My Husband sends me books.

Sometimes when I open up my emails, I’ll see that my husband has sent me a book. He’ll randomly see books and think of me , and so he will quietly send them to me, as a gift.

It is very sweet and kind and I always enjoy it. Isn’t it always lovely to know someone is thinking of you .

I am spoiled.

I am loved ❤️

I hope my children remember nights like tonight.

Family in the garden (still not yet in the house but it’s enough…)

A love filled meal.

A love filled home and garden.

Laughter at jokes old and new.

Cards in the gazebo.

Toasties in the dark.

That feeling from your childhood that you can ever seem to put your finger on…

I hope they remember nights like this in a way they can never put their finger on…

❤️

Well , 2020, I’m not even sure where to start.

So the first 3 months of this year were spent with me feeling very poorly .

The second 3 months have been spent in lockdown due to COVID19. Furloughs, social distancing and people wearing face masks in public have all been things we had never heard of or never thought we would see! But they Are all becoming familiar and a few will become “normal”.

Although it has been a very worrying time, health wise and so much of the nation and our family and friends are having to deal with financial worries on top of the health worries. We are in the mixed position of thankfully being on our usual salaries but the double edge to that sword is that we have to go out to work which feels dangerous and a little scary really.

With that said, we have enjoyed reduced working hours and because everything is closed we have the “kids” (age 21 and 14) home all of the time and this has given us so so many sweet moments. I will always treasure the bonus family time we have had together ❤️

My heart is never fuller than when it has a full nest .

We are missing all of our extended family though and have never spent this long apart or without hugs from everyone we love. At this stage we are desperate to have time together…. and hugs . Oh those first hugs will be so sweet and hugely emotional.

As we move through towards the middle of the year, we aren’t exactly sure what we are moving towards . There is still uncertainty as everything starts to open up and COVID is going nowhere. What we do know is that we aim to move forward , all together with our family at the heart of everything….as we always have and we are doing EVERYTHING within our power to make sure everyone is here and healthy at the end of this terrible time ❤️

Each year we try to grow as many veggies and tomatoes as we can. We have had some great successes and some great failures over the years.

This year , the weather hasn’t really been on our side but we’ve still managed to grow a bit of a jungle.



we have lost a fair few fights with the snails this year, I think the wet weather has made for some perfect snail conditions. They left enough for us to have a good few homegrown meals and we have learned some lessons for next year.

i started this post a good few weeks ago now and another garden update will be due soon. The changing of the seasons fills me with so much joy. Especially the summer -autumn-winter change. Incorporating the changes in the garden into our seasonal plans feels so good and connective. It is so satisfying to enjoy the goodies that we have grown throughout the summer and on into autumn. At this time of year I love planning what we can change and add in next year. I’m now reading up on what we can look into growing over the winter, this will be the first time I will try this . It’s so exciting !

It’s been around 8/9 months since we decided as a family to try to start living with less waste.

As with all things there have been some successes and some failures .

I think the real root of it all is habits. Just changing one little thing at a time and continuing to make those changes day after day , they all add up and become steps towards living a little more mindfully.

Plastic is in the news and plastic is where it started for us but it’s only the tip of a really huge iceberg of problems.

We have mostly started by trying to reduce our use of disposable items , single use convenience products that aren’t just made of plastic. We really need to simply get out of the habit of single use items. Plastic bags, plastic bottles, napkins, coffee cups, disposable cutlery, disposable wipes…just to name a few.

All of these changes are easy and most require nothing more than refusal!

No straw please!

No napkin needed thanks.

Others will need a little bit of organisation but the more you do it , the easier it becomes to remember . We just need to start with the habits.

Carry a reusable bag with you at all times and remember to use it.

Take a reusable cup with you if you often buy takeaway drinks

Carry a straw in your bag (even a reusable plastic straw will be fine , it’s not single use and can be reused for years)

If you are at home, use a cosy wet face cloth instead of baby wipes for hands and faces , use a cloth to wipe down kitchen surfaces instead of disposable wipes.

