Friday's Fave Five - 15/10/21

Yes it's me!  I'm here after several weeks' absence.  Although I've been in a bit of a mental fog the past few weeks I do still have lots to be grateful for so I was determined to join Susanne and other blogging friends over at Living to tell the Story today.

1)  Nice weather.  It's definitely been chillier recently - the heating is on in the mornings and evenings - but this week we've had dry days and some sunshine.  Perfect weather for enjoying the changes to the trees now that autumn is here and checking on the cygnets at the lake who are almost swans now.

Ella wasn't overly impressed lol.

2)  A new roof on the downstairs extension.  Our dining room, part of the kitchen and the utility area of our house are an extension to the original house and have a flat roof.  When we moved here we knew one of our urgent jobs was to replace the roofing material and we finally got that done this week.  (Grateful again for the good weather so that the works could go ahead and not need rescheduling.)

3)  I got my flu jab this week and today I've had the invitation to book my Covid booster.

4)  A night away.  One of our presents last Christmas from our youngest son and his wife was a voucher for a night away, including dinner and breakfast at a pub with rooms that we had stayed at years ago.  The pub used to be owned by the parents of the chef Jamie Oliver and although it has now changed hands it was still very much the same.

Set in a village in Essex it's a peaceful setting and it was lovely to get away and feel like we were doing something normal again.  For dinner I had mushrooms in cream on focaccia bread, followed by lamb shank with new potatoes and veg and then hubby and I shared a sticky toffee pudding dessert.  I'm not used to eating 3 courses though so I was very full!

5)  Books and bits for the grandchildren.

After a lovely full English breakfast at the pub we drove to Saffron Walden, an old market town and had a good mooch around the shops, many of which were charity shops.  I nabbed some books for me and some cars and puzzles for the grandkids.  I also got myself an umbrella as mine collapsed on me recently.  I also had to buy a couple of folding bags to carry it all in as Hubby bought a few bits too.

We stopped for tea and cake (too full from breakfast for lunch) and then we headed home taking the country route rather than the motorway.

Although it was short it was a lovely break.  

Now I'm looking forward to a lazy weekend and then preparing for guests next week.  Our American DIL's parents are coming for a visit and they will be staying with us.

Hopefully I'll have time to visit some blogs and catch up with news as I'm also thankful for the lovely comments I got on my last post.

Have a good weekend all.

World Mental Health Day - 10th October 2021

 

It's been weeks since I posted here, mainly because I haven't felt the motivation.  I've felt rather flat recently.  Nothing actually wrong physically but mentally definitely not in the right place.  I'm finding it quite hard to get back into normality.  I'm naturally quite introverted so although it was hard not being able to see family during the lockdowns being stuck at home wasn't that hard for me.  But then it's easy to disappear down a rabbit hole.

Life is a little bit hectic at the moment, our house is definitely becoming like a creche several days a week and the past few weeks it's also felt like a launderette as both our son and daughter have had problems with their washing machine and dryer.  It's been quite full on and I have been quite tired as my sleeping hasn't been great.

Looking back on my Facebook posts this was something I posted 5 years ago today. 

 I need to revisit this but another image posted by a friend was this one which is definitely helpful.

 

 

Another friend posted about the things she does for her mental health and that made me realise I need to focus and be more proactive.

On the plus side hubby and I enjoyed our first trip into Central London this week.  We had a lovely afternoon tea here.  It was delicious and was actually a Christmas gift to us from our daughter and her wife for 2019!

I even remembered to take some pics!  We had sandwiches, followed by cheese scones and then pastries on the theme of English biscuits and finally sweet scones. And of course lots of tea!