I’ve tried so many things too improve on my home and how i feel when I’m there I expect many of you have over the years also. I have scoured Pinterest, read books, watched Kon-Mari on Netflix and I’ve tried minimalism. Heck even moving house because of bad memories/energies. I’ve tried hundreds of creative decorating tips and even got some of the home design magazines but none of these really helped me to actually feel at home in my own home.

My daughter mentioned a Finnish tradition a few years back ‘quality time with family@ and we really enjoyed spending time together. Now recently I have found Hygge (pronounced hoo gah) this is a danish tradition and is hard to define accurately by many in my research. It roughly translates into English as ‘coziness’ but it is in truth i am finding so much more than that because it is primarily about your mentality over the small things and how to intentionally make the effort to make them bigger and more important.

Here’s a example. when our daughter is in bed me and my partner enjoy nothing more than curling up and watching a movie or new series. Sometimes we do it together on the sofa other times we are together but doing various things individually like watching bits on our phone or crochet. This is time together but about as casual as it gets. After reading an article on Hygge and the importance of setting an atmosphere for such simple things, while my partner did the evening washing up i grabbed handfuls of tealights and lit up the living room. why? well why not? Me and my partner enjoy our time together weather we are doing things directly or not. Calling attention to it being special to me even if we aren’t doing anything particularly special meant something to me and as i saw to her as well. I then made a tiny luxury in the form of a simple hot chocolate with only milk no hot water on the stove and added the tiniest touch of amaretto. My partner smiled from ear to ear feeling spoiled and loved and our evening didn’t change at all but our moods during it did. we both smiled more, we enjoyed that hot chocolate more, we felt happier and more content in that moment and the cold winter months were long forgotten outside.

That is how I really realized what Hygee is actually about. Even if we are staying inside playing Minecraft with our daughter for a chance to actually spend time with her sprucing that time up with fluffy cushions and making nachos makes such a difference to everyone in the room.

Having candles when we eat dinner with our movie together, or leaving our phone off while we take this exercise in the current COVID 19 quarantine. Making that small mental shift to make a tiny amount of effort in all of the small activities we do every day makes such a difference.

There’s even ways to do Hygge on your own. it is still about quality time but again it is that mentality that makes the difference. Deciding that your bath is not just about relaxing and getting clean but that it i also about spending time in your own company and relishing in it. Lighting candles (admittedly candles are a BIG deal in Hygge another plus side in my opinion.) playing music and using that luxury bubble bath that you save for desperate times more often because why shouldn’t you enjoy it more frequently? Making yourself lunch how about 5 mins more effort to make that lunch more special? perhaps grilling a piece of chicken in place of tuna and mayo because you can. Little luxuries are a big deal and a frequent thing because you deserve them they dont need to have any additional expense it’s just about you rewarding yourself for no other reason than for being in the moment and enjoying it.

we have done so many things over the years to our home and tried so many cleaning techniques or new meals etc. and lord only knows what but making the time and effort to feel good in the everyday things has really uplifted the mood in our home and our family.

What do you think are you going to give it a go? let me know what you thought of it. Do some research and tell me if you think its practical or not for you and yours I would love to hear from you all.

Several years ago I was let down by the system that is school for my daughter and I feared taking her in as much as she dreaded going.
For years I begged teachers to understand and listen to what I said about her. My daughter is loud and distracted, she says the wrong thing sometimes and does not understand that if someone is mean to her they don’t want to be her friend.

It broke my heart to watch my child scream and cry at the mention of school or even reading time at home. I tried and tried to talk to teachers and explain… yes my daughter is loud because the noises we are used to simply ignoring like lights and computers buzzing or 30 pens n pencils being used on paper sound like the engine of a sports car to her and she can’t hear herself over this behaiviour in her brain. I know she was disruptive in class but do you have any idea how many years i watched my child cry her heart out in my lap heartbroken because children had been calling her names and throwing things at her until she reacted and you missed it all until she couldn’t ignore it anymore!? But wouldnt listen to her explain this.
Then she was diagnosed with special needs with no help from the school to get this and instead of it bringing in New understanding n changing how you react with her. Her 1-1 teaching assistant she was given after her diagnosis was decided best shared between 30 other kids. I myself cried when at a parents evening you told me it was a ‘good day’ if she could write her own name on her worksheet and do a single sentence in 6 hours and that she couldnt spell said and werent sure she could learn too. She was 8 years old. I knew she was capable of more but what could i do when she was regarded as a bully because when kids were mean to her and even broke one of her toes in the classroom. Nothing was done and a member of staff even said she had started it when she had asked to go into the quiet corner because she was struggling and the child she was struggling because of followed her and stamped on her foot over n over again but she felt like telling her teacher was pointless because they never believed her, sadly she was right. They said She was the one at fault because she followed this girl around the playground as she often did with kids in her class… when I asked her why she did this she responded.
‘Because they don’t know me. They are mean to me because they don’t understand and if I keep trying to be their friend then one day they might get to know me and actually be my friend for real.’
But the school staff declared this girl a bully, she was just desperate to have a friend that tried to understand her.

