Friday Happies

I'm glad I have this routine, this anchor of sorts, in my blogging week as otherwise I don't think I'd have made the time to sit down at the laptop today. As I look back at the photos I see that it has in fact been a pretty good week, if a busy one, and that's why writing these Friday posts is so important to me. It makes me stop and notice, prompts me to record these moments, and then I remember and am grateful.

So here are this week's happies:

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1. Breakfast with John in a lovely new cafe not far from us in West Leeds, just after we'd dropped the kids off at school. I love the idea of going out for breakfast and I'd already looked at their menu online and chosen what I wanted. (I don't get out much.) I had their "Baked Beans" which was homemade baked beans (amazing) on top of toasted sourdough (my favourite kind of toast) topped with a poached egg and scattered with chorizo. Seriously good. I didn't eat again until about 4 pm that day. And fantastic coffee too, with the milk in cute little mini bottles - I'm such a sucker for details like that. I'm so excited that we finally have somewhere lovely to eat nearby!

2. Good weather, and the opportunity to be outside in that sunshine. 

I looked after Bella and her best friend yesterday as their teacher was on strike, and it was such a happy day. There was playing, baking, crafting, bubble blowing and general free spirited merriment. It felt like there was some education in there, just a different kind to what happens at school. And I even managed some crochet in the garden.

3. Crochet, specifically crocheting in these gorgeous colours. Oh, I love crochet, I really do. Looks at those tight little stitches, row after of uniform neatness.*

I don't normally understand what people mean when they talk about colour-play, I just like the colours I like, but when I was selecting these I thought...oooh, hello new favourite colours. The cool blue and gritty grey, the rose pink - just soft enough but not too sugary - and that sandy mustard, always a favourite of mine. 

4. The way these clothes hung on the washing line, in a row of glowing primary brights.

5. The simple act of preparing a spare room for guests. We haven't had a spare room for some years, using instead a sofa bed downstairs, and it was so nice to potter around making the space look pretty, buying flowers, folding towels. Trying to make a tiny bedroom look as welcoming as possible.

6. This amazing bumper parcel of goodies my parents brought me back from their recent holiday in France. 

Salted caramel sauce, a star fish, blackberry jelly (ok, Mum made that last week, that's not from France), divine smelling soap and....FISH SOUP! 

I am obsessed with this stuff. I could slurp it by the gallon, it is one of my absolute favourite things in the world. And this brand is from the Vendee, a region I love, the place of many, many happy childhood beach holidays. 

And bonbons!! Does anyone else like these? I can thank them for my excellent knowledge of the French words for most fruits. 

7. This pretty, elegant enamel coffee pot I found in a vintage shop in Saltaire today. I love the shape and that deep navy blue. A total bargain, it would have been wrong to leave it behind.

I promise to change the table cloth soon, it seems to have featured a lot here.

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Well done if you made it to the end. I always forget how relentlessly busy end of term feels. It's a bit like the run up to Christmas; extra assemblies, plays or performances to attend, fairs to bake for, teacher gifts to make or buy, extra things in the diary that I mustn't forget. And then the (very welcome and long overdue) arrival of my lovely parents for the weekend, which was all arranged at the last minute, leaves me running around thinking about shopping lists and spare bedding and forgetting to blog. And then another day passes, and then another, and it's hard to return. I'm going to blog LOADS next week! You have been warned.

I feel better for writing this post. I knew I would.

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* It's a curtain tie back for the box room, which was Angus's bedroom and is now a spare room - more on that next week.