Christmas days are magical days, especially when it snows prior to the big day, it really makes me feel so much more festive, I think watching the snow fall when you are cosy and warm and everywhere is twinkly and bright, it's my nirvana, couple that with cuddles from Holly Bobbins and a big cup of hot chocolate topped with squirty cream and marshmallows and it's the nearest thing I think I'll get to absolute perfection.

This year has been my favourite countdown to Christmas for as long as I can remember because Looby has been here and we've really been able to embrace the whole countdown from decorating our house together which took many days to building (or trying to build) an epic Gingerbread house from our friends at Biscuiteers.

Let me just say now that Looby and I shall not be entering into any professional competitions anytime soon, it took 3 people to secure the sides of the house so that the walls didn't fall in whilst the roof had to be held on for 5 minutes.  Some people are ace builders of Gingerbread houses, I can say now, I am not one of them but we did end up with lots of tasty sugary icing dowsed gingerbread and the house is actually standing this morning so I think we've achieved our goal.

Just as we were erecting our gingerbread structure another heavy snow shower happened, now I should just say that the rest of the country have had snow days for the last couple of days whilst we in Newcastle have had approximately 2 heavy showers so I was a little shocked when I saw Looby and her friend wheeling 2 major parts of a snowman up our path and we have a chubby short snowman now sitting outside of our door.

So that's been this weeks quotient of art covered and Looby is also working on a horse related project about stabling and looking after a horse which her dad set her and as I write this she's doing 2 hours of science with her tutor after a morning of maths with her tutor, she's exactly where she needs to be with her educational level and the best thing for me to see is just how keen she is to learn just because no one is telling her that she has to.  I think the best and biggest difference about home ed to traditional education is that we are constantly learning, "school" never stops, she'll be writing a blog post at 10 in the evening or we'll be off doing grocery shopping in the mornings where she'll have a shopping list or where she'll work out what we need to purchase for recipes and then we cook together though I must admit, she's not the biggest fan of cooking or of cookery programmes but I feel she'll have enough skills to look after herself when she eventually does leave home one day.

Home education isn't a cheap fix, it requires time, patience and the financial ability to be able to pay for tutors and activities but it's 100% worth it to see how happy she is.  There are some days where I want to teach her things which she doesn't want to know or she just isn't interested in and that can be frustrating but we spend very little time arguing and I have nothing but appreciation for the time we get to spend with each other.

In January we're meeting with the representative from the local education authority and hopefully they're going to give us their blessing that we are doing exactly the things we need to do but you know what?  I have no doubt that it will all be fine because what I have now, is a confident unicorn who is bright and shiny and happier than she ever was, with home education, Looby really has come into her own.

Some thoughts about time and life and home education

Where does the time go?  I remember looking down at Iain for the first time after he was born, I remember the first days in hospital and I remember when strangers told me to cherish this time because it would pass in the blink of an eye.  It did just that and last week he was a 21 year old, he's completely responsible for himself now, well sort of, he's still living at home with no sign of leaving but I love that, I'd miss him if he wasn't there.

Looby, my youngest, when she was just about to be three I told her not to grow up, she was perfect as she was, she promised me she wouldn't and then directly flouted my request, she's 14 in just 11 days. The truth is, we're all looking forward to things, we're making plans, we're booking holidays in advance, sometimes I think we stop enjoying the now because we're so busy planning ahead.

I'm trying to live more mindfully, to enjoy the passing moments and something I think is extra important when you are home educating.  We're in our settling in period right now, the one where we "deschool" because school is somewhere that institutionalises not just children but their parents too. We are so used to the daily routines that when we no longer have them we struggle a little to find ourselves again.  In saying that, we haven't encountered any major bumps but it's early days, it still seems like a holiday, maybe it always will, without the confines of timetables and rigid schedules, maybe we'll always just feel free now.

The strange thing about home educating is that the days are longer, the learning is everything, every single conversation we have directly teaches us something, it's something I never thought about before but then perhaps, perhaps it was because we never really had time to talk, the schedule of education encumbered us so that we had to try and fit everything we were and everything we did into shorter spaces of time, in a state education system there is very little time to just be, to be still, to think, to meditate.

Now, please, please don't get me wrong, I know for some school is a way of life and school is a good thing for some children but there are other ways and I know I am lucky to be able to give my daughter this untraditional learning experience.  Please don't think though it's because I am wealthy because nothing could be further from the truth, I still struggle to find the right kind of work to pay all of the bills and provide the extra experiences needed to get the most out of life, there are times when I worry what will happen if I don't get that next job or if I can't fill the sessions I've planned my income around but after 10 years I'm kind of used to the rollercoaster of work, life, finances, blood, sweat and tears that it takes to be self employed.

