category: California

With yesterday being #worldmentalhealthday, the @socialmums #SocialMumsOct challenge topic being Fear and me watching @staceydooley’s #FashionsDirtySecrets, it seemed like this post should be a combination of all three.  #Mentalhealth is something I’ve been learning more about over the past few years. It is indeed a strange beast, because everything on… read more

As I write this (or at least start to), it’s Tuesday on the last week of school, before the girls break up for the Summer. And I’m going to utter those words that all parents utter at this time of the year “WHERE on earth did this year go….? How… read more

(12:30 Saturday afternoon) Back in the Summer of 2010 as my daughter was approaching her first birthday, I wrote a blog called “It Takes Nine Months…” In it I talked about how I’d struggled to fine my sense of ‘self’ after having our first baby, how I’d struggled to reconcile… read more

“Oooh, I could quite get used to this” I thought as I knelt on the lawn, trowel in handing ‘doing some gardening’ and alternating between listening to Radio Four and One. “I quite like being a housewife.” It was summer 2009 and I’d been on maternity leave less than a… read more

Sometimes Sometimes the girls go to bed easily. Teeth, stories, songs, reading, lights out, sleep. Sometimes we then have the energy and time to tidy round the downstairs fully. And make their pack lunches the night before. Sometimes we’re on top of homework, and it’s all ready to hand in,… read more

Friday Night: Going Out From sixth-form though to my mid-twenties, Friday night would mean only one thing: Going Out. Oooh, how I loved it! It wasn’t just the going out part. It was the Getting Ready. Sometimes on your own, but mostly with a whole group of girls, outfits would… read more

* credit Adele. As my lovely co-author, Jassy Davis of Gin & Crumpets fame, recently reminded me, it’s five years since we got our hands on the first sample copies of The Contented Calf Cookbook. Five years! Wow. It feels simultaneously both like a lifetime ago and yet just a blink… read more