Every Tuesday after school I look after a friend’s children. At 3.15pm you’ll find me sat on the wall outside the youngest one’s primary school, in a flashback to the days when I had to do the school run every day. I’m always early – you have to be when it’s someone else’s child – so I have a good ten minutes of listening to the lollipop lady’s banter and watching the children spill out of the gates.

Once we’ve have found each other, we have a five minute walk home, where she tells me all about her day. Today though the chat wasn’t about school.

“I can do a handstand into a bridge!” she told me, before we were even half way across the road.

“Into a bridge?” I said. “That’s amazing! That’s really hard isn’t it?”

“Yes,” she said, with no false modesty. “I spent a whole day at the weekend practising. I started on the trampoline, then on my gym mat, and then the grass.” I was suitably impressed. “Once I knew I could do it every time I did it inside. And then every ten minutes for the rest of the day I went outside to do a few, just so I didn’t forget.”

That’s commitment isn’t it? View Post

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Who doesn’t love Marks and Spencer?

They’re one of those fantastic shops of your childhood aren’t they? My Gran would always buy her ‘bits’ from Marks and Spencer, and even after she had a stroke we would take her over to Taunton from Bridgwater every Saturday to stock up on rich tea fingers, ready to bake cauliflower cheese and other M&S essentials. Of course in the good old days you couldn’t buy things like Marmite – it was M&S brands only – but I guess as you get older you have to accept that things change.

*sigh*

win marks and spencer vouchers View Post

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Pizza!!

Hey guys, it’s Bee again. Did you miss me? Today I am here to talk to you all about pizza! The food we know and love. And not just any pizza, but delivered pizza. More specifically, Domino’s! Yay!

Delivered pizza is basically the biggest treat you can get in our family. We never quite know when the blessed day is going to come around. Sometimes it is a special occasion, sometimes it is a random rainy Sunday, but every single time it is all we ever dreamed and more.

This is particularly true for my little sister. Belle LIVES for delivered pizza, it’s her favourite meal ever. One night for her of deliciousness and not having to fight about which vegetables she will and will not be eating. In fact, the sweetcorn that she has on her Hawaiian pizza is pretty much the only vegetable she will eat without making some kind of comment. Therefore, pizza makes not only her happy, but also the rest of us, who want to eat our dinner in peace. View Post

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Today I’m very please to welcome Adam Fouracre from Stand Against Violence, a charity that’s local to me in Taunton. Please offer whatever support you can, whether that’s a donation or simply a share of this post. 

Thank you!

Stand against violence charity Taunton

So, what’s the problem?

Violence in the UK is a surprisingly big problem. For a developed country we still suffer 1.9 million incidences in England and Wales per year. More worrying still, and largely overlooked, is all those indirectly affected by a single incident. We only tend to think of the victim and sometimes immediate family, but it’s thought that 10-20 others are actually affected by any one incident. In fact over 60% of us will experience the effects of violence each year and unfortunately this means that you will be very lucky if you get through life unscathed by violence at some point.  View Post

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I have never been interested in getting married or in weddings. I’ve never tried on a wedding dress, never imagined my wedding day, never bought a wedding magazine. I’ve mocked people who’ve spent a lot of money on their wedding day – ‘What are they even thinking?’ I’ve scoffed. ‘It’s just one day, it’s bonkers to spend that sort of money on a single day.’

And then we started looking at wedding venues.

We visited a few different wedding venues this weekend and the first two, if I’m honest, left me a little cold. They were totally fine, with plenty going for them, but when I pictured myself there on my wedding day it was purely practical; I started thinking about the logistics, what we’d do if it rained, where people would be while we had photos taken, that sort of thing.

“Is choosing a wedding venue like buying a house?” I asked my fiancé. “Do you walk into somewhere and just know?”

(I’ve never bought a house, but am led to believe, by Kirsty and Phil, that I will just know, when the time comes.)

“No,” he said, “it’s not really like that. You have to be practical and think about the weather and where people are going to stay and all of those things.”

I felt a bit sad. How was I ever going to make a decision if everything just came down to weighing up one set of pros and cons against another?

On Sunday we went to look at a third option. It was a bit of a wild card, as it’s about an hour away from where we live and not exactly cheap. It was a beautiful day of course, which helped a lot, but as we walked up the drive I was already smiling.

And then we stepped into the banqueting hall.

I say banqueting hall because it literally was; this was no bland space waiting to be perked up with decorations, this was the thing of fairy tales. Immediately in my mind it was full of tables and flowers and candles and there I was, in the middle of it all, looking like a princess. I didn’t think at all about whether or not it was raining or where the guests were sitting or standing – they could be lying on the floor or sat outside in a tree for all I cared at that moment.

I didn’t care how much it cost either, I just knew I would do whatever I had to do to make enough money to get married there. I wanted to hand over wads of cash for just one single day.

wedding dress

Me as a princess surveying my banqueting hall.

The longer I stood there, the more vivid the pictures in my mind, until I felt quite overwhelmed. It’s unusual for me to have that sort of emotional reaction to anything – ask my children and they will confirm that most things in life leave me feeling fairly nonplussed – ‘It’s fine,’ I will say, or, their favourite, ‘I don’t dislike it.’

