IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING.

Tomorrow, Blonde Bridesmaid and I are going dress shopping. FOR MY BRIDESMAID DRESS. That's right. My eight-year-old self would be so happy right now. My 28-year-old self isn't feeling too bad about it either.

(Just so we're clear, Blonde Bridesmaid is actually the bride, and I am now the blonde bridesmaid. I call her Blonde Bridesmaid because when I was the bride she was my blonde bridesmaid, as opposed to Dark-Haired Bridesmaid and Light-Brown-Haired Bridesmaid, who were my other bridesmaids, and also to be distinguished from Pregnant Bridesmaid, Journo Bridesmaid and Badass Helicopter-Flying Bridesmaid who are Blonde Bridesmaid's other bridesmaids (now that she's the bride). As you can see, it all makes perfect sense. Sort of.)

Sadly for my eight-year-old self, there will be no puff sleeves adorning this particular bridesmaid dress, nor a single polyester rosebud. It's not even going to be pink. But hey, at least this one will fit. It's just a shame Joey from New Kids on the Block won't get to see it.

Next week I'll try to bring you a little update on how Hypothetical Not-On-A-Farm Wedding is shaping up. I have to say, playing fantasy wedding stylist is all kinds of fun. Especially the not-having-to-pay-for-any-of-it part.

I also have some kind of interesting news that I'll hopefully be able to share next week too. DUN DUN DUNNN. No, I'm not pregnant. The position of Pregnant Bridesmaid has already been filled (that's not a euphemism, by the way).

Which reminds me of the last time I ended a post on an Eastenders-style cliffhanger, to try and drum up a little excitement about this old blog's much-needed facelift. Well, there's been progress on that front too, and I think a wee sneaky peek might be long overdue - watch this space.

AND, speaking of babies, I'm meeting my friend's beautiful baby girl for the first time tomorrow (I know. Snuggling newborns and prancing around in bridesmaid dresses, all in one day? TOO MUCH!). The good people of Twitter were kind enough to give me lots of ideas for newborn baby gifts, and I promised to blog a round-up in return, so there's that to come as well.

GOD, all these POSTS. It's almost like you people expect me to write a BLOG or something.

So, anyway, that's my weekend. Baby-snuggling, dress-prancing, writing five million blog posts. What's yours got in store?



{Bonnie Chen shot for Harper’s Bazaar China July 2012 by Zack Zhang via Fashion Gone Rogue}

Ten years.

TEN F*ING YEARS.

I know that, once you have a proper anniversary, you're not really meant to keep celebrating the anniversary of that time you agreed, in a dark corner of some skanky nightclub, that you should probably start calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend.

Already the date is losing whatever significance it once held, so much so that I would have forgotten it completely (it was yesterday) if it wasn't also my friend's birthday. After this year, we will probably let it sink quietly into oblivion. The last thing we need is another anniversary to keep track of. (Fin has already expressed his disbelief at the fact we will have been married for three years in June. Rightly so, since it's actually two years. In July. And so it begins...)

But something about ten years feels worth noting. A decade. You only get seven or eight of those in a lifetime, if you're lucky. And at 28, we've already spent a whole one with each other. There's something comforting in that, but it's also oddly disconcerting. Ten f*ing years.

Here's to the next ten, hubster. Bring it on.


{This photo was probably taken some time in Autumn 2002. LOOK AT THE BABY FACES.}

Mulling it over.

I haven't been sure what to say about Mull. In all honesty, I find other people's holidays excruciatingly dull, and I'm always reluctant to inflict the full details of my own on anyone who hasn't asked about it, or who isn't directly related to me and therefore has no choice. "Oh, you went somewhere beautiful and had a wonderful time? How nice for you. I was at home, cutting my toenails and watching three-year-old episodes of Don't Tell The Bride. Want to see five hundred pictures of my week?" I try to stick to the highlights reel; a few snaps, a couple of pithy remarks, and leave it at that.

And so it is with Mull. But first, I have to say this: I was wrong. Before we went, I would tell anyone who would listen that no, we weren't going abroad this year, we were going to Mull, always accompanied with a resigned shrug of the shoulders and That Look. It will be crap, that look said. It will rain, the cottage will be grotty, we'll be bored after a day.

It didn't, it wasn't, we weren't. I was wrong.

