Edinburgh, November.

Nye: 'Bloody hell, Edinburgh's so cold.' 

Cara: 'Yeah, and the weather sucks too. Badaboom!' 

Every time. (yes, I actually say 'badaboom'. What? I'm cool.) Being rude about Edinburgh and how unfriendly it is (not universally, just mostly) never gets old. But it's okay, I'm allowed to be rude about Edinburgh because truly, deep deep down, I love it. It's my home, the one place that I feel unerringly safe and protected and.... home. I went to primary school and university in Edinburgh, it was the place of my childhood and my first independence and I love it. But it's freezing and when you hold the door open for people they look at you like you're about to steal their handbag. Aside from that, I love it. 

There is a route I used to walk in Edinburgh, from our flat in the south side, when I felt anxious (which was a lot in those days, art school's a bitch) that took me around my favourite places. By the end of the day I was exhausted/calm and ready to go home again. I've been in Glasgow for five years and I've never found anywhere here that does that for me. 

Whenever Nye and I are in Edinburgh I try to arrange it so that we take in one or other of those places. The most child-friendly of them is the National Museum of Scotland. It's somewhere that I've loved since I was little, somewhere I've loved for twenty years, somewhere that I would willingly spend a whole day, just walking and looking and sitting and leave feeling completely relaxed. (Maybe it's all the death? Dead things comfort me. An aside: once the art college took us to the Anatomical Museum at the medical school for a drawing trip. Most people were creeped out by the human heads and stuff but I found it kind of reassuring, like 'look how relaxed they look! One day this shit will be over.' Like I said, art school was a dark time.) It's been almost completely overhauled since my day and for purely sentimental reasons I kind of miss the moth-eaten, Victorian exhibits. The new ones are amazing though, the whole place is beautiful. 

All of that was to say: we went to Edinburgh in November, we took the girls, we went to the museum and some other places I love, it was really nice. We went to the museum again last week, before a wedding we had in Edinburgh, all of our weddings should start with a trip to the museum. 

 

scenes from a marriage, cont.

(or: 'conversations that seem perfectly normal if you spend a lot of time with toddlers. Not so much if you don't'.)

 'Nye, will you smell my leg and tell me if it smells like poo?'

'do I have to?' 

'yes'

For those of you who were following the trouser drama on twitter, yes I wore them, and yes, they did smell like poo. But only if you stuck your nose right up in my crotch and that's something I try to avoid with clients, even the nicest ones.  

*image by Kate  

chalkboards. YES, chalkboards.

Yeah yeah, we're all so over chalkboards. Whatever. 

1. Miss Pickering

2. Shanna Murray

3. Typetoken

balloons are so not over.

Last month we did a photoshoot styled by an event planner (Jillian, American, adorbs, hire her). It was a total departure from what we usually do (moments, emotions, stories) and kind of chaos with two small (hilarious) models, but we had a blast and our small hilarious models couldn't possibly have enjoyed themselves more: Flowers! Mud! OH MY GOD, A BALLOON! 

Needless to say, these aren't the official photos, the official photos are going to appear on an official blog, one that doesn't talk about poo and stuff. These are the behind the scenes photos and personally I think they're spectacular. 

MINE! 



"I SAID, balloons are so not over. OKAY?"