Month: June 2016

Hey all and a very happy weekend to you.

As you know I have two boys, Nate and Leo, 6 and 4. There is only 17 months between them thanks to a happy accident so you would think that they would both be very similar however you would be wrong.

Some days I really struggle just being a mum, I often feel like I’m no good at it and that it comes naturally to so many other amazing mums and yet I’m like an alien trying to understand how these little people work. Some days I’m quite sure this is because they are so different.

Nate is me, he looks like I did when I was little and he has my ways, massively creative, sensitive and kind. He also has some of my negative sides, moaney, short tempered and away with the fairies a lot of the time! Nate loves to sing, he lives spending time with nature and he seems to want to please and this shows by his glowing school reports and praise from teachers.

Leo however is his fathers son, Karl and I went to primary school together so I can say with authority that Karl was full of confidence, bulshey and very practically clever. Leo is like a whirlwind, he has the memory of an elephant, the problem solving skills of a much older mind than he has and can talk his way out of anything. Don’t get me wrong he is an absolute love and totally gorgeous to boot but he is one of those children that just has something about him. Almost a disregard for how others think of him, he is totally okay with who he is. Just like I remember his father being.

Together then they can be a very interesting mix, Nate with the flair and explosive moods of Van Gogh (before he cut off his ear) and Leo with the ability to wind his brother up with one word which then causes mayhem and pandemonium. Often Nate the older boy ends up being harassed by his brother because he patiently wants to get things done and Leo wants to move on to the next. I imagine Leo one day being a Steve Jobs type character, terribly brilliant and passionate and massively clever.

I love both of my boys dearly and I absolutely cannot wait to see how they grow and who they grow into. I never expected they would both be so different and therefore present such challenges to parent. 

I wonder how many other mums are feeling the same way as I am about their incredibly different children.

Variety is the spice of life.

Big love xx

Hello lovelies and a happy Friday to you all!

I have very much been thinking about positivity this morning. There is that saying about how everyone is dealing with some sort of struggle that you know nothing about. How true is that? We live in a world where we have so much more awareness about health issues both mental and physical and yet there are so many of these things we feel we can’t talk about.

There are many interesting discussions currently about how social media such as Facebook and Instagram only show us the good parts of people’s lives and that actually everything isn’t so rosy in the harsh and real light of day. Well of course that’s going to be true for everyone isn’t it? I’m not aware of anyone walking this earths surface who is perfect and we all know that is okay!

I am someone who as you know suffers with anxiety and depression, I am still suffering with the effects of my eating disorder even though I’m in recovery. I could include much more of these aspects of my life in my social media accounts however I see them as a space for positivity. Don’t get me wrong, I moan a lot and will often put how I am feeling in my posts however I like to post things that are colourful, bright and full of the things I love so I can come back to all the good things and beautiful sights around me without always focusing on my insecurities and issues.

My life is not full of flowers, I don’t spend my time endlessly arranging them or growing them or even having the time to buy fresh ones each week but I do enjoy when I can and I love and appreciate how beautiful nature is through them. That’s why so much of my account involves them.

It makes you wonder how people would react if you did start posting pictures of crying children after a day at school followed by swimming lessons and so tired they can hardly stand or you miserable because you have put on two pounds and your jeans have gone tight! I’m quite sure judgement would be passed on reverse about how not everyone needs to know all your business and how airing your dirty laundry shouldn’t be done in public! We can’t win can we!

I like to think that as a modern mum in a fast paced world I can understand that most people around me are having some sort of struggle and often will take the opportunity to show the good side of their life and loves on their social media accounts and what can be wrong with filling little boxes with happiness and colour?

I hope that whatever you are going through today will be a good day and please accept a virtual hug from me.

To finish another quote (you know me!)

“I’m afraid so. You’re mad, bonkers, completely off your head. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland 

Hey lovely people, how are we all? I’m on my first day off this week and loving the feeling of knowing I have five days at home! 

I got to thinking yesterday about stars. I have over the last few years developed what can only be described as an obsession with stars. I remember my mum telling me once that you tend to love the things you need to be surrounded with (I think we were talking about favourite colours). So I must need stars in my life. 

My brother in law made a joke about his and my sister in laws imminent house purchase yesterday and chose to veto a house warming gift of a star from me because of how many I have in my home. I had a look around when I got back from work and noticed that yes I do seem to have plenty of stars in the house however they are all different, I am almost like a collector of stars!

