Recently The Telegraph voted New Zealand the best place to live.  And it’s not for the first time.  We moved here from the UK in 2012 and on a regular basis my husband and I say to each other that we feel like it’s a privilege that we get to live here.  If I were to vote on where is the best place to bring up children, I think I’d be hard pushed to find somewhere better than New Zealand. As we have just passed our 4th NZ anniversary, and the country did just get a major accolade, I thought I would write a list of all the things that remind me I am an English woman in New Zealand.  Not quite as sexy sounding as Sting but hopefully just as interesting. People are super friendly. Right from the minute we arrived in Christchurch airport and a lovely lady scooped up our tired selves and helped us stand after a 32 hour long trip, I have always been warmed by how friendly Kiwis are.  They love to …

I love the seasons.  For me, I see the wisdom of God every time there is a change of season.  Like it says in Ecclesiastes, there is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. It’s one of the things that attracted me to New Zealand when we were considering where we could move to.  This country has seasons, sometimes all four in one day. We’re coming out of Summer and into Autumn over here and when you live in the “Garden City” this becomes a true celebration of colour.  Our road is tree lined so it’s lovely walking underneath a canopy of reds and oranges for a month or so. I don’t have a favourite season.  Gareth gets practically euphoric when Spring comes with the long days and the promise of Summer soon approaching and my friend Jan named her business after her favourite season, Autumn.  I appreciate both of these and I also love the warmth and holiday feeling of Summer and the crispness of a frosty Winter …

I have been feeling quite unsettled recently.  I say recently because there is a good chance I have been feeling this way for years now, it’s just that having children, emigrating to the other side of the world and being a working mum can really distract you from anything that is going on below the surface. Of course I can’t say for sure, but I would like to think I am somewhere close (maybe a little further to go) to the middle of my life.  Therefore I am middle aged.  This is something that I have been pondering for a few months now as I get closer and closer to my 40th birthday.  What can I say, I don’t like getting old. I consider my peers, those that I know and those that I just observe at a distance, say on the Graham Norton couch or in a blog or a Facebook feed.  All grappling with their middle-aged status.  There seems to be a scale on how we all deal with it.  At one end we have those that arrive and find peace and …

You may have noticed that I have had a little blip in writing a blog everyday over the last three days? This was mainly due to me moving office and my computer being turned off for two days.  And also sticking my hand up at the last PTA meeting to help with a cake stall for school on Sunday … when will I learn??? I probably could have carried on with the blogs but when everything was boxed up or midway between rooms my brain just couldn’t find space to think creatively. The office is now upstairs in what was Jackson’s bedroom and the wee man is enjoying a more square shaped room with actual walls. I’ve been banging on to Gareth all summer, when the children have been rioting together upstairs until 10pm most nights, that we need to get Jackson into my office.  First of all we’re splitting the terrors up.  Jackson gets a room that he might actually like to play in on his own sometimes.  And the Lego and cars that have literally taken …

My relationship with baking has developed into a great love over the course of my life. I have always been known as one with a sweet tooth.  My father’s family have a sweet tooth and I am my father’s daughter in so many ways.  You could say I was born to make cakes. My favourite grandparent was my father’s mother, my Grandma.  Jean Winney was beautiful, elegant, talented, intelligent and spirited.  I loved hearing her talk about when she would exercise race horses on the moors when she was a young woman, or how much she enjoyed being a dentists assistant during the war.  I imagine that if Grandma had been born in a later generation she would have probably been quite an independent, adventurous woman, but we shall never know… One thing is for sure, she could bake. And I’m fairly certain my first baking lesson will have been from Grandma – I can still remember placing wings on freshly iced fairy cakes at my Grandma’s house and the fuss we would all make at Christmas …

I’m a week in on ‘Make-A-Change March’ and whilst I do want to have a month off and not put lots of pressure on myself to get through a to-do list, I thought I would just have a quick check-in on the things I said I would be aiming for this month. Well there’s still quite a bit to be done…ahem…. For me, the early starts is the key challenge that I absolutely want to master by the end of the month, because I am convinced that if I could start every week day at 6am (I mean seriously that’s possible isn’t it??) I would easily achieve a lot of the other things on that list. And yet, I find it so hard to lift my head off the pillow the other side of 7am. Why?  Because I rarely get to sleep before 11pm. So for the rest of the week (and let’s face it, the rest of my life would be the ultimate aim!) I am going to do all that I can to …

Well hello there! Yes it has been a while hasn’t it.  Five months in fact, since I wrote something here.  For many reasons I just wasn’t in the right place for blogging so I just didn’t.  Nothing dramatic or sinister, simply that life did not afford me the pleasure of sitting in my office, at my desk, with space to be creative.  I’m hopeful that this is all about to change. On Friday I finished a job.  I may well unpack how I felt about the job in a future blog, but for now let’s just say, it was challenging.  And not in a good way. I’ve given myself a month off.  Because when you work freelance you can do that.  And frankly I need it.  My family need me to have it. I need to pause.  I need to have days slow down to a pace where there is room for thought and reflection.  Our house needs to be put back in order.  My body needs to be given health and vitality again.  My …

It was once suggested to me that I was a “through time” person.  What this means is that I tend to focus on what is ahead.  I’m a planner, somewhat of a dreamer (but not in the staring out of a window in a daze sort of a way), someone who is listening to you (no honestly) but sometimes I have been known to be also thinking about my reply and likely to interrupt (yes that is awful of me and I’m trying to change). In contrast an “in time” person is someone who is totally involved in the here and now.  This person is unaware of time passing, they are fully invested in the conversation or activity they are in and they’ll worry about the next thing when it comes and slaps them across the face. Like a wise young four year old son continually warns me, “I’ve got good news and I have got bad news for you Mummy”.  The good news is that being a “through time” person I have a large capacity …

In honour of the sixth series of The Great British Bake Off being aired back home at the moment, I have bought Series 1-5 on iTunes and am rather over-indulging on the highs and lows of this very wonderful BBC series. During one of my GBBO marathon sessions (don’t tell Gareth I think I watched an entire series in under 48 hours!) it dawned on me that life is very much like the baking of a signature bake.  Bear with me here, I know after the above confession you will be assuming my mind is now addled by the obsessive pursuit of the “perfect bake” and the highly sought after ” original combination of flavours”, but I honestly think there is something to be learnt from the experiences of our harangued amateur bakers. For any of you who don’t know what a ‘signature bake’ is (and frankly I’m saddened by your ignorance) this is the bake that each contestant in the GBBO is required to do at the beginning of each themed week.  So if it were “Cake Week” then all the …

I love coming home to this. Because I like to run.  I love being out in the open air, feeling physically strong and mentally free, having time to myself, seeing the world at my pace.  And all of that feels even better when I am wearing Sweaty Betty clothing. Since my first purchase from Sweaty Betty, this brand became a Lovemark for me.  They have my lifelong commitment.  I literally don’t wear any other brand of sportswear.  I can tell you all the reasons why, but this is not a sponsored blog. Oh go on then, it’s because they make sportswear pretty and feminine, their stuff always fits well, it’s 97% perfect quality and their customer service on the 3% that isn’t, makes up for it perfectly.  Put a different way, ‘they had me at hello’. The book, ‘Lovemarks – the future beyond brands’ by Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, goes into lots of depth on the subject and I’ll be honest I’ve only skim read it, but from what I gather his essential point is that …