making mistakes, everyone makes mistakes

How do you feel when you make a mistake?

I don’t mean the sort of mistake you make when you’re trying something new – like dropping a stitch when you’re knitting, or having a go at netball and being a bit rubbish at it – I mean making a mistake through sheer stupidity, or because you’ve not done something you really should have known to do.

I’m really hard on myself when I make mistakes.

I hate it. I hate looking stupid, or messing up in any way, and feel just terrible about it. I normally feel worst when it’s in some sort of professional capacity, or when I know I’m going to get told off. Actually, now I come to think about it, I suspect it’s the telling off bit I hate the most. View Post

Follow:

Did you know that April 25th marks the start of Stop Snoring Week? No? Well consider yourself informed. (It also marks my birthday, should you wish to send gifts.)

I’m sure my fiancé won’t mind me saying that he is the loudest snorer I have ever heard in my whole, entire life.

I don’t mean an adorable little snort now and again, I mean a full scale earthquake of a snore, that you can hear from wherever you are in the building, through closed doors, earplugs, the works. Fortunately, I am a extremely lovely and tolerant person, who can learn to live with most things, and so we’re a pretty good match. I have the odd night where I want to casually press a pillow into his face, but they really are few and far between, and I do appreciate that it’s not his fault, and love him regardless.

Still, it’s pretty loud, and it does have implications – it sometimes keeps Belle awake through the walls, it’s tricky if we go away as a family and share a room, and staying anywhere with friends or family can be a little awkward. And of course on top of all of this, I’m sure it must effect the quality of fiancé’s sleep – it can’t be very relaxing for him, and he often wakes up feeling tired with a sore throat.

One of the things that sets it apart from other snores is a complete lack of rhythm. There is nothing regular or relaxing about it, it’s more a series of snorts and choking noises – it really keeps you on your toes.

So, what to do? View Post

Follow:

networking tips

Have you ever been to a business networking event?

Ever been to one and wished you’d stayed at home?

Ever felt you really should go to one, but been too nervous?

If you answered yes to either of those last two questions, then you’re definitely not alone. Business networking can be a hugely valuable (and fun) way to make new contacts and grow your business, but if you’re new to it, it can also be a bit scary, especially if it’s one of those breakfast events where you’re required to chat intelligently at 7am at the same time as balancing your business cards in one hand and a chewy bacon bap in the other. (Who really wants to choke down a bacon bap that early in the morning? Not me.) View Post

Follow:

pink doughnut helium balloons balloon time

Bee is 21 this year.

Can you even believe it?? I’m just coming to terms with the fact that I’m a parent of an adult, and then low and behold, there she is, old enough to apply to adopt a child, drive a lorry over 7.5 tonnes with a trailer and apply for a licence to fly a commercial airship.

(I googled those. As a side note, doesn’t it feel weird to you that you have to be the same age to buy liqueur chocolates as you do to fly a glider??)

One of Bee’s favourite things is pink doughnuts, so we thought it fitting with her landmark commercial airship birthday just around the corner that our final post in our series with Balloon Time should be creating pink doughnut balloons. Yay! View Post

Follow:

6 Spotify playlists

There are some moments in life where we all need a little pick me up, an energy boost or something to relax us, and we don’t have the option of lying down on a nice patch of grass with our hands above our heads. Music can be a great alternative, and with things like Spotify, there’s a playlist for literally every mood, weather or season.

This is particularly useful for me, because whenever Belle asks me what my favourite food, colour or song is, I usually reply unhelpfully with “I don’t know, it depends what mood I’m in.” I have actually gone for deciding that my favourite colour is yellow, at random, just so I have an actual answer.

Here are some of my favourite playlists for when day to day life becomes a little too much. Which is my absolute favourite?

Well, it depends on my mood, obviously.

Walking like a badass

https://open.spotify.com/user/spotify_uk_/playlist/3V1WI57CMyQdmxy3aibCB4

You’ve dropped the kids off at school late at 9:04am. Your Tesco delivery is due to arrive 4 minutes ago. You live 20 minutes walk away from the school. What do you need to do? Walk like a badass. Blast this playlist through your earphones to help you walk with speed and sass, wherever you need to get to. View Post

Follow:

I do quite a lot of stuff on my own. 

