Style in your city

I'm always banging on about my love for the city of Bristol and I love showing you bits of the places I love around my neighbourhood. Bristol makes me stop and notice the beauty around me and if you let it everyday can be a discovery of something new. If I'm honest there are parts of the city I've barely been to just because it's a half hour on the bus, something I'm going to try to rectify a lot in 2015 (South Bristol I'm coming to explore!).

I've grown up in towns, cities and villages and it's safe to say I'm very much a city girl. I can't ever imagine moving away from Bristol but I love discovering new-to-me urban places and city breaks. My friend Lori and I decided it might be a fun idea to showcase some of the places we find on our daily explorations around the city, not only that we want to find out what you love about the place you live! Do you have a favourite coffee shop? A piece of street art you like to rock your outfit photos or how about your favourite place for thrift shopping? I'm just stating my favourite things in life there to be honest it can be anything! You don't actually have to live in a city either, we just kinda liked the title ;)

These photos were taken in the Bear Pit by Stokes Croft in Bristol. When I first moved to the city I would walk though the underpasses to visit Tom in his shared house from my flat by the station, there are always great pieces of street art to check out. I have to admit that a few years back it wasn't really a place to hang out but it's recently been developed with a coffee shop and fruit and veg stall built into storage crates as well as a double decker bus that is yet to be built into a cafe. There are also some planters with flowers and a little veg growing which Wilf took his magnifying glass to to inspect.

What we are wearing:

On me:

Cardigan - Fever London
Dress - Vintage (from my honeymoon in Paris)
Tights - ASOS
Boots - c/o Kaleidoscope

On Wilf:

Coat - c/o Yellow Lolly
Trousers - c/o Boden
Boots - c/o Angulus 


We would love it if you wanted to link up with 'style in your city'. We are going to run this a bi-weekly feature and it would be amazing to see peeks of where you live! For this fortnight we are going with a theme of 'the place I call home' and were hoping you might like to link up what you favourite thing about the place you live is.

You don't even need to have a blog if you don't want to you can join in with our hashtag #styleinyourcity on IG or twitter. We'll be picking our favourites to showcase on our blogs each fortnight too.

You can follow myself on IG here and twitter here
You can follow Lori on IG here and twitter here

An InLinkz Link-up

Our weekend in Pictures

Hope you all had lovely weekends! I've been feeling a little overtired at the moment as I think many of us have. That third week of January is a killer sometimes and with the weather and feeling generally a little run down it was a struggle to make it through. I can't tell you how glad I was to see the weekend.

Now Tom has Thursday's with Wilf it's really helped to ease up the amount of work I feel I need to do on the weekends. I often worry the balance isn't quite right when it comes to work/life, so much of my life is also my work and although actually that means that I often feel I'm not working it can also mean I feel like I can't escape work (if that makes any sense!). I know I'm very lucky to have the job I have though and I'm always thankful for that.

Can we pause for a second to appreciate these shoes?* Thanks
The bag and brooch are from my shop here and here.

I was recently asked if I could take a day off from the internet as an experiment and after thinking about it, I realised I really couldn't! I have taken a conscious effort to stay off my phone as much as I can though, I downloaded an app called 'checky' which told me the scary truth of just how much times I check my phone and consequently I've been putting it on the shelf when I'm home and playing with Wilf, only checking it here and there which has really cut down my addiction ;)

I've been getting into film photography a bit more and have bought a bunch of new film to try in my diana, I also picked up a super cheap second hand Holga so I'm excited to test that out. When we had the wedding I had a Instax mini and also bought an instant back from my Diana. I didn't test out how to use it though and it seemed to be printing black. I didn't realise until the end of the night when reams and reams of instant film has been used by our guests trying to make it work. This weekend I tried it out properly and realised that it isn't as simple as just shooting an instant picture as you do with a polariod or instax. I think I might do a little tutorial on it as it really isn't all that simple to realise and I wish I had known before I spent so much on film.

The camera Wilf is shooting with is a Diana Baby (SO CUTE right?) I've not yet got to the end of his film so the results will be interesting I'm sure!

Do you have any film camera's? Which one do you rate? I find it so exciting getting the prints back and not knowing if you've captured the moment or not.

Son of a tailor - giveaway

When it comes to clothes I truly believe that the fit of your clothes is as important to finding items that look, and, feel good to wear. I can't tell you how many times I've bought a dress that has a cute print to find it's cut completely wrong for my body.