I got her a tiny mp3 player and sound deflecting ear phones after the team of doctors that diagnosed her needs said using music to keep her calm in class and cover the multitude of classroom noises and give her just one would help her. She took it to school after i had a meeting with her teacher to discuss how best to bring it in and not disturb the class. as it being something they couldn’t all do.
We agreed only wordless classical or meditation music would be allowed on it and that she would have a box on her desk and could get it out and put it on if she felt she was struggling with your permission. I also suggested and signed something to say that if it was lost i would replace it and it was not the schools responsibility.
The first day with these headphones i will never forget she came out of school a different child that day calm and beaming a smile i hadnt seen in years waving handfuls of completed worksheets that she had begged you to let her show me. That day she completed all of her lessons not just her name. She managed ten worksheets and she had managed to even read her whole book. I had never seen her so proud and happy… the following day you took her box away… She had a meltdown and she was left to spend the whole day in the corridor alone in tears… when I argued with the school about the whole thing, they said the items were too expensive and they didn’t want them in the school. For two days after that I couldn’t get my daughter out of bed to go to school she just cried and told me that she was too stupid to go to school and that her teacher had even said this to her because she couldn’t finish her worksheet without help that she was meant to have 1-1 anyway.
I was so angry. But as always when I confronted the school and even had multiple other students admit they had heard the teacher say it to her, nothing was done. The school staff rallied against me and my child and you called her loud, distracting and a bully…
Now my daughter is 13. At age 9 I chose the terrifying decision to remove her from school and educate her myself. She still uses her head phones day and night wherever we go. The meltdowns she used to have up to 10 TIMES A DAY have never once happened since she left. My daughter has her own youtube channel and reads, writes and does spellings all day everyday as she plans and creates her latest videos. She likes photography and she has friends all different ages but they all understand her, not one of them thinks shes too loud or thinks that she picks on them in any way.

I have watched my little girl go from the teary child that cried all day long having meltdown after meltdown convinced she was too stupid to learn her spellings or read a book. Turn into a happy, self confident mature girl with no fear as to if she can do something or not. She does swimming, kayaking, even singing, she writes stories pages n pages, she keeps a journal and writes in it daily, she loves to draw and she even writes me little letters now and then to tell me how happy she is. She knows how to fold her own clothes and how to cook, she even learned basic times tables using just a multipack bag of crisps and can tell the time. All of this i was once told she couldn’t do because she was falling behind the rest of the class and her 1-1 teacher was to busy with other students to sit with her and help her figure these things out…

I did this.
I did this for her. I braved what was terrifying and unknown to see if she would sink or swim and make it my job to see that she would swim. Her future placed solely on my shoulders i had no teaching degree and truth be told maths makes me break out in a cold sweat. Everyone told me I couldn’t do it, i wasnt qualified or she needed to be socialised.
Every issue she has ever had even now the first response from anyone is always to put her back in a school! I have lost friends over this choice. However never will i regret my decision because no matter what she achieves later on, I know she only had a chance at it because of me. Because her school let her down, over and over again. Even if i doubt myself for a moment i cant forget that ever. I could never let her endure that system again ever.
Let me be clear though I know schools do try and a lot of children excel in school and it works for them I am not saying that it doesn’t. But for us the system is simply flawed in a way that I can’t see being corrected anytime soon and there are plenty of children, for every one that excels at least one other struggles immensely.
This breaks my heart and home education changed everything for us. So I just want to point out that for some who may not know it, that it is an option a positive one and not at all what the media portrays sometimes.

