By Heather

Last year I was so fed up with how busy everything was and the heat of the Summer I was literally ready to pack me, Mark and our 12 fur-babies up and move us all back to the UK! I had even got us visiting new build developments near where Mark is working and we were getting very close to making offers. Dramatic I know. But the Summer did get too much. It seemed that wherever we went, there were people everywhere.  The beaches were packed, the carparks, restaurants, our walk we like along the promenade at Mil Palmeras was always swamped with people. La Zenia Boulevard absolutely manic and then throw in the Spanish Summer heat and I was done. I get it, I live in a very touristy destination and people want to visit. Which I completely understand, we loved it so much we moved here!  But, day in day out when because you do live here, trying to get your normal weekly errands done was turning into a stressful nightmare. Not the idea of living in the sun. After the Summer when everyth...

  So... I've started a new Instagram page! I've always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with Instagram and my original Instagram account has had many name changes over the years, but lately it's started to feel a bit stagnant. It's the one where I'm connected to family, friends, colleagues from old jobs and random connections we make along the way. But for some reason I feel shy on there and don't feel I can fully be myself and share what I want to share.  Maybe it's that feeling of being judged or that because people 'know' you, you worry they'll think you're being a bit cringe. It's hard to explain, but if you know you know! I made my original account private and I will still use it, but I've created a brand new space where I can just be me. If people from my old account do find me and follow along then I'll take that as a good sign, that they do genuinely want to be there. So, let's get into the new page I'm now ov...

 I saw a post on Instagram the other day and I've seen some more similar recently too, it was comparison pictures of present day compared to the 60's, 70's, 80's. Showing how much more colourful everything was back then compared to all the muted tones we have today. It really got me thinking that it's so true. It really does seem like the colours are being faded out of our life. I've realised I'm always trying to find little ways to bring more colour back in, because it genuinely makes a difference. Colour lifts your mood, adds personality and just makes life feel a bit more cheerful, don't you think? Of course colour hasn't disappeared completely. But when you look around at buildings, cars, even the way interiors are styled and shown to us it's all very grey, beige and toned down. Don't get me wrong I do love a neutral colour palette. There are definitely times it works beautifully. My house for example does have white walls throughout and ...

There's so much on social media at the moment about are you having enough protein, are you getting your daily steps in, having your matcha, lifting weights, getting enough sleep, getting enough sunlight, red light therapy, daily vitamin intake, journaling, reading, the list goes on and on. I know all these things are super important and there's obviously research and logic behind it all, and I too, now I'm well into my 40's I'm trying to make a better healthier version of myself, but it can be quite exhausting and even overwhelming at times, consuming all this wellness content that's fed to us.  Instead of thinking I have to do everything that is suggested on my Instagram feed, I just cherry pick the things I like, the things I will actually do and find easy to incorporate into my daily lifestyle and therefore will become a natural part of my life. Introducing more protein Protein is important to us ladies as we head into our 40's, it really helps to prevent...

  Hey guys! How are we all doing? So this week has gone super quick for me, like crazy quick. It's 9pm on Thursday and I still have a bunch of stuff on my to-do list, but I do feel I've been fairly productive this week. Along with the usual, grocery shop, taking Mark to the airport, the housework (which I've still got bathrooms to clean and hoovering and mopping to do before tomorrow!) vet's visits and trying to make sure I'm eating healthy and keeping out of the treat box! I actually started the rest of the decking which I've been banging on about (mainly on my vlogs) for ages. I did the small decking a couple of months ago and the big decking for one reason and another kept getting delayed. I did start one section of the balustrades a few weeks ago and on Tuesday I finally picked up the paint brush again and carried on. I had a really good day of it and got all the balustrades painted which I really didn't expect. And then yesterday (Wednesday) I did the s...

We've had a house in Spain for twelve years now and have been living here permanently for nearly ten. What started off as a holiday home with a view for far into the future for it to become a place to retire to, soon became our permanent home.  We loved it so much we made the decision to sell up the UK house when we returned from five years living in the UAE and Mark, myself, Poppy and Lily (we only had two fur-babies at the time) move to the house in Spain. Mark would commute and I'd continue being the household manager and stay at home cat-mum. Commuting for Mark is hard ( I'll touch more on commuting life in future posts ) but the reward to coming home to the sun at the end of the week is worth it.  Since the move over full-time we have moved house within Spain and are much happier in the new house. The plot and the location to us is so much better then our last place, it feels worlds apart actually. We never intended to move, but that's life isn't it...

I don't know about you guys, but having a tidy and clean home really helps me to focus better and actually gives me motivation and more get up and go. Our house isn't necessarily messy, Mark and I are quite tidy people. I always leave the kitchen clean and tidy, dishwasher on, all the washing up done before I go to bed, morning me is always thankful of this.  But with 12 cats the house can look a little scruffy quite quickly. After the weekend I always want to get going with a new blog and start vlogging for my YouTube, but there's always a little barrier inside me stopping me and it's not until recently I've noticed that it's literally because the house isn't nice and tidy. It must bother something inside of me that can't seem to settle or focus until it's done. So now I make sure after I've dropped Mark off at the airport instead of moping around missing him, I start my housework asap. Whereas before I would do it gradually throughout the week....

