I’ve only been blogging for a couple of months now so I’m very grateful to Lizzie at Firstooth for nominating me for this award!

The Liebster Award is a great way for new bloggers, or bloggers with a smaller following, to get to know each other. In accepting the Liebster Award, there are some rules to follow as best you can:

1)Acknowledge the blogger who nominated you and link to their blog.
2) Post the Liebster Award badge on your blog.
3) Write 11 facts about yourself.
4) Nominate 4-11 bloggers (with fewer than 1,000 Twitter followers) who you feel deserve the award.
5) Answer the 11 questions posted by the blogger that nominated you.
6) Write 11 new questions for your nominees.

11 facts about me:

1. When we got married, we decided that we wanted four children, as I’m one of four. Then we had two, realised how hard it is to be a parent, and stopped there! But the two we have are fabulous!

2. My parents both died when I was in my very early thirties, which changed our outlook on life as we realised that life is very short and you don’t know what’s round the corner.

3. We considered emigrating to New Zealand a few years ago but, after careful consideration and research, decided that it wasn’t for us.

4. I love reading, and read all different genres of books.

5. I met my husband when we were at school – and love the fact that we appear on the same whole school photo, despite being in different year groups.

6. I did a French degree at university but have no idea why! I should have done history.

7. Yoga is my favourite kind of exercise.

8. I adore walking our three dogs every day – they are just too gorgeous!

9. I’ve recently re-discovered the joys of crosswords and colouring – and love both!

10. One of my favourite things to do is to go to the theatre, for both plays and musicals.

11. I’ve worked as a primary school teacher, a manager in the civil service, a web designer and now control the finances of the company I run with my husband.

Lizzie’s questions:

1.What is your biggest secret?
I don’t really have any secrets, apart from how I really feel inside sometimes.

2.Do you have a guilty pleasure?
Yes – the “Real Housewives” of anywhere, and peanut butter straight from the jar!

3.What’s the hardest thing you’ve had to do?
Spend a year in France as part of my degree, away from my family and D.

4.When you get a spare hour how do you spend it?
Reading, playing the piano or doing a crossword.

5.If you could live anywhere, where would you live?
Norfolk or Grenada in the Caribbean.

6.What made you decide to start a blog?
To record the little things which bring us joy and happiness, as a place to collect memories of our family life and as a gratitude journal.

7.What’s your favourite type of blog to read?
Lifestyle – a bit about people’s everyday lives, and ones with interior design inspiration.

8.Is the experience of being a parent different from how you imagined it?
Yes – it is so much harder but can also be more fun.

9.If you can go out, where is your favourite place to eat?
I love good British pub food and, as a contrast, Waga Mama!

10. What is the best thing you’ve ever bought?
Our firepit! It has already given us so many lovely family (screen-free!) evenings out in the garden until late.

11.Where is your favourite place to go as a family?
For a holiday – Grenada; for the weekend, CarFest; for a day trip, a Norfolk beach or for a lovely walk.

My nominees:

One Lonely Momma

What Mummy Did Next

Hills and Daffodils

XO-Arexa

CocoCandyfloss

Dear Dads

My questions:

1. Where is your favourite place to go on holiday?
2. What achievement are you most proud of?
3. What is your favourite thing about blogging?
4. What is your dream job?
5. Who would you like to be stuck on a desert island with?
6. What is your favourite food?
7. What is your favourite book, and why?
8. Do you have any unusual habits?
9. How would you describe your house interior style?
10. Do you have any phobias?
11. What one thing would you tell your 18 year old self?

If you’re able to participate in this then please tag me once you’ve completed it so I can have a read! @Daisytrixabelle

As I said when I first started this blog almost three months ago (woah – where did that time go?!), one of my motivations behind it was to create a record of the little things which bring me and my family joy and happiness. Part of this is most definitely covered by my Happy Friday posts, in which I record ten things which have made me happy in that week. But another aspect of blogging that I’m loving is being able to document, in words and photos, some of the oh-so-lovely times we have as a family. G and B are growing up so quickly, and we already feel that our days together as a four are numbered, so I feel that it will become even more special as time goes on to have this as a journal of the happy times that we have experienced together.

Talking of which, we have just enjoyed an absolutely lovely weekend! After the past few weeks having been taken up with G and B revising for their end of year exams, it felt so special to be able to spend Saturday all together. We began the day with a fabulous breakfast of the delicious croissants which I had bought at the farm shop earlier in the week, then we went back to Kedleston Hall, where I had walked the dogs the previous weekend, as it was a beautiful sunny day and I really wanted to share the lovely walk with them. We had a great time – lots of pleasant, relaxed chatter, fun with the dogs, with the prospect of our first picnic of the year at the end! We had walked fairly quickly, so felt that we truly deserved our lunch of bread, cheese, pate, crisps, sugar snap peas and watermelon  – and to be able to eat outside always feels like such a treat. Of course, we had to finish off our treat with ice creams, so we all went home very happy.

