Spring is a great time for goal setting so I have opened the doors to my Life Book E-Course , which is all about dreaming and planning, and enrolments end tomorrow (Friday) at midnight. I have been emailing my list with some excerpts from the content and my top tips for making and keeping to goals. I wanted to share some here on the blog too.

Read How to make goals that stick here.

Spring goal setting- it’s a thing!

So first up- why Spring?! I know January is the traditional time for goal setting, new starts and resolutions. And when I first ran my E-Course in January over 100 people joined me to do just that,(but using my much kinder approach!) I actually like the quiet of winter for dreaming and planning and always have...

Buuuut…

Spring is, in many ways, a much MUCH better time to set some goals and intentions and make them happen!

Heres why

Have you ever made a goal only to completely forget about it?!

Yeah. So have I.

I've always loved dreaming and making plans and have always written in a journal. It’s just part of my make up, and I love hearing about other peoples too. For years my hopes and dreams brought me a lot go joy and filled reams of pages in my journal….but they stayed as just that. Hopes and dreams written in a journal.

It wasn't until Idid the following things that I began to actually start taking steps toward my goals. Pretty mega steps actually. (quitting my job, moving house and figuring out motherhood sort of steps 😱)

t’s half term here and Frankie-Rose’s school bunches all of its inset days together so we get a second sneaky week off, and boy are we ready for it. Both kids are so tired! Auden has a permanent cold and Frankie-Rose really needs some quiet days after a busy term and SAT’s (ugh). Our plans are still materialising, but we are certainly planning to do some holidaying at home (actually one of my favourite things to do) and generally take it verrry easy.

We have been busy in our garden lately, half planting, half slug fighting, and are spending more and more time outside. I decided to throw a simple celebratory tea party for our family to celebrate the imminent end of term (YES), the gorgeous weather and just because I fancied it. I like getting the nice glasses and crockery out just for us, it elevates things and the kids love it too, they feel the specialness of it somehow. I worked with Hobbycraft in creating this post which is a bit of a dream for me. Hobbycraft was one of my favourite shops as a teenager (I know, I know I was so cool). I really remember my excitement at the prospect of a trip to the Bolton branch of Hobbycraft trip with my cousin and aunt. What can I say, I’m just a stationary-and-craft-shops kinda gal.

Ok, so the details!

March! A whole new season! What a hopeful, life-filled month this is. The ground is already teeming with new life, evidenced in the delicate cups of the crocuses shyly opening toward the sun, and the hanging heads of snowdrops bobbing in the wind. Daffodils are trumpeting and the bird song is intensifying by a few decibels each morning too. If you manage to catch the sun in a windless moment, it feels gently warm on your face, a sweet promise of what’s to come.

Welcome, October!

October is my favourite month of the year (I know, I know I say that about lots of them!) It’s my Birthday month and the most beautiful, colourful, Autumnal month too.

I have been taking stock of the last year as my birthday approaches and also finalising plans for the last part of the year, which is shaping up to be busy! I am finishing off an e-book at the moment, it’s a Guide to styling and Hosting a gathering which will be out in the next couple of weeks. I am also planning the launch of my first E-Course too - all about the Life Book (aka The January Book) and journalling (this is the first time i've formally mentioned that one- whoop!). LASTLY I will be releasing tickets THIS WEEK to TWO festive workshops in my home. One wreath making evening workshop, and one day long festive workshop with Milkwood candles; where guests will make a bespoke scented candle and a Christmas wreath with me. Hurray! Get on the mailing list here to be the first to be notified. I’m excited to get all of these creative babies of mine out into the world and am loving the turn of season as an excuse to hunker down, write and be creative.

How are you all doing? We are approaching the final weeks of the summer holidays and we are all feeling… tired. It’s not the exhausted end of school tired we were experiencing in July, but rather a sort of heat induced miasma that makes us all a little extra grouchy. Dave and I have been going to bed at 9.30 every night and the kids have been asleep early too (they raise really early- so we make up for our evenings together there!)

I haven’t been around much on my blog or Instagram, and when I look around at my community online, it seems many of us have taken a break or aren’t around much online at the moment.

Whether you have kids or not, July and August in the UK is an odd time, when emails are mostly met with ‘out-of-office’ replies, and the heat makes working that bit harder. Lounging around by the sea or pool in the heat is wonderful, but trying to function and work and parent in it every day for weeks on end certainly took it’s toll on me! This summer has confirmed that I am definitely not a hot hot hot weather person. Keep me at 24 degrees please. Lots of parents are busy with their kids over the holidays and things just seem quieter.