To be fair, it didn't start well. The first football match kicked off on the ferry, and it doesn't seem to have ended yet. Funny how Fin neglected to mention the European championship when we were booking the trip. Smidgen and I were united in our disinterest.

Then we arrived. And oh, it was good.

In the interests of full disclosure, I must confess that our delightful first evening, mainly spent exclaiming over our perfect cottage and its perfect views and its perfect lack of midges, was slightly marred when, in a fit of first-night-of-holiday exuberance, I whacked my half-full glass of red wine all over our friend's beloved Macbook. Awkward, to say the least. 

Our new neighbour wasn't too impressed with us either.

Mull itself is a wild, gorgeous place. Single-track roads thread between vast hills and trickle down to the sea. Purple rhododendron have burst out of their gardens and clambered up the crumbling slopes. Ferries trundle back and forth to Iona, cradle of Scottish Christianity and transient home to an inordinate number of American tourists. Smidgen was a hit there, naturally.

We walked to hidden beaches, tiny churches, mausoleums and standing stones. We bought vegetables from the back of a van and petrol from a man who pumped it for you. We learned the etiquette of the narrow roads, noting the different styles of wave (the Whole-Hand, the One-Finger, ooh, the Blessing - fancy) and cursing those who drove by without acknowledgement. They must be new to the island, we agreed. They didn't understand.

There was one breakdown of the mechanical variety, and another of the hung over kind. The less said about the gin-fuelled Chinese conga line, the better.

We sat outside in sunshine, plucking plump flesh out of little pink shells. Sweet mussels, squat lobsters, salty haddock, all freshly caught and landed just yards away. We breathed deeply, laughed freely, ate constantly.

I have never been so glad to be wrong.

{If you're thinking of a trip to Mull, we stayed in Ardchrishnish, which I would sincerely recommend, and travelled there by a Calmac ferry piloted by our friend's cousin. Scotland really is a ridiculously small world.}

If I were getting married again...

...in a hypothetical world where I was the kind of badass bride who wore midnight blue sequins to her own wedding - oh and one where I had a spare seven grand - I would be getting married in this.

And it's in stock in my size. Coincidence? I think not.

How about you?


(My little fantasy shopping spree was inspired by this post over on east side bride and, in turn, this one. Is it only in hindsight that a brightly-coloured designer gown seems like such an obviously amazing idea? Think of the re-wearing possibilities!)


{Elie Saab V-Back Beaded Gown via Boutique 1. If you're new around here, you should know this is not the first time I've played this game.}

Done and done.

So, I'm back from Mull, and I have to tell you: it was SENSATIONAL. I take back every bad thought I ever had and every snarky comment I ever made about spending my precious week of summer holiday in a cottage on an island in rain-sodden Scotland. The sun shone, the birds sang, the cows gave Smidgen the stink-eye; it was perfect.

So perfect, in fact, that I couldn't possibly bring myself to tarnish the experience by doing something as sweaty and unpleasant as running. I was on holiday.  I think we can all agree that holidays are not for running. Holidays are for eating. And drinking.

But time and athletic pursuits wait for no man, so on Sunday I duly donned my pink t-shirt and ran my race. That's right: RAN IT. It wasn't exactly a fast time by international standards, but given the lack of training and week of holiday excess that directly preceded it, it wasn't bad. As I crossed the finish line, I was beaming. Who needs training?

Ha. Ha ha ha.

Believe me, I'm not smiling now. I'm hobbling. Every time I stand up, my muscles pop and shriek. I keep letting out inappropriate moans in the office. It's getting awkward. I'm shuffling around the place like the only single man at the seniors' disco. So apparently training isn't such a terrible idea after all. Who knew?

When I've recovered full use of my limbs, I'll be back with a thrilling rundown of our holiday (in short: eat, shower, eat, spectacular scenery, eat, drink, eat, drink, sleep, repeat). Until then, I just want to say a heartfelt thank you to all of you who supported me, sponsored me, shouted at me (Ellie and Penny, I'm sorry I didn't listen to you) and generally reminded me the world is full of good people.

Thank you. From me, from my mum, and from all of us affected by cancer.

Holiday time!

Bored of holidays to gorgeous, sunny places? Tired of the same old delicious food and crystal blue waters? Sick to death of strolling hand-in-hand watching the sun set on yet another balmy, tropical evening? Yeah, I thought you probably were.

