Old Girls Nostalgia

Last weekend I went back to my old university (when I say old I don't mean that old, I only graduated last summer) for an Old Girls Hockey Day and a Red Leicester Reunion night out. The hockey day is a tradition that we try to keep every year, where those from the university hockey club who have graduated return to see all the current students and members of the club, and play a game of hockey.

In recent years the tradition has run a bit dry but this year we managed to have a proper game. The reason for this, other than the fact that we all deeply miss student life and wanted to see our friends, was that it fortunately coincided with the Red Leicester Reunion event. For those of you who didn't go to Leicester, I'll give you a bit of back story. Red Leicester was a student night not so subtly named after the cheese that first started in 2005. Obviously the music played was always cheesy, 90s music that all the old folks dance to at weddings such as 'The Macarena' or dance mat classics like 'Cotton Eye Joe'. Red Leicester was always on a Wednesday, after BUCS sports matches, and accompanied by an outrageous fancy dress outfit.

Well last year, after we graduated, the company that runs student nights at our university (or ex-university) decided to cancel Red Leicester! Nooo I hear you scream, but it's true, it happened. The institution that had been running for 10 years came to an end.  Apparently the first years joining couldn't relate to 90s music.. So instead they replaced it with LetsDisko (if anyone knows why they chose the 'k' speak now or forever hold your peace).

Anyway long story short (or actually long maybe) they decided to bring the night back for a one-time-only event on a Saturday so that all us working people could come and spend our hard earned cash on VKs and Food Factory.

The hockey in the daytime was fantastic! Although we only managed to convince 4 official Old Girls to kit up and come play, we had some great fourth year medics and some strong third years join our side. So we managed a 10 players v 13 players game. It was clear early on that neither side was keen to lose. Also, neither team had a goalie so this made the match a bit controversial, not to mention the umpire for the first half was on our (Old Girls) team.

After conceding a number of goals early on we paused at half time 4-2 down to the current hockey girls. However after a quick refresh we managed to up our standard significantly and some how pull off a 5-5 draw (if I'm honest I think we were very lucky there..) This was quickly followed by a afternoon pub dinner and some drinks, then off to host houses to get ready for the evening event!!

Georga and Grace's amazing retro outfits

In standard ULLHC (Uni of Leic Ladies Hockey Club) style we had a fancy dress theme - it wouldn't have been Red Leicester without one. And in remembrance of the night's beginnings a 90s gym wear theme was chosen. There were some absolutely cracking costumes on display from leopard print leotards to Barbie blue unitards.

Before attending the main event of the evening, we all went for drinks at the Loaded Dog, our traditional pre-Red Leicester pub and current sponsor. This was a nostalgic and fitting start to the evening with the usual hockey chants and games played. For me at least, it felt like we'd never left.

Another excitement was the arrival of some REAL Old Girls. I mean girls who had graduated before the oldest members I knew from the club had even joined! Some girls were talking to us who had graduated in 2007! I was still at school then! It was so nice to see that people who left that long ago still treasured hockey as some of their best moments of university life.

From here on the night played out as expected! There were some crazy events going on in hockey corner (yes we have our own designated space - the bottom left corner of the club dance floor), a lot of VK drinking (sugary, disgusting alcopops which come back to haunt you the next day), unusual dancing and we even managed to break one of the lights at some point but none of that mattered because we were all there, together, having fun.

The next day we were awoken by the harsh reality that we're not 18 any more and hangovers need to be short-lived because we have to be back to full fitness for work on Monday at 9am. The cure? A ceremonial breakfast with the girls who could make it out of bed by 11am followed by a long journey home and an early night.

It was so nice to go back to Leicester, a place where I've had so many great memories. There are rumours that they might do another Red Leicester night next year and I'm undecided whether I'd be interested or not. Being a student is really an incredible experience and probably not one I'm ready to leave behind just yet...

Love Dressing Up?

Someone said to me recently, "I hate costumes; I hate putting all the effort in to make them". This could not be more different to my opinion. I absolutely love dressing up! Whether it's just a new dress for a night out or a spooky halloween costume, the more effort I put in the better I feel when I pull it off. I think a little review of the fancy dress costumes that my friends and I have worn, mainly to Red Leicester (our sports and societies night-out at university) over the last year fits perfectly with the name of this blog. When you're in a costume, you have the chance to be a different character too. It's like acting without a stage!

Starting the year off with Celebrity Social, I dressed up as my all time idol, Jessie J! I can't believe I didn't get a full length photo but I still have all the parts of the costume so there's nothing to say I can't transform back into her! 

This was a reasonably easy costume to make although it was very time consuming and I didn't managed to add as many bottle caps as I had initially wanted. I bought a plain pale blue jumper-top from Primark, collected a lot of bottle caps (over Christmas and from local pubs) and either painted them with nail varnish to make them standout or left them as they were if they had a cool logo. Then I pierced two holes in the top of the caps with a screwdriver and and deodorant can as a hammer, and sewed them to the shoulders of the top like buttons. Other than this, I bought a black wig and wore some wet-look leggings. Overall I was pretty happy with this costume and now that I have finally managed to get the cherry VK stain out of the top I might start wearing it just for casual.

