It's 5 am in the morning, the tree lights are twinkling and I'm nursing a large steaming coffee in my favourite unicorn mug, it's way too early to be awake and yet my body has hated even the thought of sleep during December and I can only hope that once the equinox passes later this week that I will start sleeping properly again.

When I do sleep, I have the most comfortable bed in the world, so much so that you'll often find me sitting working on my bed or just lying on it because it's like sleeping in a giant bowl of marshmallows and having every limb cuddled, my neck, the dodgy prolapsed disk hasn't given me any pain since I started sleeping on my Eve mattress and since the Eve Pillows arrived in November I have been fighting with my teenagers as they try to pinch them off me, the fiends, what's weird is for the first time in my life I'm sleeping on one pillow instead of two and when I sit up to read I prop myself up with 2 and it's perfect!!  I really do love sleeping on Eve (not a euphemism)

I would like to also state that up until December I slept like a virtual log every night, it's just December every year that likes to mess with me, it's almost certainly a combination of the approaching equinox, the bad light levels, the excitement that Christmas is coming and the usual, "what the heck am I going to do over winter" question that I pose myself each year!

For anyone tuning in to find out what's happening with Mr France, well we didn't Skype last night but we're Skyping tonight instead, I'm very happy and I'm going to take a presumptuous stab in the dark and suggest that the feeling is mutual, what's been really fun is seeing friends and other bloggers and them all asking me #whoismrfrance the hashtag has reached over 200,000 I think now, I never intended it to happen like that, it's almost the worst kept secret on the internet but I usually refuse to confirm or deny although my good friends, my best girlfriends, they all know and they already love him because they know how happy I am, I've definitely been in super sparkly, bouncy Mandy mode and nothing has made me grumpy for ages actually, not that I was the queen of grumpy before you'll understand but well, it's just nice to be liked by someone of the opposite sex again, especially someone as fabulous as Mr France

I've been feeling somewhat reflective over these last few days and wondering if I should come up with some kind of yearly round up post, it's been such an amazing year, don't get me wrong there have been tough times and challenges, I think when you put single parenting into the mix with self-employment that's always bound to happen but I've made it to the end of another year, we all have, my fabulous teenagers and I, I should say that Iain isn't, of course, a teenager any longer but it's just easier to call him one than say he's going to be 21 next year, I'm not even sure how that can be possible!! 

I still have much to do before Sunday, my quest to do the Peter Kaye style big shop yesterday rather ended up in much hilarity, oh I spent the budget but came home with a Jamón, a lovely Christmas dress and some new fabulous underwear, not entirely sure what we'll eat over the next couple of weeks but hey ho, a man is due today with a box of veg and another man is due with some Christmas meat, oh and another man is due with my iPhone7 plus, but shush, I know you can't eat that either!

I don't know what's going to happen with blogging over Christmas, writing is my therapy, something to do late at night or early in the morning when there's just me and the sound of my fingers tapping away speedily on the keyboard, whilst I'm sort of taking a break from the business of photography for a few days, I'm not sure how long I can go without writing something and as Mr France says, if I don't write about him people will start to wonder if he's disappeared, I think he just likes reading about himself superhero style and knowing exactly what's going on in my mind, but shush, don't tell him I said that!!

Whatever you do over the next few days, may it be smooth running, may you remember to smile lots and maybe take just a moment or two to reflect on what Christmas really means, I know I'll be doing exactly that.  Until next time dear friends...

Wake Up Happy with Eve!

Around a week ago a very large box arrived at my house containing my new Eve mattress, lets just think about that for a moment, a mattress in a box, now although I realise it's been 10 years since I last got a mattress I didn't quite realise that they've moved on so much!

I can't describe watching a huge, big, thick, mattress inflating as it's vacuum packed cocoon is punctured but when I look at my mattress now I wonder how it ever came in that sunny yellow packaging.

The concept behind the Eve mattress is that you wake up happy and although that might seem a strange concept it really does actually work.  I am the grumpiest of the grumpsters when I get up in the mornings, it's not my fault, I am a night owl not a lark but in the past week my sleep scores have been between 95 and 100 and I'm getting up at 7am, on the holidays!!  It's not that I plan to it's just that I'm waking up naturally after a great nights sleep.  

I have to admit that going from an 10 year old mattress to a brand new Eve mattress has been a bit of an adjustment and it took me 2 sleeps to get used to it but after a week I am sleeping better than I've ever slept in years, memory foam is at the heart of this mattress but it's not just made of memory foam and it has a cooling layer so you don't wake up with a sweaty head, it's also firm and you don't sink into it like traditional memory foam and the best thing is that you never need to flip your mattress although they do suggest that you turn it once a month for the first year and then you are good for about 10 years!!

It's so comfy that Holly Bobbins seems to have made that her go to resting place, if she goes missing we know she's on my bed and all of my girlfriends have been around and we've sat on it like teenagers and everyone agrees it's the comfiest mattress ever!!  Both daughters have slept in it and agree it's a great nights sleep too!

It's so good that for once I look forward to coming home from hotels because I know my bed is comfier and that hasn't happened for a very long time!

I want to say thanks to Eve for sending me my mattress in exchange for an honest review, these are my words, my photos and if you listen you might just hear my peaceful ahhh as I fall into bed every night!