That's why, just for you, Fin and I have decided to forget all of that travelling-to-new-and-exotic-places crap and stay right here in solid, dependable Scotland. Who cares about sunshine! Sunshine is for losers! I never liked it anyway!

No, I am NOT protesting too much. I am also totally fine with the fact that I sent Fin and his friends to the supermarket to get supplies for our group trip to a cottage on the Isle of Mull and they came back 90 minutes and £160 later with nothing but booze and Doritos. Totally. Fine. With. It. (Sorry about that noise. It's just my teeth grinding.)

Our plans are pretty loose at the moment, so any suggestions for things to do in Mull and Iona are welcome. Suggestions for things to do in Mull and Iona when it's almost certainly going to be raining are actively encouraged. On the list so far: drink a lot of booze, eat a lot of Doritos, under no circumstances watch any horror films set in isolated locations.

Not on the list: the internet. This unfortunately means I'll have to cut back on my usual hectic blogging schedule (my, how times have changed), but I'm sure you'll cope.

Have a fabulous week, folks, and if you're off somewhere sunny and glamorous, well, try not to be too jealous of me. I know it will be hard. If you're very lucky, I'll bring you back a midge.



{Neenah + Andy's engagement shoot by Kristen Marie Photography in Seattle. I can't help thinking I'd feel right at home in the Pacific Northwest.}

Style Me May: Week Four-and-a-Bit

And just like that, Style Me May is officially over. Time to reflect on how it went. A cursory glance reveals that it went the way of pretty much every other blog-related project I've ever undertaken, including the blog itself: it started well, gathered momentum, got a bit too intense, disappeared completely, then wobbled back towards a healthy-ish balance of quality, quantity and sanity.

(There's probably an uncomfortably strong argument for extrapolating this pattern to everything I've ever taken up in my whole life, but luckily for all of us I'm going to try and resist that urge.)

In common with every project of its kind, my Style Me May attempt kicked off in a blaze of enthusiasm. A sorry void had opened up in my life, excavated by a thumping boredom and fast filling up with worry and gloom. I needed a distraction, and Style Me May was it. I was going to fill that void with scarves and belts and carefully clashing prints! I was enthused! I was excited! I was styin' me some May like nobody's business!

That was Week One. Week One was fun.

By Week Two, the over-achiever in me was kicking into high gear. A collection of crap pictures taken on a phone in a poorly-lit corporate bathroom was no longer going to cut it. Out came the fancy(ish) camera. I started planning each day's outfit in advance, determined not just to fulfil the brief but to crush it with the force of my own awesomeness (I had lofty ambitions). I even photoshopped myself into a San Francisco street scene, for fuck's sake.

It wasn't exactly sustainable.

By Week Three I was flagging. I still wanted to do every challenge, but I was struggling to keep up and beginning to feel the (admittedly self-imposed) pressure. Something had to give, and that something was words. I had none. It was taking all of my reserves, both creative and temporal, just to throw on a decades-old Brown t-shirt and call myself preppy. There was no doubt about it; I was suffering from blogging burnout (and not for the first time).

But this time, instead of retreating into nothingness, I took control. I re-evaluated. I culled the list. Dressing head to toe in black on the sunniest day of the year so far? No thanks. Doing something weird with a hairclip just to try and contort my stubborn pixie crop into 'a new hairstyle'? Actually, I'd rather not. But stringing all my pearls together into one humongous pearl party? Sure! An excuse to wear my most favourite thing ever, a beautiful 1937 heirloom ring passed from my nana to my mum to me? I'll take that!

And so I hopped, skipped and jumped my way to June. What did I learn from this sartorial experiment? I was reminded, again, that overstretching myself never pays off in the long run. (Yes, three weeks counts as the long run, ok?) I learned, again, that quality trumps quantity, always, in everything. Except maybe when it comes to jewellery-based parties. And I found out that you can pretty much get away with wearing anything to work, as long as you wear it with sass and a nice belt.

In the end, I'm calling it a success.


So tell me, did anyone make it to the end of the month? Did anyone make it to the end of this post? And, most importantly, what's your favourite outfit from the month? I'm a wee bit obsessed with the neon birds, and rather enjoying Fin's straw-hat-and-windrunner combo...