September - Lately I've been...

I'm a bit late with my update this month - after sorting the children out with back to school I had lots to catch up on, both blog-wise and house-wise! So here's what I've been up to lately.

Thinking about

Now that the children are back at school I'm thinking about how quiet the house is, and wondering what they are up to. Today they are both starting new lunch time clubs - Mia has joined a Speech and Drama class and Harry has finally been persuaded to join the Junior Choir as his school is taking part in the Young Voices performace at the O2 next year. I hope they enjoy them!

I'm also looking around and thinking that the houses is looking a bit cluttered again so I'm taking part in the Minimalism Game again this month. I've written about the #minsgame before, I find it's a method that really helps me to keep on top of the clutter in the home and tackle the areas that I keep putting off.

Crafting

My latest crafty project is in collaboration with Love Crochet. I've been sent some lovely yarn to make something with, and I decided to make a small scarf for one of Mia's teddies. I'm combining the different colours together to add a bit of interest. Unfortunately I didn't work out the width very well so it's going to end up being a very large scarf - I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up fitting Mia better than her teddy!

Our Instagram crafting community continues to grow - last month almost three hundred posts were tagged with #craftingismytherapy_august. If you'd like to join in this month we'd love to see you share your crafty projects under #craftingismytherapy_september.

Watching

We've just finished watching The Handmaid's Tale which I enjoyed very much. It's one of my favourite books so I was interested to see how it transferred to the screen. I don't want to spill any spoilers but I was pleased with the adaptation, even if it did have lots of extras which are clearly a set up to future episodes going beyond the scope of the book.

We've been watching a few films too, although not that many that have particularly stood out. The Big Sick was quite funny, and Life was also enjoyable, albeit a bit gruesome!

Eating

The children are back to school so I'm back to being careful with what I eat. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I hadn't put on as much weight over the summer as I expected (and probably deserved to). I'm hoping this is down to the fact that I made a real effort to hit my step targed (11,000 steps) every day - even when I had to march around the house in circles because the weather was too bad to drag the children out. Hopefully a few weeks of proper calorie counting will sort it, and then I just have to be careful not to slip back into the unhealthy habits.

Travelling to

We've mainly stayed local this month, the furthest we've been was to a wedding in Bracknell over the Bank Holiday weekend which was very fun and a good chance to catch up with lots of people. Now I'm just travelling to school and back every day!

Reading

I recently re-read Bill Bryon's The Road to Little Dribbling after being reminded about it when a friend posted a quote on Facebook. It's hilarious and quite thrilling because Angmering gets a (very brief) mention, as does Worthing. I love all of Bill Bryon's books and I've read most of them several times over, they still make me giggle.

I'm currently re-reading The Handmaid's Tale after watching the television series. It's another book that I've read several times, but not recently, so it's interesting to go back to it.

Planning

Over the October half-term we have a very exciting trip coming up - we are going to Hong Kong and Singapore. Ram and I visited Singapore some years ago, and I always hoped that I'd be able to return one day with children. We've never been to Hong Kong, but we are planning to visit Disneyland Hong Kong for two days and then we'll definitely find plenty more to keep us busy. It's a big trip (kicked off with a 14 hour long haul flight!) and there is lots of planning to do. So I've set up a Trello board and I've been doing lots of research. I've put together a pretty comprehensive list of things that I want us to do, so now I'm moving on to the detailed planning - scheduling in the days and making a note of how to get to places, opening times and prices and so on.

Of course, like any trip away I also find myself planning and scheduling for my blog and social media to keep it ticking over while I'm away, so there's all that to plan too!

Looking forward to

Our holiday of course, and before that a few weeks of getting the house back to normal after the summer holidays!

What have you been up to lately?