As always, I’m offering a very warm welcome to Friday! It’s almost the weekend again, so let’s hope that it’s one full of sunshine, eating outdoors, relaxation and fun! In the meantime, here’s a brief round up of all that’s made me happy this week:

1. With G leaving for France last Saturday night, we celebrated Father’s Day a day early, with our inspired gift for D – a waffle maker! He’s been saying for months that we should get one, but he would never have got round to it himself, so was really pleased with it. And the verdict on the waffles? Amazing! They are so, so much lighter and fluffier than shop-bought ones, so between us we managed to demolish quite a pile!

2. We again had a lovely evening outside last Sunday, barbecuing some delicious fish on the fire pit – trout and herring – which we then ate with sour dough bread and olives, sundried tomatoes and peppers. It really was heaven on a plate.

3. We also tried out a new long cocktail drink last weekend – a Gin Daisy (I obviously only wanted to try it because it has “Daisy” in the name!). It is made with grenadine, orange juice, lemon juice, gin and soda water, and is so tasty. It looked as though it would be very sweet, but it wasn’t at all – it just works really well, and was a nice change from our usual gin and tonic.

4. It’s a very rare occurrence for me to have a bath, but it so happened that, on Monday evening, I had nothing that desperately needed doing and D was working, so I treated myself to a long soak in my new mango and papaya shower gel/bubble bath, and it was absolutely lovely. I really should make the effort to have a bath more often, as it is such a simple little treat – and is a great opportunity to catch up with some reading or Netflix watching.

5. G and I went with friends to see a great production of Romeo and Juliet at Derby Theatre last Friday, from Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory. It was a far more contemporary adaptation of the timeless masterpiece than I have previously seen, yet it retained the language and almost all of the narrative of the original, a combination which worked very well, and gave a very “young” feel to it. All of the acting performances were outstanding, and the whole production was very exciting and vibrant.

6. Cherries! I bought some delicious fresh cherries this week – and they are so good! I seem to have consumed rather a lot whilst writing this post, by the looks of it.

7. Ginger and Lemongrass Cordial from Bottlegreen. D and I have drunk a lot of this this past week, and it is so yummy – and zingy! A lovely alternative to the copious amounts of tea that we usually consume.

8. We seem to have eventually found a new Netflix series to get stuck into – Luther. D has apparently seen one or two of them but I haven’t at all, so I’m really enjoying it so far.

9. The smell of the puppies when they came back from the groomers yesterday. They don’t just look super-smart after their summer trims but they smell incredible. I’m not sure what shampoo she uses, but it’s good!

10. As with B in April, one thing that I know will make me happy but hasn’t happened yet is G returning home from France. We’ve spoken to her a couple of times and know that she’s fine and has been having a great time, but it will be lovely to have her home again – at midnight tonight!

As all weeks seem to be at the moment, this has been one of ups and downs again, but I am, in the spirit of all gratitude lists, going to focus on the positives and the things that have made me happy this week.

1. We had a really lovely day last Saturday, when we took B for his induction day at the school he will be starting at in September. He was kept busy from 10am until 4pm, which gave us a wonderful opportunity to catch up with a friend we hadn’t seen in eight years, but whose younger son is also starting at the same school in September. Her older son has been at the school for a year already, so it was great to hear more about it from a boy who is there and is loving it! It was fantastic to catch up on each others lives as well – a lot has happened in the past eight years, as you’d expect! – so this was a great excuse to while away the day ambling around the nearby park, stopping for a drink in the café there (I may become quite a frequent visitor!) then strolling into town for a lovely Italian meal.

2. The other great thing from this day was that B had a lovely time. They had a day of sports activities, swimming, lunch, chilling and getting to know the place and the other boys, and he was very positive at the end of it. Phew! It was also good for G to see where he is going to be in September.

3. We had a really nice family evening on Sunday, cooking a delicious curry all together, followed by playing family games on the Wii, which we haven’t done for so long. It was great fun!

4. D was a complete superstar at the beginning of the week, when he picked up on the fact that I was feeling pretty down, and thus came home from work with treats – a huge bunch of flowers, and yummy bread, cheese and wine, to help cheer me up. It was all very gratefully received – and his thoughtfulness helped a lot!

