This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

Micettes - I have major news ... It's only frickin Friday again...

Let the champagne corks fly and the dream of weekend lie-ins commence - my two most favourite things!

So this week has been a bit of a balancing act - too much work to get through paired with too much social temptation ... so we did the only thing we could do and burnt the candle at both ends! We worked like billy-o by day and drank like billy-o by night. As always we also managed to make time for a spot of beauty maintenance and fashion purchasing. So without further ado, This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

Treating our talons to a touch of shellac sparkle! Some of you will know that we're shellac addicts through and through ... two whole weeks of non-chip, super shiny nails is enough to turn any girl riggggggght?! The Mice are super tight with the NYK1 team (see our full review of their shellac starter kit here) and we're lucky enough to be gifted new season colours every now and then - latest additions to our line-up include fire engine red and cutie-pie coral. This time round we were also treated to a set of 12 spangle glitter pots so we could put our nail art creative skills to the test and that we did! You’ll be happy to hear we didn’t go cra cra and embellish every nail, instead we selected each ring finger and dressed them up to the glitter nines! Subtle sparkle is definitely the way forward...

Giving into shoe-temptation and flexing our credit cards as far as they will go! Do you remember last week, we shared our latest shoe obsessions? See here if you missed it. Anyway, for HK mouse it was Sophia Webster's J Crew holiday shoe collection and for me it was Valentino's Rockstud ankle boots. Well i'm happy to share the fairy shoemother AKA fairy MasterCard worked her magic and HK and middle mouse lived happily ever after...

 Here's a snap of us both rocking our new found loves...

You know what they say...

Or is that just what we say?!!!

Regardless ... that's it for another week. Have a fantabulous weekend and...

Lots of Love

The Mice

xxx

Alexander Wang x H&M...

We've blogged about the many H&M collaborations over the last couple of years...so why break the habit of a lifetime?! The latest collaboration also just so happens to be a venture with the amazing Alexander Wang...hysteria within the fash pack is at an ultimate high and understandably so!

Touted as high fashion meets sportswear, the range shouts his defining urban style blending functionality with chic refined fashion. Sounding pretty tricky to get your head around... 

Fear not I've been pouring over the many pictures and videos released and in true 3BM style have simplified the situation and come up with the main elements to manage your expectations...!

• High performance sportswear is the main theme from actual gym clothes to everyday looks - beware the models make everything look super cool!

• Along with black, black and more black with a flash of charcoal here and there!

• With the return of branding to the fashion world, there is a lot of WANG adorning everything, but of course executed in a fabulous way! 

• You may want not want to wait for your Wang sportswear to get down to the gym...with cropped styles, skin tight leggings and leather...you may want to get a head start!

H&M released an exclusive video a few days ago, presenting the range in a mock Video Game set-up. 'Superhuman' supermodels - Raquel Zimmermann, Joan Smalls, Natasha Poly and Isabeli Fontana undertake a number of challenges in extreme situations showcasing the fashionable yet hard wearing and active line. Well done H&M an amazing collab and executed with chic and edgy teasers...spot on Wang style!

Unbelievably it doesn't stop there as last week a huge party was held in New York to kick off the countdown to the launch - naturally it was rammed full of celebrities and the fashion elite! 

And as if Wang hasn't done enough, he replaced his perfunctory fashion bow for a lap of the sports track catwalk! I LOVE him!

If like me, you need more...check out the full video of the catwalk and snippets from the party itself...6th November - get it in the dairy NOW!

On the 3BM iPod: Laurel

We've made it to Wednesday blog buds, so here's a little mid-week music pick-me-up! 

We discovered Laurel when she appeared one morning on our Radio 1 Spotify playlist. Unfortunately, she'd disappeared off it again by the time we'd remembered to jot to down her name. And so, in the last week or so, we've been on a mad hunt for 'that really, really great song by a girl with one name who sounds a little like Lana Del Rey'... As that seems to describe about 90% of the music we blog about, our hopes weren't high. Luckily after a sudden flash of genius, we remembered that the track name was 'Shells', a little google later and boom - we were in business!

Just 19, Laurel bring us mellow floaty Lana-esque vocals and stuck-in-your-head for days melodies. We predict she'll be a permanent fixture on that Radio 1 Playlist before long...

Laurel - Shells 

Laurel - To the Hills

Laurel - Fire Breather



Laurel - Crazy (Patsy Cline Cover)

3BM Review: Aolha to Pond...

Us Mice are always on the look out for new restaurants that come with a healthy portion of rave reviews! Grace Dent (ES Mag food critic) is pretty much our go-to-gal when it comes to hot openings in town - she's firm yet fair and says it pretty much how it is which means you trust her with your taste buds when it comes to good food. She's also hilariously funny with it, quite often taking the piss out of herself ... a snippet from a previous article ... "another curious pleasure of my job is being re-reminded what an absolute tit I am on a regular basis" ... love her! Anyway only the other week I was reading one of her gorgeously descriptive Friday write ups on new Hawaiian themed cuisine restaurant, Pond. See her review here. Just up the road from the London Mousehold in Dalston, I had to check it out. The following Saturday night ... it ... was ... on! 

All of the week before, I had been counting down the days, hours and minutes to my reservation. The anticipation was sky high! I had arranged to go with my J-Lo-double-bootilicious uni pal, Anna and I couldn't wait to catch up and fill up on delicious food all fuelled with a couple of bottles of decent wine. Saturday arrived and so did Anna. After a swift glass of bubbles and excitable speed-light chatter, we put our stilettos on and fled my flat in search of Pond life!