In home educating Looby I have given up seeing Abigail every day, her daily visits when she dropped her sister off on the way home from school every night are no more and her busy schedule means I haven't seen her in more than a week, something which makes me truly sad in my heart, I miss my big girl but isn't that life?  It's all so very bittersweet, I don't think there's a single person in this world who truly has it all, money doesn't buy happiness, love is the answer but even then, there are other extraneous factors which means having love alone isn't the whole answer to existence.

Now I don't want to be unnecessarily nihilistic because I do believe our lives have meaning although we'll probably never understand what that is, all we can do is try to make our mark, believing that all lives matter, I believe above all else that my children are the future and that the way that I parent has a direct correlation to their future failures and successes, another reason why it's the right choice to home educate Looby.

I hope this post has not been too profound, it's been a long time since I have been able to take the time to sit and write my innermost thoughts but here I am, at my desk sharing my thoughts whilst Looby is at the cinema with her friends, no need to worry about isolation with that one, she has many friends from lots of different areas of her life, a social butterfly will always be just that.  It is my aim with my month of saying yes that I too might become more social, I'm eagerly awaiting the chance to be less of a hermit, it's time to come out of my cave and into the light.

Home Educating My Teen, Our First Week

Oh, hey you, remember me?

Yes, I know, I was trying to blog more often you know but the first week back after summer always seems more than a little chaotic.

The funny thing is that Looby wasn't going back to school but we were settling in to our new way of life and anyone who's seen Looby in the last week or so has commented just how happy she is and how she's more like Looby again, hurrah for that I say, long may it continue.  It is amazing though, I think perhaps we're both so much happier and it was only a couple of days before we attended Home Ed trampolining where she made her first similarly aged friend.  I have no worries at all about Looby feeling any kind of feelings of isolation, she's made a new friend, she spent a day with her best friend from school at the weekend and then she saw all of her riding school friends yesterday, my social butterfly's wings have certainly not been clipped by the introduction to this new way of life.

What's amazing is that I wasn't sure when we should commence any kind of formal learning, the guidelines say that you need around 1 month for every year the child has attended school as a deschooling period and during this time you don't do any formal learning at all.  In Looby's case that would be 10 months which seems like an awfully long time to me so I decided that we'd just do things our own way, it usually works!  I feel and so does Looby that she's learnt more in a week about  real life than she ever learnt at school so that's already a win and within the first couple of days she set up her own blog and now she's blogging on a daily basis, please go over and give her blog a read, it's quite early days but she writes eloquently with a bouncy kind of style which makes for easy reading, she's more amusing than me and let me tell you, her blog about why she's home educated made me so proud, she also has had way better reader stats in a week than I ever had when I started blogging, she's a whizz!

This week is our first full week and we have lots of interesting things, we're at the Theatre tonight and tomorrow we're helping out at a dementia charity tea dance, home ed is brilliant because there are no boundaries and my financial aim this week is to accrue the funds needed for our cultural trip to Gdansk at the end of the month.

I need to sort my working times out, I am much behind currently as I wanted to spend as much time as I could with Looby but it's still early days and we need to work out how it's all going to work, it's probable that I'll just end up editing, sending newsletters and speaking to clients in the evenings and early mornings but that's fine, it's all doable, with my job, the brilliant thing is that I am mostly a digital nomad from Mon-Friday, I can literally work from anywhere on the entire planet!

I think I'm happy with life at the moment, I said yes to lots of great work things last week, nothing personal came up but there was always a chance that would happen, I'm just going to have to make sure I keep making my mark in a work sense so that I don't completely get forgotten about.

So this week, watch out for more blogging, more vlogging and definitely some new and interesting adventures, home educating is going to be the best ride we've ever been on together.

Why I'm about to say yes to everything

Do you know the last time I went out with friends for a night out?  I think though I can't entirely remember that it was sometime in either January or February and it's not that I don't get invited out, it's just that I'm a bit of a hermit!  When I'm not working I like to be on my own, not speaking out loud and digesting as much information as I possibly can from wherever I can find it!

It's not that I don't like socialising, it's just that really, I'm now completely allergic to alcohol and I like to be in bed as soon as I can possibly manage it, plus the world is scary, I'm terrified of at least 50% of people, mostly the ones of the opposite sex, one of the reasons I've now been single for pretty much 3 years is that men terrify me, if I see one coming towards me in a pub I literally shrink back into the wallpaper.  

Now don't get me wrong, I love my life, I'm someone who embraces working 23 hours a day but I feel there's a change needed or not even necessarily needed, I've just decided that for the next month, in the style of Jim Carrey or Danny Wallace to be more correct, I'm going to say yes to everything. Obviously, I'm not going to take mad risks or endanger my life but it's time to say yes for a while instead of no just in case it makes a difference and there's something I'm missing out on.