5. Films! We seem to have had a bit of a film fest over the past week – we don’t watch many films, often because they seem just a bit too long and I always think that I will fall asleep – but we have watched three great ones this week: “The Other Woman”, which was very funny; “The Theory of Everything”, which I have wanted to see for months and thought was absolutely amazing (wow – Eddie Redmayne!); and “Philomena”, which was very poignant and shocking at times, but wonderfully done.

6. A wonderful conversation I had with a friend one evening this week. It was so good to have a really great catch up, although an hour and a quarter just wasn’t long enough. Luckily we are meeting up in a couple of weeks, so we can pick up where we left off then!

7. Lottie falling asleep whilst cuddling D one evening – she was properly cuddled up against him  – and snoring – too cute for words.

8. Actually coming up with a good idea for D’s Father’s Day gift this year! He is so hard to buy for, but I think that we’ve done well this year, so hopefully he will agree!

9. I know that this one has definitely featured before, but I have to mention the garden again, and the new flowers which are constantly appearing as if out of nowhere! It is still a revelation to us each time we spot something new – it will obviously be different next year, when we know what to expect – but the previous owners did an amazing job of choosing so many various plants that flower at all different times, so as soon as one has died or faded, another stunning bloom appears. I think that I may have to do a garden post next week!

10. The new toy that I bought for the puppies yesterday! It is just a bright pink, squeaky bone, but they love it, and all three dogs have been enjoying the bones I fetched back for them from the pet shop yesterday – they’ve certainly kept them quiet for a while!

So we are going to celebrate Father’s Day on Saturday this weekend, as G then goes away late on Saturday night to France for a week with school, so we are looking forward to a nice family day together before she leaves. Whatever your plans are for the weekend, I hope that you have a good one.

Well, it’s had its ups and downs, but we’ve survived another week – hurrah!

Now that the children’s exams are over, things seem far more relaxed, and we are all beginning to see that the end of term and the start of the summer holidays is in sight. I am incredibly lucky that I can be at home with the children during their school holidays, but it does mean that the preceding weeks can be pretty crazy, as I try to put things in place at work and set up procedures in advance, so that I can have some time off. This seems to be even more vital this year, as we have quite a busy itinerary for their break, with our holiday first, then having two French Exchange children to stay, some of which time we will spend in Norfolk, then CarFest at the end of August, before B starts at his new school at the beginning of September.

So, what’s made you happy this week?  Here’s my list:

1. A truly lovely family weekend, as documented here – it was so good to spend lots of time together again.

2. Cooking popcorn over the fire – we weren’t entirely sure that it would work, but it did, and we ended up with a huge pan full of buttery, salty yumminess!

3. Using my lovely, flowery insulated cup, that B gave me for my birthday, almost every day. He had noticed that I had managed to drop and crack my previous one, so he (absolutely correctly) thought that I’d like this. And I love it! I’ve used it on the way to work and again when I’ve been on the afternoon school run, as, I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m always rushing around so much when I’m home that I don’t ever get to drink a HOT cup of tea.

4. The quick meal that G and I had at Ed’s Diner on our girly shopping trip on Sunday. I had Atomic American Fries – delicious fries with five dips: jalapeno jelly; guacamole; cheese sauce; sour cream and chilli – with a skinny peanut butter milkshake. A very naughty treat!

5. Planning what we’re hopefully going to do in Grenada next month. So far, we’ve got deep sea fishing, a trip to a treetop restaurant, a hike to the highest waterfall on the island and possibly another boat trip on our wish-list.

6. The beautiful weather for walking the dogs -although they do get very hot and are very ready for water when we get home.

7. Sorting out the garage! Not a very exciting one to most people, but the satisfaction I get now when I go in the garage is huge! It isn’t completely finished, and D needs to chop a lot more wood to be stored away for the fire pit and then the woodburner , but it’s so much better than it was this time last week.

8. G’s exam results. It’s been her turn to get them back this week and she’s done very well – her hard work has paid off.

9. A trip to QUAD in Derby with a lovely friend on Tuesday evening for a bite to eat and the National Theatre Live performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman”. The National Theatre Live concept is just brilliant, and this performance was amazing – how Ralph Fiennes remembered all those lines is incredible – it is a really long play with 57,000 words, roughly half of which are his.

