Today it's really dawned on me that the summer holidays, the summer of excitement and adventure, the best summer ever is drawing to a close, my girls both return to school on Wednesday and my house is going to feel so empty and quiet, not that I've been home very often over the last six weeks, tomorrow I'm throwing a little goodbye to summer soiree to mark the occasion and I plan to cook some super tasty and healthy treats because today is the first day of the Handy Diet and Exercise plan, luckily I managed to eat that last box of Polvorones I bought at the airport, go me!

I've put on about a stone in weight over the last few months and I haven't been running since the girls broke up from school so I really do need a shove if you see me standing still for too long or attempting to fill my face with something which isn't grade A healthy.

September for me means, the start of Autumn, the beginning of the busiest time of year for portraits and I know that over the coming months I'll be out there recording hundreds of families making their own sweet memories in what is the most colourful time of year.

I have some new Autumnal lovely shoes which are going to ensure my feet hold out during the myriad of sessions I'll shoot over the coming months, thanks to the lovely people at Hotter who make the most comfortable stylish shoes, seriously, if you are a photographer and shoot weddings, try wearing a pair of these and you'll still be able to stand up at the end of the night!!  You know when you put new shoes on and think "ooh, they'll be comfortable when they're worn in" well Hotter are different, I put my Stephanie shoes on and they instantly felt like comfortable gloves for my feet!

I will also tell you that even Looby loves Hotter shoes, she has a pair of their plimsoles and has worn them the entire summer, they really do have shoes for all ages.

Now I'm not going to lie when I say that September is always a bit of a hard month for me personally, in some ways it's like January, you've done all of the fun stuff and now it's back to work but at least it's not cold, dark and minus 3 just yet and I am hoping that the Indian summer will last right until the end of October at least.

Over the last few months I've learnt to expect the unexpected, I've learnt that there's adventure waiting to be had around every corner, over spring and summer I have collaborated with some of the most brilliant brands and worked to showcase both their products and they're experiences, it's something I never even thought would happen when I became a blogger ten years ago and I still write for me today about a myriad of subjects as well as collaborating and I think that's why my blog feels like home to me, it's enriched with memories and experiences, it's my happiest place but it's also a place where I can be honest, where I can truly be myself, sometimes venting or laughing or even sometimes crying or reflecting, it's good to remember that life is like a big patchwork quilt and some of the sections are bumpier than the rest.

I'm not entirely sure what this next part of my life is going to hold in store but I do know that every time I come home I get itchy feet again, my thirst for travel is unquenchable whether I'm travelling alone, or with my kids, friends or even with Holly Bobbins.  

So I hope you're reading this having had the very best of summer, I hope that your memories will linger on much longer than the kiss of sunshine on your skin which seems to fade the moment you step on the airplane home!

This post contains a collaboration with Hotter shoes but all thoughts, words and previous summer adventures were mine and mine alone!

The woman who sold her life on Ebay

I've mentioned previously that I had several thousand pairs of Irregular Choice shoes and for whatever reasons I was going to have to sell them (in most cases my feet are too small for them after losing so much weight).  I set about starting to list them all on Ebay on Sunday and then I remembered each and every adventure my shoes had been on so each listing ended up taking an age to write but I do feel that I have rather excelled myself in terms of descriptions and adventures.

Sadly not everything I'm listing on Ebay is quite as exciting as my Irregular Choice shoes but I do feel that I could go about listing most of my life on there.

I can't quite believe some of the things I'm selling but I'm on a bit of a mission to declutter and also to reinvest some of the money into some new camera equipment in my business (should have been a painter, it's so much cheaper) and also I want to be able to pay for Looby and I to have a great holiday in the summer without worrying about anything, obviously Holly is coming along too, I don't want much, just a cosy caravan near a sunny beach or a quaint cottage by the coast, something where we can get away from the stresses and strains of life for a couple of weeks and somewhere we can reconnect with each other and spend some precious time before Looby starts at Secondary school in September, it's a big thing when your youngest goes to Secondary school and I have no doubt that our carefree primary days with no homework and many adventures will be remembered with such fondness in years to come.  I know that the workload of St Marys is going to be a huge shock for Looby, whilst Abigail was ready and doesn't mind doing 2 hours of homework a night she's very different to Looby, there are rather less unicorns in Abigails life and sometimes even their 16 month age gap seems so huge, how can two children so near in age seem so completely different.  It's strange because often I can see the connections between Iain and Looby, similar traits and behaviours though they'd probably never admit it but Abigail is so unique and different that I wonder where her quotient of bohemian is hiding, I'm sure it's in their somewhere but I certainly never expected to have a daughter who wanted to be a politician for the labour party!

Whilst listing all of my shoes on Ebay and telling their stories I really did remember every single one whilst writing the descriptions, a lot of them come from fabulous exciting times and bodacious evenings out, something I rarely have now, or that's maybe a little unfair, I do have nights out but they're much more likely to be a good pub quiz or a dinner with friends than they are likely to be a raucous cocktail filled evening with dancing until the wee hours.  I don't regret a moment of it but I'm glad that life didn't have to continue at that kind of pace forever.

I have 25 items from my life past listed on Ebay at the moment, I could probably list items every day for the next year and still not run out of the extraneous gubbins I seem to have collected, I remember now that I have very little need for most of lifes attachments, I love adventures and experiences and things you can't see or whole but things that you remember forever, the photographs of our lives are the important things to me.  I remember all the time that my youngest child is 11.5 and these days should be cherish and held onto for as long as I possibly can for all too soon in the seemingly sudden blink of an eye they will be over and time will have moved on.  The only way to move on is to start again afresh and that's what I am working on trying to do now.