I'm also going to say yes to every work offer I get, well with the stipulation that I'm not going to undervalue myself or put my business at risk but I do turn down a lot of opportunities which could lead to somewhere amazing but until I actually start saying yes, well nothing life changing is ever going to happen.

This week I have already said yes to going back to Slimming World and going to the pub quiz, I need to lose weight and the pub quiz jackpot is over £1500 with only 5 keys left, I'd be stupid to say no!!

I told Harriet today so she knows and I trust her with the information and power that I'll always say yes, I also told Abigail, cue several crazy ideas like sky-diving, I'm kind of hoping for more realistic possibilities, like maybe being asked on a date or receiving an exciting work assignment.

Of course there's always the distinct possibility that going to the pub quiz and rejoining Slimming World is the most exciting offers I'll get but you never know until you try and I guess that's why I'm taking a moment to write it down, first off, it opens me up to my readership, it puts notions out into the universe and it also means I can't go back on the idea.  I'll write a post in October to tell you if anything happens.

I am planning to travel in September with Looby so who knows what that might lead to and when she comes back from Tenerife this week I'll tell her my plan, again, I'll put aside any crazy ideas that come from that, I shan't be signing up for any bungee jumps or dangling by my ankles over any crocodile tanks anytime soon.

So, stay tuned, along with single handedly home educating Looby, this could be the most exciting September I've ever known.  So, over to you...  Want to set me a challenge or ask me to do something, you can leave a comment or email me!

There's No Turning Back Now...

I make no apology for the fact that my blogging has been utterly sporadic of late or that I've written very few posts over the whole of summer.  It's weird that sometimes it just seems impossible to grab five minutes to sit down and collect my thoughts but unfortunately that is the way it's been.  I can't remember the last time I was actually up to date with work and as of right now, I have 2 weddings and 4 photo shoots to edit.

It's not that I've fallen out of love with blogging or indeed writing, in fact, nothing could be further than the truth, it's just simply that I need an extra hour in the day!  It's only a few weeks since I started vlogging but I really love finding my feet on a new platform, it's a task to build up a new following but I'm on a mission to conquer Youtube before the end of the year, come subscribe to my face if you already haven't!

I cannot quite believe it's the first of September or that in just 5 days my son will be 21 or indeed that in 24 days my youngest will be 14!  Yesterday I sent off her letter to deregister from school, no going back now, home education here we come!

I wonder if blogging is going to get easier during our year of adventure or if it will end up being like that random year where I only managed to write 34 posts....surely not, I hear you cry?!

Well dear readers, what's going to happen over the next year I just can't tell but I am excited by the possibilities and whilst in some ways, everything is changing, in many ways, I'm going to have to work even harder to support us all whilst simultaneously being responsible for Looby's education.

So, what's on the cards for the next few months, well in a work sense I've just announced my "Last day of summer" Mini photo shoots taking place at King Edwards Bay on 23/09/17 and yes, technically it is actually the first day of autumn but I'm guessing I couldn't fill a whole day of photo shoots on a Friday!!

So if you want a mini photo shoot then, it's £100 and you'll get all of the edited digital images to print and keep forever!  Just send me an email,  sessions are available from 10 am until 4 pm and they're 30 minutes in length.  

It is of course that shooting these crazy days are the thing that sustains us, my income comes from working hard and to the best of my abilities, our lives are what they are because I work more hours in a weekend than there actually seem to be, but you know what, I wouldn't change it for the world, I'm actually a bit rubbish at a life without deadlines, I work better under just a little pressure,maybe that's why I'm single parenting, running a successful and award winning business whilst home educating my 14-year-old, or maybe I've just lost the plot!!

I have big plans for us, we're undertaking a project about tourism in Poland and we'll have a cultural trip to go along with that, we're also going to be working on many forms of media and I'll be helping Looby to set up a blog/vlog when she gets back from her well earned holiday with dad, she's currently in the sunshine in Tenerife, lucky girl.

I also want to do a project on farming since that's what she wants to do and I'll hopefully arrange a stay on a working farm for us and hopefully, Holly Bobbins can join us for that one!  Oh and towards the festive season we'll be studying Christmas around the world with a cultural trip to a Christmas market, it's just as well the English/Math and Science program we are doing is online and accessible wherever we are.

So I want to end this blog post with a note of great thanks, thanks for your continued patronization of my business, thanks for your continued friendly faces entrusting me with your special moments and thanks to all of the people who've helped and advised about our home educating adventure, I really feel, now more than ever, the very best, is yet to come.