Hosted by Grazia’s Fashion Blogger of the Year 2012, Sheree Millington will judge all the entries and pick a winner! All you need to do, is style your favourite outfit from this season’s womens collection and write up an accompanying blog post! You can enter by submitting the link to your post in a comment on Sheree’s fabulous blog glitzngrime.com.

Whether you’re mad about this season’s summer dresses or want to get your hands on a pair of wedges, the Next’s Fabulous £500 competition allows you to show you creative flair with moodboards, links, pictures and social platforms to tell everyone about why your style choices shine. Perhaps go for a beachwear look and show us how you’d glam up a bikini or maybe an elegant evening dress that you’d wear to a movie premiere. Don’t forget to add in a stunning pair of Next shoes, bags and jewellery for the finishing touches to your look and tell us how you’ll have everyone turning heads this season.

What’s more, you can join in the conversation on Twitter with #nextfab500 and see what style suggestions fellow fashionistas have been talking about. Be as original and imaginative as you like; it doesn’t matter if your outfit comes to £49 or £499, the winning blogger will still receive the full £500 gift card to enjoy spending at Next.

Next’s Fabulous £500 Competition is open to residents of the United Kingdom only who are aged 18 or over and entries must be received by 12 noon on the 24^th May 2012.

For the ladies, our designer dressescollection could not be better. Encompassing all the top trends… tribal prints, powdery pastels and delicate lace, the latest Lipsy collection has some delicious designer finds for all occasions. With an array of shirt dresses and floral blouses, your day-to-night look is effortlessly achieved! Whilst power print bodycon dresses such as this Neon Tribal Bandeau Dress will be sure to turn heads. If you’re already a fan of Lipsy, you will love a new brand to Next; Motel. Favourites include this Scarf Print Dress and this seagull print Spaghetti Strap Playsuit.

The Boutique Collection has some on-trend treats too; with names such as LK Bennett, Hobbs and Nicole Ritchie’s new brand Winter Kate. Founded by Linda Bennett in 1990, LK Bennett is a leading British label, offering sophisticated collections of signature clothing and shoes favoured by celebrities and stylish women alike. Reflecting its unmistakable British heritage, luxury pieces worn by Kate Middleton (aka The Duchess of Cambridge) include LK Bennett’s signature Davina dress in teal with the matching Jude Jacket which K-Middy wore for the first day of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations in Leicester. You can buy the red version, here at Next!

Another star quality brand is House of Deréon, the contemporary fashion collection created and developed by Beyoncé and her mother Tina Knowles. From party dresses to playsuits, the palette of the collection is soft pastels flowing effortlessly from cool mints to ice cream pinks, and for SS12 – coral. The details of the season include feminine ruffles, bohemian inspired prints and delicate florals. Subtle touches of lace, pin tucks and smocking – perfect for the city streets or this year’s festivals. We love this Coral Zip Dress which is great for holiday nights and summer cocktail parties.

Not forgetting the guys of course – Next is excited to showcase stylish urban apparel from a selection of high fashion brands in the Style Council. With Farah Vintage, J C Rags, Humör and Selected Homme, again you can enjoy next day delivery and no-fuss returns on this array of exclusive pieces.

Firstly, Farah Vintage mixes slick tailoring with smart casualwear to produce great fitting coloured jeans, chinos and modern men’s shirts. The Farah SS12 fashion collection ranges from nautical striped crew necks with elbow patches to roll up chino shorts; all of which look stylish with Next’s new season shoes such as espadrilles and boat shoes. Similarly, Selected Homme create men’s check shirts, graphic tees, stylish jackets and coloured chinos with a confident yet relaxed style, which will add a modern edge to any outfit. A great wardrobe essential is this Selected Homme Cotton Duffle Jacket which makes for a stylish transition from Spring through to the (British) Summer.

So what are you waiting for? With designer hats and hipsters to necklaces and nightwear, enjoy hundreds of designer brands at Next at the click of a button.

Meadow also likes to sing now! It’s like a grunt but with it she points her finger and shakes her head back and forth. She is partial to a bit of Nicki Minaj and Steps (!!) and we have even devised our own dance routines. When I do my exercise dvd she thinks its hilarious – and lets face it, me doing high kicks along with Billy Blank – it probably is! Her hand clapping is now accompanied by knee smacking and she can wave hello and goodbye. Words are occasional with “Coo” for Cookie and “Dada “, “Mamma” and… “Oil “. I’m constantly trying to prevent her from playing with the Blu-ray player, fish tank pump and/or poor dogs food – more than once Robin has come home from work to find the dog water bowl upside down across the kitchen floor. She blows raspberries and her latest skill is bobbing her mouth open and closed like our fish.