Son of a Tailor got in touch with me recently to ask if I'd be interested in introducing their service to my readers and with Valentines coming up I thought it would be a great fit (pun not intended!). I'm pretty sure it's not just Tom that's hard to buy for, men are notoriously hard to shop for in my opinion.  When I start asking him what he likes he mainly says things like 'well I do need a new screwdriver' or something equally as dull (my dad was always the same!).

Son of a Tailor appreciate that the cut of a product is as important as the design and as such they have taken their Tailored T-shirts to the world 'in a bid to end bad fitting T-shirts, and make way for handcrafted truly Tailored T-shirts, which the man in your life will love'.

To create the perfect t-shirt you can visit Son of a Tailor, input vital statistics and customise by selecting preferred colour, style and adding embroidered initials for a personalised finish. Or you could simply buy them a gift card to the site so they can purchase one for themselves. 

I'm giving away one gift box to one lucky reader (or the man in their life) in time for Valentines day. To enter simply enter any/all of the below and good luck!

all entries will be added to the Son of a Tailor and Tigerlilly Quinn newsletters of which you can opt out of at anytime.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Three things about my beautiful city

It's been about six months since I last wrote about my beautiful city of Bristol so I thought I'd chirp up again about why it's ace ;) There are a few more places we've visited and discovered since then so it made sense to share them with you guys. If you've not visited before then you must!

Bristol is a place that will always hold so many memories for me, there's the pub I met my husband (at the King Bill before a comedy gig in Colston Hall) the place we went on our first date (the Rummer) or the place we got engaged off St Nics market (an eco metal caravan). There's the registry office we got hitched at, the local pub we held our reception and of course our own home where I gave birth to my son.

What I love about our city though is how it never gets dull, we can tread the same grounds over and over and still discover something new. It's a city thats full of colour and character and as a parent it makes for a exciting and cultured place to raise my kiddo.

It's hard to choose three things I love about my city but if I were to generalise I'd say the art, the food and it's 'eco friendliness'.

Let's start with food because it's almost always on my mind ;) So if you have never visited Bristol and are just stepping of the train? I'd recommend a stop off at St Nics market as your first port of call. I wrote a little about my three favourite places to eat there here but to summarise it's a fantastic place for a mooch, a spot of Moroccan tea or if you're hungry you really do need to visit Pie Minister, I think that's a Bristolian right of passage actually.

Clifton is a beautiful part of the city and one I haven't really fully explored as much as others. Brilliant for taking pictures of victorian architecture, pastel houses and of course the suspension bridge. Sometimes on a work day I will try to inspire myself by working from a coffee shop instead of at home (where I despair at the mess and yet do nothing about it). My favourite place to do this is The Mocking Bird cafe just off Whiteladies Road, it's perfect as it's just minutes from the train stop so you can easily get there from around the cities' many train stations or direct from Temple Meads within about 5 minutes. They serve southern style food with many veggie options and some of the best coffee in town.

Park Street is a great one to stop at for some independent shopping or a bite to eat. We love Rocotillos for milkshakes and Boston Tea Party for a quick coffee and a cake.

One of my favourite parts of town is Stokes Croft, I was born just off it on a street called Thomas St. It's full of street art and independent shops, my favourite is the Here Gallery which is next to another of my favourite cafe's Kafe Kino. Actually pretty much everywhere around the city you will see brilliant graffiti and installations. It's the perfect backdrop for pictures and makes sure I never lose my inspiration when it comes to taking pictures out and about.

The house I was born in! (well the room above me really)

Bristol has just won the European Green Capital title for 2015 which makes me love my city even more! If you are visiting you can stay in a bunch of eco friendly options (including the airsteams I mentioned at the start of this post) or how about a cosy eco-cabin for just £49 a night? The restaurant Friska has just won 'best ethical restaurant' which I've yet to try and there are lots of vegetarian and vegan cafes and restaurants to choose from including Maitreya Social. What I really love about Bristol is how many parks and green spaces there are and not just little parks either! Our favourites are St Andrews, Eastville and St Georges park.

Did that tempt you to want to visit? I hope so!

This post was an entry in the 'tale of three cities' competition ran by Accor hotels. You can see some of the other entires by checking out the #3cities hashtag on twitter. I've learnt so much about cities I've never been to!