little white truths

We went away for two nights over Easter to my parents' holiday house down the coast, and I wasn't able to blog while we were there (too exhausted: we didn't sleep well) so I'm a little behind and I have some catching up to do.

One thing I wanted to knock off today was my next monthly positives post. While I'm not feeling particularly positive because the kids have both had bad night coughs for almost a week now so we're all damn tired, it's a good day to write that kind of post so I can get myself into a more positive frame of mind - or at least attempt to ; )

In no particular order...

I've had a lot of work on lately

I'm a contractor so I usually don't know how much work I'll have on a month-by-month basis, but I'm pleased to say that the last two months have been huge and it's meant that we've been able to put some extra money on the mortgage.

I also really enjoy my work (I'm a freelance writer and editor), and I like being busy with it and doing something other than raise children. It's good to have a balance, and March and April have been a lot more balanced than the few months before them so that's a plus.

Here's to hoping these work levels continue. I just feel better when I'm working more: I'm better mentally when I'm doing what I love.

We had the morning off unexpectedly

I started writing this post hours ago and then got a text from my brother, who said he was on his way over because he wanted to take the kids out for a while. Hooray!

They were gone for over two hours, meaning that my husband and I could go out for coffee by ourselves and also do some grocery and pharmacy shopping without pre-schoolers running interference. While that mightn't sound like much to some, given that the kids were at each other's throats this morning, having someone come in and take them off our hands unexpectedly felt like Christmas!

Better still, he took them to the park so they burned off some of that grumpy energy by the time they got home. Double Christmas.

The house and garden are looking better

Over the past month, I've had to cut back some of the overgrown trees in the garden and deal with the usual autumn leaves. I love gardening so that's no issue, but it's meant that we've had piles of green waste everywhere that we weren't going to bother removing until the last of the work was done and we could organise the council to come and collect it in one hit.

Happily it's all in bags and bundles now, and it's ready to be collected tomorrow. This means the backyard is free again and the kids aren't negotiating piles of sticks when riding their bikes, and everything just looks better when I peer out the window.

Also, my husband has finally been through all of his clothes and he's managed to weed stuff out to be donated, which means that the spare room upstairs no longer looks like a bomb's hit it. Hallelujah. 

The citrus trees are starting to ripen

I always look forward to our yearly explosion of citrus, and at the moment the lime tree is just beginning to bear ripe fruit, while the orange and mandarin trees aren't far off - and the lemon tree will be a time after that.

There's something pretty special about being able to look out your window and see a wall of ripe fruit, and I look forward to it every year. I also like being able to go outside with the kids and help them choose oranges and mandarins to eat: it's a cool experience, being able to do that in your own backyard.

My aim once the kids are older and we have more spare time will be to plant other things out there. We do have grapes, apple trees and a peach tree too, but there's more space for other things and I want to grow as much stuff as possible. Better for our wallets and the environment, too.

Soon I'll be able to buy makeup and skincare again

As you may know, I'm currently on spending bans for both makeup and skincare, and I have been since December 2018. While these are going well and I'm not feeling deprived yet (ha), I do plan to lift those bans in June (being my birthday month) so I can replenish whatever needs replenishing.

We're only a month away from that now and I'll likely start investigating what I might buy very soon, and I suspect that May will be the month when I do all my research.

Although I don't plan to buy a lot, I will need some things and I enjoy looking at what's out there, testing things when I can and also compiling a short list of what I might buy - and I haven't done any of that browsing since I started my spending bans so I'm looking forward to the process of doing it. Hip hip hooray.

In sum

That's all from me. It wasn't the easiest positives post to write this month because we're all sick and exhausted, but I'm glad it's done and it's helped me to think of happy things while I've been writing it.

Do let me know in the comments what your positives are this month: I'd love to hear.

Hope all's well with you, and speak soon x

* All images courtesy of unsplash.com