When we have our afternoon walk with Cookie, she likes to play with my keys when I lock the front door. She also points at things from her buggy and laughs at Cookie pulling the pram along like a reindeer. Meadow is allowed to eat everything now and believe me she does… olives, peppers and humous – fish is her absolute favourite and she likes mashed potato and a babies organic gingerbread man as a treat. Just this week she has mastered her drinking cup so bottles will soon be out the window but she still ends up with wet knees when she decides to tip the cup up and create her own rain showers!

We are preparing for her birthday tea party and seaside holiday at the moment but I am yet to develop those much needed eyes in the back of my head as she is into everything – one minute she is playing on her bedroom floor next she is kissing the bath tube edge – bizarre! She is so much fun now and her heels do reach the floor now when she stands so the first steps aren’t far away. It’s hard to believe this time last year I was having my royal wedding tea party with a huge bump – it feels like she has always been here and believe me there is never a dull moment!

Watch it now and tell us which trends you’ll be wearing!

On Easter Sunday my cousins and their children congregated at my Nana Clara’s in their Easter outfits to catch up and exchange gifts. This was lovely and Robin and I also got to catch up with the adults, which is always a bonus as we live so far away. When I was little we had a few Easter family tradition’s, one was the Arran Cardigan, my Nana Bell always knitted them for my brothers and I so I was eager to see the cable knit cardigan my Mam aka Nana Susan had made for Meadow. As she is growing so quickly it’s hard to judge sizing but I had said vaguely, “ Oh just make it big!” and it really did look lovely and fit quite well with her brand new Easter dress. Another tradition we have passed down through generations is the Pace egg. Now a lot of my southern family and friends hadn’t heard of them and said they must be a “Northern thing” – and they were right. The Pace egg – a hard-boiled egg dyed with tea or food colouring, originated in Lancashire and West Yorkshire around the time of the Great War. My family still give out an orange and a Pace egg with a chocolate egg, gift or card at Easter and I actually love boiling up a pan of eggs with teabags to give out and this year added children’s names for my friends girls. I have to say it was lovely having Meadow join in with both these family traditions this year.

We bought Meadow a lovely Spring book called Moo, which she enjoyed reading with Great Grandad Tony, as well as her Easter dress this year as we don’t want her eating chocolate yet. This is something my dentist agreed with and said that the longer that you can keep children away from chocolate the better …so a while longer won’t hurt and her lack of teeth means she would make a mess anyhow. We are still enduring teething and the top two teeth are starting to make a painful appearance but Meadow is taking it well bless her heart. Instead of chocolate eggs lots of people bought her lovely cards, toys, books and clothes, which was really kind, and she will appreciate these much more anyway .  Her dad and I had to enjoy a few of her chocolate treats on her behalf –such a hardship – so next month I really will have to step up my exercising and dust off that old Tae Bo dvd, but for now we are just enjoying being a family which is what it’s all about.

Burning 270,000 calories… watching My Week With Marilyn 180 times… or hearing Gordon Ramsay say his 32,680th swear word… just some of the things that could happen in the 300 hours it took to make the stunning Louis Vuitton dress Michelle Williams wore to this year’s Oscars.  So what really is the true value of a priceless dress?

Although in 2002 the most expensive red carpet ensemble was £5,000,000, why not treat yourself to something a little more purse friendly from our evening, party and maxi dresses collection, with coordinating clutches and on-trend wedges.

For a Audrey Hepburn inspired look without the designer prize tag, you’ll love this Black Ruched Dress. Or for a summer twist on the Michelle William’s red evening dress, check out this Geri by Next Red Maxi Dress.

Meadow is almost eleven months old now and can fast make her way across the floor with a combination of rolling and crawling, she attempts to stand and I don’t think her toddling days are far off.  As we laid down the picnic blanket in our local park, not far from the church where she was christened, it was obvious we were going to have problems keeping her still and the grass was in danger of being uprooted! She very much enjoyed her chicken sandwich and kept sharing it with Cookie – who was happy to help finish it! She has reached the stage where she feeds herself with her fingers and no one else is allowed to help. She then had a bowl of strawberries, which maybe wasn’t such a good idea with her little white trousers, but hey she enjoyed them and polished them off no problem (the trousers are still soaking 24 hours later!). She loved playing with my plastic picnic fork although it was the blunt rounded end that interested her and she waved this at a worried looking Cookie. They both enjoyed chasing the pigeons and Meadow flapped her arms and Cookie gave out playful yelps. We must have sat there a good hour and she had lots of fun and ate a lot but as the weather took a windy turn we headed to the ducks.

Meadow has fed the ducks before and if you dangle a piece of bread to entice lots of ducks to surround you – she loves it. The ducks were happy as I had lots of stale bread and the dog wasn’t very interested in them at all! We stood on the bridge and watched several swarms of ducks at either side below which she loved. Though it’s still only March, the recent warm weather has got me thinking of all the outdoors activities we can now enjoy with Meadow.  She is yet to experience a BBQ and we already have a date pencilled in her for her to visit a local farm who will hopefully have some lambs by then. We are also having a seaside caravan holiday around her first birthday which will be great.  She is starting to babble a little and her movements are quite fast, I can only wonder what she will be able to do by the end of the summer but I know it’s going to be an eventful one- we cant wait!

