Mummy's Coffee Morning

The book rest cafe in Exmouth is a wonderful discovery. From the street the facade is slightly faded and relatively old fashioned, if you were to judge this book by its cover you would probably not be expecting very much. However a quick stroll through the book store downstairs, trying not to be distracted by the huge array of books on offer, leads you to a tiny staircase. There is a space to park the buggy downstairs before ascending the creaky and narrow staircase.  When you reach the top and open the door you will be wonderfully surprised! The book rest cafe opens up into a large space that seems twice as big as the shop downstairs. There are loads of tables packed into the main space and some trendy, squashy sofas in the window, with a lovely view.  Despite the amount of seating available the cafe manages to still feel roomy and uncrowded. I always get the sense of being in a friends cosy farmhouse kitchen when sitting in there and could easily spend hours there.  The space

Oscar is my tiddler. He is 20 months into this world and is a mad ball of continuous motion and energy. With this in mind I still decided it would be a fantastic idea to book us tickets to see my mum, in Devon, by train... For those of you not aware, the journey to Exmouth, from where we live, takes approximately 3hours. Naturally I was completely shitting it when the night before travelling was suddenly upon us and I looked frantically between the huge rucksack, general rucksack and pushchair that I would be lugging around the next morning. I am a notoriously awful packet, I freak out about it for days packing little bits here and there then have a massive packing related panic and end up with way too many knickers (You just never know) and not enough socks. Throw into the mix the random may weather and packing for a tiddler who needs SOME item of clothing changed every two minutes and my lightweight carefree packing quickly turned into the same enormous rucksack I take away with

It does not take much to overwhelm me. As an anxiety sufferer, and I make no secret of that, I am used to having the crushing feeling of being overwhelmed descend on me like a sack of shit. I obviously have no comparison to what being overwhelmed feels like to an 'ordinary (if indeed there is such a thing) person. But to me it is an all encompassing feeling that can come on quite suddenly or can spend it's time brewing in the back of my mind before rearing forward like a greyhound after a rabbit. I am aware that I have now rambled for at least two paragraphs...therein lies the problem. My anxiety induced feeling of overwhelmed comes hand in hand with a helpless, confused procrastination. I can be 100% overwhelmed by the mess in my kitchen and 100% unable to do anything but wonder aimless around in circles perhaps picking up a dirty plate and putting it down again. Anyway, the main reason I wanted to write today is because after about 2 years if being mainly anxiety free (is

Since having my son I started to become more aware of my moon cycle and how much this affects my daily life. I don't know if I just didn't notice before or if my body and mind have become more sensitive to the affects but I can certainly sense a pattern that wasn't there before. I am noticing that for a week or two every month I feel particularly attractive, sexy and confident. In this time I am powerful and I can believe that I am enough for myself. This time slots nicely in to a feeling of creative frustration. I have so many ideas and projects and want to do them all right now, the trouble is that this time is immediately  followed by a lack of confidence and motivation. This inevitably  results I  half finished projects and lost ideas. I feel morose and deflated, everything is painfully irritating during this time and I am frustrated and full of despair at myself. Just when I have lost all hope, the feeling of uselessness reaches a crescendo of breaking things and ge

I have had a pretty stressful and emotional time recently. A lot has been going on in my life nd the lives of my family. And I mean a lot! So when I received an email telling me my article was going live on the green parent magazine I was massively excited. It was a Ray of sunshine in the cloud. Seeing my first published piece of writing on the Green Parent magazine filled me with a swell of pride. Pride is something I rarely feel of myself in fact I don't often allow myself to feel many positive things about myself, I save them for everybody else, which is wrong I know so I am basking joyfully in every moment of pride and excitement I feel bout this. https://thegreenparent.co.uk/articles/read/a-positive-birth-story