OOTD: The Race That Stops The Nation

Today was Melbourne Cup Day in Australia.  This is a public holiday in Victoria and a non-official public holiday for many other places.  Our office basically closes for the afternoon and other offices have at least a lunch or something.  Most offices have a sweepstakes draw as well.  Our office dress code is very casual - jeans, shorts, t-shirts - and so for Melbourne Cup we usually dress up.  Even the boys dress up.  I bought a couple of dresses from ASOS a few months ago that I haven't worn yet and was planning on wearing one of those, but unfortunately they don't fit properly so I need to get them taken in at the back or something.  So I had to switch to my back-up plan.

Dress: Beth Ditto at Evans

Shoes: Hush Puppies

Bracelet: Handmade

Necklace: Store on Mt Tamborine

I love this dress and I've featured it here before.  I feel like it has shrunk vertically a little bit - it seems shorter than it was the first time I wore it - but I still think it looks great.

More pics of my accessories after the jump!

These shoes were my wedding shoes, and even though I deliberately bought shoes that weren't too high and were a style I could wear again, I haven't worn them since, which I think is a shame.  They're a really unusual colour, more pewter than silver (which matched my pewter wedding accessories).  I should wear them more during summer because they're not so over-the-top dressy that I can't wear them with a fairly casual outfit.

This bracelet was a birthday gift from Dave.  One of his coworkers makes jewelry as a sideline and he chose this one for me.  He remembered I really like carnelians and chose one specifically with carnelian in it which was sweet.  It also has lots of lapis lazuli which I also love.  The bracelet is one big spiral that I have to loop onto my wrist, with a series of different stones and charms all along it.  It's beautiful but I can't wear it to work because I can't type with it on, it's so big!  I took it off after the photo was taken and took it with me, then put it back on when we were getting ready to watch the race.

The necklace is another birthday gift, this time from my parents, from a store on Mt Tamborine.  I can't remember the store name unfortunately but they sell all glass jewelry like this.  I picked this one out because I liked the unusual weeping willow style tree, and the shimmery amber colour.

Also my hair is violet now.  I forgot to get Dave to get a pic just of my hair, sorry!