In January I released a free downloadable guide called the January Book. It is the planning and review process Dave and I go through each year, and I put 9 years worth of experience into the guide. The response it had blew me right away and it has had to date over 1000 downloads. Part of the January Book process is reviewing it in the middle of the year, so I wanted to write a post about this. I also wanted to write a mini mid-year review guide.

Incredibly, we are half way through the year of 2018, and at the peak of summer. The Solstice has passed, as has the full moon for the month, and all of these factors have inspired me to release and review. The 1st July marks the start of the last half of the year. It is a very good time to review the goals we set at the start of the year and see how we are doing, assess whether any of our goals need to change, harvest the lessons learned and figure out some practicable action steps.

Whether you have been checking in on your goals regularly, or you can’t really even remember what they were, this process is useful.

My July Book is a shorter version of my January Book. Similarly to the January Book, this guide is the culmination of 9.5 years of mine and Dave's planning and review process. We have tweaked and fine tuned the process over the years and this here is the best version yet, and the one that serves us the best. We hope it can be helpful for you too. It won’t take long to fill in, but I always find the mid year check in incredibly useful.

Welcome, July! The beginning of the second half of the year; the perfect time to take a step back and check in on those goals you made at the start of the year. I have been looking over my January goals, and have a blog post ready to go up tomorrow with my process. It has been, as usual, revealing, hard at times and liberating at times too. How are your goals or your word for the year holding up?

July is, for many, the pinnacle of the summer. The weather is warm and dry, the school summer holidays start in just a few weeks and the best of the seasons fruit and flowers are abundant. This summer in particular has been the warmest we've had in years and I am drinking it up! I'm living in sandals, sunglasses and sundresses and we are busy planning some summer adventures too. Hurrah!

Earlier this month, we became entirely bewitched by a cabin on a private lake. It's called Ditchling Cabin, in Hassocks, Sussex, and is listed with Canopy & Stars. We had never stayed in a cabin before, nor on a lake either. I thought I preferred coastal water but boy, was I wrong. We completely and entirely fell in love with the cabin, and the lake life that came with it.

The lake is completely private with no neighbours at all. That in itself felt totally luxurious! We ate delicious vegan food cooked on the Big Green Egg barbecue, slept in the most enormous bed you have ever seen, bathed in the bathtub of dreams. There were pink and purple sunsets reflected in the water, trout jumping and splashing back down, creating ripples all over the lake. Mature trees gently swishing and swaying at all times, constant birdsong and buzzing. The sounds alone were wonderful.

We ate in swimming costumes on the deck, had afternoon swims, and family boat paddles. There was fishing, journalling, reading and fire pit lounging.

We were there for 3 days, after a really busy month, and it was so desperately needed. It had such a magical affect on my mood. When I returned I realised how much more relaxed I felt. I wasn't holding tension in my shoulders and chest and felt generally calmer. The difference was amazing, actually! I felt like I really and truly exhaled in those 3 days by the lake.

Let me show you around.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time in my life, imagining my dream house. My list is really quite detailed, and I have loved asking my instagram followers for the things on their dream list. I appreciated all the comments that involved less obvious things like plants, window seats, books and sheds!

One of the things on my list was having tumbling red geraniums bursting out of my window boxes. I have just always loved them, I think since seeing them on holidays in France, Venice and Croatia when I was younger.

​June June June! Strawberries and Peonies and Elderflower! Sandals and barbecues and freckles! June has been a sweet, warm month for us Brits so far and I am soaking it up. This month I am committing to rest after a weird heart health scare last month (anxiety related heart palpitations - fun times!) We have booked a last minute mini break next week, and I have been making more time for small moments of rest in my daily life too. Enjoying the sun in the garden, outside cups of coffee, taking myself off for naps and little lie-downs, watching Netflix in the evenings for the first time in months.

June is the midpoint of 2018, how has it been for you?! This month, whilst on holiday,I will be looking back at my January book and assessing where we are against where we thought we would be. I will try to share a blog post about it this month, a part 2 of the January Book, if you like (in case you don’t know what i’m talking about, The January Book is the planning and review process we go through each year)

10 Wonderful Things to Make, Do and Celebrate in June!