Hello!

This is my first blog about me, as opposed to my many blogs about Mummy Bridge and my family, this is about Melanie Bridge!

About a year ago I decided I was really fed up with how I looked. My kids are growing, my youngest is now 3 and I felt like I was disappearing. Fast. Under layers of supermarket clothes and (when I could afford it) Fatface and Boden layers.

Here are some 'before' pictures :)

ok, so in my pyjamas on xmas day, taken by my 5 year old...not the best picture ever...

I do have the excuse of pregnancy for the rather large striped t-shirt...

preggers again

who says you can't look great in a paper hat?

yum. school run anorak on bonfire night with my very beautiful son

Matalan t-shirt with Tesco cardi.

I love this pic, it was a great day.

 

ok,so boring right?

I didn't look horrendous, I looked like I could do with a bit of touche eclat (!) but also I didn't feel that my clothes reflected my personality. I am a curvy girl, 38/30/40 but I felt like I was starting to disappear.

This blog is about my er kind of reinvention(s) there's more than one, because I am still finding my style. Also I am making HUGE mistakes!! Like when I decided to go blonde! (more of that later)

I am of the right age to be a 'yummy mummy' but I home educate so you won't see me in the school yard. I was saddled with student debts and just dressed in whatever was on sale in Sainsbury's for years, until we started to be able to afford for me to dress how I wanted to. I went through the phase of wearing fat face, Gap jeans and Pandora jewellery, dressing like the crowd or the herd or whatever you want to call it, but after the first few months of feeling like part of the 'gang' I started to feel like I was no longer expressing myself as different, unique or creative person.

I then watched 'Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang' with the children. In it the very beautiful Maggie Gyllenhaal dresses in the most charming repro 40s clothes you will ever see! They are not true vintage in style as the costume designer embellished her outfits in quite an eclectic way but it got me thinking that maybe I needed to shed my 'Gap cocoon' and see if there was any shape-wear out there which might help me squeeze into something a little sexier and any clothing out there to squeeze into which might make me feel on the outside like I do on the inside.

I am finding that it takes balls to change your style because you have to risk looking like an idiot when it goes wrong and you have to risk being laughed at even when you think you look great.