I am sat at the dining table as I write this (and not in my newly painted office on account of the floor and desk still be covered in props and magazines and paper that I took to BritMums and hastily emptied out of the boot) looking out of the window up into the blue skies and feeling thankful that it seems the summer has returned to the UK!

This blog has been a rather quiet place over the last few weeks, our feet have barely touched the ground and I am wildly racing between photo libraries trying to keep my laptop from crying under the weight of thousands of images I've taken in the last couple of months.

I scroll through my camera roll on my phone and almost can't believe all the things we have done this summer. The work I have felt so lucky and grateful for, the experiences we have had with the boys because of this blog and the family celebrations that have taken us to Paris and America! I have so many photos to share with you, stories and tales behind the glossy photos (Yes my husband is the one in 3 people a day at Heathrow who tries to travel to the US without a valid visa and almost gave my mum a heart attack at check in) and places I have discovered that I want you all to know about!

For me it's all the anecdotes that make the sentimental memories. The perfect times are great but it's the mishaps, the laughs and the "it could only happen to us" incidents that I will look back on with a happy heart. Sheltering in the rain in the beach hut on my birthday last week with the boys and my niece dancing in the rain, poking her tongue out to catch some raindrops, watching my brother and sister in law look completely relieved walking through the crowded Gare du Nord after getting very last minute tickets on the Eurostar to get home to London when their flight was cancelled and looking at Rich on the plane back from Greece, smiling that we had 3 boys in the 2 seats next to us playing games, on account of a new holiday friend squeezing in with the boys and his lovely mummy and daddy up at the front of the plane relaxing!!!

One of our adventures this summer started off as the perfect mini break. We headed to one of my favourite hotels in Bradford on Avon near Bath where I did some photography work 18 months ago. Woolley Grange is a sanctuary for families, nestled in an area of unspoilt British countryside. We'd been counting down the days until our stay there after our first trip had to be postponed as Sammy had come down with a sick bug that was working it's way around his school. 

We had watched the weather forecast all week, hoping for a sunny day to use the outdoor pool and sit outside the orangery with cocktails and mocktails and arrived to blue skies and a delightful suite with adjoining rooms. The boys went straight for a bounce on the enormous bed in our room and we hurriedly unpacked our swimming things ready for an afternoon pond dipping, trampolining and swimming. They raced from one activity to another, too excited to stop for any length of time and we promised that we would do it all again the next day when it was time for dinner. Our room has a magical pointed bay window which overlooked the pond and the beautiful front lawns.

Woolley Grange understands that nights away as a family are about keeping everyone happy. We joined a couple of other families in the main restaurant giving their children an early dinner and the boys tucked into their pizzas with glee as we had a pre dinner drink and a starter to share. By the time it was bedtime they were worn out from swimming in the indoor pool and were desperate to watch a movie in our bed.

We had never used a hotel listening service before, we have always had the boys with us or in bed at a holiday apartment or villa so I felt terribly nervous as the lovely hotel manager talked me through how it worked. Once the boys were settled we went down to join the other couples in the intimate, candle lit restaurant and we joked that you could spot the first timers like us, as each of the couples took it in turns to go up and check on their little ones, like we did every 10-15 minutes! We couldn't fault the staff, the food and the promptness of the manager when he popped into the restaurant to tell us he could hear one of the boys.

We scurried upstairs and poor Ollie spent the next couple of hours being poorly before we made the decision at 11pm to head home. He was so upset to have to leave, but when your small ones are sick you just want to be at home. I can't praise the manager on duty enough that night. He was so sympathetic, so kind when we were trying to pack up and deal with Ollie in the bathroom, and reassured me that I wasn't to feel terrible for letting them watch a movie whilst we and dinner! I'm sure it doesn't happen all the time but he dealt with it all like a pro, and calmed my frantic nerves.

The next day Ollie felt much better and was so disappointed to be stuck at home instead of swinging on the tree swing! But that is life, you can't ever predict when you might be ill. Mini breaks have to wait! Lucky I had these photos from my time before - we know we are in for a treat at breakfast when we go back and the boys are desperate to play in the wendy house!

We are so lucky that Woolley Grange are going to have us back soon and hopefully this time everyone will be fighting fit.

I am working my way through all the photos I took in Greece, it's almost impossible to choose which ones to post to make sure you get to see just how fantastic the resort was. But I will do my best! So the blog is going to turn fifty shades of blue this week, with clear blue skies and deep blue seas.

2015 is definitely our Summer of adventure. So sunshine, please stay with us so we don't feel like it's over already!  

Our stay at Woolley Grange was part of the #SummerGoodTimes campaign with Boots.

Linking up with The Ordinary Moments 

If you love capturing your adventures then this is the competition for you. Every week I host a weekly Instagram hashtag and encourage everyone to join in and share their colourful captures with #capturingcolour.

