A Far North Book Festival, Lagom, The Karate Kid and Getting Organised for Spring – #LittleLoves

The last week has been all about getting back into the old routine here in the wellies household. School, work, and the everyday juggles – like it or not, it’s got to be done! Thankfully the weather has been kind enough to ease us in gently and whilst we didn’t quite reach the heady heights of the southern heatwave, for the far north it’s been perfectly lovely 😉 . My internal batteries seem to run on sunshine so any day that doesn’t involve grey skies is good enough for me!

We’ve also had a busy week of family activities, with my eldest spending a lot of the weekend at a karate grading event (where he and his cousin moved up a belt, just call them the karate kids 🙂 ), and I spent a lot of Saturday at the very first book festival to be held in the far north. Plus there were the usual after-school clubs and the last session of my regular writer’s group (sad face). And of course as usual, there were a few other offerings in the shape of this week’s clutch of Little Loves…..

READ

Kicking off this week was this lovely little book on Lagom. This Swedish philosophy of ‘not too little, not too much, just right’ has been striking a lot of chords with me. Of course, there are a few things you can never have too much of, like sunshiny Spring days, doggy cuddles and books on your to-read list 😉 . But I do like the Swedes understated approach to happiness and contentment. What say you, could you adopt a more lagom approach to life?

WATCHED

This weekend – in keeping with my son’s karate-themed activities – we watched the original Karate Kid movie, one of my favourites when I was a youngster. I remember my siblings and I renting it from the local garage/video rental place and proceeding to watch it on repeat for the rest of the weekend. It’s always a bit different watching as an adult but that sense of nostalgia is always there and I loved introducing it to my own kids. There’s one scene in which Daniel lets his girlfriend drive his new car and then exclaims ‘it’s the 80’s!’ as if that’s the very height of modernity. Of course at the time it was – but it did make me feel a bit old! And then there’s Mr Miyagi – right up there with Yoda as one of the best ever on-screen characters. If you were a child of the 80’s you’ll know what I’m saying. E.T, Pretty in Pink and Grease movie-fest, anyone?

HEARD

At the weekend I listened to author Theresa Breslin talking at the first ever John O’ Groats book festival. If you follow me on Instagram or Instagram Stories you’ll know I had a really lovely day. It was fantastic to see something like this happening in the far north where we can often feel a bit remote from events and conferences. And I got this beautiful copy of Theresa’s An Illustrated Treasury of Scottish Folk and Fairy Tales – she also signed it for my children. Altogether, a fabulous event – can’t wait to go again in 2019!

WORE

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed that I don’t always include this section in my Little Loves. I have to admit that I find myself poorly equipped to talk about fashion – let alone take photos of myself wearing anything other than skinny jeans and a Boden stripy top. I’ll try to do better on this in future, but I’ve said that before and I’m still failing 😉 . I did wear sunglasses a lot last week, does that count? (*Insert picture of sunny day in feeble attempt to divert attention from Little Love in hand).

MADE

I do seem to do slightly better on the making category, and last week was all about getting back to the bullet journal, making a new weekly spread and getting the to-do lists happening for the kid’s final term before the summer hols. I get a lot of questions on my bullet journal, so if you want to find out more there is loads of info on the posts I’ve written all about bullet journals here and here before. Speaking of to-do lists, I better get on with mine before another week runs away with itself. Here’s wishing you a lovely seven days ahead, Little Loves readers. I’ll be back soon with another dose of sunshine from the blogosphere to keep you feeling sweet.

G x

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As usual, I’m linking this post up to Morgana’s weekly linky.