Well, shockingly, here is my first Happy Friday post of this year! It’s not that there has been a shortage of happy events, you understand, just that life seems to have been running away with me over the past few months, so it has been an issue of time – plus the fact that the camera stopped working on my phone, which left me without the ability to take photos of everyday moments of joy. But I’m back, so here goes:

1. The first one this week has to be the weather! It is currently so beautiful – hot, sunny, blue skies, my favourite – and probably even more welcome after the ridiculous amount of rain that we received last week. As we know, we are all pretty obsessed with the weather in this country, but the variety that we experience really makes us appreciate the “good times”.
2. This obviously makes for some very pleasant dog walks – so long as I get them out before it gets too hot! But few things beat walking in the sunshine.
3. It was my birthday 11 days ago, and D bought me lots of beautiful flowers, most of which are still going strong, so I am loving still seeing them around every day – the colours and fragrances are fabulous.
4. Speaking of flowers, I am a little obsessed with peonies, and we have some stunning deep pink ones growing in the garden. However, because they are situated at the far end, where we can’t see them very easily, I have picked some of the blooms this week and had them in the house instead, where I can appreciate them every day.
5. Much of the busyness of the past few weeks has been down to my dog grooming training that I have been doing for the past few months, as I was working up to taking my exams. However, with my written and practical (100% and 93% respectively) out of the way and only one more training session to go, I am getting very excited about embarking on this new career for real – once we get the building work completed! The photo below shows before and after images of Honey, as she was my practice for my practical exam last weekend (I can’t wait to get all of my equipment out of the garage where, as you can see, it is currently being stored, and into my studio).
6. So our summer holiday is now looming – only 59 days until we go to St Lucia – so a little bit of healthy eating is on the cards. It is much easier to eat healthily in this sunny weather though, I find. Here are two of my favourites from this week – porridge with apple, pecans and maple syrup, and a summer salad made from lovage from the garden, prosciutto, peaches and halloumi.
7. Of course, life is too short for missing out on all treats though, so we have been enjoying some new gin cocktail recipes recently. This one is proving very popular – gin, ginger ale, with a piece of homemade honeycomb in – amazing!
8. So it has not just been me taking exams recently – G is currently in the middle of her GCSEs. She is working incredibly hard, so I hope that she does well. Some of the exams seem to have been quite challenging but her spirits are high and she is certainly doing her best – we are so proud of her.
9. We now have half term upon us, so B will be home tonight for the week, so we are looking forward to both of them revising hard during the day time (B has school exams as soon as he returns after the break) and then plenty of family time in the evenings.
10. The final one for this week is the great night out that D and I had last night watching Rory Bremner’s Partly Political show at the theatre. He is a fantastic impressionist (his Donald Trump was THE BEST!) and so funny, as were the two performers on with him, comedian Fred Macaulay and impressionist Jan Raven, so it was a really good night.

So, hopefully it won’t be another almost 6 months until I write again – it’s good to be back!