Holy crap it's Autumn!

September gets a bad rap...ok summers over, no you can't wear your favourite dress with no tights anymore, sure you loved spending days snoozing in the park and you can't do that now. 

But autumn brings it's own bag of tricks to the party. There's knitwear. Lots of it. There's hot chocolate and cake and pies and sickly sweet syrupy coffee. There's that thought in the back of your mind that Christmas is just around the corner, and if you don't like Christmas then this blog is not for you.

In an ode to autumn we're doing a two part round up of our most favourite autumn things, starting off with what we're calling 'Bits and Bobs'. Enjoy. 

Shop items above: 1. ASOS Leather and Check Clutch 2. Anthropologie Horned Beauty Bottle Opener 3. Office Poste Mistress Boots 4. Fat Face Dani Owl Jumper 5. Mango Oversized Check Coat 6. Topshop Autumn Floral Tea Dress 7. Etsy Bird Pillow Cover

Festive September

From the pattern of my posts it's tempting to start a "Tanza's Adventure of the Week" section as I don't seem to be posting anything about actually being IN Edinburgh. Who wants to donate some money to send me on another adventure? I'm thinking Thailand next. You are all just TOO kind. 

I'm going to start this post with something none of you will be wanting to hear: Damn I feel Christmassy right now. 

I'll elaborate. I've just returned from my works peak conference at Longleat forest Centreparcs. I work for FatFace and as anyone who has ever been alive during christmas will know, peak is a MASSIVE time of year for any retail company. Hence we start planning for it very early. I won't bore you with any of the retail details (yeah I rhymed) but what I will tell you is that 200 people in one room all wearing patterned knitwear, eating mince pies and staring at christmas themed props makes you feel VERY festive. And confused, since it's September. Usually I feel christmassy and confused because of the mulled wine so this made a refreshing change. Again, no boring details but come say hello at some point during the next couple of months because we have one BANGING Christmas planned. 

When we found out we were visiting Longleat forest for our conference I was delighted. First thought: Lions. Lots and lots of lions. And wolves and big cats. In my head I would be knee deep in big cats. No, no big cats for me. I got bikes.

The park was massive and our lodges were scattered throughout the forest so we had bikes to travel about on. For the first day or two I was a definite bike convert. I was all "yeah I'm TOTALLY getting a bike when I get back home, I'm such a bike person now". By day 3 I was like "oh my god has someone kicked me in the crotch whilst I wasn't looking". However, regardless of the undercarriage pain we were all suffering, the bikes were brilliant fun. Especially at 1am when you've had a couple of glasses of wine.

On the second day of the conference we got finished up early and had plenty of time to go out and explore the park for ourselves. There was a tropical indoor swimming pool, horse riding, paint balling, crazy golf: any outdoor activity your heart could possibly desire. After a wee bit of exploring we stumbled upon the jackpot of outdoor activities: pedalos. That kept us amused until we had to leave. 

The lodges were pretty plush too: you could listen to whatever was on the tv whilst in the loo. Technology blows my mind.

I left Centreparcs with a tender undercarriage, a touch of a hangover and feeling festive as hell. Not entirely how I expected my first work conference to go, but that's life I suppose. 

Tanza 

P.s. It may not be December yet but it is totally acceptable to start wearing patterned knits and drinking mulled wine. And if anybody says otherwise, just throw your tinsel at them. 

Dog of the Week

We're a little bit obsessed with dogs, and we know you are too. That's why we're sure your heart will skip with joy when we tell you we are launching a weekly post cleverly titled, Dog of the Week! Each week we shall creep around local dog walking haunts, searching high and low for the most adorable canines for your perusal, aren't we good to you? 

We are kicking off with an unnamed dog about whom we have very little info, other than that he is quite dashing. Frankly who cares what his name is because he is taking care of business (the business of protecting his manor). 

Unnamed Dog, we salute you! 

Be sure to check back next week for another fabulous pooch!

Diane & Tanza 

Routinely Challenged

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a sucker for an exercise in self improvement (Paul Mackenna is my guilty pleasure). So when I read about Sarah Jenks' Live More Weigh Less 28 day challenge I was excited to get involved! 

Basically, Sarah Jenks is this super inspiring lady who helps women lose weight by first curating their perfect lives. Sounds too good to be true, right? Regardless, I am keeping an open mind and so far it's been fun!   

Here's how some of week one's challenges looked! 

Even if you don't need to lose weight, but just want to spice up your September a bit, get involved here!

Diane

Amsterdam

So I've just arrived back from Amsterdam and it's safe to say: Amsterdam won. What an absolutely incredible city. I know most of you will be expecting this post to be all about drugs and sex, however, you'd be very wrong (apologies to all you soft porn fans). Don't get me wrong, we did the whole coffee shop/sex museum/red light district thing - you can't go without doing those things- but the parts I enjoyed the most were much more innocent. I must be getting old.

I'll keep this as brief as possible and with a minimal amount of gushing, I promise. 

Firstly, we spent a good few hours trawling around the Artis Royal Zoo whilst I picked out what my next pet is going to be. We visited A LOT of museums and galleries, including the Anne Frank House and Foam, the photography museum. However, out of them all I have to admit, grudgingly, that my favourite was Katten Kabinette (Cat Cabinet), an old canal house filled to the brim with... what's the best way to describe this... I suppose: lots of stuff about cats. Prints, paintings, models, toys, anything that could possibly be cat related was there. It's quirky and utterly ridiculous: therefore I highly recommend it. 

The architecture is fantastic, the canals are adorable and the sheer amount of bicycles is insane. We took an evening canal boat cruise to fully explore the canals which was such a romantic experience. I was there with two friends though so no canal hanky panky for me. Don't get me wrong, I tried, they were having none of it.

Of the whole trip, however, my highlight was definitely going roller-skating around Vondelpark. Sometimes the simplest things are the best. Miraculously, nobody hurt themselves and we spent the afternoon snoozing in the sun. Delightful.

On reflection, we went to Amsterdam with the typical "lets get ruined" attitude but very quickly realised there is so much more to it than that. I have completely fallen in love with the city and would jump at the chance to go back or even live there. And we did get ruined, several times. So everyone's a winner. 

Tanza 

Well hello there!

Welcome to The Fox's Tail, having just moved to Edinburgh and in an attempt to curb our anti social habits (napping and wine) we have decided to blog about the exploration of our new city. We will be covering everything from what's happening in town to what's happening in our kitchen and we hope you will join us (not actually in our kitchen, we only have six chairs and a limited supply of wine.) 

Watch this space!

Diane & Tanza