This month I am teaming up with the fabulous team at Joules and we want to celebrate getting outdoors. A couple of weeks ago we took the boys to a beautiful walled garden at Pythouse in Tisbury and wandered through the cut flower beds, snipping a bucket full of home grown stems for Granny. We were testing out some items from their new collection, The Walk, and I can't wait to see the photos on the Joules blog soon.

Joules are offering a lucky follower a £50 gift card and one of their lovely Home Fragrance Room Diffusers of their choice. 

To enter all you have to do is share a photo on Instagram and tell us where you are walking. Are you close to home, in the garden or having an adventure abroad? Get as creative as you want, share a scene or just a snippet, anything goes! I love seeing toes creeping into the bottom of a photo, small people exploring through big trees and just a hint of where you are. 

I am amazed each week by the different stories people share and tell with colour. The gallery has grown to over 17,500 posts and I find it so inspiring to look through all the compositions, the way people capture light and movement. 

This past month has seen us walking along the Champs-Élysées, racing through London Waterloo, dragging suitcases along station platforms, wobbling over white pebbles in Greece and feeling the sand between our toes as we ran into the sea. It's been one of the busiest Summer's we've ever had and we are packing in as much as possible before Ollie starts school in September. 

And last week was full of blue skies, lush green grass, flowers of every colour of the rainbow and the most delicious food I have ever tasted. It's a strange feeling, when you share so much of your daily life on the internet, to not share even a peek from a whole week of work. But I am hoping you will all be excited when the book comes out next Easter! We sounded like broken records by the end of the week, all crowded around the laptop saying in unison "Ooh that's nice, no wait that's really nice!" The challenge of a recipe book, or any book for that matter, is that every image is a hero shot. Each page needs to stand up against the one before with even the incidental imagery holding it's own amongst the magic winning shots. 

I loved the fact that one minute we were in a field of long grass, balancing cables and the tripod on uneven ground and the next minute tucked away in a beautifully lit corner of the owner's farmhouse. We had to create every season through the course of the week, conjuring up a wintry morning on what was actually a glorious day and in contrast trying to capture a summer's balmy afternoon under umbrellas, sheltering from stormy skies! 

And the gallery had scenes from different seasons, people joining in in from wintry Australia to sunny seaside resorts in the UK. 

Each week it gets harder and harder to create a grid of favourites. I scroll through and just see what catches my eye. It's funny because my subconscious must be drawn to certain hues each week because when I open all the tabs once I have selected 9 and they all seem to compliment each other!

And my absolute favourite form last week was this image by Elizabeth. So simple, beautifully composed and perfect even natural light.

It made me realise how much I have missed playing with flowers from our garden being so hectic in the last couple of weeks - on the list for next week! 

Follow Elizabeth's inspiring feed here. 

So what are you waiting for? Join Joules and I for the month of August and snap your seasonal walks. Show us your sandals or super wellies! Rain or shine we want you to get out and about. I'll be sharing our birthday/anniversary trip to New York this week, there's something about being in a city that makes me just want to walk and walk and walk. We fly on Thursday morning and have booked a lovely hotel in the Lower East Side so expect a cliché Brooklyn Bridge shot or two on Friday!

You can find Joules on Instagram here.

The competition is open from 3rd August 2015 - midnight GMT 31st August 2015. A winner will be announced on the 1st September. You can enter as many times as you like. Tag your photos with #capturingcolour.

Gift cards will be valid for UK only. 

This week couldn't be more different to the last, hence the very late posting of my monthly family photo! We spent last week under the sunny skies of Kos in Greece on our first ever family holiday with just the four of us. A whole week of each other, thousands of jumps into the swimming pool, countless ice creams in one day (the one ice cream a day rule totally went out of the window) and too many memories to fit into one post. 

As I write this I have the folder open with all our photos and videos and quite frighteningly there are 1289 of them! I couldn't believe we had snapped so many as I felt like I hadn't taken enough photos on the plane home and was worried I wouldn't be properly able to do a Mark Warner holidays justice! 

I have so many things from the holiday I want to share, but this past week has flown by in a blur. The boys have been UK jet setters, being passed from Surrey to Somerset to Dorset, staying with grandparents whilst I've been working flat out on the new Honeybuns recipe book shoot. It's been a logistical challenge, Rich has been on 100% house duty, juggling boys drop offs and pick ups, cooking and holiday washing and I've come home each night and flopped! It's been the absolute highlight of my photography work to date and I got in the car yesterday as we called it a  wrap (Yes we actually all exclaimed "That's a wrap!") and had a little cry. A mix of relief and pride!