You can find stars in many different places (yes I know the sky is one!) I tend to find them in trinket shops, vintage stores, shabby chic furniture stores and various other places. If I see one I can’t resist buying it so as a result I have many in different styles and materials. I literally surround myself with them. 

Do you have a theme that runs throughout your home? A symbol, something that makes you smile, makes you think of something or be reminded of something? I would love to hear about it.

All of my stars have come from local shops to me in Whitstable and Canterbury and each and everyone makes me smile. 

I hope you like them! 

‘Don’t lose hope, when it gets dark the stars will come out’

Much love xx

Hey all, just a quick post today as I’m about to zoom off to work.

Today’s post is about running, about my running. I class myself as a runner, I started running properly in 2013 when I completed the NHS Couch to 5k podcasts. I can’t describe how running made me feel, time to think, some space, something that was only mine and all the while burning calories.

Unfortunately as my eating disorder took hold I came to be at odds with my running and ended up running far too much for far too long on far less fuel that I needed. This was like a kind of self harm, I got up at silly o clock in the morning, if I didn’t I felt I wasn’t working hard enough, I had to push myself constantly, to be better than the day before, to be fast and of course to lose weight. It became such a huge part of the cycle of me needing to lose weight that when I started therapy with the Eating Disorder Service in my area I was asked to sign a contract promising to cut down my physical exercise by 50%.

I am today two stone heavier than I was at the height of my eating issues at the end of 2014. This is for many reasons, the main one being that I now actually allow myself to eat! Others are that I am now happier with myself, eating a balanced diet and accepting of the fact I was never built to be a size zero.

My running then has had to evolve massively to the me I am today. For example getting up early to run is something now that feels alien, why would I want to go running when I could lay in bed cuddled up to my boys and listening to the birds outside the window. See, that’s happiness, contentment and allowing myself to not be so regimented. I accept that to stay the weight I am (still healthy for my height) that I can’t sit around doing nothing so now I run to keep fit and enjoy the world around me (oh and eat cake!).

I managed to pull myself out of bed this morning and did a run around the woods, it was hot, sunny and beautiful. The light breeze in my face, birds chirping and fellow runners greeting me as I went by. I am so much slower than I was when I was lighter, I still struggle with not looking at my Map my run too often as it’s no longer important how quickly I do it I just need to remember that actually being out and doing it is what it is all about.

I was mean and nasty to myself and my running helped me to continue that. I now see that being healthy and fit is a far greater part of being happy than being skinny ever was. Don’t get me wrong I still have those days where I look in the mirror and groan but…. Ladies that’s normal! 

Embrace who you are, what you do and how amazing you are! Walking, running round, swimming, cycling, you name it, it’s all exercise and all does us a world of good, not just physically but mentally too. 

Leaving you with a very sweaty picture of me after my run and another lovely Roald Dahl quote:

‘A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.’

This afternoon the boys and I walked the the forty houses or so down the road to my Mum and Dad’s house (Nana and Grandad as they are more commonly called nowadays). I live on the same road I grew up on, it’s seems very odd to think it now with all my dreams growing up of where I would go and where I would end up but home is home!

When my parents bought the house on our road in 1992 I was nine. I remember coming to look at it and although I recall it was a bungalow I remember nothing about the house other than the garden. A huge space going back as far as the eye could see with beautiful miniature apple trees and huge horse chestnut trees around the edges. Growing up the garden was often used for adventures, camping, barbecues, quad biking and the occasional sunbathing session with baileys on ice (only after I turned 18 of course!). 

My parents had for many years talked of a dream to build their dream home in the large garden of the bungalow. I always loved listening to them talk about it but being honest never thought it would happen, the bungalow was big, lovely and well… Home.

Fast forward to 2010, I was long since married and living in another town in Kent with my husband and then newborn Nate when mum and dad got their planning permission and building works began. I couldn’t help but be sad, the gorgeous garden, the house I grew up in wouldn’t be there anymore and instead someone else would be living in the bungalow and my parents in the garden in a new house that had never been my home. I think I may have behaved a bit like a spoilt brat but I didn’t go and see any of the progress of the new house until summer 2011 when I was heavily pregnant with Leo who came a week before mum and dad moved into their new home in August.