Me as Winnie the Pooh in first year

Next comes Disney social - a personal favourite. My costume for this was not as adventurous as Winnie The Pooh (which at the time was great except when I needed the toilet) in my first year of university but still a bit more unusual than the normal Disney characters. 

My friend Grace and I decided to go as Kim Possible (Grace) and Shego (myself). 

I only have a group photo but this is what it turned our like

This is what I should have looked like

I'd like to do a massive shout out to my friends Aimee, Kat, Sully (as mentioned in my last post) and Sophie in the picture with me for their great costumes. I'm always amazed by the creativity in all our outfits on such a budget. I mean really someone should employ us! 

I wore one leg of green tights with a black hockey sock on this leg and a green on the other, reused the wet-look leggings and then wore bright green hot pants over the top so you couldn't see where the tights were attached. I also glued half a green t-shirt onto one side of a black long sleeved top. I decided to re-dye my hair, which was long and brown at this point, a slightly darker shade of brown so as to look as close as I could to the villain I attempted to emulate. 

Next was Cops and Robbers, which was made successful mainly by buying a decent hat, fishnet tights and lots of cheap accessories in a pound shop. My pictures of this night are awful thought so you'll just have to imagine it! 

After this costumes took a bit of a break with varsity, hockey tour, easter break, exams and summer holidays! 

But they really started up again with an awesome VK costume with my friends from hockey. Grace and I had seen someone in a similar costume last year and thought that it would be easy to do ourselves in a day and on a budget.

Aine, Grace Georga, Me and Amy as VKs 

We used paper plates for the bottle caps and attached them with string to cheap headbands. We then bought long tops/short dresses from H & M which we all gave to Georga, the master artist, and she painted VK logos on our tops and caps. She then made us labels to tie with string around our necks. This was one of my favourite costumes of the year and I think we looked great! 

Me and Grace as Winky and Doddy

After this my friend Aine had her 22 birthday party with was Harry Potter themed (YAY)! Aine picked which characters to we were to come as and Grace and I got assigned Dobby and Winky respectively. We didn't do our costumes together which would probably have been a good idea but I think we looked good anyway. If you haven't heard of Winky (she's not in the movies) here is a quick factfile of her character http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Winky. I went for a dirty, depressed look with make up smeared down my face and a fraying dress. 

I ended up sewing the dress myself on my sewing machine after losing out on ebay three times for blue dresses. I didn't use a pattern I just decided what I wanted it to look like and went for it. The material was initially cut into one long strip like a sports bib. I then realised I would need more material around my hips so I added a triangular side panel to each side. After this, I read on the internet how to make a Peter Pan collar. This was good fun and something I might do again (I love collars), and then I attached this to the neckline by hand. I added a button at the back on the neck to conceal the ends. 

I wore my old brown boots and made ears out of card and attached them to another headband. 

To do the make up I patted on fake tan for the dirty (I couldn't face putting real dirty on my skin) and drew thick lines of black liquid eyeliner around the top and bottom of my eyes. I then wet my fingers and spread the black down my face. I think this covered the 'depressed' look I was going for. 

Me as a corpse bride Halloween 2012

The most recent costume I've done was for Halloween. Whatever I made it was going to have to be pretty damn good to beat last year's corpse bride with handmade veil.

I decided that I would actually buy a child's clown costume (aged 11-12yrs) from Morrison's and focus of the face paint side of things. My brother had bought me some expert face paint brushes for my birthday in March which I still hadn't used so I was determined to make good use of them for halloween. And although I knew I'd decided to go as a clown I still wanted to look nice! I search the internet for 'pretty clown make up' and the such like.

I decided on this image but changing the colours around so as to go with this outfit. I did a couple of sketches then decided on pinks, reds, oranges and golds would be best. I also added glitter to my lips which I saw on a youtube video. Mine didn't look as amazing as hers do but I think that was my glitter quality. 

Here is a close up of my make up and then a picture of my outfit in full. 

I was very happy with this costume even though I had bought half of it rather than made it. The face paint still took me about 2 hours and I thought it looked pretty much as I had imagined it. The only issue I has was with glitter. The triangles were supposed to look glittery like in the professional picture but I didn't have time to find the right cosmetics. Instead I used an old eye pallet I had picked up in first year from Primark. This was a massive error as it was such bad quality that it reacted with my skin and made it sore. This is a note to anyone out there trying the same look or simply wanting to have glitter near their eyes, get the right products as the wrong ones leave you with puffy eyes and people asking you all day if you've been crying. 

I'm sure I will have another update of more costumes for the rest of the hockey season. I hope you've enjoyed reading this post - it's a bit different from my normal style. If you need any help recreating any of the costumes or are just generally interested in finding out more, leave me a comment below and I'll get back to you as soon as possible!