52 Weeks of Happy...39/52

Thank you for your comments on the honeycups post  - I loved reading them so much! The butter trick - where you hold a buttercup - sorry, honeycup - under someones chin (while looking for the yellow reflection to see if they like butter or not) - I thought everyone did that. I'd love to know if you did too. And it was fun learning about all the different words for things that have crept in to each family's history. I really enjoy stories like that. For ages both my two called sneezes "bless yous" as in "Mummy, I've blessyou-ed, I need a tissue." and I was a little sad when they realised that everyone else called them sneezes.

It's been a hot week, and there have been tired, unreasonable children and tired, unreasonable adults too, but it's not all bad. The weather has been wonderful (if you like 30°C - I do) and we've fallen into a warm weather routine where we pretend we live in the Mediterranean. We close all the curtains upstairs during the day, to keep out the sun, and stay indoors between 12 and 3 as it's just too hot to be in the garden. We collect Bella from school then spend the rest of the afternoon and evening outside, or inside with all the doors wide open. The kids wear their swim suits from 3.30 till bathtime and we've eaten outdoors every day this week. It's easy and light and free. So, joining in with the lovely Jen at little birdie, here are my happy moments from the last week:

1. Every afternoon this week, after their tea, the kids retreat to the playhouse in the garden. They take a pile of books, paper and felt pens in with them and just amuse themselves, quiet and busy and content, until I drag them inside at bedtime. The playhouse makeover is not finished yet - I still need to mend the cracked windowpanes among other things - but already they are using that little space again in a way that makes me so happy.

2. A brand spanking new Marimekko make-up bag in one of my favourite prints, found in a local charity shop for a mere 50p.

3. When I was in my early twenties I worked in a bookshop in the centre of Leeds. The air conditioning never seemed to work and on warm days the ground floor, where I worked, would be stiflingly hot. I would go out on my lunch hour and buy an iced latte from the Starbucks on the corner and wander around the shops sipping my drink and cooling down until it was time to go back to work. It was the best job I ever had, not least because of the lunch hour shopping opportunities that were available to me. I recreated the coffee and have been drinking it all week: espresso, cold milk and lots of ice. Cooling and delicious.

4. Our first strawberry, almost ready to harvest from our very own tiny strawberry patch.