Bicester Village!

The girls and I trekked to Bicester today, to see Bicester Village, an outlet centre not too far from Oxford. It only took us about an hour, but honestly it was a little bit of a let down. I mean, I did see some cool stuff in Dior, Fendi, D&G, an some amazing stuff in Alexander McQueen (including some fan-fucking-tastic heels!) but generally most of it was still out of my price range. As usual, I loved The Cosmetic's Company Store and I also had fun in Cath Kidston and Monsoon.. buttt generally it seemed like a bit of a waste! I guess there were some good bargains, but things that were still £200-300 are a bit out of my price range at the moment! I got a few goodies, though, but I think from now on I'll stick to the Portsmouth outlet, because there are some good shops around the area that I can afford. (:

I'm sure many of you know of Cath Kidston, I'm assuming most? Their patterns are adorable, and it was hard to not to buy lots of little bags and purses in all kinds of colours and styles, but I wanted something to keep my makeup in when I'm out and about, so picked up this little beauty for only £4!

I loved the rose-pattern and inside is plastic-coated:

...So it's perfect for keeping my makeup in! And it's just the right size, too!

Anyyyway, The Cosmetics Company Store is what the American's call CCO's. It sells out ends of old stock, so in terms of MAC they had loaaads of left over Hello Kitty, lots of jars of glitter, lots of discontinued eyeshadow colours. They also had some Bobbi Brown, Clinique, Estee Lauder, DKNY. I limited myself to one nail polish, because otherwise I'd have bought so many of those glitters, because they were like £9 a pop!

This is the colour I got, it's called Spicemix. I have no clue what collection this is from, Temptalia.com tells me that it was Classic Coordinates, but I was just getting into MAC at that time, so I'm no authority on that! As you can see in the bottle, anyway, it's a rich reddish-bronze with a orange tint to it, which made me super excited!
On the nail though.. and it's a different story. It's still pretty, don't get me wrong! ...Buttt you can't see those fantastic shimmers! Which makes me sad. So I had an idea.
The other day I posted saying I made a polish using Old Gold pigment - well I made up half a bottle of it.. so I tried it out, thinly layered over the top.

The result.. well see for yourself.

It went from a fairly standard reddish-brown, to this red with bronze and green reflects in! Love it!

And last but not least, I picked up a pair of great vintage-looking sunnies in Accessorize for £4.50! I know they're a bit on the tacky side, but I loveee the blue colour and the old-fashioned shaped frames.
I love glasses where the arms are quite low, like these. Finally, my scratched up gold Dorothy Perkins aviators can be retired for the summer now that I have these! I wish I could get some Chanel/Dior sunglasses, but I break them all the time, and don't trust myself with them because I'm clumsy as hell. (: Such is life. I prefer these bright blue ones anyway. Cheap and cheerful!

On an unrelated note, on the way home we took a slightly different route down the M40 towards London, and we saw loads of Red Kite's flying overhead! They're a really excellent looking bird of prey, and they sort of swoop around, haha.

Aren't they great looking? Apparently they used to be really endangered in the UK, because they were easy to hunt, and they introduced a breeding program and they've done really well! I love birds of prey like this.