Social media is addictive. This something we all know to be true. In truth a lot of things online are addictive.

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many others are designed to feed our fears and increase our impulses.

How often do you reach for your phone to scroll through Facebook or watch something on YouTube simply because you are sat still? Only to find news reports on murders, n poor mistreated dogs, or people treated with lack of respect and needing to shout about it.

We live in an ‘instant society’ as I call it boredom is taboo. Both us and our children fill boredom with screens. For some it can be genuinely soothing an example is someone with aspergers it is a much needed distraction from other stimulation and gives them a focus on one to calm down. However with majority of people including some with aspergers it has the opposite effect. Watching and scrolling only gives us more stimulation. More colours, more information, more ideas, more everything. This increases stress not lowers it and we are so used to it, we cannot tell this anymore. We can’t seperate the stress it causes from the need of something to do.

Back in February this year i looked up from my own phone one time to see my partner on hers with crochet on her lap, my daughter on the computer and we all had our lunch plates n cups etc to the side of us. We had out of habit eaten lunch n left it until we needed to move… I am sure you yourself have often done this and then forgotten we are no exception. So I took mine out and when i asked my daughter to do the same there was an instant explosion of temper at the thought but what bothered me most was that as she shouted and moaned about it not once did she look up from the screen to me…

I mentioned it to my partner and over a few weeks we both noticed some rather shocking habits and behaiviours revolving around technology. I noticed that if I went on Facebook scrolling and Pinteresting etc i could loose an hour and felt more reluctant to do something than before i had gone on it in the first place. I also noticed that my daughter was incredibly stressed by all her youtube subscriptions. Her phone would ding constantly and often her response was to groan or sigh but she didnt know what i was on about when i asked. Leaving the house to do anything even a family day trip to the cinema would be exceptionally stressfull for her because when she came back she had so many subscribed videos to get through it would take days of effort to catch up with on top of all the new ones everyday! I also noticed that her impulses to be helpful or kind were just gone with technology around.

I started to do research and what I found prooved i wasnt going mad. Studies have shown ‘instant visual entertainment’ is a massive focus today and it has a huge impact on everyone individually…

Well what we did.

I jumped on a band wagon and other than basic communication with family and friends to discuss meeting up etc there was to be NO other technology.

None.

No internet, Google, facebook, youtube, Pinterest, Twitter, DVDs, tv, nothing not even radio. I allowed cds for back ground noise occassionally.

As you expect it was a very loud, unhappy and chaotic first few days the meltdowns over every video she was terrified of coming in caused my daughter so much stress she just kept unaccountably bursting into tears and yelling at me for the first two days. Then the other 2 was anger and hostility. Me and my partner struggled too we constantly caught ourselves reaching for our phones out of habit to go on apps we had removed.

But day 5 was the biggest turn around we all got up n me n my partner realised our constant headaches were gone and when we woke up we felt awake and our home wasnt half as difficult to keep up with. We had So much more time and energy.

The biggest change however was my daughter. No more arguing everytime someone spoke to her like a ‘typical teenager’ She was in a good mood and even said at the end of that first week that her depression was gone. Her friends visited and the same rules applied.

One occassion happened when I found her and her friend listening to a music video in my room on her friends phone so after that their phones went on my kitchen side until they left. (Obviously informed their parents truth be told they were impressed) we took trips to poundland, the works and hobby craft and got piles of things to do. Crafts like beads, clay, painting, sketch books, yarn and we even all started congregating in the kitchen together to cook better dinners because we had time and enjoyed making it together. We went out more to see our friends and even my daughter realised how addictive technology is. Every friend and family we visited were on their phones or tablets or tv’s and it was hard for us all at times.

I remember a small conversation with my daughter 2 weeks after we started though. She talked to me about her you tube account and had realised that whenever her phone had dinged she was actually scared. The pressure she had put on herself with all her subscriptions scared her. It had made her anxiety tremendous and she could see how crazy it had been to feel like she had to watch them all in the first place. So we got her phone and I cleared all the new videos that had come up over two weeks in her notifications it was close to 800 and we went onto her account and counted 32 youtube subscriptions to different YouTubers videos some did 3 videos a day. As we continued talking about it she knew that it was impossible to

‘have a life and watch that many videos everyday’

So together we cut her you tube subscriptions down to 18 and by the end of a month with no technology she had brought it down to 5 and thought it reasonable.

