This week my Word of the Week is: Treats!! #WotW

This week my Word of the Week is:

I could have used the word disrupted again this week. On Saturday Stu's bus broke down and he had to wait for another and mid-week, the bus was diverted because of a crash. There is a road near us which is terrible in normal weather but on Wednesday we'd had hail for most of the afternoon, so I am guessing the road was extra slippy. Eek! Thankfully, no one was hurt, which was really lucky as a car had overturned. The weather has been rotten this week, well rotten for what you expect in May. It has been cold, rained and on Wednesday and Thursday we had plenty of hailstones. Eesh!

Anyway, onto this week's Word of the Week. I have gone with treats as we seem to have had a week of them. It all started when Stu and I went into town. Can you believe the last time we were out shopping together was in February! We went to the retail park and had a good mooch around.

First up was Tesco to pick up a few bits for tea. I finally saw the Matilda and Friends cakes and was quite shocked by the price! £16 for essentially 3 slices of cake. I know it says it serves 10 but Stu and I stood there looking so confused. I thought I had hit the jackpot when I went round into the next aisle and saw the same cakes on the reduced shelf. Before I picked them up, I said I would get them if they were under £10. Nope, they were reduced to £14 something which is still way too much to pay for cakes!! I did end up getting a Key Lime Pie which was all mine as no one else in the house likes it! hehehe

Becky had been talking about decluttering her room and I said to her that she needed to use the Marie Kondo method, where you only keep items which spark joy. Well, I was going to do that when it came to shopping, sort of. If something brought me joy, I was going to buy it as it had been a while since I treated myself and that is what I did. I saw these gorgeous mugs in TK Maxx and had to get them.

I love a glass mug and these are so pretty. I didn't just stick to treating myself. I bought the girls a sweet treat from M&S each. A blueberry muffin for Ellie, a pistachio doughnut for Becky and I stocked up on the bird food for the birdies outside. I also bought a little birdhouse from B&M which Stu needs to put up somewhere over the weekend.

On Tuesday Becky was off work and it was our treat day! We have been getting Costa delivered for lunch once a fortnight but as I had it the day before, I didn't really fancy it and neither did Becky, so we ordered from Greggs. Becky couldn't believe that I ordered myself a salad but it was one of the new prawn layered pasta ones. It looks amazing online but it isn't anything special, it is just like what you get from a supermarket with maybe a little more Marie Rose sauce. I got the Mango & Strawberry Cooler to drink and that was good. I can just imagine drinking it on a hot summers day! We also had to get one of the chicken sausage rolls to try. They're nice but not as good as the original.

I was sick of being cold by Thursday afternoon, so as a treat for Ellie and I, I decided to put the heating on. It feels so indulgent putting it on at this time of year, it's supposed to be warm. Hmmf. It wasn't on for long, just enough for us to get that cosy feeling. Stu came in from work and could tell we'd had the heating on and was grateful for it.

I am writing this just before I went to my dad's yesterday and he says he has a surprise for lunch. I think he has either found our favourite pizza from Iceland that has been out of stock for a few weeks, the ham and pineapple one, or he has perfected the scone recipe that he has been trying to recreate. I mentioned it in my Wednesday Hodgepodge post that he is trying to make scones as good as my great Aunty Jean's. I am sure whatever he has planned will be a treat!

How has your week been? I hope you have had a good one! I am of course linking up with Anne who blogs at Raisie Bay to join in with her Word of the Week linky!

What I have loved this week! Week 20. #FridayFavourites

Happy Friday! I hope you’ve had a good week. Mine has been a really good where there’s been lots of little happy moments and things that have made me smile. As always, I’m linking up with Erika and Andrea to share them.

Remarkably Bright Creatures!

I watched the Netflix version of Remarkably Bright Creatures and loved it so much. It was just such a lovely, feel good film with loads of heart. I did not expect to get so attached to an octopus as much as I did. He had me smiling every time he was on screen and crying a little. It was like a big hug in movie form!

Remarkably Bright Creatures is about an older woman called Tova who works cleaning at an aquarium after losing her son years earlier. She is lonely, stuck in her routine and still carrying a lot of sadness. While working there, she ends up forming an unlikely friendship with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus. At the same time, a young man called Cameron arrives in town looking for answers about his past and where he belongs. The story follows all of them as their lives slowly connect together.

Lunch out with Stu!

It nearly ended in disaster. All the tables were full at our usual place, so Stu suggested going to the other side of the retail park and trying somewhere new. I was hangry and decided we should go to another shop and then go back to our usual place! Thankfully, it had cleared and there were lots of tables to choose from. It was such a nice lunch. My usual from Costa: a bacon bap, lemon muffin and chocolate fudge frappe.

Greys Anatomy!

