The more I have shared photos of myself on social media recently (as opposed to my preferred snaps of interiors!), the more I have been found that those photos have been met with comments about my appearance and how great people think I look.  This isn’t me blowing my own trumpet, quite the opposite, I feel like it’s more of a confessional really as to why my body, skin and general appearance have improved in recent months. It most certainly hasn’t been born out of a want to look different, I can promise you that; not that there would be anything at all wrong if it had.

This is a question I ask myself all too often.  How do I continue to be a “good parent” to Teddy when he’s not physically here anymore.  I know that once upon a time it would have been the done thing to simply forget about his existence, sweep it under the carpet and move on.  Thankfully we live in very different times, and I feel able and confident to speak his name.  Sometimes I try and say his name in sentences just because I can.  I love to hear it aloud; it reminds me that he was here.  My friends, of course, are very much used to this now, and they too use Teddy’s name as much as they would if he were alive; that makes me so very happy.  It also makes me feel like as much of a parent as they are, which can be so hard sometimes when you feel like you are on the outside staring into a life you have been robbed of.

When we moved in to this house, the kitchen bothered me, always.  It became one of those things that continued to bother me for the next two and a half years.  The plan had always been that the KOD (kitchen-extension of dreams) would be coming.  Initially we thought that would happen after two years, then that turned into three.  KOD is still very much on the horizon, but then something happened that made me realise that I couldn’t just live with our sh*t kitchen (or “shitchen” as it has come to be affectionately known) for a moment longer.  I was approached by a magazine who wanted to photograph our house; brilliant I know, but my first reaction? “My kitchen is sh*t.”  Ok, maybe not those exact words when I wrote back to them, but you get the idea.  So it was time to come clean, show the world the kitchen we had been living with and actually use this as the much-needed kick up the arse to actually do something about it!

I won’t lie; I will be the first to admit that I got the colour choice for the guest room completely and utterly wrong when we initially created that room at the beginning of last year.  I think I wanted to try a warmer colour out, so we went for a Farrow & Ball shade (always!) in New White and, although a lovely colour, it never felt quite right.  I always felt that although it was very cosy in there, it didn’t make the most of the space.