As the weather was so kind to us, we decided that we would light the fire pit and barbecue our evening meal over it, so we had homemade burgers, fish and homemade garlic bread baked on the side of the grill – it was so good! G, with her obsession with bacon, then decided to try cooking bacon over the fire, which, I have to say, worked very well. We had such a great night out there that we stayed out until 11 o’clock, with D cooking yet more bacon at about 10.30pm! It was a very special night.

The following day saw me and G going for a shopping trip into Derby to buy some final holiday clothes. It was a really lovely “girly” trip – and we may even have got some tasty lunch at Ed’s Diner whilst we were out!

See, I know already that this is one of those posts that I will come back to in the months and years to come, to remind myself of what a lovely weekend it was. I don’t want to suggest that such weekends are so few and far between, but some are just especially lovely, don’t you think?

I can’t believe that it’s June already – time is certainly flying – not that I’m complaining, with our holiday now being only six weeks away!

We had a pretty quiet weekend, which was nice. One of the highlights of it was my trip to Kedleston Hall, near Derby. We have had our National Trust membership for several years, but have certainly not made the most of it in the past couple, so I’m determined to change that this year. So, when I knew that G was going to be busy revising, and D and B had planned a run and a game of tennis for Saturday afternoon, I decided that I would take the dogs for a lovely walk at Kedleston Hall. We have been into the hall and walked here a few times previously, but I took a very different route this time, doing the “long walk” (which isn’t at all long, but at 3.2 miles is the longest of the set walks on the estate).

As you can see from the photos, it was absolutely beautiful! The route started off near the hall itself, from where I walked down to the Adam Bridge, then turned to the right to walk amongst the sheep and lambs alongside the gorgeous lake, complete with swans. I passed two weirs before reaching the end of the lake and turning up into woodland, continuing to then follow a pretty, sun dappled path up into the woods which run along the back of the estate and hall. There were stunning views of the hall and countryside along the way – as you can tell, I got a little carried away with the camera! I was stomping at a pretty good speed with the dogs, but, had I wanted to stop, there are plenty of benches dotted along the way, often with amazing views to admire as you rest or have a picnic. The woodland path then dropped back down to the side of the hall, where we had started – the great thing, following our misadventures of last weekend, was that there was no possibility of getting lost – the route was very clear and simple to follow! Phew!

Now that I have discovered this walk, I think that it will become a very regular trip, as it was just so lovely. The only downside is that dogs have to be on their leads all the time. I can fully understand this on the parkland areas, because of the freely roaming sheep, but it seemed a shame that I couldn’t let them off to run around and explore the woodland areas.

Having done two fabulous walks in the past two weekends on National Trust properties, I feel quite confident that we WILL get the most out of our membership this year.

Three day weekends are just THE BEST, aren’t they? They encompass everything you love about normal weekends but with extra servings of fun and relaxation. Three relaxing evenings, three mornings to lie in…what’s not to love?!? I feel that we really made the most of this last Bank Holiday weekend, so here’s a little round up of what we got up to:

:: We had three great nights out by the firepit, making s’mores, eating “bangers and mash” and we even barbecued our dinner on it, with D cooking bacon steaks, burgers and sea bass to perfection.

:: We did two fantastic walks. D and I did one alone on Saturday, around the Melbourne area. It started off near Melbourne Pool, which is a lovely spot – and is where Honey had her first encounter with geese! It was then a lovely, varied walk – we went across meadows, past bluebell woods, alongside the golf course, through the village of Breedon-on-the-Hill, through a rapeseed field, before returning to Melbourne itself (for a quick stop-off for a drink before heading home). It was a beautiful walk, not even spoilt by the fact that we added 1.25 miles to it by getting a little lost! We then did a second great walk on Monday, with B as well (G was busy revising with friends), around Calke Abbey and Staunton Harold Reservoir. Again, this walk will definitely be repeated, as we loved it – the reservoir is stunning, the bluebell woods we walked through just beautiful, and it was lovely to explore a little more of the Calke Abbey estate than we have previously done. We have decided that following directions it not our strong point, as we went wrong AGAIN but, again, this wasn’t a problem at all. The puppies loved the walks too, as there was plenty of opportunity for them to be off their leads, so got so much exercise.

:: We had fun playing “Risk” – as you can see, the boys take it all very seriously!

:: We did a little spot of baking – vanilla cupcakes with strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and meringue mixed in.

:: We had delicious breakfasts in bed on two mornings. We love spending time in our newly decorated bedroom, so D and I took it in turns to get up to deal with the dogs and prepare yummy breakfasts, which we then took back up and enjoyed in a very leisurely manner.

So that was our incredibly relaxing weekend – I enjoyed every second of it! What did you get up to?