I travel sometimes for work, so have stayed in lots of hotels on my own, been on trains and planes on my own, and frequented plenty of cafes alone too. I guess the nature of being self-employed equips you for it well, but I like doing social things on my own too, like going to the cinema in the middle of the day with snacks from Marks and Spencer.

In fact, I was really shocked when I went for dinner with a group of about eight friends recently, all in their forties, to discover that half of them had never done any of these things. One woman in fact had never even been in a cafe for a coffee on her own.

What I’m not so good at doing is proper sit down meals in restaurants. 

This morning I had a meeting in London with a potential new client. It went well, and after I finished, at about midday, I was hungry and excited. I had that lovely feeling you get sometimes when you come out of a meeting and things have just clicked – you like the people, you like the project, and you know that you’ve managed to sound vaguely like you know what you’re talking about. What I needed next was what any successful lady about town needs – lunch. View Post

Follow:

top interiors instagram accounts

One of the best things about Instagram is the fact that it clearly demonstrates that everyone else’s life is definitely better than yours. If not totally perfect.

From pictures of babies who are always happy and cute and never have milk down their front, to intricately arranged granola, everyone else is having an amazing time and you are having a sort of mediocre one, that can be remedied only by flicking through pictures of everyone else’s perfect life while on the toilet. Even other people’s houses I have never been to are definitely way better than mine. If you want to feel bad about your own house and how cluttered and messy it is compared to everyone else’s, have a look at some of my favourite interiors Instagram accounts.

 
The Jungalow

We all know how much I love house plants, in particular spider babies, so that’s why this account is right up my alley. I love all of the fresh, vibrant bohemian decor they feature every day, and basically wish everything they feature was in my house.

 

View Post

Follow:

funny laundry mishaps Ecover

What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you, laundry wise?

The classic red sock in a wash full of bright white shirts maybe? I’ve always thought that was a bit of a cliché, the sort of thing that only happened on TV, until I did it with a pink sock. It actually turned my white dressing gown a rather lovely pale lilac colour, which I was pretty pleased with, so it wasn’t all bad.

Does Ecover washing liquid work?As you may have noticed, (from the big pictures of bottles of Ecover laundry liquid), I’ve been doing some work recently with Ecover to try to help people lighten the laundry load. Ecover’s plant-based Non Bio Concentrated Laundry Liquid formula tackles tough stains, even at 30 degrees, so hopefully that will save you a bit of laundry time and stress.

I could certainly do with some help.

A couple of weekends ago we spent around four hours in total taking our washing machine apart, looking for a mystery noise that turned out to be a five pence that had worked its way through the filter, and I don’t feel I’ve been quite forgiven yet for taking an extremely expensive pair of dry clean only suit trousers to the launderette for a service wash and tumble dry.

I’ve had a few ironing incidents too.

You know how people say that men deliberately do the ironing really badly so that their wives won’t let them do it? That’s me. Except it’s not deliberate. View Post

Follow:

I’m a big believer in talking about stuff, particularly the stuff that traditionally we’ve been encouraged to keep to ourselves, like mental health concerns. Today I have an interview with Dr Mark Winwood, Director of Psychological Services, AXA PPP healthcare. (Find them on Twitter and Facebook.)

I hope you find it useful. Please do leave a comment and share your own experiences if you would like to. 

how to cope with anxiety and depression

How many people in the UK experience stress, anxiety or depression every year or at some point in their life?

Research has revealed that up to 5 million people suffer from anxiety disorders in the UK, and it was the second most prevalent mental illness reported amongst adults in 2014¹ – so we’re looking at a big problem here. It’s likely that you’ll know someone suffering from mental ill health at some point in your life. We know that one in four people experience a mental health problem in any year. Prevalence is different depending on gender – women are more likely than men (33% compared with 19%) to report ever having been diagnosed with a mental illness².

If people haven’t experienced mental ill health themselves, it can be difficult to understand, and you get a lot of ‘pull yourself together’ and ‘cheer up’ attitudes toward the illness. Is there any element of this that’s good advice? To what extent should we take responsibility for ‘pulling ourselves together’?

Taking responsibility for how you are feeling is a step in the right direction, but if you are experiencing the symptoms of anxiety or depression, don’t trivialise it – seek professional help, or begin by talking about your feelings with someone you trust. It can be very difficult to explain mental ill health to those that haven’t experienced it; and this is part of the stigma we are trying to tackle.

