Today I’m feeling mixed emotions.

Sure, it may only be officially less than four months now until Christmas, (hoorah!), but it’s also almost the end of our mini-break season. I wanted this year to try and get away for as many weekends as possible, and we accomplished it spectacularly – we’ve visited all sorts of lovely places, and had some lovely times, but the end of the summer holidays marks the end of the peak season. We have a couple of trips planned still, but mainly we’ll be hanging out at home. I’m kind of looking forward to this, but sad too, as I do like a hotel breakfast.

One of the last destinations on our mini-break calendar of fun was the Woodbury Park Hotel in Devon. It’s less than an hour away from us, but I actually kind of like to holiday nearer home, especially if you’re only going for a night or two. No one wants to spend half their allotted mini-break time driving there do they? Also, when you go somewhere relatively close by, you’ll often discover places you never even knew about, that you can then visit again.

That was the certainly the case with Dart’s Farm, where we headed after checking in, to hire bikes. Dart’s Farm is a massive farm shop, with a cafe, loads of food, drink, interiors stuff, an outside area, local fish and chips – I can’t believe that in the all the time I’ve lived in Somerset and been on family days out, we’ve never come across it. If you’re anywhere nearby, it’s definitely worth a visit, if only to go in the kitchen and bathroom showroom and gawp at the small glass bathroom shelf that’s on sale for £350. Seriously, it was about 10 inches long and maybe three deep? Bonkers. We started pricing things in shelves from then on – ‘Mummy, can I get this book? It’s not expensive – I could get 48 of them instead of a glass shelf.’ View Post

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For Belle, our recent lunch at the new Ivy Clifton Brasserie, Bristol, was less about the food and more about the opportunity to wear her new outfit, bought especially for my sister’s wedding. For me, it was definitely about the food. That, and the chance to look at Belle in her new outfit and sob quietly to myself about my lost youth. (Not that I ever looked like her even when I was 14, but I can dream.)

Here she is, getting in the way of one of my door pictures.

Review Ivy Clifton Brasserie Bristol

The Ivy Clifton Brasserie opened recently in Bristol, and Belle and I were going along to test it out. We make these sacrifices for you, you see. We went on the day before Belle’s birthday, so that even though we were there as guests, for the purposes of this review, I could make out that it was a fancy birthday treat. (I’m so thoughtful!) Actually, for the record, Belle did have a very fancy treat on her birthday, which I did pay for, all by myself, so I am thoughtful.

Anyway. View Post

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I have a quiz for you today! It’s only two questions, it’s not The Krypton Factor or anything, so give it a go. It has a ‘back to school’ theme:

Q.1. When it comes to labelling Belle’s clothes and equipment for school, do I:

A. Carefully iron labels onto everything, including individual socks, whilst listening to wholesome podcasts and humming classical music quietly to myself.

B. Assume that because she is now nearly 14, she’ll be able to carry a jumper and lunch box to and from school without accidentally throwing it in a hedge or leaving it in a bin.

Q.2. How many times have I had to pay to replace lunchboxes, bags and items of uniform, including a whole PE kit plus trainers, so far?

A. None. Because of the labels. Dur!

B. More times that I really care to mention. Certainly enough times to wish I had answered A to question 1.  View Post

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I don’t think I’ve ever really watched surfers. (Unless you count watching Point Break about 27 times as a teenager.) I’ve seen them, but I’ve never really watched them, and appreciated the dedication and passion that’s at the heart of surfing. That is, until I visited the Esplanade Hotel in Newquay.

As I sat in the big windows of The Esplanade Hotel, looking out over Fistral Bay, the sea looked like it was covered in birds – little black blobs bobbing up and down on the surface of the water. They were surfers though, lying in wait for waves. As I watched, I realised just how much lying in wait is actually involved. For minutes on end they bobbed, watching the waves, waiting for the one that would be worth it – all of that time for just a few seconds of adrenaline.

Our bedroom was pretty much directly above the big front windows, so we had a similarly lovely view to wake up to:

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I have confession that is going to BLOW YOUR MIND. (Okay, so if you know me at all it probably won’t, but I was trying to add a sense of drama. Did it work?)

I am totally rubbish at back ups. When conversation turns to phone or computer backups, (which I can’t say it does terribly often to be honest), it always goes something like:

Other person: So, when did you last back up your phone?

Me: What?

Other person: Your phone, when did you last back up all your pictures and contacts?

Me, pretending not to hear: What now?

You get the idea.

I did once back all of my phone photos onto a memory stick, via a laptop, so that I could switch them all over to my new phone, but then a dog ate it. I’m not even kidding, a dog actually ate it. And so that was that, thousands of precious family memories, lost forever in a dog’s digestive system.

Because I know that I’m hopeless, I have taken steps to try to make sure that backups happen without me actually having to do anything. For my computer this means doing as much as I can in Google Drive, and in online design apps like Canva, and for my phone, I now use MEEM Memory.

