little white truths

It's all a bit nuts here at the moment: aside from the usual trials of living with two toddlers, we're having a fortieth birthday party for Mex in a couple of weeks so things are even busier than usual.

There's much organising to be done (cleaning too), and I've also been spending plenty of time out in the garden. While I normally garden anyway, this time I'm cutting back any trees and bushes that are encroaching on the paved areas where people might stand or kids might want to play. This has also meant pruning back our exploding citrus trees, where there's a lot of unripe fruit that I've been shearing around.

I digress. We're nearing the end of the month so why not have a look at my monthly positives. Feels like a good day for it, tired as I am.

We've been a lot more social lately

Any parent will know that the first year of a child's life tends to be incredibly draining. You spend most of your time exhausted - whether or not you get a good sleeper - and my second child definitely wasn't a good sleeper so we had that added 'bonus' to deal with.

Still, once he turned one in October and we got past the festive season, it's as though we suddenly felt able to do more. Seeing people we haven't seen enough, really using our weekends, making extra play dates for the kids - that kind of thing.

And yes, the impending party - which we're using as an opportunity to see people whom we haven't seen in a while.

Of course, we're still permanently drained because the kids have boundless energy during the day, but at least we're not as sleep-deprived as before so our lives feel a little broader. That has to be a good thing.

Contact dermatitis has turned out to be a good thing for my panning projects

You wouldn't believe it, but being told that I can't wear makeup unless I go out (not to mention the tight skincare restrictions) has turned out to be a positive for my panning projects - at least where makeup's concerned.

Because here's the thing: I need to apply makeup during the day for my own sanity, and since I can't do that to my own face while the kids are screaming around me, I've been doing it in a notebook by drawing a face every day and filling it in. Also for my own sanity, I've been applying makeup to my own face in the evening just before my shower (my dermatologist gave me the green light on this), so I've essentially been applying makeup to two different 'faces' every day for over three weeks.

This of course has meant that I'm getting through some of my powders a lot faster. While I wouldn't apply my more special stuff to paper (eg, certainly not the Hourglass palette I'm panning), I don't mind doing that with the older, more crumbly stuff that doesn't look great on me anyway. On top of this, you need to apply a lot more product to paper in order to get it to show up (and my paper face has more lid space than I do, with my hooded eyes), so I'm burning through some of my powders faster than I ever have before.

Yes there's an end to this because I won't be under makeup restrictions forever (well, I certainly hope not - touch wood), but for now I'm looking on it as a good silver lining where my makeup panning is concerned. Hooray.