We added facebook etc back on our phones and barely actually clicked on any notifications we had recieved. And honestly, no one even noticed when we started going back onto it… speaks volumes really.

Technology increases our impulses and it convinces us that we aren’t bored because we are visually doing something but that’s not true. Our impulses are designed to help us with quick reflexes, reaching out to friends when they are struggling, pushing ourselves to get outside and excersize or enjoy things. Technology numbs us to that. And looking back it scary how much because 6 months later its October… and my daughter has 27 subscriptions again and climbing we are on our phones again all the time and if it wasnt for our weekly family days out i dont think we would go outside Really ..

Really think about how much u use technology and push yourself to cut down or brave going without. Even just observe how much you use it for a few days. It can change your perspective. Writing this i am honestly tempted to do it all again.

Priorities can be stressful when your rearranging them. Finding new focus is hard. But I am trying to breathe through it and watch my priorities realign instead of struggling with a thousand puzzle pieces.

It’s been hard i am watching pieces of my life that were once very important to me fall away lost completely. Some of it is emotional other parts of it have been surprisingly eye opening.

My priorities have been previously budgeting and saving money, helping n supporting everyone i can that needs it, training my dog out of bad habits, getting out once a month on a trip to lift my spirits and so much more. But things have changed travelling is one of my highest priorities as it makes us all feel good to experience new things. Yesterday we visited glastonbury and what an amazing and spiritual place it is. Right up there with my highest priorities is also now encouraging my creativity. This is harder than u think when it feels like u lost interest in them years ago only to see that by pushing myself back into drawing, cooking, writing is changing my outlook in a big capacity.

To many i expect these priorities sound strange above budgeting or supporting those i love. But I have been suprised by many. I have never felt so supported n loved. I am still budgeting but its just not as high up as encouraging myself to be creative. And supporting those i love is still there too and those i do are more grateful for it than ever at this time because they understand its challenging and difficult because i want to but I cannot seem to cope with it too often.

Priorities should come in order of what makes you feel happy and safe then by whats important to get through as it is for me but even so it can change. Loosing your job for example can force whats important to the utmost importance.

My advice to u now is to sit and really, really think about what you need and then explore it and see where it moves too on this scale. You are important too and its taken many years and obstacles for me to see this for myself if I give u a kick to yours I am blessed.

So the other week our teenage daughter mentioned an old finnish tradition. It is something they value hugely and is all about daily/weekly time with family normally in the evenings weather its tea and cakes or reading a book together.

So I thought awww that’s cute and the conversation was somehow lost in the blur of day to day life. However last night it came back to me and the fact she had asked us if we could try it and we had all forgotten (including her!) Upset me as her asking to me was important.

So i did some research and it shocked me to learn that here in the UK spending time with family is one one of the lowest invested in.

Myself included… My daughter is 13 and all her interests are purely technology based. For over a year i have had more conversations with her forehead as she looks at her phone than i have with her actually looking at me. This always bothers me and so talked about it with my partner and then our daughter and we collectively decided that we all loved the idea of investing more quality time in being together. After more discussion we are adding in two new weekly habits for us all.

1. To get out of the house and do a day trip somewhere that doesn’t cost us anything more than fuel and a packed lunch on a day off.

2. Saturday evenings be home by 5 so we can all cook our dinner together and enjoy a few hours together with a book, drawing, crochet, music etc. All talking and chatting. (Our phones will be on silent) We are planning to start with the Harry potter books reading to each other.

We want quality time together to be the highest priority as we always say family comes first and feel its important our daughter learns to stop and take time out of her life on a regular basis especially as she gets older.

So do your research and think what can u add in?

Before this we just made a point of sitting on her bed for about ten minutes each evening and just talking about whatever came up for as long as I can remember. It was mostly anime and jokes or even make up but those 10 mins we noticed gave her so much more patience and tolerance during the day with us and general tiny things. Plus bonus she was always very excited to go to bed just for those few mins talking about anything she wanted. In truth we still do it now despite her age and it meaning we still put her to bed. But she never wants us to stop doing it, so we won’t.

I would love to hear what quality time u prioritise with your family.

So many are misinformed and unaware of the complexities of mental health or even simply how much of a toll life takes on our bodies day to day.

