And just like that, I felt like blogging again for the first time in two years. When I happily picked ‘green’ for my theme of the year for 2020 because I wanted to give the ‘green light’ to new experiences, I was thinking slightly more attending a life class or visiting a new country, and really less coping with a global pandemic that felt like being in some kind of disaster zombie movie where we all had to hang in there and wait for Jack Bauer to come over the horizon with the vaccine… and when I planned to spend more time outdoors enjoying nature and ‘green spaces’, I had envisaged having pi ..read more

I don’t make New Year resolutions - instead, I pick a theme for the year ahead. I know some folk argue that January is just like any other month, so what’s the point in setting intentions or making plans at this time of year rather than any other. However, I’m a very seasonal person, and January feels very much like a month of change and awakening - the winter solstice has passed and the nights are gradually getting shorter, the early bulbs are starting to feel their way out of the cold soil, while inside the paperwhites are in flower with their promise of spring. The first of February is know ..read more

When we first met with our architect about five years ago, he asked us how we envisaged living in our home once it had been extended. “We want to host lots of parties”, we said. And that’s exactly what we do - birthday parties for the kids, Easter egg hunts, summer solstice parties, dinner parties, my 40th birthday party, Bonfire night parties, Christmas parties… any excuse to get the prosecco glasses out and switch the disco lights on. Our middle daughter’s after-school birthday party turned into a prosecco party when the ..read more

We didn’t intend 2019 to be a year of doing massive DIY projects - in fact, we deliberately didn’t take on anything major (like a bathroom reno) as we just wanted to treat ourselves to a year of not working like dogs for a change. We look back on the early years in the house with mild horror, remembering how stressful it was doing DIY until midnight, and taking it in turns to take our then very small children out of the house for the entire day while the other stayed home and tackled big, dusty projects like sanding bedroom floors or plastering walls. Nonetheless, we managed to churn through ..read more

Happy Christmas! I’m Alice, and I like power tools and massive Christmas trees. You can find loads of pictures of our DIY Victorian house renovation in south Manchester on my Instagram account, or on this blog. We first bought a huge Christmas tree seven years ago during our first festive season in our new (old) Victorian house. Prior to this, we’d stuck with the normal variety from the garden centre or local greengrocer - but I felt our newly acquired 13 foot ceilings demanded something a little more spectacular, so off to Ivy Cottage Christmas Tree Farm in Wilmslow we went. I selected an ab ..read more

Last year I decided to make Christmas presents for the grown-ups of our acquaintance (why should the kids get all the gifts?), so I bought some clay to make little tea light houses and Christmas tree ornaments, and wax, oils and wicks to make scented candles. Having a large supply of my own personalised candles has turned out to be a lovely treat - I made some more recently and even have three of them flickering away in front of me while I’m writing this post :-) I bought my supplies here. There is a fairly large choice of ..read more

At this time of year, I like to reminisce about our camping trips. Just looking at pictures of our beautiful bell tent against a gorgeous blue sky is enough to take me back to those summer days, curled up in my pink camping chair drinking coffee and listening to the waves crashing on the shore, the seagulls wheeling overhead, and the kid in the tent next door demanding a snack. Last year we camped on the east of the Island at Fakenham Farm in St Helen’s. This year we decided to head to the west, and pitched up at Grange Farm, a lovely family and dog friendly campsite on a cliff overlooking a ..read more

This is a sponsored post. I was gifted our house history by My Houstory. Our house was built 145 years ago by a glove buyer called George, an Essex boy born and bred who moved up to south Manchester and began dabbling in property management. George sold our house to Mary Jane, a wealthy Victorian lady who lived here with two other ladies, called Fanny and Mary. This must have been a slightly controversial living situation - Victorian ladies weren’t typically supposed to swan around owning large properties in their own right. Not Mary Jane though, who clearly didn’t give a monkeys for what oth ..read more

Every year, we pick a theme for the coming twelve months. It’s a largely intuitive process - the word seems to magically spring to mind when setting intentions. For 2019, our theme is ‘nurture’ - ourselves, our family, our careers, our doggies, and our garden. I have a family history of green fingered folk, but have never been able to justify the time required to keep a whole load of extra dependants going on top of the gorgeous two and four-legged ones I already have. But now the house is largely finished, we decided to turn our attention to the garden. I wanted to grow a cutting garden of s ..read more

#Sponsored post: I was gifted the Vauxhall Combo Life XL in this post for a week. We are a family who love camping. We love pitching next to the beach, letting the girls run wild, and waking up to the sound of the waves crashing on the shore and the kid in the tent next door demanding loudly to go for a wee. What we don’t love is the grim divorce-inducing process of packing our slightly too small car, and then squeezing into it to trek in hideous discomfort down the motorway. We always argue over who gets to drive, as the other person has to squash inbetween the two big car seats in the back ..read more