Reasons to be cheerful - take 2

Talk about being the new girl on the block!

Yesterday I posted up my Reasons to be Cheerful 1,2,3 courtesy of the lovely Michelle over at Mummy with Heart.

When I arrived the linky had closed. I thought "Blimey, this woman moves fast and doesn't give us much time to join in!"

NOW I realise that it opens on a Thursday evening to run during the following week - duh!

Michelle picked up through twitter (I am on there as UKMumBlog if you'd like to follow me, although my account has been suspended twice and I can't figure out why) that I am an optimist, so it wasn't a challenge to find three more things to be cheerful about today!

Reason to be cheerful 1

Cats who love nothing more than to be carried around like a sack of potatoes (come on, admit it, you want to kiss those paws)

Reason to be cheerful 2

Hobby horses celebrating their Birthday (I'm sure Ella, the pink hobby horse, is blowing)

Reason to be cheerful 3


The shape little fingers make when they're dragged along a chocolatey mixing bowl

If you could stop to reflect, what are you cheerful about right now in this moment? I'd love to know!

Reasons to be cheerful

Michelle, over at Mummy from the Heart set up a wonderful weekly link up called "Reasons to be cheerful 1,2,3".

She set it up for no other reason than she feels completely blessed in her life. As Michelle says "The best medicine for a negative day is to remind yourself of what you are grateful for".


Well Amen to that!

All you have to do is write a post listing 3 things you are grateful at this particular point in time. Michelle evidently shares some of my values in life; she writes "Do you know what I believe are two of the fundamental keys to happiness? One, is to choose to be happy and the other is to want what you already have!"

This really is the secret law to attracting what you want in life. We all have choices every moment of every day, even when we think we don't. So yes, choose happiness and more happiness will find you :)

Here are my 3 reasons to be cheerful today:

Reason to be cheerful 1

Seeing my daughter's face light up when I do some home baking:

Reason to be cheerful 2

Learning old crafts; in this instance Finger Knitting!

Reason to be cheerful 3

Love in the Mist; a beautiful spring flower:

  What are your three reasons for being cheerful today?

The Gallery

For a while now I've been seeing some lovely photos on the Gallery. The Gallery was started by Tara from Sticky Fingers. Her passion for photography meant she wanted a way for us all to pimp our photos!

This week she's chosen the theme of 'green'. As green happens to be one of my favourite colours and I'm also currently choosing my shade of green in terms of my carbon footprint, I thought it would be fun to play and what a great 'first post' for my new blog!

So here we are - a photo of my girl running at the back of our house. She looks at one with nature don't you think? And so free!

The shortest stay at a party

I thought I'd do the right thing and sign up for Twitter. After all, it's the best way for a new UK Mummy Blogger to connect, right?

I dutifully fill in all the fields and start tweeting about some of the wonderful posts in this week's BMB carnival hosted by Zoe at Playing by the book.

So there I am merrily tweeting about two women who met in cyberspace and co-authored a book, congratulating Hot Cross Mum who published her ebook, and looking forward to sharing some favourite reads when I notice twitter is taking ages to update.

I can't follow any new people and my latest tweet is hanging like a hangy thing. THEN I notice my account has been suspended. After only five tweets!

No warning, no email, no notification just a big red 'ACCOUNT SUSPENDED' emblazoned across my cyber chest.

Now I figure it must have been reference to my tweet about Roxy who claims that despite outwards appearances, she's "not a bleedin' s** therapist". Sigh...

Never before have I been told off for using the S word...
It felt a bit like 'Your name's not on here and you're not coming in'.

The power of reading books with older children

This is my first post on my new blog, so I've left it a bit late to join in with the latest Brit Mum's carnival hosted by Playing by the book.

The theme for the posts was 'books' and as I have a book worm in the house (she even reads in the bath) it would be remiss of me not to join in, even if it means arriving late to the party!

Even though my daughter is 10, she still loves to have a cuddle and hear me read her a book. It's a time when, despite all the fledgling hormones and countless mood swings and arguments we might have had during the day, we can re-connect.

Reading a book together allows us to forget the harsh words that have been shared between us, to let the hurts go and to be in a sacred space together. We sit in our favourite rocking chair, on the floor in front of the fire, outside on the back door step or we might curl up together on her bed. It's our 'girlie' time, a time that creates special memories between us and a time for us to decompress. It means I can spend meaningful and quality time with her and she gets me all to herself for a while.

Although she can be wilful, when we read together my daughter gives me the honour of choosing the book. It's an opportunity for us to discover new authors together and for me to introduce her to some of my personal favourites. She has many of the books I read as a little girl and we can join the Famous Five on their adventures, stay up late with the girls of Malorie Towers or run across fields with Laurie Lee...

I've cried through 'The Giving Tree' with her and we've laughed our way through 'Slinky Malinky'. She's begged for more at the end of chapters and we've shared private jokes thanks to the mischievous plots in books.

We all know it's great to sit with our toddlers and preschoolers to encourage a love of reading, but maintaining a space for reading with older children can be deeply rewarding too :)