Happy Easter! The day we celebrate spring, eggs, flowers, bunnies, baby/dead Jesus, flowers, the dairy industry and most of all, caves.
Aren’t sunsets wonderful? I wanted to share these photos from Prineville; many are just from my Aunts garden but there was such a gorgeous light in Prineville every day we were there. I tried to capture the beauty and stillness. The sunset seemed to last for hours and every evening we were drenched in this stunning golden light.
My family has had ties and connections to Oregon for about 5 generations now and on this trip my Aunt took me to visit certain key areas where ancestors of mine were born, married, buried. It’s strange to think that we live an entire life and eventually get distilled into a handful of places and sentences. “Hers is the fourth plot from the left. She liked playing the piano and was a big animal lover.” “His birth entry is on the second page. He had grey eyes and everybody mentioned his big smile.” We’re left to fill in the gaps with our imagination. Maybe when our generation is gone it will be different, and we’ll leave acres of mundane photos and comments strewn across the internet that our great-grandchildren will never read.
I originally wanted to call this “Denbies through the Seasons” but I’m not entirely sure my real life cynicism, sarcasm and constant irony really come through on this blog and was worried people might think I was being serious. Anyway, these photos are from Denbies Wine Estate in Dorking. I first visited back on one of the first sunny days of the year, and it was lovely to visit again and see the changing colours of the leaves against the perennially golden fields.
If things look a little different, I’m trying out my new camera lens! This lens will take some getting used to as it has an incredibly shallow depth of field which is great for portraits as it focuses on one subject (i.e. notice how blurry and undefined the backgrounds are in the photos of me), but I do like taking shots that show detailed tableaus and this lens is not great for that (i.e. the banana sign is way clearer than the others, where as in previous posts those kind of flat detailed shots are very clear as I’m using my other lens –Â like this one).
I’m wearing my newish Orla Kiely coat (!!!) which was 65% off in their sample sale and then a further 35% off the marked sample sale price when I got to the till (isn’t that the best feeling ever?) and my new shoes which were £6 from New Look in the sale. One of the many perks of having massive feet is your size is always left over in the sales. I love mustard (both as a colour and a condiment) and have wanted a coat in mustard and gold for such a long time, so it was like a dream present to myself. Does anybody else have dream items in their mind which rarely seem to actually exist?
P.S. I’m going to be shutting down my Raccoon Circus Facebook page soon so please follow me here or here instead and I recently signed up to both LookBook and Pinterest, so you use those sites do let me know! 
Coat – Orla Kiely (sample sale), shoes – New Look (sale), dress – Miss Patina (sale), bag – ModCloth (gift), leggings – Tesco, socks – Monki
Hello! I have just got back from holiday so apologies if you were wondering where regular posts had gone! I tend to blog about things a day or two after they happen; I know some bloggers save photos up for weeks but I find it feels really irrelevant to do so. Something else is bound to happen and I’d rather live in the moment! However, these photos deserved to go up as I keep promising more food posts about my strange diet.
These are actually at Camden “Night Market”: essentially just Camden Market open a bit later on a Thursday, with a slight variation on stalls and a Backyard Cinema residency (including an amazing screening of one of my favourite film, Almost Famous). IÂ don’t follow any listings or event mail outs because in my experience anything advertised or listed as “the place to be” is never the place to be (also who has the time to trawl through all the events in London?!), but presumably Night Market was quite heavily promoted as it was heaving!
So, FOOD. I’m completely obsessed with Chin Chin Labs as you can tell from my hilarious ice-cream face; the staff always have the best recommendations and flavours change every week. I was sampling Walnut Whip ice-cream with peanut brittle in the above photos.  Later on we “shared” Dutch Pancakes from this adorable stall I’ve not seen before. Fresh strawberries and warm baked goods is so good! I’ve not had such tiny pancakes before; they were almost like waffles in texture. I also left with a massive bag from Cupcakes and Shhht who make the best crumbly cookies (treat breakfast).
P.S. I’m wearing the mythical cardigan of the sub header and also this new skirt – it doesn’t go but it arrived in the post this morning and I whipped off my other skirt and threw it on. As if I have the time or inclination to change clothes when I’m already wearing them! skirt – Modcloth, gift. Spiked lion cuff – Stella & Dot Limited Edition (similar), gift.
TAPE PARADE 