Day 9 of blog everyday...

Day 9, Thursday: A moment in your day (this can be just a photo or both a photo and words)

13º in Scotland means a quick trip to the shops and enjoying sitting in the sun eating crisps and reading Disney magazines.  Today was a good day.

Oh also look at all those curls! My boy is a cutie :-)

Day 8 of blog everyday...

Day 8, Wednesday: A piece of advice you have for others. Anything at all.

The best piece of advice I've ever had is to "talk about it". If you don't feel happy or there are things bothering you the best thing you can do is talk about it. When I didn't talk about it and bottled it up it would come out in bad ways. So now if I need to talk about it I talk about it. It's not always easy but it works. 

For some reason today the post isn't waffly or long. I hope I haven't lost my bloggy mojo..... Nah I think I'm just tired! A sleepy baby, crazy dogs and too many errands to run = less chatty me.

Day 7 of blog everyday...

Day 7, Tuesday: The thing(s) you're most afraid of


Yet again a topic I could answer with a list. I love this challenge! :-)

Seriously though I've never been a obviously scared person, however I am afraid of lots of things. I'm terrified of all the usual things, illness, something happening to my family, friends or even more scary, my child. I'm scared of social situations, of making new friends and keeping the old ones. I'm scared of the things my child may have to suffer, even the little things like scraped knees and having his heart broken. 

I've spent a lot of time lately trying to put my fears in gods hands and let him take the burden. It is something I struggle with deeply but I am working so hard at it. It really does make a difference. Instead of taking my fears away it feels like they become a little bit lighter.

I'm still scared of clowns though... I do not understand them at all!! Also spiders, big huge size of my fist spiders. Scary stuff.

Rather than a picture of my fears I figured I'd share our sunny day!!
fyi... there was a huge spider in that shed back there.... :-)

Day 6 of blog every day...

Day 6, Monday: If you couldn't answer with your job, how would you answer the question, 'what do you do'?



What do I do? That's quite a deep question really. I wonder about this as I don't have a job in the traditional sense. I'm a stay at home mama to my lovely little man Isaac. That's what I do.

I play. With lego, a play kitchen, Happyland figurines, mega bloks and cuddly toys. I make music with him. On a keyboard, the drums or the various xylophone/maracas we have.  I walk around the house and the garden very very slowly. I watch countless amounts of Disney junior and remember the names of all the characters and the words to all the songs.

I cuddle him when he cries. I kiss his ouchies and wipe away his tears. I hold him in the night when he has unexplained nightmares. I cuddle him to sleep at nap time and cuddle him again when he wakes.

I make his breakfast, lunch and dinner. I bake him cakes, cook him healthy dinners and pretend I don't notice when granny gives him biscuits.

I teach him about the world around him. I name the animals on his wallpaper and do (bad) impressions of their noises.

I photograph every day of his life. The funny, the cute and the ordinary. I document his whole life for him to investigate in the future and for us to remember.

I pretend I'm not scared of spiders or clowns so he won't inherit my silly phobias.

I do an abnormal amount of research into safety measures to make sure my little one is as protected as possible in every situation.

I ferry him to toddler groups, music groups and swimming lessons. I wear an unflattering swimming costume in public to make sure he's safe in the pool.

I tell him stories of family members he doesn't see often or will never see. I teach him about our faith and truth. 

I love and cherish him unconditionally and always will. Nothing can or will ever be done to change that.


I'm also a wife. I've been a mother longer and that just came naturally to me. Being a wife is harder. It involves much of the same...
Showing an interest in lego and computer games..... Ferrying him around..... 

In all seriousness though marriage is a joy that requires work. Relationships have never come easily to me and marriage comes far easier than any others did. I have never been so at peace as the day of my wedding. I knew 100% I was where I was supposed to be. Bringing my family into a little unit in the eyes of God.


So what do I do? I learn. I learn how to be a better mother, wife, friend, daughter. I learn how to live a life of fellowship while living the life I want. I learn how to be a better person every day. So while I teach my son I am always learning. Isaac is teaching me as much, if not more than I am teaching him. 

Day 5 of blog everyday....

Day 5, Sunday: Publicly profess your love and devotion for one of your blogger friends. What makes them great? Why do you love them? If you don't have blogger friends, talk about a real-life friend or even a family member

So technically I only have a couple of blog friends and they're people I knew before I knew they had a blog. I do have loads of blogs I read on a daily basis and I love the people behind them in an "internet" way. That does sound strange and I do not want to come across as a creepy stalker type! So I think I will write a little about a cuple of the bloggers I love and why. :-)

Blog 1: Kaelah over at Little Chief Honeybee. I've been reading Kaelah's blog for over 2 years now which is amazing to me! It's been wonderful watching her life grow and change over the years in a similar way to mine has. I feel I can relate to her and see a lot of similarity in our opinions on certain topics. I've had the pleasure of a very small amount of actual interaction with her and can confirm she is as nice as her blog shows!

Blog 2: Jen over at I Heart Organizing. I only discovered this blog around a year or so ago and am in love! I love the organisational skills Jen, and her contributors, have. It makes me aspire to organise my home in a more beautiful way!

Blog 3: Sarah over at Sarah Rooftops. I knew Sarah before she began her blog. However it was only in a friend of a friend sort of way. I'm happy to say that I can now count her as an actual internet friend! Reading her posts allowed me to see that we actually had a lot in common. It also made me braver and able to actually talk via facebook. Remember I said in a previous post I could be strangely shy? Sarah's blog put me at ease and also showed me another side to the city I live in. There are places she mentioned I had never even heard of and I've lived in the area for 26 years!