The beauty of MEEM is that I have to do pretty much nothing at all. (My best thing.) It’s essentially a charging cable, but with a built in data backup device, so you don’t need to remember to do anything, or have extra cables, or an external hard drive or anything like that.

MEEM memory automatic phone backup device View Post

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Before we arrived at Nozstock festival at the end of July, I don’t think I had done quite enough to prepare my fiancé for an authentic festival experience. Until last summer, the only festival experience he had had at all was The Proms, and I really don’t think that counts. As far as I know, Prom goers don’t tend to wear revealing mermaid costumes or walk around during the concert, kicking up hay with their bare feet.

Nozstock festival

Last summer, we eased him in gently with Wychwood Festival, but that’s so small and family friendly, and essentially in a car park, with tarmac floors, that it’s more like a large church fete.

“Is this what all festivals are like?” he asked, as we arrived at Nozstock, and passed a group of people with blue dreadlocks, holding cans of cider.

“Um, yes, pretty much,” I said. He has led rather a sheltered life, (until he met me), and sometimes funny coloured hair makes him nervous. I think he worries that he won’t know what to do, or how to behave properly, and that he will end up looking silly.

“Should I wear my hat?” he asked anxiously. “Will people laugh at me?”

I assured him that the beauty of a festival is that you can wear whatever you like, and no one will laugh. It’s just about having a good time, and escaping from real life.  View Post

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I have some fond memories of Crealy Park in Devon, which all came back when we camped at Crealy Adventure Park and Resort.

It was a favourite haunt when Belle was little, and we even went on a coach trip there from playgroup. I remember it clearly, as we took this very funny picture of Belle on the coach. It always makes me laugh because it looks a bit like she is being born – sort of popping out.

crealy meadows luxury camping View Post

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It’s the last day of term for us.

How can July 15th be the last day of term?! To say I’m freaking out would be a bit of an understatement. Belle is refusing to go to any kind of camp or club, so I’m stuck with working full time and somehow trying to stop her from spending ten hours a day on Snapchat.

*eye twitches*

It’s weird, because you’d think that with her turning 14 this summer, childcare would be easier, and of course in some ways it is, but then at the same time it almost feels like she needs more supervision, partly because she’s the only child at home, and partly because of the technology thing. If I had a couple of them, say 7 and 5, they could amuse themselves for an hour or so building a den or punching each other, or something wholesome like that, but Belle isn’t me, she’s not going to turn around on the first day of the holidays and say ‘you know what Mummy? I think I might do a project about badgers today.’

(I did once do a project about badgers. Things like that were more fun before the Internet, when you had to trace pictures from books and what not.)

I had an interesting chat with fiancé a few days ago. He’s properly into the whole parenting thing now, and I think he’d had a bit of a moment. ‘So parenting,’ he said, ‘it seems to me that it’s 95% guilt?’

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Belle and I have been on a lot of mini-breaks on our own. They’re fun. We have our little rituals, which mainly involve planning our snacks and which village-based murder mystery we are going to watch in the evening, and we rub along perfectly fine. Here we are in fact, looking adorable as always, outside our Hoburne Naish cabin a couple of weekends ago:

Hoburne Naish review Hampshire View Post

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We all love a bargain don’t we? Thanks Promo Vouchers! I don’t know about you, but I very rarely pay full price for anything online – I always do a search for a voucher code, free postage, cash back offer – anything that will save me a few pounds. The few pounds I save can then go straight into my savings account.

Haha!

That’s a lie obviously. Any money I save just gets spent on more treats. YOLO and all that.

coffee and cake discount code View Post

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My lovely fiancé wrote this post about our trip to Woodland Tipi and Yurts in Herefordshire.

I won’t go into the details, but lately, as a family, we really needed to reconnect. Work has meant we’ve had far less time to spend together as a family and we were all feeling the need to go spend some quality time together. Cue a weekend away at Woodland Tipi and Yurts in Herefordshire.

When I was a child, a tipi was something you read about in a book about native Americans. Along with Eskimos in their igloos, they were things I never thought I’d experience first hand. Admittedly they seem to be everywhere nowadays, but a boutique campsite that offered the chance for us to be together seemed like too good an offer to miss.

Woodland Tipi and Yurts review View Post

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Today’s post is from my very stylish, leather satchel loving fiancé. 

In my life, there have been three occasions complete strangers have stopped me to comment on my appearance. The first was an Australian cricket fan outside Lord’s cricket ground, who asked where my pink blazer was from.  He added that if I wore it to a match in Australia I’d leave in a coffin.

The second and third times were all in the last couple of months, and whilst not technically something I was wearing, both related to my new leather satchel from Ruitertassen.

Here it is:

beautiful leather satchel for men Ruitertassen review View Post

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