10. A visit to my favourite café – The Book Café in Derby – to write a blog post yesterday. It was definitely a good place to write, with the most enormous mug of chai latte for fuel.

We have a day at Ben’s new school tomorrow – well, he has a day of activities and getting to know people while we have to entertain ourselves for a few hours – but hopefully he’ll have a great day. What have you got planned for the weekend?

Well, that’s the end of the children’s first week back at school after the half term holiday, which means that they only now have five weeks left until the summer break (which means it’s only just over five weeks until we go away too – hurrah!).

In the meantime, this is what’s made me happy this week:

1. My beautiful walk with the puppies at Kedleston Hall last Saturday – as described, with lots (!) of photos, here.

2. G finishes her exams today, which will make us all very happy. She has worked very hard and deserves good results, so fingers crossed.

3. B has been getting his exam results back this week and they’ve been pretty good on the whole, I have to say, which makes me both happy and relieved! (When I took them to school on Monday, G was facing her first exam and B the prospect of getting his first exam mark back – guess who was the more nervous of the two of them?!)

4. I had a good night out with my sister on Monday. She is member of Soroptimist International (if you don’t know them, they are a global volunteer movement working together to transform the lives of women and girls), and they have an annual fundraising fashion show event which I always go to. It is a fun, relaxed evening, and I always come away with a few real bargains – I think that my favourite purchase this year was a pink summer scarf decorated with beach huts – a lovely reminder of Norfolk!

5. Food! We have had some very tasty meals this week, especially a prawn and vegetable curry, and also the spicy Thai prawn meal shown in the photo above – that was especially good, with the added bonus of being very healthy.

6. Lottie has really discovered the joy of playing with balls this week. She has been able to retrieve one since we brought her home at 9 weeks old, but she has suddenly become obsessed with them this week, and is becoming very adept at catching. The photo below shows the sight I’ve been faced with repeatedly this week, as she drops the ball near me and then sits there looking hopeful until I throw it for her. So cute!

7. The garden is continuing to be a beautiful delight to us, as new flowers and plants emerge. This week has seen the blooming of the amazing peonies – honestly some of the most stunning flowers I have ever seen. In addition to the flowers, it was so lovely when D spotted the beautiful moth shown on the photo at the top of the page on the tree in our fire pit area last weekend. It was about two inches in length and the camouflage markings were so clear and defined.

8. After leaving work a little earlier than I had intended on Thursday, I made the most of the extra time as an opportunity to visit a farm shop which opened a little while ago quite close by, but which I haven’t had time to go to previously. It was lovely and I was very tempted by so many things, but I came away with some lovely fresh, locally made bread, Crunchy Red Onion and Sage cheese, a special bottle of beer for D, some croissants and a bag of huge marshmallows – we are consuming a lot of marshmallows right now!

9. A nice break in G’s revision evenings this week was when we had a meeting at her school about her upcoming trip to France. It was good to find out more about where they will be staying, visiting, and the activities planned, and lovely to see how excited she is about going.

10. A final one for this week was my night out yesterday. I went with some friends to the Red Carpet Cinema, which I haven’t been to previously, to watch “A Royal Night Out”, which was lovely. If you haven’t seen it, it is about the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret venturing out of Buckingham Palace to celebrate VE Day, incognito. It is very far-fetched, but I did wish that it had been true – it would certainly have been a night for them to remember!

Someone has just asked me what we have planned for this weekend, and I had to say that I have absolutely no idea! It sometimes feels like such an achievement to actually get to the end of the week, that we don’t actually get around to planning anything. No doubt it will include lots of chilling time for G, a family evening around the fire pit, some good walks with the dogs – and maybe even making a start on sorting out the garage if we feel brave enough!

Whatever you are up to, have a great couple of days.

How can it possibly be Friday again already? Bank Holiday weeks seem to whizz by faster than any other, obviously probably due to the fact that we get the long weekend followed by a shorter working week, but this one seems to have passed even quicker than usual.