I have heard it all the whispering of friends family and neighbours. Opinions, assumptions and judgements on my course of actions or the lack there of and I expect that you have too.

When you take a day to do nothing and are met with these behaiviours it is hard, truly hard to make the progress that you are aiming for then. They hinder you further and are unaware of this in essence it only adds fuel to their own fire of opinions. Which is as backwards as it gets.

The hardest part is to take those days anyway and to release the anxiety those words cause. (Sounds simple i know its not) but we need those days.

We need to take time to simply breathe and be. To potter around with ‘menial’ tasks or to create something new or even do nothing at all. I am a strong believer that looking after yourself must be a high priority always just as high on your list as paying the rent and feeding those in our home because of this there is a big difference between laziness and recovering from day to day life.

One is essential for your health and wellbeing often used to help and support others in theirs.

The other is recharging your batteries but choosing to do nothing with that energy.

There is a fine line between one and the other at times and the longer the lines are blurred the harder they are to seperate because habits are easily formed.

My blog today is to point these differences out and to encourage you that when you feel stressed this is an option no matter what anyone’s opinion on the matter.

For most of my life i had no idea how to cook. If it didn’t come from the freezer section with clear simple heating directions or wasnt a cake mix that needed one egg i didn’t have a clue so I didn’t own it.

Then i had my daughter and i thought i was clever and an excellent parent puree-ing boil in a bag fish in chive sauce for her baby food! I won’t lie that scares me now. A lot. Its cringe worthy.

But at the time I didnt know any better. Thankfully though i wanted too. When my daughter was four months old i joined a free cookery class with people my age that let me bring my daughter.

The course was simple. I turned up, put my daughter in the adjoining lounge to the kitchen with qualified child minders and with 4 other people was guided through making a pie or peeling, boiling and mashing potatoes. Then after we would take the food home for a free meal that night that i just reheated.

After 6 sessions i was disapointed that it ended so I found another. This one was the same but it was with other single mums and after we ate the meal together with enough to take home for another. Towards the end they even had us cooking basic desserts alongside our meals! That right there is where I found my passion. My confidence grew tenfold as i adjusted and realised i wasnt only cooking fresh home made meals but i was multi tasking with multiple fresh cooked items and it wasnt even difficult.

They gave me thousands of print outs of various recipies to try at home and it was a target to do a freshly cooked meal once a week.

I know now that I didnt even need the courses. They just helped me to approach it without worrying about

A. Wasting money

B. Getting it wrong and not having the ‘know how’ and

C. How to read a cookery book when I had never picked one up.

Thankfully C is sorted by Google anything u don’t understand now you can simply google and voila! B no one has this knack to begin with but not having it doesn’t mean that you will (A) burn it.

So many fear cooking (i did too) because there is a thousand and one recipies for one meal. Who wouldn’t find it intimidating. But to anyone that wants to know how too cook and doesnt know where to start i recomend that u pick a meal u already eat and Google it. BBC recipies are personally simple and a good starting point. It doesn’t have to be a meal it can be scones or cheese twists anything. Start small build your confidence and you will find your passion growing encouraged only by sharing your food.

So be brave and start cooking to find your passion.

Life is exceptionally busy day to day now. Hours can disapear watching you tube after a long day at work or with the kids making us feel even more exhausted despite actually being sat down and supposedly having rested.

It is my honest opinion that a huge amount of the general population have no idea how to truly relax anymore. There are so many ways and advice on how to relax now that ‘doing nothing’ is a confusing idea even a laughable concept.

So after some personal circumstances recently tried to force me to take things more slowly and my physical limitations became more n more of a struggle and i was forced to admit defeat and am readjusting to taking things slowly and in doing so I am realising that a lot of what I do is not in actual fact relaxing at all, but habits i just assumed were relaxing because everyone does them. Scrolling through Facebook, window shopping, researching, Pinterest, you tube etc its never ending stimulation.

This is one of many things i am learning in my life and i hope it is an experience that makes you stop and think.

When was the last time you stopped with no videos, no music, no lights etc and simply closed your eyes and listened to your own thoughts then took the time to organise them without advice from others?

I think if you try it you be suprised how much harder it is than u realise because it is essential but so long forgotten.

However it is something I intend to invest a small amount of time in each day and see where it leads me.