An Autumnal bucket list

It may only be the 2nd of September, and it isn't officially Autumn until the 21st September (my Birthday wahoo)! But I have been dreaming of falling leaves and festivities for some time now! 

Here's what we are looking forward too...

Make a big old batch of scrummy flapjack,
Watch Hotel Transylvania,
Go for a crisp morning walk,
Drive around the illuminations,
Get food from the chippy and walk around the illuminations, go in the arcade too!
Go on an Autumnal picnic, hot chocolate is a must!
Watch Hocus Pocus,
Watch The Corpse Bride,
Pick out our pumpkins,
Carve and decorate our pumpkins,
Make goodies for the trick or treaters,
Have a bonfire and roast marshmellows,
Light sparklers,
Decorate for Halloween,
Make DIY Halloween decorations (spiderweb flowers and spider and web mason jar lights)


And here's some things that aren't on our bucket list, but might make yours!
Visit a Maize Maze
Go apple picking
Bake pumpkin pie
Trick or Treat
Visit a pumpkin patch
Eat a candy apple

100 Happy days

I first heard about 100 Happy Days when Rosie Hardy posted about it on Facebook (If you don't know who she is or of her work, give her a google, she is bloody fabulous, as well as being super super lovely). So I had a little look into it, and the website instantly sold me on it! On the website it says '71% of people tried to complete this challenge but failed, quoting lack of time as the main reason'. This struck a cord with me. Did I have 'enough time' for my own happiness and if not, could I make enough time? Every day, everything we do comes down to us just trying to be happy, so how could I not have enough time for my own happiness.

The rules of 100 Happy Days states that it is not a happiness competition. Having spent the majority of my life comparing myself to other people and their lives, I thought if anything, that would be my biggest challenge. To not compare my happiness or what makes me happy, against what makes other people happy.

Since the beginning of this challenge right up until the very end I have noticed nothing but positive changes in myself. I was reminded that in every single day, there is something to be happy about, whether it be receiving some flowers, going for a walk, watching my favorite 'youtubers' or whatever silly things my fur baby has been up to that day. There is always, always, always something to be happy about. Some days I would feel like I didn't have anything that made me really happy that day, so I would go and make it happen by buying myself a plant or doing something like painting my nails. So not only did it make me realise how much happiness was out there, it helped me create happiness for myself too! Aside the obvious reasons, I originally set out to do this challenge as an aid in recovering mentally from my Miscarriage which happened earlier this year.

I would recommend this challenge to absolutely anyone! To people suffering with depression, to people who are going through a tough time, people who have nothing to do over summer or even the happiest person on the planet. I don't think there is one person who wouldn't benefit from 100 Days of Happiness. 

See my 100 Happy Days here 
100 Happy Days website

Fathers Day

I had been waiting for fathers day to come around for some time, I could not wait a single day more for Simon to feel as proud as I did on Mothers Day! With Mothers Day I had sooo much anxiety in the build up to it, but Fathers Day was completely different. We had gotten through Mothers Day, so we knew the sorts of emotions that would probably arise.

For special occasions we be naughty and let the fur-baby come on upstairs with us to join us for present unwrapping fun, and fathers day was no exception! She bounded upstairs and purred her little heart out whilst Simon opened his presents.

Since getting home from Tenerife where we lost Snowflake, we have eaten at home very little. We have lost all motivation to cook and eat at home, we found comfort in going out to eat at our favourite local pubs, or getting a cheeky McDonalds. So it felt appropriate that for Fathers Day Snowflake sent Simon something to encourage us both to eat at home more often! He was absolutely thrilled with this gift, he has been mentioning George Forman grills for some time now.

He also received this Marvel notebook to store all his ideas and plans to improve his family business. From the moment I found out I was pregnant with Snowflake, Simon put so much effort into the family business to build even stronger roots for our family. So we thought this notebook would be appropriate for the Marvel Loving note taker he is (and we were sick of the loose paper and lists piling up around the house)! Simon had a lovely day and said he felt proud and happy throughout the entire day which I am ecstatic about. He even went to bed that night and had a 'new baby dream', I hope his intuition is correct! Fingers crossed for now.

