Ok so you know I am a sucker for a floral photo or five, make that five hundred. So with all the streets and gardens filled with blossom trees, Spring Blooms seemed a perfect choice for last week's #capturingcolour theme!

I picked up the most beautiful orchid stems for £2.50 a stem in a little greengrocers on Southbourne High Street that's been there since I was a baby! They have the most amazing selection of flowers and offer a 3 bunches for £5 offer too!

2 weeks later they are still looking lovely, floating in a shallow bowl of water on the coffee table.

I decided that they were far too beautiful not to share them in some way, so if you fancy downloading a new orchid phone wallpaper just click on any of the photos below for the link. 

They were the perfect props this week and I loved snapping corners of the garden that are bursting into colour.

The gallery was insanely beautiful this week and it was almost impossible to choose a favourite!

I loved these perfect pinks which together just make a stunning grid. For the accounts to follow check out my Instagram post here and tap for details.

But the one that just caught my eye the second I saw it was this one from Alexis. I have serious calligraphy envy! I wish wish wish I could write like this! I was given a course for Christmas 2 years ago and still the quill and inks are in a box on my desk. But I am totally inspired by Alexis and am determined to start my course.

Come and join in a brand new week of CUPS! Yes that's right I am working all the way through the insta loves this April! Feet, flowers and mugs!

#capturingcolour is a weekly theme on Instagram. Tag your CUP photos this week. Coffee, tea, hot water and lemon, whatever you are drinking I want to see it! In fact, cups and saucers and some of my favourite props too. Favourites will be featured next Monday :)

Memories of my school holidays are filled with happy times with my cousins. Special occasions and celebrations with us noisy 5, making dens, performing made up shows and carefree, barefoot days in the garden together. I love that the boys and Yasmin are growing up with that same very close bond. Yasmin is desperate to be part of the gang, she calls to them “Oh boyshsss!” and wants to join in with their more grown up games, helping with their elaborate Lego creations!  Sammy adopts a high squeaky voice when he starts talking to her, in that silly, slightly slower googly way we all can’t help ourselves but do to newborns!

They are like the three amigos, tearing around Granny’s house, every now and again all vying for her attention, and poor mum ends up with her legs being squashed with all three of them on her lap! 

I promised the boys a trip to Granny’s house during the holidays and mum lives very near to a Squire's Garden Centre. So we were delighted to be invited to try out their Easter create and grow craft activity and watch the children enjoy the mini soft play area and outdoor climbing frame. 

Mum and Yasmin are regulars to the centre and whilst the children all played with their slightly muddy hands, mum enjoyed a coffee and I whizzed round their gift section, oohing and aahing at all the lovely home ware, browsing in their farm shop feel food department, spotting the perfect mint cushion for our family room and trying to resist all the Easter decorations on sale!

They all chose their bunny planter and which colour plant they wanted and the very nice member of staff talked them through why it’s important to water your plants and how you need to be careful and gently put them into the planters. Sammy blasted her with a few other horticultural questions and then charged off to the soft play! Yasmin on the other hand was fascinated with the dirt on her hands (A Princess in the making, why would those boyshss want to be dirty!) and really took her time, after all it is quite the big decision to choose which bunny out of the identical “wabbits” to call your own, studying her flower, scooping in tiny bits of soil at a time! 

Yasmin and I had a little stroll around the plant section, stopping to sniff all the flowers and stroking every single ceramic animal ornament. I love having these little snippets of time on my own with her, to listen to her sweet tiny voice, each time I see her there are a string of new words and we always talk about coming to stay at Auntie’s house and playing with all our toys!

I’ve watched my sister’s relationship with the boys develop over the last 6 years, and how when we are all together, how interchangeable she is with me. They trust her implicitly, want to impress her and flop all over her after a busy day. And having that relationship happen with Yasmin all on it’s own is just wonderful. She becomes my little best friend for the day, sharing stories, holding hands and smooches on lips. Oh the kissing on lips phase, just melts me. 

A lovely morning together before we headed back to Granny’s for lunch and games in the garden. The sunshine has spoilt us over Easter, I hope these glorious days are here to stay!

If you are near a Squire's Garden Centre do check out their in store events, and make sure you leave some extra time for shopping, I didn’t even get near the enormous craft department! Next time! Through the May half term they will be running Create and Grow sessions from Tuesday 26th - Friday 29th May. The sessions are open from 9am - 12pm and this time the theme is all about vegetables! Your children can:

• Children can create a tasty vegetable box with pepper, lettuce and tomato plants to take home, the cost is £5
• There will also be a FREE Veggie Hunt (follow the trail of questions around the centre), and a FREE Word Search (find the names of the vegetable for your chance to win a prize)

Thank you to Squire's for inviting the children to make their Easter bunny planters.

