Following on from my last post I’m delighted to reveal the dress I received as part of the M&S Valentine’s Challenge and how I wore it while in London at the weekend. The dress that was chosen for me is this wonderful abstract floral print number from M&S’s Limited Collection. If you've seen some of my blog posts from last year, you’ll know already that I’m a HUGE fan of this particular collection, so I was especially delighted that my secret blogger chose this dress for me.

I spent the weekend in London not at Fashion Week, but with my husband, parents and brother and sister-in-law, being tourists and enjoying the sights and sounds of the big city. Saturday night included a trip to the Apollo Victoria to see Wicked and I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to wear my new dress. Thankfully my Mum was willing to get behind the camera and take some outfit photos for me before we left for the theatre. The location of our apartment (on the Thames) made the perfect backdrop for a series of outfit photos. This is the second time we've stayed in an apartment in the St George Wharf building and I’m sure we’ll be back again!

I styled the dress with two Anton Heunis jewellery pieces; my mixed-metals necklace and ring, my suede ankle boots from Oasis and my new Jimmy Choo dusky pink Shadow bag. The dress is really comfortable and flattering, it’s also lined, which means that it’s warmer than it looks. I really love it and I’m sorely tempted to get the similar version with the stripes as well. Huge thank you to whoever chose it for me (I've yet to find out), I’m absolutely delighted.

I can also reveal the blogger I chose a dress for... I got paired with the lovely Hanna, who writes a blog called 'The Wardrobe Challenge'. If you would like to see how Hanna styled the dress I chose for her, then take a look at her blog post here.

I was sat at my desk at work last week when an email popped into my inbox entitled ‘Marks & Spencer Valentine’s Challenge’, instantly intrigued I opened it up to see what it involved. M&S had decided to challenge 10 bloggers to a ‘Secret Santa’ style project to celebrate Valentine’s Day. As they put it “with Valentine’s Day taking place next week we want to encourage all the girls out there to embrace the day, whether single or in a relationship. After all, the day is about feeling special, right?”. I completely agree and regardless of the fact that I could be celebrating with my husband I’ll actually be spending Thursday evening with my entire family in London, something I’m very much looking forward to!

For this challenge M&S paired up 10 bloggers and asked each of us to select an M&S dress for our secret gift receiver, up to a £50 value. Then, once we’d chosen they posted each of us our surprise dress to wear out on Valentine’s Day. The idea behind this challenge was to create a bit of girl power over Valentine’s and get us ladies trying something new which could make us feel great – what a marvellous idea!

I received the name and blog address of my secret partner on Friday and subsequently spent most of Friday evening browsing through their site (this brought back memories of my verging-on-stalker territory whilst participating in the MSM Christmas challenge). Thankfully my chosen blogger (whose name I’m not yet allowed to reveal) has outfit posts aplenty on her site, which helped make my life much easier when choosing a dress for her. She described her style as ‘versatile’ which is very much the case; bold colours, prints and textures abound in her previous outfit posts.

Having browsed through the best part of a year’s worth of outfit posts (my Friday nights are so rock‘n’roll) I carefully selected the ones I liked best. All of these featured a skater style dress with a full skirt, which, in my-ever-so-humble opinion she totally rocks. Based on that style I pulled up the M&S website and browsed through the vast collection of dresses until I came across ‘the one’. 

‘The one’ as it turned out was the floral embroidered skater dress. A beautiful deep indigo hue with cutwork detailing around the neckline and a flattering full skirt. I really hope my secret blogger likes my choice, I definitely think it will suit her and the subtle colour will also give her the opportunity to build accessories into the look. I’m really excited to see how she styles it!

I’ve yet to receive my Valentine’s dress, it should arrive this afternoon, so keep an eye on my Twitter and Instagram feeds for updates. I’ll be taking outfit photos at the weekend and in my next post I’ll also be able to reveal who my secret blogger is...!

I was originally going to title this post ‘A Money Supermarket Christmas’, but worried that it would be misinterpreted to suggest that I opted to buy people car insurance as gifts this year. This post is actually the second in my #MSMSecretSanta series and I finally get to share with you the lovely gifts I received from 'The Girl About Town', aka Sarah.

I resisted opening them until Christmas day (lord knows how) which meant I had to explain the #MSMSecretSanta concept to family members at least three times, but nevertheless, the wait proved more than worthwhile. I was delighted to open the first gift to find a beautiful illustration of me (cue expanding ego) commissioned by Sarah and drawn by the talented Jaymie O'Callaghan. A wonderfully unique gift idea and something that I’ll treasure as a testament to my blogging days long after I've hung up my SLR. The second gift was the perfect accompaniment to the Christmas day festivities; Charbonnel et Walker's Handbag & Heel's chocolates (#NomNomNom). Needless to say they didn't last very long.