  I love food and what I love even more is quick and easy food that tastes delicious and my summer potatoes are just that! So let's dive in. This is so easy and is nothing new or groundbreaking, but sometimes I think we need to remind ourselves that it's ok to go back to the basics, to keep things simple, and do you know what, most of the time that's the best, especially when it comes to food. As soon as new potatoes hit the shops they're in my trolley. We definitely know summer has arrived and every dish that would have a jacket potato, chips or roasties are being replaced by my favourite summer potato. So easy that you probably don't even need me to do a full on recipe step by step, so here's the gist Wash and remove any knobbly bits roughly chop add to salted boiling water over boil them so they are really nice & soft, almost mashable texture drain, put back in the pan add lashings of butter ~ yes it has to be REAL butter lid on & give them a good swo...

  Hi guys welcome back to the blog ♥ Hope everyone's well and having a good week.  * * * Back in January I shared with you what skincare products I use daily and I mentioned I had bought a couple of new items which I would report back on. Here's the  link  to that post if you wanna quick read. About a week or so after writing that post I really started looking at my skin and to be honest it wasn't looking quite right. I always seem to have a red nose and red chin which does bother me. I don't drink alcohol very much at all, literally a glass of wine a month, if that, so it can't be alcohol related. I'm thinking maybe some sort of mild rosacea maybe or maybe it is my skin reacting to the products I use. I went on good old ChatGPT and that suggested I literally strip everything back basically and just use warm water to wash my face in the morning and minimise the products I'm using on my face. When I entered what I was using it recommended to stop using the to...

  Hi guys and welcome back to the blog ♥ If you follow my  Instagram  and/or my  YouTube  you'd already know that last week we picked up my new car. And I love her! I must admit I was super nervous at first driving her as technically she's not that much wider then my Ecosport was, but she is longer, but to me she does feel bigger. I'm slowly but surely getting more used to her everyday. It does get easier every journey. If you remember we ordered the new Kuga back in December on Christmas Eve - you can catch up with the post  here .  We bought the car from the Ford dealership in San Miguel de Salinas. We've used another Ford dealership in the past for our last two Fords, unfortunately the customer service really went down hill from the showroom and service department, which to be honest really put us off. But I really liked the Kuga and didn't want to cut my nose off despite my face, as the saying goes.  So we went to the Ford in San Miguel and we...

  Good morning friends! In today's post I'm chatting about something I should of definitely taken my own advice on years ago! For about the last week or so I've been getting emails and notifications on my Gmail that I'm running out of space and I'm pretty much at full capacity. Since I've been saving my videos to upload to my YouTube for my vlogs I have noticed my space being taken up quite quickly. I've been quite good at clearing the Google drive and deleting videos from pictures as soon as I'm finished with uploading everything for my YouTube videos. But it's still close to full capacity. I've pretty much deleted all my emails - luckily Gmail isn't my main account, but the pictures seem to be what's taking up the most space. I literally had no idea that every time I take a picture they are not only saving to my phone gallery, but they are going over to Google pictures too. Please tell me I'm not the only person in the world not to ...

  Hi gang ♥ Welcome back to the blog - I'm writing today from a very wet and rainy Spain. I'm currently sitting on my bed under a blanket, comfy clothes and slouchy socks over my regular socks with three cats on me keeping me warm. And to be perfectly honest, I just can't find the motivation for today's blog post! The weather's been a bit grim all week and I just haven't been able to get a blog post together. I have titles for some posts in drafts but I just can't find the words to put anything together. I want to keep up the momentum of my Thursday posting schedule, which I know it probably doesn't really matter if I miss a week. It won't be noticed and it's not like its my job where I have a deadline to meet or a pay check depends on it. But I want to do it for me. Keep that consistency going and to show up even when I'm not feeling it. So, last week I told you guys about my new YouTube channel. I am actually really enjoying filming vlogs a...

  Hi Guys! Happy Thursday ♥ Welcome back to the blog. So big exciting news! I'm officially on YouTube! I've actually had an account for quite a few years now, just being a viewer really. I did put a short video of a couple of my kittens on there (which must of been around 2017) Rae and Rocco. (we sadly lost Rocco when he was 6 months old, but I'm so pleased I have that video of him, to be able to watch him anytime I want & somehow it feels like he's living on, through the power of the internet ♥) I didn't post for years, but it's something, like blogging, I've always wanted to do, but I always put myself off. We are terrible to ourselves sometimes aren't we!? Because I feel awkward in front of the camera, have no idea how to edit a video, put music to it etc etc. I always just talked myself out of it. The whole self doubt talk would enter my head, telling myself who did I think I was, no one would be interested in watching anyway. But like starting b...

  Hola mi amigos! Happy Thursday and welcome back to the blog. I hope everyone is well. I wanted to chat today about my recent Emdogain surgery. They call it surgery, but I guess it's really a procedure, as it's done under local anaesthetic, they just numbed the area of the gum and it was done at my dentist practice. Either way it wasn't a pleasant thing to go though. My sympathy goes out to you if you're having this done or anything to do with your teeth for that matter.  I think since I had braces about 5 or 6 years ago my pain threshold for the dentist has completely gone down to zero. I never used to mind going to the dentist, but recently I dread it. It's probably because I'm getting older and things are sadly starting to go wrong. It just feels like every time you go they suggest something else that will need attention. Anyway, with that aside let me tell you a little bit about Emdogain. Well how I understand it anyway and what I've been through with i...