Saying Goodbye to Holidays, Festive Reads and Getting Organised With The Bullet Journal – #LittleLoves

Hello, Happy New Year and welcome to my first 2018 Little Loves 🙂 I hope you all had a lovely festive season, and were happy with everything that Santa brought 🙂 Who else can’t believe the holidays are already over? Me either. We had a fantastic time though, and enjoyed lots of slow mornings, a few days out and plenty of family time. The quiet life is my happy place – but now it’s back to reality as the normal routines of work and school resume.

Thanks to blogging, though, I can still reflect on the holidays and share some of my little loves from that two weeks of utter bliss. So sit back, grab a cuppa, and join me for a quick 5 minutes. You never know, you might even see something that becomes a little love for you, aswell! 🙂

READ

I did lots of reading in the holidays, and when I’m taking a break from writing, reading is probably my second favourite thing to do 🙂  I started off the holidays by finishing off The Miniaturist so that I could watch the BBC adaption (more on that in a minute). I really enjoyed it and it’s the second of Jessie Burton’s books I’ve read and enjoyed over the last few months.

Over the holidays I also read The Catcher in the Rye and The Great Gatsby. For some reason, the Christmas holidays always seem to be a time when I’m drawn to reading classic stuff. Perhaps it’s because I have a bit more energy to concentrate, or perhaps it just feels in keeping with the season – a time for old movies, old books and festive traditions. Speaking of which, we seem to have started a few traditions of our own….

WATCHED

One of the highlights of the holidays for me was sitting down and watching Gone With The Wind with my eight year old. I’ve watched it every year for a few years now and it’s just one of those stories that never seems to get old. This year, my youngest actually managed to sit through and enjoy most of it with me. He did start to get a bit fidgety for the last 45 minutes but given it’s epic nature I think he actually did very well!

My littlest and I also loved watching the BBC’s adaption of Little Women (I watch a lot of these things with my youngest because to be honest they’re not really my eldest’s – or my husband’s – cup of tea). The adventures of Jo, Meg, Beth and Amy were just as enthralling as ever. It’s only a year since I last read Little Women, but I have to say, watching this made me want to grab the book off the bookshelf and dive into it all over again!

My husband and I also enjoyed the dramatisation of The Miniaturist over the festivities. It was quite dark and suspenseful and very true to the book. We’re currently making our way through Feud, the story of Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and their bitter rivalry. It has something of a Mad Men vibe about it and I’m loving it. There are so many binge-worthy series on iPlayer just now – hopefully plenty in store to get us through the rest of the long dark winter nights!

Before I sign off on this section, just a quick mention of Jumanji which we went to see at the cinema – for slightly older kids like mine it was a really fantastic watch. Finding films that satisfy the whole family can be a little tricky. An added bonus was that my husband and I really enjoyed it too! 🙂

HEARD

Last week I listened to Dr Rangan Chatterjee talk about his new book, The 4 Pillar Plan, on Radio Five Live. If you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know I love Dr Chatterjee and his common sense approach to nutrition and health. I found this interview with him really useful, and one of the snippets I took from it was the need to incorporate strength training into your exercise regime as you get older due to loss of muscle mass. I do a lot of walking and yoga, but don’t do much actual strength training and so as a result of listening, I’ve started building Dr Chatterjee’s 5 minute kitchen workout into my day. To be honest, it doesn’t actually even take 5 minutes. Believe it or not, it can be done in the time it takes to brew a cup of tea! 🙂

WORE

I actually got a chance to dress up a few times over the holidays. No big nights out but lots of chances to socialise in the homes of family and friends. Very occasionally, I do get out of wellies you know 😉 I struggle with posting pictures of myself to be truthful – you may have noticed that photos of me on the blog are few and far between! 🙂

MADE

We did a lot of family cooking over the holidays. This was something we all really enjoyed and hope to do a lot more of in the months to come. No more leaving all the cooking to Mummy! Unfortunately you’ll have to take my word for this as the photographic evidence is very sparse 🙂

I did get some photos of the new bullet journal spreads I’ve been making though – it’s so nice at the start of a new year to get the old bujo looking nice 🙂 If you’re thinking about starting a bullet journal for 2018 then watch this space for inspiration. I hope to have a bullet journal post on here at some point very soon!

AND LASTLY…

That’s it for this week’s Little Loves, but before I go, here’s a picture of the typewriter Santa brought me – it has to be one of my favourite Christmas presents of this, or in fact any other year. If nothing else, it means that I can write dramatic captions like ‘To Be Continued’ and ‘The End’ – you know, writer goals and all that malarkey 🙂

On that note, have a great week, readers – and I hope to see you here again with some more of life’s little lovelies in approximately 7 days 🙂

Gx

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