So, here are a few of the things which I am thankful for and have made me happy this week:

1. Walks with D and B – as I described earlier in the week, we went on a couple of wonderful walks over the weekend. It was lovely for D and I to do one together, just the two of us – we realised when we had finished that we hadn’t stopped talking all the way round the 5 and a half mile route – not about anything important or life-changing, but just chit-chat, which was so nice. Then we took B with us for the slightly longer one on Monday, which again was lovely – and, as usual, I don’t think that HE stopped talking all the way round-  no change there!

2. Food by the fire – we had three great evenings out by the firepit, and had some great food out there too, eating s’mores, bangers and mash and then barbecued burgers and fish on the final night. We all love eating outside – it feels so special and simple.

3. Crosswords – I haven’t done a crossword for years but I suddenly felt the urge to do one last weekend, so I bought a small book of them, which I’ve started working through this week – and I’m really enjoying doing them! They certainly make you think!

4. Blog comments – as my blog is attracting more and more visitors, I am beginning to receive more lovely comments on my posts, which is so gratifying and I truly appreciate them.

5. Reading – one of my posts from earlier in the week was a review of two fantastic books I’ve recently read, so I’ve been very grateful that I’ve had more time to read again this week. At the moment, I’m 24% of the way through “The Girl on the Train” – wow, absolutely loving it!

6. Board games – one of the upsides to G having to revise all week is that I have had plenty to time alone with B, and, as we both love board games, we’ve been making the most of the time we’ve had and played quite a few. Game of Life Celebrity Edition, PayDay and Mastermind have been our favourites.

7. G’s revision – much as she is now getting a little fed up of it, G has worked so hard this week, being shut away in her room for the majority of the time revising for her end-of-year exams next week. I’m so proud of her conscientious and diligent attitude – I’m sure that it will be rewarded.

8. Baking – in order to keep G fuelled throughout the long hours of study, we have done plenty of baking this week, making cupcakes with fresh fruits and chunks of meringue in, a Victoria sponge with G’s favourite butter cream filling, and a chocolate cake with white chocolate chunks – yum!

9. Lazy mornings – with G and B on half term, it has been so nice to be able to stay in bed a little longer in the mornings (this has been my favourite reading time), and not have to rush around like crazy making early breakfasts, packed lunches, ensure all school and work bags are ready and do the school run on the way to work. A real treat!

10. Yoga – as I did Adriene Mishler’s 30 Day Yoga series a little while ago, I have embarked on another of her yoga programmes this week. I can’t say that it has been fun all the way – it has been very challenging and my body has rebelled slightly afterwards (on Thursday morning, EVERYTHING hurt!) but it does make me feel so much better to do it and it does give a real sense of well being after each session.

So we have a nice quiet weekend ahead. D may have to work, which will be a shame, but that just means that we will have to make the most of our evenings together, when he is back home and G has finished for the day.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Well, I’m hoping that this turns out to be a “happy Friday” as it’s my birthday! I have very little planned for today, which I am very excited about – a complete “day off”, so no work, no food shopping, no housework, etc. – what a treat! Then we are going out for a meal tonight, just the four of us, so that will be lovely.

Anyway, here’s what has made me smile this week so far –

1. D and I worked hard in the garden last weekend and we are so pleased with the results. I will probably blog about this later but, in a nutshell, over the past couple of weeks, we have done lots of “tidying up” – weeding, mowing, strimming, power washing, painting fences, having trees removed, re-gravelling, etc. – and we finished this project off at the weekend, with the main aim being sorting out the area for the firepit!

2. The firepit – what a fantastic purchase! We used this last Saturday and Sunday and it was so great. We are beginning to think that we are a little obsessed with fire, being that we lit the woodburner every single night of the winter, and now are loving this! It meant that we had two lovely family evenings, all together, outside, with no screens, toasting marshmallows and baking potatoes (wow – they were AMAZING!).

3. Never mind Happy Friday, I met “Happy Tuesday man” earlier in the week! It was a beautiful sunny day, and I was walking the two puppies (Tilly was on bed rest with a  sore leg!) when a man, with a gorgeous border collie, walked past, smiled and just said “Hello, you three. Happy Tuesday!”. It put such a huge smile on my face!

4. I have managed to find two perfect picture frames this past week, which I’ve been looking for for a while, one for a beautiful word-art that Georgie made me for Mother’s Day, full of the most complimentary things possible, and the other for a painting we have of the church where we got married. We had this hung up for years, but haven’t put it up since we moved last year, as I decided that the frame didn’t do it any justice and was frankly pretty old-fashioned, but it now looks lovely in its new, white, triple-mounted frame in the dining room.

