CURRENTLY COVETING: WINTER WHITE

In honor of the official start to the holiday shopping season, I decided to do a little digital window shopping. There are some really good deals out there and the plus size market is really serving up greatness for us this year. I love white and cream and would wear it more if I could manage to eat with out spilling all the things on myself. I love that I can wear it any time I want here because the Brits don't seem to mind that stupid "no white after labor day" rule, mostly because they don't have a labor day but minor details. Anyway see some of my coveted  items below and happy shopping!

Girls night out tribal dress

alternative NYE dress

knit midi

                   

cozy jumper dress

                

tuxedo party dress 

CHRISTMAS MARKET SEASON

The Brits really love their Christmas Markets. They are full of yummy decadent foods, great hand made items perfect for gifting, and basically Charlie and the Chocolate Factory worth of candy shops. Newcastle has one and it is cute but on Saturday I went on a school sponsored trip to Leeds for their Christmas Market, which was AWESOME.

We had all day to kill so we flittered in and out of shops and just explored the city a bit. It was COLD, like tights under my leggings cold but nothing a few mugs of mulled wine could not handle. The sun was out and shining and hey there was no rain this time! I ate a lot of wonderful things on sticks, ate too many sweets and let me kid flag fly and rode the most beautiful carousel. It was a pretty solid day, exploring another part of England!

A CITY OF LIGHTS

I know when people think of the city of lights they think of Paris, well for a week in November there's another city that gets a magical touch of glittering lights.  Last weekend some friends and I headed out to Durham for the day. The city has this event every year called Lumiere , basically the entire city is filled in lights and installations for a week.  We he had missed the trip with Newcastle University because the tickets quickly sold out so we decided to just hop on a train to Durham for the day and go explore on our own. 

HOME SWEET DORM ROOM

One of the first things that I knew before coming to the UK was that I was for sure going to live on campus. I didn't want to go through the process of finding and paying for off campus housing. Newcastle University made it really easy to find student accommodation and I ended up getting my 2nd choice (out of 10). I am in graduate only accommodation which I like a lot; I have my own room and bathroom and then share a kitchen with about seven other people. I also really like that the building is secure; we have a key fob that we have to use to get inside, as well as a keycode. The area is friendly I never feel unsafe walking alone at night. I happen to be the only girl in my kitchen and that has been interesting. This week I had enough and put up the dreaded "CLEAN UP YOUR MESS!" sign but to be nice I bought a bunch of cleaning supplies and put it in the communal space, so these guys have no choice. It has been working thus far; I am pretty sure they know it was me because every time I walk into the kitchen now, they quickly scurry to clean up. 

I love the balconies on my building

A NIGHT AT THE BALLET

I meant to post this after attending the ballet but I got sick and was out of the game for a week. Newcastle, like most uni's here have freshers week which is a week full of welcome activities. They had a few graduate only events as well, which as a 30 year old among babies I appreciated.