batteries recharged

This is strange, not having blogged in just over a month. Apologies to those who may have missed me. I think I needed this time to take stock of where I am, and how I spend my time. It has been a crazy year for me – at the beginning of the year:
• I went from working 3 days a week to 4 days..
• around the same time I set up my Etsy party supplies shop..
• and started this blog..

Enough craziness for anyone!

Add into the mix the excitement (and hard work) of both kid’s birthday parties to plan over the summer..

Then Cyan started school in September, so now we have both children at school, with two lots of homework to be done each week.. September was also my most intensive blogging month so far, and I was sleep-deprived and rather burnt out at the beginning of October.. then both kids got sick, twice, one after the other. We even ended up in hospital with Oliver a couple of weeks ago, he had a viral cough and got so wheezy he was having trouble breathing. Scary stuff. They are both better now.

I have caught up on a lot of sleep in the last few weeks, and Karl and I have spent some quality time with friends. Batteries are feeling recharged :)

Consequently I haven’t done much in the way of crafting, just a couple of little projects for Halloween; and I really didn’t have the time or energy to devote to blogging. I have missed it though. I will write about Halloween stuff soon, and will aim to post maybe a couple of times a week, and I really need to catch up with all you other lovely bloggers too..

I was looking for a random photograph to add to this post, and found the above photograph of a peacock butterfly, taken in August, one happy weekend when the kids and I went to stay with my sister Arwen in her new home in Exeter, the next city up from us in Plymouth. I intended to blog about that weekend, but haven’t got to it yet, so here are a couple of photos of the kids from that weekend, a bit of gratuitous cuteness for you.. as my good friend Clara commented recently: “Let’s face it, if we don’t post stuff about our kids, the cuteness factors in our blogs drops down dramatically.” Very true!



Picking flowers and blackberries in a gorgeous Exeter park,
on a gorgeous summer evening.




Playing on a twisty tree in another gorgeous Exeter park.