I watched the last episode of the season and a couple of characters were leaving and they did a little montage of clips which got me thinking about the early episodes, which then turned into the thought that I must watch Grey's Anatomy again, all 22 seasons! I forgot how young they all were in the first season but I suppose it was 20-something years ago! My girls asked me why I was doing it to myself, they know I will end up crying and I already have. I will get attached to characters all over again only for terrible things to happen to them. I still love Cristina so much and George was so sweet in those first episodes.

My eldest decluttering her bedroom!

Becky has started properly sorting through her bedroom and I am so happy about it. She has been thinking about moving out and getting her own place eventually. She’s not in any rush but she has been looking and thinking about the future. With a little nudge and a little bit of nagging from me, she realised she really needed to start sorting through all the stuff in her room because there is a lot! She filled four bags with clothes, a whole bag full of teddies and a box of keepsakes to go into storage. There is still loads left to do but she’s finally started and that’s the hardest part sometimes.

Old photos!

My dad showed me a ton of old photos that he was recently given by a relative and they brought back so many memories from when I was a kid. One photo that really made me smile was one of the little red dumper truck my brother and I used to drive around the farm. We loved that thing and probably caused far more trouble with it than we should have.

I remember my brother being too small to properly reach the pedals at one point but that didn’t stop us. Health and safety definitely wasn’t a thing back then. hehehe One time we tied a go-cart to the back of the dumper truck with a rope and skidded around the fields on it when the grass was a bit wet. Looking back now, it was so dangerous but at the time it was the best fun ever. It only stopped after the rope snapped and my brother went crashing through a fence. Oops. Somehow he was fine apart from a few scrapes and probably a good telling off. lol

Football!

The football season is nearly over and everything is getting a bit exciting now. I always love the end of the season because every match is so important. The battles at the top of the Premier League table and at the bottom have been so entertaining to watch and every fan seems stressed out at the moment. Over the past week I’ve also been keeping an eye on the EFL Championship play-offs which have been full of drama. Our local team, Hull are through to the finals and in with a chance of promotion, which is exciting and my childhood local team didn’t have such a great result but there’s still a bit of hope because the team they were playing against have been accused of spying on them and now there’s going to be an investigation and Middlesbrough could end up taking their place in the final. I love all the drama. Eek!

What have you loved over the past week?

How I finally sorted my wardrobe without keeping a maybe pile!

At the end of last year, my wardrobe had reached the point where opening the door felt dangerous, clothes were trying to escape. Every time I pulled one thing out, three others followed it onto the floor and the annoying thing was I knew why. I’d kept pretty much every item of clothing I’d bought over the last ten years at least! All those tops I might wear again but never do, the dress I wore once to a wedding and felt amazing in even though it’s been hanging there untouched since 2016, the jeans that don’t fit but might one day and the things that I was weirdly attached to. I was fed up with fighting with my wardrobe and fed up with wearing the same few things, so I decided I was done messing about and was going to be ruthless with a proper wardrobe clear out and this is exactly how I did it!

Step one: I pulled everything out!

I started like I meant business. None of that, I’ll just have a little tidy nonsense. I pulled everything out of my wardrobe, finding things that I thought I had thrown away years ago. Oops. I even found some of the girls clothes there. It looked like a clothes shop had exploded in my bedroom. The bed and the floor soon disappeared! Once everything was out and staring me in the face, I made three piles: Keep, Donate and Toss! There was no maybe pile, I was serious about this!

I knew I needed rules, otherwise past me would start negotiating with the present me and that wouldn't end well.

If it doesn’t fit, it goes!

This one was important. If it didn’t fit me on the day I was doing the clear out, it went straight into the donate pile. I had things that were too small and too big. I wasn't keeping clothes for a version of me that may or may not exist one day.

If it hadn’t been worn in 12 months, out it went!

Twelve months is generous. It covers all seasons, birthdays, Christmas, random days out and those moments when you’re saving an outfit for something special. If I hadn’t worn it in a whole year, I wasn’t suddenly going to start now. This rule even claimed some of my PJs, which hurt a bit because you all know how much I love my PJs but if they were shoved at the back on the shelf and I always picked the same ones instead, so what was the point?

If it was damaged beyond reasonable repair, it was gone!

There was no I might fix this one day. I had trousers with holes in them that I had planned on fixing but deep down I knew I wouldn't. I had tons of paint-covered tops and leggings from when I had been decorating which I kept in case I needed them again. I haven't needed them, so most of them were thrown away and there were items that were past their best. Most of it went in the bin, but I did keep some old T-shirts to rip up for cleaning rags.

If it made me smile, I kept it.

I used the Marie Kondo rule and it worked. If I picked something up and it made me smile, it stayed. Some things were tempting to keep just for nostalgia, but I reminded myself that memories don’t live in wardrobes.

If I wore it regularly, it stayed!

This one was easy. If it’s something I reach for all the time, it didn’t even get questioned. Straight into the keep pile with no guilt attached.