My first impressions of the area surrounding Pond was a mixture of confusion and disorientation! You turn off Kingsland Road and find yourself in the middle of a grubby random square, featuring a tired looking jazz club and a number of food stalls that you frankly wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. I turned to Anna with a look of disgust, thinking we had come to the wrong end of town! Turns out we hadn't and Pond was just across the square down a beaten track lined with wheelie bins ... not quite what I had envisaged! Putting that to one side we pushed open the entrance door to uncover a Victorian warehouse dressed up to the industrial-chic nines - exposed bricks, pipe-laced ceilings, bronzed metal details and concrete everywhere. 

We decided to skip drinks and head straight to our table to order up. The dining space is kept separate from the main bar area and is surprisingly small. Peppered with several striking scalloped edged red booths, which sadly we didn't get allocated - boo hoo. Here's what we missed out on...

After settling down and selecting a bottle of Pinot Noir, we turned to the perfectly formed menu to cherry pick our dishes of choice. I had read and heard great things about the spam chips. Definitely not something I would ever choose myself but I felt it would be rude to ignore all of the hyped word of mouth plus apparently Hawaiians class spam chips as a delicacy and as such are considered some of the world's most devoted fans of Spam! So we caved and ordered a portion to pick on before diving into our main options. They arrived and were jaw-droppingly moreish - fried in shrimp and served up with yuzu mayo - seriously delish! 

For main I went with the Sambal Black Cod - shrimp-coated black cod fillet with kailan, glutinouse shiitake mushroom rice, sambal sauce and miso-poached egg and Anna opted for the Maui Charcoal Avocado - salmon poke in charred avo with scallop, king prawn, marinated wakame seaweed, glass noodles and salted coconute and macademia creme. Both heavenly, but Anna's did have the edge and I have to admit the dreaded food envy feeling did creep in and sit with me for the duration of her food appreciation squeals of delight - damn that girl!

For puds we went halves on the baked cheesecake of dreams! To die for...

Food finished, there was nothing else for it but to order up another bottle of the good stuff and retire to the bar area for more girly chatter and drunken antics... 

The perfect Saturday night...

Pond Dalston

Stamford Works

3 Gillett Street

London 

N16 

020 3772 6727

Happy Monday...

So it's that time again...painful, depressing and the lowest point of the majority of our weeks. All three of us feel your desperate pleas to curl back up, snuggle under your duvet and drift back into a cosy slumber rather than battle through the cold and wet to spend the day at our desks. 

HOWEVER we must remember it's not all bad...the clocks may have gone back so the darkness is creeping in that little bit earlier but it's also the sign that Winter's on its way which brings with it...cosiness, candles, knitwear, pubs, red wine, cuddling up, bowls of steaming pasta and chunky socks! 

So we propose you shift those Monday blues, embrace the upcoming season and jump on the happy bandwagon with us...why not hey?! To help spark those warm and cosy feelings I thought a post full to the brim of everything that makes me happy would be very apt! 

ENJOY...!!! 

Here's to a wonderful week ahead!

This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

First things first fellow Mice...

So what have we been up to this week? Bobo burger scoffing, trying London's new Mondrian for size and FINALLY checking out the much-hyped Gone Girl! Today's post however is mostly centred around shopping and beauty products ... you know when you have one of those weeks when ALL you can think about is spending money? Yep well this week was one of those! SO, I'm going to share my new purchases and latest shoe obsession with you all ... word of warning, hide your credit card now...

Majorly Crushing over these Valentino strutters...

Could they be anymore beautiful?! Textured leather ankle boots embellished with Valentino's signature rockstuds - smashed it! I feel slightly like i'm cheating on the original rockstud kicks which I am also completely head over heels for too...

Think I need to commit to both beauties, flex my Mastercard and treat my tootsies to some Valentino va va voom! Why not it's Fri-yay after all! 

And while we're on the subject of a little shoe splurging...

Swooning over the brand new Sophia Webster x J Crew holiday shoe collection. Sophia at a snip? Yes please! Get in there fast though, the last collection was gone in the click of a heel and these beauties look like they'll be selling out doubly quick...

Sophia Webster Pippa Pumps

£460

Sophia Webster Eva Pumps

£440

Sophia Webster Amma Pumps

£510

Obsessively layering my lips with Dr. Jackson's Coconut Melt. Mini mouse bought me a pot of this moorishly addictive beauty balm for my birthday in September and i've been hooked ever since. And I'm in great company, celebs like Miranda Kerr and Emma Stone are raving about it too! It can be used for more than just lips ... in fact skin, cuticles and hair. It's super nourishing and hydrating and literally melts upon touch. Hands down the best lip treatment I've used in a while plus it tastes bloody amazing! I have more good news - it's just £10...

Getting soapy with L'Occtaine's Bonne Mere Rosemary shower gel. 'Rosemary soap???' you ask ... I hear you, it shouldn't work but it so so does! It's gorgeously fresh, zingy and has the ability to turn your usual two minute shower into an hour-long affair! Also available in lemon, peach and olive. £9 for 100ml

Right people, it's Friday and that means one thing ... Friday alcohol thing - whatever that means...!

Lots of weekend love,

The Mice 

xxx