November 1 – DeFrocked

WOOT!! We did it – a whole month of Frocking Goodness!! I will be rocking frocks more often now that I am no longer phobic about my own legs, but I could snog my jeans I’m that pleased to see them.

It’s been, quite frankly, mental (yes, I know some people will think that’s an inappropriate choice of word. Suck it up, Thought Police, that’s how it’s been).

A month ago, I woke up with the word ‘Froctober’ in my head and it snowballed from there. We’ve raised over a grand. We’ve reached people all over the place (still wondering how Kate got on in the desert in her frock) and we’ve inadvertantly caused a lovely bunch of young men to cross-dress (bursts with pride).

Hopefully, we’ve helped a few Mums feel better along the way too, because ‘If Mama Aint Happy, Aint Nobody Happy’. That thought is so central to the campaign for me that I’m half-thinking of having it tattoed somewhere (don’t worry, Mum, you know I’m too scared of needles to go through with it).

We’ll be back next year, bigger, badder and frockier  –  for now, thanks for reading and for being part of FrOctober 2012. You are super.

Day 31 – Wedding Dress Weds/Halloween

Evening Frockers and what a spooctacular day it’s been (admit it, you’ll miss my puns now this is over, right? No? I’ll get my coat). Here are your last two dresses of FrOctober 2012 from me.

Dee and I decided to mark the last day of FrOctober with ‘Wedding Dress Wednesday’. I feel like a massive fraud for agreeing to do it, as I was working from home today, so only the postman, my husband, my son and the cleaner actually saw me in my wedding dress, whereas Dee, being the massive trooper she is, actually went into the office in hers.

I loved putting my dress on again after 10 years, but couldn’t work out how to lace up the back and couldn’t wait to get it off again once I remembered just how scratchy all the embellishment on the bodice was. Then it was on with an old black ponte dress, on with my witch’s hat and off trick or treating with my little Ghost Pirate!

I’ll blog again tomorrow with a campaign round-up, but tonight I just want to say a massive THANK YOU to everyone who frocked, blogged, Tweeted, Instagrammed, Facebooked, sponsored and generally supported the campaign this month.

Day 30 – Getting Serious

So it’s another post where I need to get the dress out of the way quickly, so I can talk about something else, so here it is…

Ancient Topshop tunic, accessorised with a muslin square & the 1000 yard stare of someone dosed up to the eyeballs with Lemsip!

Now I was all set for today’s post to be solely about us having hit our fundraising target. We are up to 97% on the Everyclick page and with the £60 or so from my eBay auction (which won’t show up there for a week or two) we’ve hit our £1000 target, something that everyone involved in the campaign should be immensly proud of. A month ago, Dee, Eliza and I were literally just pulling the idea together, so no one had much of a ‘run-up’ to this and now we’ve got a grand in the bank for PNI ORG, which rocks.

But, actually, I want to talk about why this really matters – which is because PND is a really serious illness, as anyone seeing the news about Felicia Boots today will understand. There’s little point speculating as to whether Lily and Mason would still be alive if Felicia had been taking her antidepressants or had more or different support. Each person’s experience of PND is so different and so too the treatment that’s required, but I can’t help but wonder how things might have turned out for the family if PND was more widely understood or spoken about. If Felicia had known that being on antidepressants doesn’t mean your children will be taken away.

So, although we’ve hit a financial target and not an insubstantial one, there are other goals against which to measure the success of FrOctober. If just one person out there who thinks they might have PND feels more able to go & get help, then it’s been a success. If one person feels like they can say to a friend “I think I have PND” without feeling like that friend will run away screaming. If one person doesn’t end up feeling how Felicia Boots did.

I’ve stayed away from the serious stuff on the Blog on the whole, but on this penultimate FrOctober day, it’s worth remembering the serious side of FrOctober too.

Day 29 – Nightdress

Evening Frock Fans. So, yesterday’s chill wasn’t a chill, it was another bug and I got to spend today in bed with a temperature and a sandpaper throat. Great. I’ll be getting the flu jab the minute I can stay well for long enough to get to Boots (fat chance living with the Toddler Germ Sponge). I’m still technically Frocking here, even if it’s a nightdress (no mean comments about snow blindness caused by my white legs now….)

For a much more stylish take on FrOctober (not like that’s hard, but anyway), check out Kat’s post yesterday on Does My Bum Look 40 In This? I love Kat’s mummy luxe style and as a fellow dress-o-phobe, it’s great to get her onboard!

Day 27 & 28 – Brass Monkeys

Even here in the sub-tropical climes of South Hampshire, it’s proper naffing cold. Hats & gloves on both children yesterday, ice on the car, which added another dimension to the Frocking challenge.

On Saturday I was slightly liberal with my interpretation of ‘dress’ and wore a very long jumper & leggings, which I wish I’d done today, as I actually think I got a chill from going out in a thin dress & non-woolly tights. I always thought chills were Victorian complaints like consumption & fainting from a too-tight bodice and therefore unlikely to happen to me, but I’ve never missed my jeans more. I’m not sure I can face three more days of frocking in this coooooold.

On a brighter note, we’re up to 90% of our FUNraising target – just need one final push to get us to a grand!

Day 26 – Cocktail Dress Coffee Morning

The last Friday of FrOctober (how did that happen?) and two dresses from me today.

After the amazing dedication to Frocking shown by the Technophobia folks yesterday, I couldn’t let the cold snap put me off, so I went to my Weight Watchers meeting in a pre-child navy satin Coast cocktail dress, despite being almost as blue as the dress with cold  by the end of the morning!

