Roses in the Rain

You can never have enough Little Black Dresses.

I fell in love with todays’ dress back in August when I featured it on We Want All the Dresses. It’s from Phase Eight and has a real 1940s Mexican inspired vibe, with embroidered roses on a wide waistband and a crochet bodice. I obsessed about it a bit, and set up several sale alerts in the hope it would drop in price and I’d be able to afford it.

Then at the end of September I got an email asking me to take part in a Little Black Dress challenge with Debenhams, and I noticed Debenhams stocked the dream dress, so I took my chance as a poor self employed person to get my hands on the lovely dress. The good news is that the dress is now on sale, the bad news is that I have checked multiple online stockists, and they all only have a size 8 remaining. (Update: Phase Eight have let me know that the dress is now reduced even further and there’s more sizes on the Phase Eight Website)

❤ Phase Eight Lena Dress c/o Debenhams ❤ Bracelet c/o Debenhams❤
❤ Shoes  – Stylist Pick* ❤ Earrings – Abilu Creations ❤

I decided to pick up the rose embroidery with roses on the toes of my shoes and in my ears. Don’t worry, I also had a coat and an umbrella because the weather really was rotten!

Early on Saturday evening I took my new dress in to try some American style smokehouse barbecue food in a new pop up restaurant in the Ten Bells in Norwich. Harbercue will be open at the Ten Bells on Friday nights, all day Saturday and Sunday lunch times over the winter. The Ten Bells had also put together some rather yummy cocktails to go with the food.
I had Bacon Old Fashioned, made with bacon infused bourbon to go with my smoked beef brisket in a brioche bun. We also had the most delicious beef ribs and a plateful of sides to try.

Then, to finish the meal I was offered a pickleback chaser. What, you might very reasonably ask is a pickleback chaser?

Well it’s this.

That’s a shot of bacon infused bourbon, and a shot of, erm, pickle juice…..

I can safely say it’s probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever been asked to drink. But, contrary to the look on my face, it was actually quite nice. It was sweet, but sour at the same time. I’m not sure it’s going on my favourite drinks list, but it was certainly an experience!

The other thing I did with my weekend, was run the Marriotts Way 10k, in under an hour, whoop! But if you want to see and hear all about that (there’s video!) you can pop over to Lipstick, Lettuce & Lycra.