5. Talking of which, the dining room re-decoration is now complete and we are so thrilled with the results. It is so much lighter and brighter, the tiled floor is fabulous – and you should see our rather quirky light fitting!

6. Considering how new my blog is, I’ve been really happy with the visitor statistics I’ve been getting. Having hundreds of visitors has never been the aim of it, but it’s still very gratifying to see that lots of people are reading my ramblings and leaving lovely comments. The other aspect that has made me very happy this week though, is that one of my posts from a few weeks back, on Sibling Love, has been featured on two other websites – www.theguiltfreeguide.co.uk and www.post40bloggers.com which is pretty thrilling to see!

7. Nothing really specific but, following on from a pretty rubbish week last week, this one has been a whole lot more positive  – definitely something to smile about!

8. I hosted a really lovely birthday meal last night for two of my sisters and two of my closest friends, and it was such a great evening. I made a Strawberry and Basil mocktail to drink, which was very tasty, then we ate Fig and Parma Ham Salad, followed by Pistachio and Lavender Salmon with Salmoriglio Potato Salad and Samphire, Asparagus and Bean Salad, then Meringues with Lemon Curd and Strawberries to finish. Conversation flowed about all sorts of things – books, films, theatre, children – and it was 11.30pm before we’d even thought to look – surely the sign of a good evening.

9. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find figs?!? Well, I certainly didn’t until this past week! I decided that I wanted to do a Fig and Parma Ham Salad for the starter for my birthday meal, but could I find figs? No! I visited two different Sainsburys four times, only to see a huge blank space above the figs label, which was an improvement on Tesco and Morrisons, which didn’t even have a space for them. Luckily, M&S to the rescue – a quick trip there yesterday proved fruitful (ha – see what I did there?!?) and figs were eventually located and bought. Parma Ham Salad wouldn’t have been quite the same!

10. So, as I may have mentioned(!), today is my birthday, so I am very happily looking forward to my lovely relaxing day, followed by a family meal out tonight, then a university friends get-together tomorrow. It’s not easy for the five of us who shared a house at uni and have stayed very close friends to all meet up, as Emma has only just returned to England after living in Europe for ten years, whilst Helen has spent the last few years in Paris and then Jersey, and is soon leaving for Hong Kong, so it is always a really special occasion when we can all spend some time together.

So, that’s pretty much my week in a few points. What has made you happy this week?

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Thank goodness that this has been a “short” week and is now almost over. It has been a really tough week for so many reasons, so I’ve had to dig very deep to come up with my Happy Friday list. Literally just about everything that could have gone wrong has done – and more besides – so here’s hoping for a much better weekend.

Anyway, here’s what I managed to come up with which have made me happy this week –

1. We had a lovely weekend in Norfolk for the Bank holiday – and the weather was very kind to us!

2. One thing that D and I did which we haven’t done before is go out for a long walk by ourselves, leaving G and B at home with their revision. Although it is always lovely to go out as a family, of course, it also felt very special that it was just the two of us – and the three dogs, obviously! We did one of our favourite walks around Burnham Overy Staithe and the sun shone almost all the way round.

3. Having the time to read a magazine, cover to cover – what bliss!

4. Our fire pit arriving! We have everything crossed that the weather stays fine this weekend so that we can finish off the area of the garden where this is going to go, then we can try it out.

5. My (or should I say “our”?) new workstation. We decided a couple of weeks ago to put an area on our landing to better use than housing a storage hamper, and have instead removed this and installed a small desk and a new computer. This is for both me and B to use, and we really love it.

6. Sleepy puppies! We took them out for such long walks at the weekend that our evenings were much more peaceful than usual, as they were absolutely exhausted and just slept. Too cute!

7. The gorgeous spring lambs which we came across whilst completing the treasure trail – they were so beautiful and very inquisitive as to what we were up to as we searched for a clue.

8. Flowers in the house. We currently have lots of fresh spring flowers around – mainly daffodils and tulips – which I absolutely love.

