Five Things I Learned This Week
Hello!
Welcome to my ‘Five Things I Learned This Week’ page. This series of weekly blog posts was initially dreamed up after a glass, or 3 of prosecco with my sidekick, Stu Chandler. It was during one of our ‘end of the week, let’s pretend we’re discussing work’ drinks evenings where I was whinging that I missed blogging but wasn’t committed enough to do anything about it. Stu suggested that rather than write about techie stuff or digital marketing (don’t worry, I still do that too), I should write about my crazy life as apparently people find the trials and tribulations of my household amusing.
So this part of the site is all about my crazy family. I’m in my *ahem* mid 30s and am a single mum to 2 boys (who are 8 & 4), I have a long suffering partner who comes complete with a beautiful daughter so I’m not too outnumbered at home, and a crazy dog, Stitch who, due to a misunderstanding in a pub playground, spent a short time in police custody this year. I live and work from my not-as-tidy-as-I’d-like-it house in south west London. Life is a combination of parenting, work and trying to avoid being signed up to school bake sales.
I publish 5 Things every Friday so grab a cup of coffee or glass of wine and enjoy reading about the trials and tribulations of my week. If you’d like my blog posts dropped into your inbox please sign up to my mailing list. I promise not to pass your details onto anyone, even if they offered me huge sums of money for it.
Best wishes,
Holly
Me and the long suffering partner after surviving a trip to Ikea.
With the mastermind, Stu Chandler.
Five Things I Learned This Week – Life is full of mistakes, learn from them
Life is full of mistakes, learn from them Mistakes can be so annoying. It’s usually straight after you’ve made it that it becomes obvious how you could have avoided it. Some have greater consequences than others and as adults we often berate ourselves over and over again for it. [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Progression means change
Don’t start clearing the loft on a Friday night I’m big on clearing out the house. A while ago my friend Stu and I nicknamed it ‘project zero’ the idea is that we really don’t need that much to live happy, fulfilling lives and most of us are just surrounded by clutter. [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Comfort Zones are Rubbish
Our pets are a reflection of us We’ve all seen the memes of people who look like their pets and they’re frikken funny. I’ve never really thought about how our pets are a reflection of us. Until now. Last week we moved my partner’s cat back into our house after 5 months [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Some things take a leap of faith
Some things take a leap of faith Most of the time I feel like I’m winging it - life, work, parenting, you name it, I’m doing the best I can and am always nicely surprised when there’s a positive result. On many occasions life decisions are taking an (almost) blind leap of [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Working from home isn’t the easy option
When a child makes food no-one is allowed to eat that food Last week my son decided for part of his Home Learning project to make a castle out of a cake. A very tense hour was had while the Swiss rolls were decorated and stacked but late on Thursday night we [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – People can change your perceptions of things
There is such a thing as too busy My Friday posts on Facebook often start with ‘Wow! What a week!’ because each week feels so busy. All weeks have paled into comparison to this last week. Seriously. I started the week feeling completely overwhelmed and decided the only sensible decision was to [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – New sofa = new rules
New sofa = new rules A few weeks ago I had one of those ‘I can’t live like this’ moments. These can be about anything - a spot that I’ve picked that won’t go away, the boys constantly pawing at me, some tech on a website not working properly, dinner needing to [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Girls can do anything boys can do
Online groups are awesome If you’ve noticed that my Social Media has been quieter than usual recently it’s not because I’m not online, it’s because I have joined a host of new online (mainly Facebook) groups. Other than my magic (to me) online group, which I’ve been a member of for years, [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Networking is a skill
Alcohol free wine is not remotely like wine When I embarked on One Year, No Beer I promised myself I wouldn’t make my 5 Things all about that but every now and then there’s something that can’t be ignored. In this case, it’s that alcohol free wine is not remotely like wine. [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Negativity only outweighs positivity if you let it
Proms in the Park is pretty cool Rock music has always been my thing. Says she who listens to Ed Sheeran and James Blunt. But seriously, rock music is where it’s at. My Bon Jovi tattoo proves that. So when my friend said she had 2 tickets for Proms in the Park [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – My Partner is who you want in a crisis
Always have a checklist for camping Up until earlier this year I was not what you would call a seasoned camper. I had been a couple of times in childhood with my Dad and once last year with my friend, Kate, who sorted everything, packed the car and even gave me a [...]
Five Things I Learned This Week – Don’t argue before getting on a plane
Don't argue before getting on a plane This probably sounds obvious because of the whole ‘if the plane goes down and we haven’t made up….’ thing but I’m not talking about that. The reason I very definitely learned not to argue before getting on a plane is because once you’re in seat [...]