I don't know if you're reading this because you want my shoes or if you're just one of my regular readers but why not make yourself a cuppa, go check out my listings, my stories, my adventures and you know what, if you want to you can make a bid but maybe you could just spread the word, I would love to be one of those pages that Ebay finds and then highlights as something humerous, it's all good writing practice after all and every single piece of writing I put out there on the internet is one step closer to a publisher finding it and helping me to finish my project.

The weekend, my garden and what happened to all the sunshine

You know, there's been times when I've gone months between weekends off and the sunshine has gloriously shined and I've missed it all, so I really thought this whole working less plan would be super and I'd get to enjoy lots of sunny family days out at weekends and my pale milky skin would take on that healthy peachy sunny glow, well let me tell you it hasn't!

It seems that when I have weekends off it rains, and rains and then it rains a bit more!

On Friday I treat my gorgeous husband to his very first pair of Irregular choice, well you know how I love them so it seemed like about time he had some, I bought him some gorgeous boots which have a stencilled Chrysanthemum up the side of them, quite appropriate for a gardener really, I shall of course be posting a lil instagram photo when they arrive!

On Saturday, in the rain, we went shopping first of all and lovely hubbykins must have been feeling uber lovely and reciprocated my shoe gift by buying me these babies from Garage shoes.

Orange and Peacock blue they are and ever so high, I need an occasion of mucho fabulousness to wear them!

After the shopping we went to the Heaton Festival where it rained, and rained  and well you get the picture...

We made the best of it and Meandering Paul played hide and seek with what I'd call a mixed degree of success

We came home shortly after that because we were wetter than we were dry, I think though if it had been a gorgeous sunny day that the festival would have been a runaway success and I really hope they repeat it on a sunny Saturday next year.

Today we woke up to a dry day so the plan was to have brunch letting the Meandering one enjoy the luxury of a lovely lie in, the girls were very excited because they'd made and bought lots of little gifts for him for Fathers day, he loved it all, he does like being the centre of attention but I have to say credit where credit is due, he's an amazing dad to our 3 errant children and we make a brilliant parenting team.

So off in the car we went to the Seaham car boot sale, you see I'm desperate for a new dinner service, people keep smashing plates and for brunch today we used 3 dinner plates, a platter and a flan dish!

Sadly just as we were approaching the heavens opened and they didn't stop opening for quite some time so we came home and tonight we had sunday dinner on 3 plates, a platter and a flan dish!  Dear readers I simply cannot buy a new dinner service, I want old and vintage preferably, I'm not actually praying for some rain so hubby can take me to Morpeth to the charity shops where we'll hopefully get a new to us one, thats where the current one came from, can you believe we had 8 dinner plates, the cost of having no carpets me thinks, atleast with carpets sometimes they bounce, not so much with hard flooring!

This afternoon when the rain had just stopped I had a wander to see what was going on in our postage stamp of a garden and it seems the plants are actually quite liking the rain, I have enough salad leaves to feed the street and if the radishes get much bigger they'll be eating us!

Lets hope this little yellow flower becomes a huge halloween pumpkin!

My favourite of all our plants is our Gunnera Manicata, it's not exactly pretty but it's interesting and this one is called gertrude and she loves living in a dark muggy bog, for the first time in ages I can actually see her smiling as she sits in our usually dry garden.

and so we're reaching the end of another weekend, I am off again next Saturday so don't plan for sunshine but I've shoots and lots of work this week and on Sunday so they may be your days to plan your sunbathing.

This week in Instagrams.....

How can it possibly be Thursday again, 1 whole week since my last post, each week I'm so determined to blog more often and then before you can say two posts in a week it's been a week already!

So here's whats be going on in my little world of the strange this week, mostly captured by the wonder that is fabulous iPhone app Instagram.

Much excitement yesterday as my latest pair of Irregular Choice shoes arrived, I think they might be my favourite pair ever!

They are all kinds of fabulous and so very very me, I just need to find a suitable occasion on which to wear them.

On Tuesday I was outside in that splendid sunshine we had when I noticed our Alliums were looking gorgeous so a quick snap later...

Just in case you missed Tuesday it was glorious, barely a cloud in the sky

I've also managed to squeeze in some time to see my little adopted nephew Benjamin who I have to say loves his Auntie Mandy and makes me a very happy lady indeed with his gorgeousness and giggles, not long now till I shoot his mummys wedding!

This was his little face after I'd given him a bottle, can you say Milk Coma?

Our weekend was quite restful apart from me shooting a wedding up at Lumley Castle on Sunday.

Lots of it was spent enjoying the grand prix which always does this to my husband, he's like Pavlov's dog

Saturday was the rainiest day I can remember for ages, it just rained and rained and rained, this happens every year when our Lillies bloom, this one does look awfully pretty with those chunky raindrops on it's petals though doesn't it?

We went out on Friday night and had a brilliant night with friends, I reassured myself with this self shot photograph that for 37 I could look much worse, after now what must be around a year of taking photos of myself I'm finally getting used to my own face, if you hate your photo (or your face) try it, I promise it really helps!

Friday last week was windy in the afternoon but oh my the sky

and that was it back in time to a week ago, so what happened in your week and did you manage to capture any of it?

Who's Wedding Shoes are these?

Check back tommorrow to find out....