9. Chips at the village pub. We popped in on Sunday after our long walk for a drink and some chips and they were the best! They still had the skins on, and there were plenty of small crunchy bits as well as the larger ones, so they went down very well.

10. Planning my birthday meal. It’s my birthday next week and I’m having a small dinner party the evening before – a girls night – which I’m really looking forward to, but one of the parts which I really enjoy, as well as the night itself, is the planning. The menu has now been decided!

Another week has somehow rolled by, so it’s Happy Friday time again. Here is a handful of things which have made me happy this week.

1. Last Friday, I met a very good friend, Lindsey, for lunch, and we tried a new venue! We went to The Jinnie Inn at Rolleston on Dove, and had a lovely meal. I opted for the Ploughman’s lunch, which is a really unusual choice for me, but I had seen it being served to the adjacent table and it looked delicious – and it was! Lindsey chose a salad, which she also really enjoyed, so I’m thinking that it may be a good place to try on my birthday in a couple of weeks. It was lovely, as ever, to catch up with Lindsey and get up to date with each other’s news – a great start to the weekend.

2. What’s better on a Friday night than a takeaway? I was out and about until later than usual last Friday, with my car having been serviced, etc. so we decided to go for the easy option of a Chinese, so we had a lovely family night in – takeaway, a new episode of Modern Family and a new gin to try (that was for me and D only!).

3. It is firmly revision season in our house right now, with B’s exams looming in just over two weeks, so that means that I am on duty providing regular drinks and cakes for the workers! I made a tasty lemon drizzle cake last weekend, which everyone seemed to enjoy – so much, in fact, that it didn’t last long at all.

4. One of my favourite flowers, along with tulips and lilies, is the bluebell, and I am so thrilled that our garden is absolutely full of them at the moment. I did notice that there were quite a lot when we viewed the house last spring, but I was worried that the puppies might have destroyed any chances of them reappearing, but there are so many – just beautiful.

5. Talking of gardens, we have actually been doing this quite a lot this week ourselves, as we have developed  our plans for the top end of the garden. We had several leylandii trees cut down last Sunday, as they were serving no particular purpose, and were actually making that area quite dark and shady, so their removal in itself has made a huge difference, but we are now looking forward to opening it up a little more and developing it into a fire pit area. The gravel and fire pit have been ordered, so we are really looking forward to getting the work done and toasting our first marshmallows!

6. One of the things that has made me so happy  this week is the fantastic customer service which I experienced from Thinking Slimmer. I used one of their Slimpods four years ago – if you haven’t come across them, you listen to one of their 10 minute hypnosis sessions, available as a download or on CD, every day, and it retunes your mind to help you create healthy lifestyle changes. I decided that I wanted to start listening again (our holiday is looming!!) but thought that I would have to buy the programme again as I had had it downloaded onto my old phone, so no longer had it. However, they provide such fabulous customer service, that they put a new copy of it into my account immediately so that I can download it again.

7. “Peter Kay’s Car Share” definitely fetched smiles – and laughs – to us at the weekend. I had heard Peter Kay talking about it on Radio 2 on Friday and thought that it sounded like an interesting concept – all six episodes were available on BBC iPlayer from 9pm on Friday, but then are being shown on normal BBC channels this week as well. We have always loved Peter Kay and this really didn’t disappoint. If you haven’t seen it, you really should take a look – Peter is excellent, but Sian Gibson, who plays the other main role, is fantastic.

8. We had a really productive couple of days last weekend, getting lots of jobs done in both the house and garden, which is always satisfying and makes me happy.

9. A delicious salad I made last weekend was yet another highlight. I had heard it mentioned on a vlog a few days previously, and thought that I would give it a try – it was spinach, strawberry and blue cheese, and I drizzled it with balsamic vinegar – so simple but super tasty!

10. The final one for this week is that I am always happy when we have a weekend in Norfolk to look forward to, and with it being a bank holiday weekend coming up, that means that we get three days and nights there, which will be so lovely.

I hope that the weather is kind to everyone and that you all have a fabulous weekend.

Well, Friday has come around once again! It’s been a busy week, with G and B being back at school, which means I’m back at work, and we’ve all returned to the normal routines. At least the amazing weather has made the transition that much easier.

So, apart from the weather, what else has made me smile this week?