So there it is a short list (another list! I'm obsessed!!) of blogger love. Pop over to their pages and say hi, I guarantee you won't be disappointed you did. :-)

Day 4 of blog everyday...

Day 4, Saturday: Favorite quote (from a person, from a book, etc) and why you love it


"Just be yourself it doesn't matter if it's good enough for someone else"
"The Middle" by Jimmy Eat World

My favourite quote is from a song by a band I only like two songs by.  I sometimes find it ironic that I don't like any of their other music and yet this one line inspired so much in me and still does.

Most of my life I struggled with depression and self esteem issues. I'm thankful to say after a life changing event around 6 years ago I am a very different person. However this quote really speaks back to then.  

My issues meant I ALWAYS picked the WRONG men. When I say picked I mean embarrassed myself for. I spent a lot of my youth confusing lust and love and expecting to be treated poorly. It's a cliche that until you love yourself you can't be loved but it's a cliche for a reason.

This song was played at pretty much every club/bar/social gathering I would frequent, so was a pretty big deal in my life. At the height of my issues I listened to it and for the first time really heard it. Being something I wasn't (which I was doing every day) was never going to make me happy. I couldn't rely on other people making me happy either as they would never be able to. Even if I found the perfect man, he would have failed because I expected him too. I expected to be disappointed and let down. At that time I was getting tattooed quite a lot and I decided to have this quote tattooed on my ankle to remind me of what I had realised.

It didn't quite pan out the way and things went a bit more awry for me! However, as is true for most people, hitting rock bottom meant I could build myself back up! I learnt, with a lot of work, to love myself. To be happy and realise I deserved to be happy! This quote really came to my mind a lot during this process, helped by being permanently written on my skin probably! But I finally, finally understood what it meant. I understood it applied to men and to all my other relationships in life.

Being me is what makes my husband love me. Meeting him was the true beginning of a new life for me in relationships. I could be myself, bad and good, and it was more than good enough. It was what I needed. It made me use this view in other relationships too.  Sometimes I wasn't working hard enough to understand the people I loved. 

I also learnt to view things the other way. If someones best wasn't good enough for me that wasn't their fault but mine. I can choose to feel hurt by other people actions or I can choose to understand them better and realise a lot of the time they don't even know they've hurt me. Some people may be struggling the way I was and by allowing them to be themselves perhaps I can help them realise what I did. Because it's not about love or sex or men or women or relationships, it's about people. Being yourself is the one true way of being happy. Changing yourself, or pretending you're something different, will only bring you heartache. 

So be yourself. Love yourself and embrace who you are. If someone else doesn't appreciate it or feel it's enough for them then the truth is they aren't enough for you. Life's too short to pretend and far too short to spend time on people who don't love you for you.

Said tattoo..... filters make my legs look fabulous!

Side note: I beginning to think this challenge is less about blogging and more about my stream of consciousness. If you feel I'm waffling I apologise! I'm trying to be very honest to help me find my voice and I hope by not editing my posts I can. Being honest in this sort of forum is very new for me! 

Day 3 of blog everyday...

Prompt: Day 3, Friday: Things that make you uncomfortable


I've debated over this post quite a lot. All day in fact! I'm pretty sure no-one wants to read a long list of the things that make me uncomfortable so I thought I'd see what appeared today and tell you about them. In list form. Cause I love lists. I can't help it and I won't apologise for it! ;-)

1.  Being in a crowd/group of people. Despite attending the same toddler group at my church since Isaac was 3 months old (he's now 18 months) I still feel like the shy awkward new girl every week. I get there early so I can have a chat with the volunteers (my mum and the rectors wife!) but when other mums arrive I can feel myself physicall pull away and try not to catch anyones eye. I never used to be this shy. Back when I had "issues" I was the life and soul of every party. Now I'm happy in myself I'm as shy as they come. Strange but true.

2. Other peoples politics... Expecially when they broadcast them on facebook. How do you respond when half of your friends list "likes" a post you inherently disagree with? You don't. So I spend half my time ignoring people who otherwise are good friends! Just don't talk politics with them and we're fine. The particualr case today was the vote for Scotlands independence..... 

3.  Speaking of things you can't talk about with friends... It makes me uncomfortable to discuss religion with most of my friends. In fact nearly all of them. I've discovered over time that it would appear most atheists I know feel that fact gives them the right to tell me my faith is wrong, maybe not in so many words but the intention is there. Even though I would never presume to tell them theirs is. It makes me uncomfortable that there is this double standard among my generation and that it means most of my friends don't know how important my faith and religion are to me.

4.  Making polite chit chat with a checkout person when all I want to do is tell them they're scanning my items wrong! Stop giving me the shopping all out of order! I put heavy things on the belt first because I want the heavy things first! Don't lean over my large bag of potatoes to scan the bread first. It only means I have to wait to pack said bread and end up looking like I should have accepted your "help" with my packing. Although that would have ended in more than one broken egg I'll bet.

5.  Parking in a very busy public car park. This uncomfortableness has been alleviated somewhat by my lovely car (which I've now had a grand total of 7 months and still love completely) having parking sensors and a rear camera. I still get that uncomfy feeling though that I must be doing it wrong. Especially when someone is watching me from their car....


So judging by this list of things that made me uncomfortable today, I think I have some work to do.  I don't believe my social anxiety will get magically better anytime soon but I am working on it. I think it'll be a work in progress forever.  As for not talking to friends about things I think I'm learning some friends are for sharing certain things with and others aren't.  It doesn't make either group better than the other it just makes them different and I'm ok with that.