See our Mothers Day post here!

3 month update

When people bring up our holiday I can barely believe that three short months ago we were on holiday, it just seems so long ago now and it feels like a lifetime since I was pregnant! After our miscarriage I had so many questions unanswered and things I just didn't understand, and where possible I tried to see a doctor, but sometimes you just find yourself googling things. And on my Google missions, I found that nobody really talks about miscarriage, aside from privately on forums (usually backdating to the 00's). So we decided that we we're going to be open about everything. So that one day perhaps, when someone like me is googling away, that they stumble across our little blog and feel less alone in their journey. From the beginning we have been more than happy to answer peoples questions, open to talk about the subject and of course my little blog here. It was a big risk for us being so open, we were already vulnerable from our experience, but we have received nothing but positive and loving feedback! Healing wise, as a person who tends to hold everything in until I pop, blogging the journey has been extremely therapeutic for me.

I have had depression and anxiety for around five years now, and I have learnt an important fact about myself, that i'm not one to be able to be beaten down for long before I start making plans to build myself up again. Myself and simon sat down at the very beginning and made some goals we would like to acheive to aid our recovery. We wanted to be able to look at baby clothes in stores, see a pregnant person and smile, be able to smile at little ones (came very easily, i'm a sucker for a gummy smile), begin pinning nurseries again on Pinterest, be able to hear baby talk, be able to discuss future pregnancies and so on. We are doing very well with the goals we set and we have pretty much checked them all off, which feels amazing!  One thing that really helped to spur along our recovery was discovering that Simons brother and our sister in law were expecting a second baby. We found out the news the day after we found out we had lost snowflake. Initially, this was really bloody hard, I am not going to lie. I am incredibly close to our sister in law (I love you and hello if you are reading this :D) and we would chat for hours and hours about pregnancy, babies and everything for that matter. I really did not want to lose this, I didn't want to lose such a wonderful relationship, so we kept talking about things, and it got easier and easier. 

The miscarriage hit Simon hard, but he too found outlets that helped him get through. It was hard for both of us to think about anything other than the miscarriage. He played lots of Disney Infinity which he got for his birthday, which I think was really really good for him. It's good to lose yourself in a happy childlike world. He also began creating graphics for his family business, and today he continues with that. We stuck together through it all, we made sure that each day we were talking through our feelings and getting them out in the open. 

The recovery phase is a journey, a journey which has no finish line. As daunting as that may sound, it does, and it has got easier. Day by day we are getting stronger and the breakdown moments are farther and fewer inbetween. We still have a long journey ahead of us! But for now, since receiving the news that I will not have to have another operation, we are hoping to get a positive pregnancy test sometime in the near future!

Remembering Snowflake

'When a baby is born, it's a mothers instinct to protect the baby. When a baby dies it's the mothers instinct to protect it's memory'

When everything that happened - happened, I had this motherly instinct within me that had to do everything possible for this babies memory to be kept alive. For some that may sound utterly ridiculous, as we never met snowflake. But for us, we knew snowflake, we knew how he or she would make me feel at certain times of the day, we dreamt and pictured the face, and more importantly we knew how we felt about snowflake, and we didn't want to throw that away.

We had a few different ideas of things we wanted to do for Snowflake, such as matching tattoos for myself and Simon, a scrapbook, and a memory box. We decided since we had so many bits and bobs accumulating (some big too, like the booties) a memory box would be best! We purchased our little box of love from a super cute vintagey homeware shop in Keswick, The Lake District. We was away there for a few days for Simons parents anniversary, shortly after we got home from Tenerife, it was perfect timing and allowed for a little holiday to get over the holiday. In the shop, to the left of the box was a sign that said 'If you are looking for a sign then this is it, then we saw the box - we think it was fate!

Putting the box together was an emotional rollercoaster, we felt so many different emotions. I had a lot of cries that evening!