Our lovely group were all rocking the frocks and we raised almost £50 for FrOctober in our monthly raffle. Looking at the Every Click page today, we’re so close to our fundraising target now too – hope everyone’s fundraising is going well!

Little Frocker sneaks into shot again

Day 25 – Dudes in Dresses

Let’s just get my dress out of the way early, blah, you’ve seen it before, big whoop, because the news of the day has got to be our first Fellas in frocks!!! Dudes in Dresses, people!!!.

I like to think I am dedicated to the FrOctober cause. After all I’ve worn a dress all blinking month, to everything, running, archery, Zumba, work, Tots Bop, despite the fact that I’m right out of my comfort zone. But let’s face it, I’m a girl, so no one is really going to bat that much of an eyelid.

So I’m struggling a bit to find the right words to convey just how impressed we are by the team at Technophobia, who showed a new level of commitment to the campaign today, with most of the (mainly male) team rocking up to work in frocks and with some lovely accessories to boot. Working in them, interviewing in them, bucket-shaking round the office in them and even going to the pub in them at lunchtime.

Twitter was buzzing with insights from Technophobia Frockers which had FrOctober HQ in stitches;

Can’t get the bloody hem straight #froctober

My legs are cold. #ShouldHaveBroughtTights #FrOctober

Tim is sitting in an interview with a colleague and a prospective employee; Tim is wearing a dress! Haha #FrOctober

Just took my dress off temporarily and my tits fell out #FrOctober

I’m about to go for the most confusing wee, ever. #FrOctober

Web agency Technophobia have a special link to FrOctober, as they revamped the PNI ORG UK website, run by the lovely Nat Ellis (top right, sequinned blazer), who says “When I told my work about FrOctober, they started thinking of ideas how we could all take part and this seemed the best way to get involved for a company of mainly men!”

I am doing a Wayne’s World ‘We’re Not Worthy‘ grovel right now. Technophobia, we salute you!!

Day 24 – Home Straight

It’s one week until the end of FrOctober, which means we are now on the proverbial home straight, so here’s the last of my bought, begged, borrowed and blagged frocks. Being very much a pear-shaped person, I struggle with shift dresses and this one was no exception – it’s really too big on the top, but there wasn’t much chance of shoe-horning my bum into the next size down! Think I’ll be sticking to empire-line cuts for any future frock purchases!

No one pointed & laughed at my misguided matchey tight choice!

With a week to go, it’s great to see that funds are still coming in – and I heard a rumour on Twitter today that tomorrow we might get some photographic evidence of our first male Frockers, so keep an eye on Facebook for those pics!

Day 23 – Bad Frocker

I like to think I am pretty good at giving advice (hopefully only when solicited) but I am hopeless at taking my own and after all I’ve been harping on about making time for yourself, I really didn’t today.

We have a hectic schedule on a Tuesday morning: school run, Tots Bop, feed the ducks (who turned their snobby beaks up at our vintage brown sliced today, clearly too full of artisan bread & ciabatta), swimming.

The Little Frocker & I love the actual swimming lesson, but the getting-dressed-again-afterwards is a huge fag and never more so than today, when I had to get us both back in our tights before she kicked off. So I couldn’t be bothered to put on make-up or do anything much about my hair which had gone totally Mad Scientist as a result of the fog and swimming pool. And I felt a bit scummy and yuck for the rest of the day as a result.

‘Scuse the shabby photo – I promise to try harder for the rest of the month!

Just noticed my dress is see-through too. That’s super.

Day 22 – Fantastic Froggers

Frocker + Blogger = Frogger! D’you see what I did there? Not sure that one’s going to catch on but anyway…

My Day 22 dress and my crazy son

One of the nicest things about being involved in this Challenge has been reading everyone’s different takes on PND and Frocking, so I wanted to do a shout out to all the lovely bloggers
who’ve been the driving force of FrOctober. Blogging looks easy to the uninitiated, but as someone who has spent the last 18 years writing for a living (mainly for fairly dry corporate websites), I thought that writing about something fun like this would be easy, but it’s actually been a big stretch writing for the blog every day (as you can probably tell. Sorry. But the dog ate my homework)

Here’s a few favorite posts, but I’m sure there are more out there – if you’ve blogged about FrOctober, please put a link in the Comments!

• Kelly’s personal & evocative account of her PND on A Place of My Own
• Alice really got the spirit of FrOctober in her post on More Than Toast – it’s not so much about wearing a dress every day, as spending the time on yourself, because you’re worth it (am expecting a call from L’Oreal’s lawyers any day now. Hide)
• Our Campaign Powerhouse Dee’s 21 Day Round-up
• Alys is a seriously dedicated Frocker who got the Me Time message 100% on Plus 2.4
• Avril at School Gate Style’s fantastic One Dress, Seven Ways styling tips
• Fiona from Avenue 57 even set up a Pinterest board for Froctober
• Snaps for Camilla from Mummys Own for Procking (Frocking whilst pregnant, another dud term I suspect)
• A FrOctober Dress Review from Lish Concepts
• Alison from Not Another Mummy Blog
  
• Ruth at Nyssapod has been another Frocking stalwart – dont think I’ve seen her miss a day yet!
• Rhian on her Yarn, the web and cake blog (mmmmm cake)
• Tales of Ted & Agnes – Rachell’s account of her own experience with PND
• Emma at Skull Mad Mama 
• Steph talks about her PND at I’m Counting UFOS
• I’ve been seriously envious of Mrs B’s wardrobe on Twitter
• Another great personal account of PND on LC Healthy Living

The speed with which the FrOctober message travelled and it’s reach (Dubai!! Dubai, people!!) is down to these lovely Froggers and others like them. Not wanting to go all Oscar Speechy, but thanks.