So for this month's Me and Mine post I want to share some holiday snaps, a collection of selfies, nothing fancy but full of happy memories. Part of me wishes I'd taken a tripod and a "proper shot" but then a bigger part of me thinks these are the real photos of our holiday. Capturing a moment. And even if they don't print as well as I'd like, the fuzzy hazy grain will just just make them all the more precious. Because each one of them makes me happy. The boys loved saying we were the cool kids on the back of the coach transfer and feeling like grown ups with slushy cocktails at the beach bar. Holiday shirts and holiday dresses, dinner with the boys in pjs  and sun kissed cheeks.

We'd been looking forward to this holiday since we found out we had been chosen as one of Mark Warner's Ambassadors this year. Life has been so hectic, trying to grow the tea business, juggle all my work commitments manage the boys school activities, changing schools for September and renovating the house. We sometimes feel there isn't a moment to breathe. I was packing for holiday literally in the hours before we left to lead to my mum's who lives just outside Heathrow airport and en route we stopped to shoot a feature for Joules! 

I squeezed in pre holiday shopping by staying up late and ordering bits on express delivery and as Rich was tearing around the house, locking up doors, putting the recycling out, popping a key to the neighbour I was of course snapping some photos of our hand luggage! As you do!

I love seeing what people pack, I've picked up tips over the years from lovely flat lay photos so here is what we took in our carry on luggage. What else do you take for a stress free journey?!

From top to bottom, left to right: Favourite magazines Hooray and Suitcase // smaller shoulder strap handbag for decanting purse and passport once through the one hand luggage bag check in // spare pants // pancake lens for my Canon - much more practical for around the resort! // MAC Studio Fix powder foundation // mini make up bag // emergency first aid - baby wipes, plasters, Calpol, Sudocream, paracetamol // extra small present for the plane - Top Trumps is always a winner! // iPhone // Tic Tacs // GoPro // Hair kit - fold up hairbrush, clip and band - my hair always feels like it gets greasy in a second on the plane - is it the cabin air?! // emergency wash kit - deodorant, perfume, suncream // notepad and pen // holiday book // camera cards // plastic bag THIS IS ESSENTIAL I always wish I packed more, for rubbish on the plane, for an extra bag, for scooping up toy parts that won't fit back in a box // emergency snacks // School bear - Ollie has a holiday project for his new school to write up his summer adventures with his little friend //swimming costume - if you lose your luggage you can still jump straight into the pool! // large bag you can recycle as your beach bag // laptop - every year I try and leave it at home but I knew I'd want to share a few photos from my big camera whilst we were there! // holiday purse - you don't need your full purse with all your loyalty cards and old receipts! Just take a smaller more streamlined version. // more emergency snacks. Always more snack!

Rich's hand luggage was a bit of a contrast...

Headphones // speaker - we love a bit of music in our room when we are getting ready! // Oakleys // iPhone // holiday wallet // passports // notepad and pen // Plug bug //GoRuck // Laptop // iPad - incredibly the boys used this just twice, on the plane there and on the way home! // inhaler // Plug bug bag - so handy for all your cables // magazine. The magic of Mark Warner means you get grown up time in the day time - woooooo hooooo!

The boys had their cute rucksacks - I've learnt that those pull along cases look fun but I find them hard work! They bash into people, they open up completely and everything seems to just spill out! I prefer smaller rucksacks that they can actually carry themselves, we've tried bigger ones but they end up moaning that they are too heavy and we end up like packhorses, struggling through departures!

Their hand luggage looks like this - snacks // games // snacks // games // swimming shorts // snacks // games. You get the point! I find the easiest way to keep them entertained on a flight is with endless short games, cards, colouring, spirograph, small puzzles, origami, and we even took a small Lego set this time. 

At 4 and 6 we are kind of passed the need for spare clothes, there's no nappies or bottles. I find the best snacks are dry and no sticky sweets or chocolate. Cereal pots are fab for an early morning flight, and an encyclopaedia means you have a thousand books in one. Individual books end up being the heaviest part of a child's hand luggage so find a compendium and ease the weight!

What else would you suggest?!

I can't wait to share our holiday and what we really thought of the Mark Warner experience, behind the glossy photos, the sunshine and the blue sea. The staff, the food, the facilities, the childcare. Is it all as fabulous as you can make it look in a photo?!

This was one of my favourites, even though it was as we said goodbye to Greece! I was filming the boys walking up the steps to the plane and the kind member of the airport staff in his high vis jacket saw me and wandered over. He signalled to me that he would take a photo of us and shooed me up the steps! I could have kissed him! 

Every month it's amazing to see so many following this monthly portrait tradition. I was talking to a few new friends on holiday about it and one mum said that they hadn't taken a single photo all week which had her in it!

Family photos are so important, they are your history and whether they are beautifully posed or a snapshot of that second in time they are just as precious! Share your family portraits with us and head over to Fritha's blog to see what her soon to be family of four have been up to in July. They have just found out if there is a pink or blue one on the way! How exciting!