I was quite unprepared then for having to take myself off into a corner and take some deep breaths to stop myself from crying at just how beautiful and perfect it was.

It turns out you do just know.

Photo credit – bride from Eduard Stelmakh/shutterstock

 

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Have you ever woken up in the morning, your head feeling a little on the delicate side, and groaned at the thought of what you did the night before?

I’m not talking inappropriate one-night stands, I’m way to old and happily engaged for that, I’m talking internet shopping. We’ve all done it – a quiet night in at home, a few glasses of wine, and suddenly it seems like absolutely the best idea in the world to order a giant hula hoop and pair of metallic pink high heels.

I tried hard, but couldn’t think of anything too outrageous that I’d ‘accidentally’ bought online. I did buy a book in German by mistake from Amazon a couple of weeks ago, but that was just through plain stupidity, not drunkeness.

Slightly disappointed in myself, I asked my fiancé instead. I knew he would have a whole raft of stories of impulse online purchases that he could tell me about. I was not wrong. View Post

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I’ve been a member of Hestercombe Gardens on and off ever since Belle was born. When she was little, it was our go to place for meet ups; many an hour have been whiled away on weekday afternoons looking at the ducks, hiding in the orangery or paddling in wellies in the streams.

Food at Hestercombe

I walk around the formal gardens now and I can still picture Belle and her friend Ella as toddlers, propped up against the side of the fountain, chubby hands in the water. I can’t quite get my head around how tiny they must have been.  View Post

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If you know me but at all, you will know that I’m not exactly enthusiastic about exercise. Avid followers will know that I have tried my hand at running with little success. I also played a bit of netball, but I think that was more about wanting to win and less about wanting to keep fit.

One type of exercise that I have always quite liked though is yoga. It’s barely exercise at all really is it? I mean some yoga poses are quite hard, but if you’re a beginner it’s basically just breathing, stretching and relaxing, which somehow has loads of health benefits! Great right?

 

After moving away from my netball team, and giving up running after discovering the many reasons why you shouldn’t run anywhere, I’ve been thinking about starting yoga up again and have been to a few classes at the Nuffield gym up the road from me. Aside from its many benefits to your wellbeing, here are some other great reasons to practice yoga. View Post

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I am now 37 years old and I have never had my own kitchen. Well obviously I have had kitchens in the houses that I have lived in, but I’ve never done that really grown up thing of going to Ikea or somewhere and buying lovely matching kitchen units and getting them installed.

However, now that I am getting married and becoming a Real Adult and all that jazz, I’m starting to think about moving house, maybe to somewhere more grown up, and maybe finally getting my very own kitchen that I have personally designed.

If you’re thinking about planning your perfect kitchen too, here are some things you need to consider. View Post

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Last weekend I took Belle and my fiancé* off to Wychwood Festival.

It was his very first ever festival experience and we set off with a mixture of excitement and nervousness – he wasn’t sure how he was going to cope with the camping, festival fashions, or the dancing requirements and I was slightly concerned about the weather forecast for torrential rain and 40mph gales. Fortunately he needn’t have worried.

“I was anxious about not being a very good dancer,” he told me afterwards, “but then we got there and I realised no one was.”

Well quite. If there’s one situation in which you really don’t have to worry about looking silly, it’s at a festival.

We got off lightly on the weather front too. There was a slighty soggy moment on the Sunday morning, just as we were trying to pack up our tents, but apart from that the rain restricted itself to when we were asleep. Good job too, as I had made the brave decision not to take wellies, and didn’t want to look foolish.

Wychwood Festival review

Making the most of the little bit of sunshine to show off my new Joe Brown’s dress.

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Last week I moved into a new office.

I’ve been sharing an office in Taunton with a couple of guys for a while now, but it had a little bit of a student bedsit feel about it – gym kits, dirty spoons, rugby posters, you can picture the scene. My roomies were lovely, but there wasn’t the space for me to have all of my things around me.

My new office is much more spacious and I rocked up with a whole car load of stuff from home – folders, tissues, plants, fruit bowl – pretty much all of the things. Back in Bristol I had dedicated office space at home, and had everything arranged really nicely, so it’s lovely to have all of my work things back around me, and all of my pretty postcards stuck up, for me to gaze at when I get bored. A high proportion of my paraphernalia is food based – granola, biscuits and bananas abound.

It got me thinking though about how your workspace influences creativity and productivity, and I was curious about how other bloggers work – does everyone really have beautifully white Pinterest ready workspaces, or is the reality a little more down to earth? View Post

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I have to be totally honest and say that I only came across the British Summer Time Hyde Park festival very recently, but blimey, what a line up! It’s ten days of absolutely amazing stuff, from Taylor Swift to Blur, Kylie to The Who. Seriously, it looks immense. There’s loads of free events happening too, so do take a look.

On the final day, June 28th, there’s a special family event with an equally impressive collection of family friendly acts and entertainers. The day includes the legendary Justin Fletcher, aka Mr Tumble, TV favourites Dick and Dom, boy band Union J, the hilarious Horrible Histories and loads more.

Union J at BST Hyde Park festival View Post

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