What’s the first thing someone should do if they are worried that they are experiencing stress, anxiety or depression?

I would recommend they talk to a medical professional. If that seems too daunting, or too big a step; take it slowly. Do some research first and talk to someone you trust about how you are feeling. From there you can slowly build up to seeking expert advice.

How helpful is medication?

Medication can be helpful for some people – in some cases, anti-depressants can help those experiencing anxiety and depression. For individuals who have panic attacks beta blockers can be prescribed to help. Talking therapies are also sometimes recommended for mental health issues and can be very successful when combined with medication.

Are mental health issues like depression and anxiety genetic in any way? Or do we learn certain behaviours if we have grown up with them?

We do not know for sure what causes someone to experience mental ill health, but it could be linked to a variety of factors including our genetics, family history, lifestyle and life events. Going through a stressful life event such as a divorce, bereavement or redundancy or having money worries can trigger mental health issues, as well as more traumatic experiences such as being in a car crash or a fire. A life event trigger may more significantly impact those with a family/genetic predisposition.

View Post

Follow:

I had a grey hair incident a month or so ago. I was meeting a friend for lunch, and I hadn’t seen her for about 18 months. I arrived at the restaurant first, and sat upstairs. When my friend arrived, I could hear her downstairs, talking to the waiter.

“Hi,” she said, “I’m meeting a friend, long dark hair, is she here yet?”

“I’m not sure,” said the waiter, “there’s a woman upstairs with long grey hair, might that be her?”

Hmmm.

I had a similar grey hair themed happening a few months ago after I’d met one of the young women fiancé worked with.

“Your girlfriend is really cool isn’t she?” she apparently said to him afterwards.

“Is she?” he said. (I can understand his confusion.)

“Yes,” she said. “I know a lot of celebrities are doing that grey hair thing, but you have to be really brave to dye your own hair grey.”

I laughed a lot at that one.

So, back to the question, should I dye my grey hair?

No. 

That’s my simple answer.

If you’re wondering why I wouldn’t dye my hair if it’s grey at 37, answer me this – why should I dye it? Why on earth would I spend time and money, and probably damage my hair in the process, just to change its colour artificially? Seriously, give me one good reason.

Apart from anything else, I quite like the confusion on people’s faces when they see my grey hair against my smooth, chubby baby face. When I drop in that my oldest daughter is graduating this year, they really don’t know what to do. It’s like I’ve told them I make a career as an international ballet dancer. (That would be less believable.)

Plus, I want to look like this when I grow up, I think it’s an ace colour:

should I dye my grey hair?

Sure, some people are going to say that it’s about how you feel about yourself, and that dying your hair makes you feel younger and more confident, but I tend to think that if your confidence comes down to the colour of your hair, that there are bigger issues at stake.

What do you think? Should I dye my grey hair?

Image – Volt Collection/shutterstock

Follow:

I’ve never really bought into the idea that a full, cluttered desk is a sign that you’re super busy and creative, and far too important to organise yourself. When my desk gets messy, I just feel a bit out of control, and if anything, far less creative, as I feel hemmed in by stuff.

My desk has taken on a distinctly scruffy vibe lately, and it’s not cool.

desk makeover Red Candy giant thimbles

desk makeover Red Candy giant thimbles

So, it was time for a tidy up.  View Post

Follow:

It’s exactly one week until the official start of spring and I can smell it in the air.

On Saturday we went to Clifton in Bristol for a mooch about, and sat outside to have a cup of tea and a piece of salted caramel brownie. Sure, we had coats on, and fiancé had a stylish flat cap, but we were outside nonetheless. It was lovely. The sky was just that little bit hazy, like the very beginnings of a hot summer’s day.

We went for a look in Papersmiths, the achingly cool stationery shop that’s opened recently in Clifton, and I looked around at all of the things I would take pictures of for Instagram, if only I was a little better at photography and not a little afraid to start taking pictures in somewhere so clearly out of my league style wise.

Back outside, after I had swooned for a while over a particularly expensive but wonderfully shaped and shiny pair of scissors, we walked around to a junk shop we both like. Opposite was a florists, and as technically I was in the street rather than in a shop, I felt brave enough to take some pictures. These for me sum up just how much I’m looking forward to spring. 

What are you most looking forward to about spring?

Spring flowers

Spring flowers bulbs

Spring flowers daffodils

Spring flowers tulips

Follow: