On 1st January last year we started a Happy Jar. We’d tried before in years gone by and never really made it past more than a couple of weeks before forgetting all about it, but this time I was absolutely determined to keep it going for the whole year. And so, as the months sped past, any time any…
Twenty sixteen has been a tough year for many. It’s also been an awesome year for many. To be fair, I think most years are both tough and awesome one way or another, with a whole lot of ordinary, mediocre stuff in between. It would be a very rare thing to come across someone who had…
I only realised, quite literally a couple of hours ago, that tomorrow is New Years Eve. NEW YEARS EVE! How did that happen? Where has the last week gone? I’ve been thinking for a while now about various posts that are crammed into my brain at the moment, waiting to be written – reflecting on 2016, my intentions for…
Christmas is a relatively quiet affair in our house. I’ve mentioned before that the husband only really gets Christmas Day itself off – the rest of the time he’s working and so it’s up to the girls and I to make our own fun. I love the little Christmas Eve traditions that we’ve created over…
The husband working in the industry he does means that Christmas Eve is one of the busiest days/evenings of the year for him and so he always works a super-long day – starting in the morning, spending most of the day on his feet and not getting home until the early hours of Christmas Day. It means it’s…
I’m not a fan of Winter – I much prefer the promise of Spring, the warmth of Summer and the colours of Autumn. If I had my way I’d move us all to the Southern Hemisphere for three months and then return once the greyness has lifted. However, this not really being practical (though I’m sure…
Earlier on this week, Ella, my eldest daughter, turned ten years old. TEN! I can’t believe I’ve been a Mum for a decade. As clichéd as it probably sounds, it really does feel like only yesterday that I gazed down in awe at the tiny ET look-a-like blinking up at me just moments after making…
I’m currently sat at my kitchen table, food shopping bags in the middle of the kitchen floor with the groceries still waiting to be put away, dishes in the sink that need to be washed up, washing on the airers and several to-do lists each as long as my arm scattered around me. I’m procrastinating a little…
There is absolutely no reason for this post other than because I absolutely love all of these photos I captured of the girls and I want to document them somewhere. I took these images last Sunday on a lovely, chilly, brisk morning walk up to the rope swings we discovered a couple of months ago…
“I can feel it all starting to speed up. The workload. School stuff. Thoughts and feelings. Birthdays and Christmas. The approach to the end of the year always feels incredibly frantic, no matter how much I try and plan and organise and control. I wish I could freeze time, like this frozen leaf, just for…