There's a line I love in Pretty Woman, when Julia Roberts whispers to Richard Gere as they are about to step out of the lift. She's dressed in a breath taking red full length evening dress and she says with nothing but complete adoration, "If I forget to tell you later, I had a really great time tonight."

And strangely that's kind of how I feel about Southbourne. It's not a tropical beach, a super trendy London high street (well almost!) or a beautifully furnished contemporary city apartment but it's ours. And every single time we go there I feel nothing but love. I know we are going to have a wonderful time.

And this Easter was one of the best. New friends, bestest old friends and a series of simple pleasures. We swapped fancy meals for staggered breakfasts where anyone ate whenever they fancied it, pub burgers, picnics at the beach hut, and impromptu bonus lunches of supermarket sandwiches. It was perfect. 

We made the holiday about the boys. No laptops. Yes no laptops for four days! So if I owe you an email please bear with me! I shared my break over on Instagram, I am a blogger after all, but no glaring at a big screen in the evenings, for the first time in a long time! 

Instead we played cards, oh man have you played Cards Against Humanity yet? Eeek! Played a family favourite spoons (Are we the only ones?!) and chatted into the early hours. I had some precious time with one of my absolute best girlfriends who I miss dreadfully since we've moved. In fact the last time I saw her, when it was time to say goodbye, I cried, quite spontaneously and quite loudly, in the centre of the city of Bath. 

It's funny, as you get older, you still need the support of friends. Just like you do when you are at school. People to laugh and cry with, to talk things over with and get advice from and just sit with, in silence. Because you are comfortable just sitting, appreciating it's just nice to be in the same space. We even managed a couple of runs, which shook off our slight wine headaches, from a night of gossiping til we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer. 

I've found it a little hard to make new friends in our new area. Working from home, tag teaming school runs, makes it that much harder to literally see anyone! Everyone is lovely of course, so welcoming, so friendly and I just need some real time to get to know them better. But it's made me realise how much my heart is pulled back to Weston. 

We started the week with some new friends from school and it was a joy to see Sammy and his little friend include Ollie as part of their gang. Probably a little shock to her Dad with two boisterous boys to contend with, and lovely to have time to chat over a few drinks in the evening. We watched them race in and out of the shore, pretending to beat the waves, wondering how they weren't feeling the cold of the biting waves, and smiling as they skimmed stones into the sea, which was more like plopping lumps of pebble!

My kind in laws are away with part of the Heath family for Easter somewhere hot and sunny, so we borrowed their house for an afternoon! The kids showed off their swimming skills, we cooked a spag bol and headed back to the flat for bedtime. 

On Friday our friends changed over and our Weston gang arrived! Sammy and his little pal have gone from spending all day at school together to not seeing each other for almost 6 months! Life has just got so busy that we are planning weekends together right up until December! But you wouldn't have believed it. Four boys with ages ranging from almost 11 to almost 4, thick as thieves.

We had time sat up at the beach hut, drinking Prosecco from a novelty bunny cup, with four boys making up game after game. One minute one was an alien, the next they were dragging each other down to the sea in the wagon. We had to force them not to swim in the sea, and promised a Summer trip when they don't need specialist wet suits!

Moors Valley was perfect for an overcast afternoon, and I almost did a double take seeing them tackle the obstacle adventure course around the forest play trail, just like I did with my family friends when we came to Southbourne as children. It felt like we were living all the seasons in one long weekend!

Ollie trailed after their eldest like a lost puppy, he got to stay up late whilst the little ones went to bed and help Rich on the last dog walk of the night. We had a chance to really get to know him without 3 noisy lads trying to steal the show.

The boys had an easter egg hunt, reliving my exact childhood Easter breaks with my cousins when we were little. Scrambling around the grounds of the flat, Ollie so excited to find his first egg, he almost forgot to look for anymore!

We finished our mini break with a pootle up the river at Christchurch, walking through the grounds of the Priory and a picnic at the play park. Lush. 

And it showed, when we said goodbye, and he put his arms out to give me a monster hug. With his younger brother shedding tears into his Mummy's poncho because he didn't want the long weekend to end. We are all so comfortable with each other, there's no worry of make up first thing in the morning, you can change into comfy clothes as soon as the kids are in bed and Ollie has such a thing for my friend Emma! 

We didn't want to say good bye either! But as I said to him, there's always another time. So what shall we do on our next visit to Southbourne?! 

I hope everyone had a nice break too. What more do you really need over Easter than each other?