude but it was all fits and giggles and I realised I was being silly and soon got into it! I loved the fact that all the women were slightly different and weren't your average "pin up" so they weren't all with pin curls and cats eyes but just a gaggle of girls that knew how to dance.

What was I to expect, was it just girls taking their kit off through the show or would there be Shakespeare with extra twirling tassels. Well I'd have to say a bit of both! Of course all the ladies were rather good at slowly stripping the stockings off but there was humour and stylishly thought out themes such as western, police women and school girl... Sounds like a perverts dream come true but no it had class if a school girl can have class?

Each routine had a cleverly put together dance with songs to match such as Lady Gaga's Bad Romance, The Pet Shop Boy's it's a sin and their own self written tunes! And if those women were too much for you then there was a swooning crooner Spencer Day who certainly lightened my evening up, how he managed to control himself with all those beauts is beyond me, He worked his magic while the girls were changing for the next sketch and we girls were more than happy to sit there and drool.

Miss Polly Rae oozed confidence and sophistication and completely stole the show (and so she should as it was her show!) A petite scarlet vixen with a dazzling voice which was a little bit nice but a lot of Naughtiness. She had charm, she had class and she had the crowd in the palm of her hand as well as her Hurly Burly Girls .

With rhinestone encrusted outfits that if you blink you'll miss it, it was a show Dita Von Teese would be proud of, using companies such as Agent Provocateur and What Katie Did to name but a couple, for how scantily dressed the girls were it could have been easily misinterpreted for sleazy but no, thanks to the amount of teasing there was very little time to think about the strip!

This performance made me think that women are using this as a way of empowerment, something that makes them feel good and glamorous about themselves and damn right with burlesque work shops popping up all over the country this show made all the women in the audience think Yes I can do that,I can add a bit of bump and grind into my everyday life! Because that's what it got me thinking but as I have as much class as a plant pot and have two left feet I don't think I'll be stripping my draws off anytime soon, only  when it's time to put my pajamas on. A fab night out that made me proud to be a woman!

Until Next Time

Toodle Pip

xxx

Photos by Chris Jackson curtesey of Google ;)