Inside our little box we put in some lovely cards we received sending love, the 'Thank you' one above may seem a little inappropriate to anyone reading this, but it was from my Grandad who was on holiday with us and had to leave us at the airport to go home. He thanked us for looking after him on holiday, and wished us love and luck in the future. We also put in the booties, our announcement card, and the plane tickets that got us home the day of my Op! We also put in the pee stick as we kept that, but didn't feel it required its own picture.

Our memory box for Snowflake has provided us with lots of comfort, whenever I want to remember what we went through i'll have a dig through our little box. Snowflake now feels a part of our home although he or she is not physically with us!

Mothers Day

I'll be completely honest, after losing Snowflake I was really worried and anxious about Mothers day arriving, I thought it would have been a day filled with sadness that I wasn't a mummy to be anymore, that I had lost my baby. But I was wrong, in the best way possible! I woke up today feeling proud as punch at what I have achieved and been through, my contentment seems to have made a reappearance and I feel great.

 Myself and Simon came to the decision that it is important for us to celebrate mothers and fathers day.  We created life, I grew life inside me, and although we didn't get the outcome we wanted, we achieved things beyond what we thought possible. For a short time we were parents, we had to make decisions on behalf of our baby and adjust our lifestyle to suit.

 I can't fully put into words how I feel today, but I now can no longer wait for Fathers Day to arrive for Simon to feel how I have felt today!

I woke up this morning to two beautiful bunches of tulips (my favorite) in yellow and red, a sweet Winnie the Pooh card and a box of scrummy Forerro Rochers from our fur baby and our angel baby.

Happy Mothers day to all Mummys, Mummys-to-be, and all women out there who care and help somebody else to grow!

 See our Fathers Day post here!

Miscarriage update

'She wasn't just expecting a baby... 

    she was expecting the rest of their lives'


After the whole palaver in Tenerife, then coming home and being treated for infection I was sure that, that pregnancy was now over, and we could begin thinking about a new pregnancy. But boy was I wrong! I continued on to get another infection, this time a water infection which is apparently very common in ladies who have had a d & c. I've never had a water infection and was always curious to know how people even knew they had them. I never imagined them to be painful. Again, I was very wrong. The pressure and pain that came with the infection was unbelievable, I was very thankful that a trip to the walk in centre and some antibiotics later, the pain had gone. By that point I was rather ticked off to say the least.

A few weeks later, myself and Simon were pleased with our emotional healing, and physically my body was feeling back to its pre pregnancy state. I even instagrammed as part of my 100 happy days how content I was feeling about where we were in life at that point. That unfortunately didn't last as long as we would have liked, as we shortly walked head first into more bad news! On a Wednesday morning I got up as usual and we went about our morning routine, until something literally fell out of my foo-foo, it was alien-like and me and Simon were absolutely devastated at it's likeness to a fetus. We got an emergency appointment at the doctors and we sent what we found to the lab. For the next week we put it out of our minds the best we could, we didn't know what the outcome would be so we chose not to waste our energy making up possible scenarios. For us, the worst case scenario was that either we had unfortunately met snowflake, or that we had lost another pregnancy. Luckily, neither was the case.

Today I should have reached my six week recovery mark, we were thrilled to have come so far and we thought we could finally begin making plans for a future pregnancy. Yesterday we got an early call from a very lovely doctor who has seen us multiple times since my operation, he seemed sad himself to be giving us more bad news. It was the placenta that fell out of me, and I am going to have to have another D & C operation to make sure there isn't anything else remaining in my uterus. I am really upset to have to go through another six weeks of recovery, it felt like forever this time, and knowing i'm walking straight back into it feels awful. But, I have to have it, and I am somewhat grateful I discovered what I discovered. Currently, I may be infertile, my body may be under the impression it is still carrying a baby, which would mean I wouldn't ovulate or have a period, making it impossible to conceive again.

If the operation means we are one step closer to our dream, then an operation is what I must have. This time we will be in england, it'll be on the nhs, our family will be around us and there will be no language barrier (phew). But sadly no mermaid Jorge.