To stop myself getting stressed, I worked through one category at a time. Dresses, jeans and trousers, then T-shirts, jumpers and finally pyjamas. There was no chucking things aside to deal with later. Each item had to earn its place. Some things needed trying on, especially summer dresses I hadn’t worn much yet. I asked myself how I felt in them, not how I wished I felt. That made the decision much clearer. Then came the big realisations. Did I really need eight black cardigans? I didn't, kept three and donated the rest. I counted 56 T-shirts! I cut that number in half and only kept the ones I actually loved and wore.

The donation pile quickly became my favourite, it felt like a reward. Knowing those clothes were going to people who wanted or needed them. It made it easier to let things go. Someone else gets to enjoy them instead of them gathering dust with me. The toss pile was smaller than I expected, which surprised me and the keep pile was my new wardrobe. Seeing it all together was such a moment. I could actually see what I owned, I rediscovered things I loved but hadn’t worn in ages because they’d been buried and it felt lighter.

Opening my wardrobe now doesn’t stress me out. I’m not battling hangers or digging through stuff I don’t even like. Everything there has earned its spot and the best part is that I actually wear more of what I own now. Nothing’s hiding, there's just clothes I like, that fit and that work for the life I have now.

What is your wardrobe/closet like? Organised or chaotic?

The Wednesday Hodgepodge #55

I hope you are all having a good week. It's Wednesday, which means it's time to join in with the Wednesday Hodgepodge with Joyce who blogs at From This Side of the Pond! Each week there are 6 questions, we answer and then link up. Simple!

1. What's one piece of advice you would you give a recent or soon-to-be graduate?

Learn how to properly look after a home! It doesn’t sound as exciting as career goals or big life plans but this is the stuff that makes everything else easier. When your home life is running smoothly, everything else feels more manageable! Knowing how to cook a few decent meals is a big one. It saves money, stops you living off takeaways and means you’re not standing in the kitchen late in an evening wondering what to eat. Keeping on top of laundry is important. It piles up fast if you ignore it and suddenly you’re doing emergency washes because you’ve run out of basics. Cleaning doesn’t have to turn into a full weekend job, the trick is doing little bits often. Then there’s managing your bills and general life admin. Setting up direct debits and keeping a budget isn't the most exciting part of being an adult but it needs to be done!

2. May 15th marks the birth date of L. Frank Baum, author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. At this point in time are you more in need of brains, courage, heart, or a trip back home? Explain.

With everything going on in life, it’s not that I don’t know what to do, so I can’t really blame a lack of brains and I don’t feel short on heart either. It’s more about having that confidence to actually do the things I keep thinking about. I’ve got ideas, plans and little goals sitting there waiting but instead of jumping in, I can end up overthinking them. So it comes down to me needing courage or someone to give me a big kick up the behind. lol

3. "There's no place like home" is an oft repeated line from Baum's book. When was the last time you felt the truth of that statement?

During the week when I had been out running errands! The best part about being out is coming home. Shutting the door, taking my shoes and coat off, getting changed into comfy clothes and enjoying the quiet. The day hadn't been stressful in the slightest but at home I can relax without having to rush about, talk to people, being pulled in ten different directions or thinking about what’s next. It was nice for it to be just me, in my space and having everything just how I left it. There really is no place like home!

4. May is National BBQ Month...do you own a grill? Who does the grilling at your house? What's your favorite thing to throw on the grill? What's the last thing you grilled?

We do have a little BBQ somewhere in the back of the garage but we rarely use it. Living in England, the weather is never fully on our side, so planning a BBQ always feels like a gamble. You get that one sunny day when everyone gets excited, burgers and sausages are bought and then the clouds roll in and the rain comes, so we don’t really grill often. Maybe once or twice a year, usually right in the middle of summer, when everything lines up just right and we take a risk with the weather. When we do use it, it’s pretty simple stuff like burgers, sausages and maybe some chicken if we’re feeling organised. My favourites are beef burgers, which are usually overdone a little and they were probably the last thing we grilled.

5. What's a memory you replay in your head when you need a little joy?

Right now, thinking about BBQ's is the memory of when we had a little beach party for Ellie's 9th birthday! It was a bank holiday Monday so there was no travelling to the beach. I made one in our backyard with two little paddling pools. One filled with sand and the other with water. We had a BBQ, pinata to smash and of course, grilled food. It was such a lovely day! The weather wasn't perfect but we didn't let it spoil our fun!

6. Insert your own random thought here.

This is totally random. Scones are a big thing in my family. My grandmother was an amazing baker, so I was told as she passed away before I was born and her sisters, my great Aunt especially, were too. My great Aunt was a big part of my life and whenever we visited her she always had freshly baked scones ready for us. Anyway, my dad has been on a trip down memory lane. He went to visit a relative and was given a ton of photos and they got chatting about my great aunt and her scones, so he has been on a mission to recreate them. He has made quite a few batches and while I was visiting the other day, he whipped up another batch which tasted so good but he wanted my honest opinion, were they as good as Aunty Jean's? They came close but sadly, no. I told him he needed to keep practising and sending any going spare this way.