2014, Welcome to my Life

I've been gone a fair old while, eh? My bloglovin' feed is full to the brim of round up posts and people motivated to start a new chapter in their lives.  It's somewhat inspirational and it's what prompted me to sit down and type.

2013 and has flown by.  It has been an epic year and has brought a few turning points to my life.  The summer was amazing, it will always be up there as one of the best summers of my life.  I made sure it was filled with plenty of plans and friends and to make it all even better the sun actually stayed around for longer than usual.  Summer came to an aprubt end for me when I suffered a brain trauma and spent 2 days in an intensive care unit and then a further 2 weeks of recovery at home.  I don't remember much about it but the get well wishes and concern from people were overwhelming.  My husband had to watch me be loaded into a helicopter with half a dozen tubes attached to my body, to hear the words "I can't promise she will be ok" and to then drive 3 hours to be at my bedside on no sleep and whole lot of worry of his shoulders.  Someone said he was a hero.  I think so too.

A week later was our very first wedding anniversary.  It was truly wonderful reminiscing about our day.  It was literally the best day ever, the emotions you go through on your wedding are so indescribable to anyone else - I would do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Another significant time for me this year was falling pregnant with our first little cherub.  After you get married everyone just kind of expects you to have a baby and a lot of people feel like it's ok to question to your motives and plans for the future.  I knew before we got married that I wouldn't have a baby straight way.  I wanted to enjoy being "us" for a while, to take the time to just be a married couple. I wanted to make sure I made the most of my summer, it's my favourite time of year and I knew when we made the decision to start a family that the dynamics in our friendship group would change and we wouldn't necessarily be able to do everything that we can do now but I am excited to welcome our little June baby into our lives and to share all our fun times with this little mixture of the 2 of us.

There's been so much that I will remember about 2013.  It's cemented love and friendships and brought major highs and some lows that only served to teach me and help me grow.  I'm very excited to welcome 2014 and although I never do resolutions I'd like to get a few more decorating bits done in our house and perhaps learn a new skill or take up a new hobby.  Blogging wise, I'd like to allocate some specific days to sit down and just blog in a bid to help me be a bit more consistent with it.  Whatever happens, I just want everyone to be happy and to allow themselves to have the best year.

Missing

Alloha! Ok so this is one of those mundane 'sorry I stopped blogging' posts. I just literally had to no time and was a bit ill and yucky for a while and had actually only planned to take a break for a week or two but it got a liiiiitle out of hand. Anyway, I am back, I shall resume normal(ish) service next week.

The Ten List

Ten favourite films!

1. The Lion King
2. Mary Poppins
3. Finding Nemo
4. 10 Things I Hate About You
5. Man on Fire
6. Lucky Number Slevin
7. Alice in Wonderland
8. The Notebook
9. The Jungle Book
10. Love Actually

Week in Words

I have had a tiring week! Not that I have been doing anything strenuous or have been particularly busy but it's been a long one! What have you all been up to? Any memorable bits? Here's mine!

• Getting stressed out by the amount of STUFF and general junk in our house.  We probably have enough to do about 5 dump runs but we just don't have the time.
• Wasting a whole hour of my afternoon sitting in the doctor's waiting room.... I appreciate the fact that we don't need to make appointments to see our doctor and that there is open surgery every morning and every afternoon but it just always seems to take so long.
• Doing a big food shop and actually sticking to budget.  It's always my aim but I get very sidetracked by all the goodies on offer....
• Putting up with the husband whilst he's quitting smoking, phewwwwww.
• Sorting out Christmas merchandise at work!
• Organising sky installation!
• Having a lovely evening with my beautiful friend drinking tea and possibly having a tiny wee gossip.
• Attending my little cousin's 1st birthday party.  He is such a clever little cutie!
• Rushing around after having a gorgeous lay in.
• Having to chuck my first cuppa of the day as my milk was off (despite being a new carton and being in date).  It was rather horrific.

I'm sure I have missed out bloomin' loads but I am absolutely shattered and I have a tooth bothering me and no painkillers in the house!

Secret Corner - Dibor

This week's secret corner is a lovely French style homeware store called Dibor.  This family run business has recently relaunched and you'll find tonnes of beautiful things.  As well as the french flair there is also a touch of vintage which I absolutely love! They do a wide range of gifts so make sure you check it out if you want to get a head start on your Christmas shopping!

I have actually held back a bit on my favourites, there is some real cute stuff but I thought I would keep it short and sweet today.  First up is this downright lovely Amelia Lamp which I am seriously considering buying for our bedroom.. so obviously I would need two! I'm not entirely sure yet if I am prepared to spend that much on two bedside lamps but I have struggled so much trying to find some simple, plain white lamps for the bedroom - who knew it would be so difficult!

Next up is what I would call a "grown up" item haha.  We get terrible draughts through our house in winter and it drives me mad so this draught excluder is on my "must buy" list.  And the red fits in with my living room, must be fate.

In keeping with chills of winter I just bloody love this faux fur throw.  Look how snuggly it looks! It would be utterly stunning draped across my bed... or any bed for that matter! I would not let anyone touch it for fear of dirtying it but it just looks amazing and COSY.

So, what do you think? Is French style your thing?

Week in Words

This, my friends, shall be short and sweet! I've had a crazy week and genuinely cannot remember most of it haha! Here's what I do remember..

• Taking a well deserved day off work.
• Day trippin' with the husband.
• Having to carry a massive bloody bag of dog food - I had dead arms afterwards!
• Tasting some chicken curry and rice soup, it was absolutely dilicious but basically left over curry without the meat haha.
• Recieving some exciting news!
• Making a funny treasure trail for the husband.
• Deciding to have a lovely chilled out night which actually turned out to be an amazing night with my gorgeous best friend.  I just love her.
• Googling, googling, and more googling!
• Saying goodbye to the bestie as she's heading off for a week down south.
• Having a lovely evening with my parents and my friends.
• Shedding a tear or too... they were happy ones.
• Having a busy day at work.
• Going out for a lovely long forest walk with the dog.  She had a right good time!
• Looking forward to FINALLY having a day off tomorrow with absolutely no plans and no one to see.  Think I'm possibly going to have the laziest day of my life!

Secret Corner - Country Cream

Country Cream is a beautiful, 10 year old family run business.  They have some exclusive items that are handmade and handpainted by various people.  I love this companies ethics - they aim to use mums at home, retired, elderly, disadvantaged and disabled people to help make some of their items.  The bonus being that for some of the items you can actually choose what colour you would like it painted in.  I wish more companies were able to offer this service!

Country Cream offer a wide range of items from ribbon to furniture and it's all beautiful!

I absolutely love this cute little card/photo holder.  I always wish I had somewhere to put my cards! I have a fireplace but it it fills up pretty quickly and I don't really like putting them in the window so this is perfect and when we don't have an "occasion" happening in our lives we can just pop some photos in but there are thinks like thank you cards or whatever that I would probably just keep in it forever.  I quite frankly think it's superb!

Check out these cute little cat shaped peg blackboards - what a genius invention this is! Not entirely sure how practical they are because they seem quite small but I still think they're cute and I'd still probably buy them.

Lastly, I just adore these beautiful heart boxes.  I can think of all sorts of things to do with them and places to put them but I have Christmas at the forefront of my mind right now and I think they'd be fab filled with some decadent chocolates or I'm actually considering filling one with some make-up bits and giving it to my bestie. There is a whole tonne of uses for them and they would look gorgeous on the dressing table.

Have you spotted anything you like? Share them with me!