Fast forward again to today, I walk or drive past the house I grew up in almost everyday and down the little private lane that leads to my parents house, The Orchard Farmhouse as they called it. A lovely couple now live in the bungalow who have looked after it and are cheerful and always nice to the boys (even when they are being noisy). When I get to the end of the lane and see my parents house I still feel like I’m coming home because you realise of course as you get older and become a parent that home is really where your mum is.

I’m not discounting Dad’s please don’t get me wrong but as a mum myself I have never felt closer to my mum. Sure we drive eachother mad at times and my decisions have left her fretting (let’s not talk about tattoos) but wherever my mum is she makes home, not just for me but for my boys too. I love the feeling of knocking on the giant metal door knocker on the wooden front door and walking in and smelling whatever is cooking that day (they feed us a lot, shift work again!) but what I love most is the garden.

When I was growing up I recall mum doing a lot of gardening and the garden always looking pretty but that was as far as my interests went however today I would go as far to say as I am fascinated by flowers and I can spend hours looking at the beautiful plants and flowers mum painstakingly grows in her garden. There are different areas that remind me of different times and things, like the rockery with Passion flowers and overflowing pink clematis climbing down it or the zen like pebble garden with old pots and fountains with different plants growing out of them, there is the vegetable patch and the country garden part which is literally anything you can imagine used to grow flowers from (old fire buckets, enamel jugs, clogs, you name it!).

I spend so much time taking pictures of mums garden and enjoy the moments we spend talking about what she is growing and me learning all the names (I’m getting there!).

I did just that this evening and would love to share some of the pictures with you. 

I love the saying ‘home is where the heart is’ but I think really home is where the family is. I’m just lucky that I have two homes, the one you have already seen a bit of where I live with Karl and our boys and the one in the garden of my childhood home that for a year I refused to look at! 

Lucy xx

Hey lovely people. I have just got home, I have been at work today for ten hours, I left my children in bed watching Deadly 60 with my husband who didn’t have to go to work until this afternoon.

It’s half term, what mother doesn’t want to be at home enjoying some rare ‘free’ time with her children but due to a holiday later on in the year no time off for me or hubby this school half term.

Our cleaner came yesterday, yes we have one, she is amazing and literally allows me to have a small amount of time back to get other jobs done mostly. When I left this morning everything wasn’t perfect but it was calm and mostly in order.

My husband dropped the boys off to my parents on his way to work this afternoon, my parents took them to their weekly swimming lessons, fed them and took them back to their house where I arrived at half past six, they fed me (shepherds pie, love you mum) and then we sat over a cuppa and the boys watched one episode of Operation Ouch (hot identical twin doctors, I don’t argue too much!). Then came the ‘I don’t want to go home’, ‘I want to stay at Nana’s’ and the half an hour long struggle while I am yawning my head off and trying to collect up the copious amounts of belongings the boys travel with.

When we finally get in the car and drive home all the while with the boys arguing I turn the ignition off and look at my watch, it’s twenty past eight in the evening. I’m bloody knackered.

I turn the key in the front door, in my hands are one handbag, one swimming bag, one carrier bag full of today’s dirty clothes, one plate of shepherds pie for hubby when he gets home, two small minion raincoats, a shopping bag with some birthday bits for hubby’s birthday tomorrow and a set of car keys. I open the front door and look around the hallway. There are living room cushions on the floor. There are toys all over the floor. The breakfast bowls are still on the breakfast bar, the bed isn’t made, the living room is covered with sofa cushions from the conservatory (a makeshift boat the boys tell me) and I want to scream. 

I have now read the boys a story, put on their Roald Dahl audio book (bfg) and come and sat on my bed. I’m looking at the piles of washing that need putting away, the birthday presents that need wrapping and the clock, telling me just how fast time is going and how rubbish I am at time keeping.

How oh how do we do it? I don’t even work full time (thirty hours a week), how many women tonight are in my position, we want to earn money to have nice things, nice homes and to set examples for our children of strong women with successful careers and yet all I want to do some days is be here, share their time with them while they still want to spend it with me, to keep the house as nice as I possibly can, to be able to relax and enjoy the world around me instead of feeling stressed and tired all the time!

What’s the solution? The lottery? A dynamic career change with a huge pay cut but more time at home? 

Answers on a postcard please! Considering on changing my name to tired and useless from Whitstable! 
Lucy X

The weather at work today somewhat reflecting this evenings mood!