Like you couldn’t write it, the night before the builders arrived we had a horrendous night with Fin, him deciding that he no longer liked his bed and preferred mummy and daddy’s much more, of course we walked him back to his Fireman Sam bed umpteen times before finally giving into the tiredness and very reluctantly letting him sleep with us. He slept soundly, blissfully unaware that he would be rewarded for his episode of bed-hopping with NO TV for a day and NO treats. So, just to clarify, a team of builders arrive to dig, dig, dig and I am stuck indoors with two kids whom both desperately want to join the far too dangerous dig, dig, digging and I don’t even have the TV to fall back on!! Damn those 3am threats!!

The TV-less day obviously triggered something for Fin because the next night he decided he DID like his Fireman Sam bed and remained there all night – phew, now that was a big relief because I’m not sure what I would’ve done next! My next challenge (because there is always one) was keeping Fin away from the builders. Not happy with calling the builders by their actual names (being friends of the family he clearly knows their names) Fin decides he will address them as ‘builders’ (‘builders, what are you doing?’…’builders, what are you doing now?’…’builders, do you want a cup of tea?’…and when they don’t answer…’builders?..builders?..BUILDERS?…). And all he wants to do is go out in the garden and do exactly what they are doing and he seems completely bewildered that I won’t let him. Go out and fall down that massive trench? Sure go for it! Mess around with a massive saw? Why not!…

Another fun part of the process was ordering and designing our brand new shiny kitchen. When you say it out loud it doesn’t register…‘what are you doing tomorrow?’, ‘oh just ordering our new kitchen’, ‘oh, taking the kids?’, ‘yes’, ‘oh…’. YES ‘OH’. We had been at the well established kitchen supplier for less than half an hour and already it looked like we had been there for a week, our belongings were spread far and wide, not to mention a kind, unsuspecting office clerk giving up most of her time to draw various animals and sea creatures for Fin. Once that boy gets a scrap of attention he goes back, time and time again! Poor girl didn’t get much work done that day!

We are 5 weeks into our big build now, Fin still calls the builders ‘builders’ and he still wants to be involved with every aspect of the build although the initial novelty aspect has waned slightly – one highlight was him putting his footprint into some wet concrete, that went down particularly well with the guy that had just finished perfecting it! But whilst I am currently creating ‘microwave’ cuisine and washing up in the bath I’d say I’m in more need of a shiny kitchen than the ‘builders’ are of a break!!

However you wish to wear it, the Must Have Item is more than a piece of attire. It is a piece of British history, a memento for you and of one of Britain’s greatest teams. 

It has been designed as a tribute to Team GB and this is reflected in the nine hundred athletes that are shown on the scarf. The detail and preparation that has been applied to the scarf represents the detail and preparation that every athlete puts into their training throughout their lifetime. 

Thousands of symbols create an overall picture of the powerful Team GB lions head. The 60 hands within the design signify one for each of the million supporters. The 900 hearts, figures and stars are for the athletes we love, the athletes themselves and to show each one is a star. 

Every scarf will have the XXX symbol to proudly show Great Britain is the only country to ever hold three Olympic Games. 14 Paralympic lion heads will humbly sit among the design to state the 14^th Paralympian games that this Must Have Item celebrates too.

 This multi lingual scarf, appeals to everyone who wants to be involved within the Games, regardless of their nationality or heritage.  All four countries that make up our nation are embodied within the design by a British Rose, Welsh Daffodil, Irish Flax Bush and Scottish Thistle.

 More frequently used symbols such as telephone boxes, minis, London taxis and London buses all help create a sense of location, while not forgetting the M1 to show that this Olympics is involving the whole country.

 All Olympic sports are represented in the scarf design. This is shown through figures running or fencing, cycling and rowing. It might be an archery board or sailing boat. Each and every sport can be viewed in the scarf, as each and every Olympic sport will be taking place in Great Britain.

 For those you who like a challenge there is one map of Great Britain hidden in the complex design. See if you can find it!

 The Must Have Item can either be a fashion accessory, a great piece of artwork or even a fun game to play. But whatever its use it is a piece of history to keep and something we can all be proud to wear.

 The scarf can be bought for £10 and is 90x90cm, it also comes in a smaller 50x50cm size, priced £5. You can order your Official Team GB and ParalympicsGB supporters’ item online now.

Last week saw the official launch of the scarf to the Press at an event hosted by Claudia Winkleman. Special guests included Sir Steve Redgrave, Sharron Davies and Lee Pearson CBE.

5. Pink Scalloped Edge Shorts - £30 

4. Geri Lace Pencil Dress - £85 

3. Sequin Shift Dress - £58 

2. Animal Print Tapered Trousers - £35 

1. Coloured Block Dress - £45