I can also now reveal the gift that I chose for Sarah and just as importantly, the gift I chose for her cat Hugo. As mentioned in my first post, I spent a fair amount of time reading through her blog, studying her Twitter feed and generally being as nosey as possible in the hope that I’d stumble across a good idea. A few days in I noticed a couple of tweets mentioning her new iPhone 5 and her struggle to find a suitable case for it. I knew Audrey Hepburn was one of her style icons, that she liked cats (obvs) and appreciated illustrations; judging by the lovely depictions on her site (also drawn by Jaymie). So when I came across an iPhone 5 cover that included all of the above I couldn't believe my luck.

Once I'd ordered the iPhone case I then set about researching a gift for Hugo. This involved a trip to Pets At Home; where I proceeded to wander the aisles aimlessly, looking like a complete moron plonker (I'm not responsible enough to own pets… not even fish). After finally arriving at the cat section, I spent another fifteen minutes looking at the insurmountable stack of cat-related festive gifts. You wouldn't believe the choice, it was far harder choosing something for Hugo than it was for Sarah. It took me the best part of my lunch hour to finally make a selection, but I was pleased with my ultimate choice; a ‘Catmess’ stocking full of everything a cat could dream of at Christmas.

After merrily posting everything I happened to be browsing Sarah’s Instagram feed when I came across a picture she’d uploaded (and I’d previously missed) of her new Audrey Hepburn iPhone case… arghhhhh! Thankfully the one I chose was slightly different and she has since assured me that she does like the one I bought her regardless - phew!

Enough rambling from me, just time to say a quick thank you to Sarah for my lovely gifts and to MoneySupermarket for organising this fun and inventive competition! I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and I will see you again in 2013!

As one challenge ends, another begins... today I'm excited to reveal the details of my Moneysupermarket.com Secret Santa Challenge and who I've been partnered with!

For those of you who haven’t seen various discussions with the tag #MSMSecretSanta whizzing by on Twitter I’ll give you a quick bit of background information. Back in November I was contacted by the rather lovely Ben from Moneysupermarket.com to ask whether I’d like to get involved with their Secret Santa campaign. The challenge was simple; they would give each participating blogger £25 to buy a Secret Santa present for a fellow blogger. The pairings would be entirely random, organised by MoneySupermarket.com to help introduce you to new bloggers and challenge you to buy a gift for someone you've never met.

So how do you go about choosing a gift for someone you've never met before?! Well if they’re a prolific blogger you can easily employ the power of the ‘cyberstalk’. Follow them on Twitter, find them on Facebook, subscribe to their blog and generally learn as much about them as you can. I have spent the last week engrossed in oodles of blog posts and hundreds of tweets trying to establish likes/dislikes of my chosen blogger and think of a great Secret Santa gift idea.

Now while I'm not allowed to give away any details about the gift/gifts that I have purchased, I am allowed to reveal who I've been purchasing them for. So here goes... drum roll please... I have been partnered with the fabulous Sarah, who writes a blog called ‘The Girl About Town’. Over the past week I feel I've got to know Sarah quite well (albeit without her knowledge), she loves fashion and photography, has a cat called Hugo and owns a vast collection of lipsticks. Hey Sarah!

This week I will be wrapping and packaging my Secret Santa gift ready to post to Sarah. Once she receives it she will write a blog post about how much she loves or hates it (fingers crossed it won’t be the latter!), so keep an eye on her blog to find out what I chose. I’ll be doing the same when I receive my own gift, I've yet to find out who my Secret Santa is, so I'm excited to see who has been ‘cyberstalking’ me.

You may remember I posted about my ‘eBay Challenge’ a few weeks ago, it’s taken me longer than I expected, but here is the final result!

The challenge itself was fairly straightforward; I had to purchase an outfit (not including underwear!) from eBay for less than £50. There were three possible outfits to choose from and I asked you guys to pick the final one. After you voted in your thousands (ahem...) the result was clear, the ensemble I had to find for less than £50 was a party outfit.

I set myself a deadline of two weeks to buy all of the items, which I managed to keep to, but I had to wait for the bag to be delivered as it was being sent from China. And then had to wait even longer for an opportunity to take the outfit photos, but I managed to get there in the end!

The dress was the critical element in planning this outfit, I knew once I had the dress that choosing and styling the rest should be reasonably straightforward. I must have spent a good four hours at the start of this challenge compiling a watch list of about twenty dresses and slowly narrowing it down to just five. I kept a beady eye on all the bids and eventually swooped in and nabbed this sequinned number from Warehouse for the bargain price of £24.99 - brand new with its tags still attached. A cost or jacket was next on my list and I managed to find this houndstooth coat, also from Warehouse, for only £11.49 - used, but still in great condition. The ankle boots were a complete steal costing only £5.50 and last but by no means least, the bag was a mere £4.99. Bringing my total spend to £46.97 - what a result!

Overall I’m delighted with the result of my first #ChallengeHelen. It shows that you don’t have to spend a fortune to find a great Christmas party outfit; it just takes a bit of time and some gutsy last-minute bidding!

As one challenge finishes another one starts, I'm currently taking part in MoneySupermarket.com’s Secret Santa Challenge. I've purchased my gifts and will be uploading a post all about the challenge and who I've been partnered with later this week, so keep an eye out for that.