1. One of the many things that I love about warm, sunny weather is being able to eat outdoors, which is exactly what we did on Saturday. I made Blueberry Lemon Scones for lunch, and we ate them (while they were still warm!) on a picnic blanket on the lawn, accompanied by fresh orange juice. Simple but delicious.

2. On Saturday night, we went out for a family meal to Cosmo, in Derby. If you’ve never been to a Cosmo, and I think that there are a few around, it is a casual dining, family restaurant, with a range of English, Chinese, Japanese, Sushi, Indian & Thai dishes, served both buffet-style and from live cooking stations. G had visited previously for a friend’s birthday, but it was a new experience for the rest of us, and it didn’t disappoint. There was a huge range of dishes available – definitely something to suit everyone – and it all appeared to be very fresh and tasty, and we had a lovely evening.

3. This week I have seen some truly beautiful sunrises and sunsets, which are so uplifting to observe. We have really been treated to some gorgeous sights on early morning dog walks and in the car in the evenings.

4. Talking of walking the dogs, G and I did so on two mornings this week before school, and it was really worth the effort of dragging ourselves out of bed early. The park where we walk was quiet, the weather was beautiful, if a lot chillier than we’d expected, and it always feels like such a special way to start the day. I have to say that the dogs all looked very bemused when we got them up on the first morning and put their leads on immediately – they were still looking a little bleary-eyed as we went through the gate!

5. We have been really enjoying our juices for breakfast again this week. I do absolutely love my juicer, and again, drinking one first thing in the morning feels like a great way to begin the day. The favourite this week has been apple, pear, kiwi, lime, cucumber, courgette, celery and spinach. They taste so good!

6. D bought me a lovely white, wooden, collage, multi-opening photo frame for Christmas, and, soon afterwards, I got the perfect photos printed for six of the openings, but I have been struggling to fill the remaining two spaces – a heart shaped one and a smaller square one. I have returned to look at it many times, especially over the past couple of weeks, as I wanted to put it in our newly decorated bedroom. But, eventually, at the weekend, I found the perfect solution – and it’s not photos! All the photos which I had chosen were black and white (so much more flattering, don’t you find?), but for the final two spaces, I found that the Mother’s Day cards, which G and B had given to me this year, would fit perfectly, with only minimal trimming, into the empty frames. They are beautiful cards, both from the same range, I believe, with a kind of lace effect, so compliment each other, and the photos, wonderfully.

7. I had a little “incident” when I collected G from school on Thursday, in that I managed to hit the kerb very hard when I parked at the side of the road – so hard that it made a rather significant hole in my tyre! Unfortunately, my car doesn’t have a spare tyre, but instead has some kind of weird tyre sealant kit, which I dutifully tried, but the sealant simply poured out of the hole. Fortunately, Speedy’s Wheels and Tyres came to my rescue, and were with me within 35 minutes of calling them, and had replaced the tyre 20 minutes later. This definitely made me VERY happy!

8. Thursday night was a lovely evening, as G and I went to the Garrick Theatre in Lichfield with friends to watch the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The King and I” performed by the Lichfield Operatic Society. I have seen many of this group’s productions over the past seven years – the standard is always phenomenal and this was no exception. All the parts were brilliantly cast, the singing and acting were  exceptional, the orchestra were faultless, and, as for the costumes – well, they just created a kaleidoscopic feast for the eyes. It must be about thirty years since I last saw “The King and I”, so I couldn’t remember exactly what happened, but I was totally unprepared for the incredibly sad ending!

9. Two very smart-looking puppies have made me happy this week! Lottie had her second and Honey her first trim this week, and they both look so beautiful. They had become pretty scruffy over the past couple of weeks, but now they are both neat and tidy – and still smell amazing three days later!

10. The final one for this week is an email I received from one of my closest friends, letting me know her new address. The reason that this made me so happy is that this new abode, unlike her previous three, is in England! She has been living abroad for the past few years, in Switzerland, then Belgium, and latterly Holland, and therefore I am so pleased that she is shortly moving back to this country, as  it means that we will be able to see much more of each other. Hurray!

We are now enjoying that Friday feeling and looking forward to a relaxing weekend, to recover and catch up from some too-late-nights and too-early-mornings. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!