Pop your /your child’s lunchtime sandwich into a tub instead of cling film/food bag

refill a juice/water bottle instead of using a new one each day.

Just by adopting these easy habits , how many disposable items can one person avoid each week?. Multiply that by the number of people in your home and you can see how quickly you can eliminate a good number of disposable products without having to spend any money or really change much about your day to day living .

I think for my first post on this subject this is probably a good place for me to finish up and put together a wee series of the bite size steps we have taken on our journey so far and the areas that I feel we need to try harder ☺️

Leaves

Chill in the air 

Sunshine on my skin 

Breathing fresh cool air 

Smoky evening air 

Candles 

Darkness 

Family 

Pumpkins 

Hot tea 

Cinnamon 

Apples

Red

Warmth

Geese arriving overhead

Blankets 

Books

Home

Octobering. Another new word that I invented! I love it! It stays! 

A few things that are making my heart happy this week…

Our Autumn chalkboard (that has now been defaced by my cheeky Dad!! Which actually also makes my heart happy ❤️) 

Autumnal goodies creeping in.❤️

Pumpkins ❤️

The time to rearrange my dresser ❤️

An Autumnal gift from one of my faves ❤️

Miss Meatball as always ❤️

Foxy goodness ❤️

A lazy Sunday lie in with my love ❤️

So, yesterday sucked! It was just one of those yucky days where everything felt wrong and a bit sad.  We got some bad sad upsetting  crappy news to do with my Dad’s health and just a huge general feeling of ugh-ness (not a real word but sums it up perfectly!) 

It was one of those days that had me dreaming of a remote cottage with no responsibilities, a log fire, a stack of books and a few bottles of wine. 

I may or may not have spent a good half hour looking at houses for sale online…..

But today is a new , beautiful crisp , sunny Autumn day and I have had a word with myself.  I’ve shifted around my mindset a bit and realised that thinking negative thoughts and feeling negative breeds negativity all around me, so instead I want to focus on positive thoughts. 

My Dad is my absolute super hero and I know he will be ok, he has to be. 

Yes my neck issues from last year are returning, I think it’s all down to the stress of the past few months. It’s inconvenient and painful but I am grateful to have the ability to book a physio appointment and to have the time today to attend it without any rushing or juggling. 

This summer I started on the journey of what I had thought was going to be a new career, as it turns out it wasn’t for me in the end and it was has been a difficult decision to walk away from it. Today I should have been heading south for a 3 day training course with some great friends that I had met along the way. I feel a little bit sad that I won’t be connecting with them all this week as I loved those girls to bits! But we have another weekend planned to get together and that one won’t involve stressy work stuff! Win win in my book! 

There is beauty to be found in letting go though and what I will gain this weekend is priceless to me, time with my family, peace of mind and no stress induced illness. 

Today I am choosing to feel happy, I will breathe in the fresh sea air and enjoy the sunshine on my face. And although I never did find that remote cottage, I do have a stack of books, a fake electric wood burner and a bottle of wine. 

                                                                 Happy Thursday Folks ❤️

After a tumultuous few months full to the brim of grief, hard work,  life altering decisions, a lovely family holiday, an away from my family 4 day work trip , tears, heart ache, soul searching and more life altering decisions….I feel like I have suddenly woken up from a fairly long nightmare. 

Luckily for me I have awoken in my favourite season, choc full of my favourite things. 

I am finding it so hard to believe that September is almost over …… I’m struggling so much with this that I have to check the date multiple times each day and keep writing an 8 instead of a 9 when writing the date. Luckily it’s almost October and hopefully it will be more settled. 

Im so grateful for the support of my family and friends over recent weeks and months. I will never forget how they showed up for me when I really needed them ❤️ 

Tough decisions have been made and life can return to normal and I can look forward to the weeks and seasons ahead. Coming up in the next few weeks;

Weekend walks

Falling leaves 

Hot chocolate 

Soup

Cosy scarves and knitted jumpers 

Boots 

Weekends away with family and friends 

Dark and cosy candle lit evenings 

Conker hunts and crunchy leaves 

Baking

Having a happy heart ❤️