I surprised myself this year by not publishing a New Year's resolutions post. Last year I looked back at the goals I'd set myself and I fully intended to do the same this year. But do you know, with the boys not back at school until today, the New Year hasn't felt like it's officially started just yet. We have eeked out every last drop of the holidays, realising we'd spent just one night at home in 5 last week! The boys have loved our mini adventures with best friends to Bournemouth and adored their sleepover with Granny on Saturday, but yesterday I promised we would have the last day of the holidays on the go slow.

They spent the whole day in pjs, played with absolutely every present they got for Christmas and rediscovered old toys rooting through the playroom. It almost feels alien to say it, after quite a challenging few weeks of over excitement/stamping of feet, but they were delightful. Angels singing to themselves "We wish you a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!" 

I almost wished they weren't going back. It's refreshing and rewarding to end the school holidays on a high note! So instead of my traditional New Year list I am going to save my 35 before I'm 35 post for the weekend and share my lovely sister's baby shower we had on Sunday.

When my sister told my niece she was pregnant and they went to the 12 week scan, Yasmin decided that the thing inside Mama's tummy was a baby rabbit. And it's stuck. The bunny theme has got stronger and stronger, with all of us unable to walk past a light up rabbit night light, a hare print cushion or a bunny greetings card! I loved spoiling her the first time around with a Baby Bee party and this time we went for florals and bunnies!

8 of us headed to a beautiful local hotel and took over their garden room for the afternoon. We sat and made floral crowns, stuffed wooden monogram letters with oasis and created floral initials. My sister has decorated the nursery with a mint green and grey colour palette which has brought to life all of Sammy's lovely dark wood furniture that we have passed down to the soon-to-be newest member of the family. I incorporated a touch of gold and peach roses into the party decor and made the most of the vintage bureau and little tables in the room for the nibbles, sweet treats and drinks. 

We made crowns, prettied up our wooden box initials with oasis and flowers and had fun painting a set of alphabet blocks for the baby's room. The canvas rabbit made the perfect memento guest book which we will add to at the baby's Christening. 

Simple games are really all your need for a great shower. We had time to sit and chat over nibbles, watch my sister really smile and relax and laughed through the nappy race game. The bottle trophies were presented to the 3 fastest times for changing a nappy blindfolded on a rabbit stuffed toy!

We are all equally divided between team pink and team blue this time. I am hovering over the team pink column but armed with 6 years of lovely blue clothes if we are blessed with a precious nephew! Everyone went home with something sweet and something to grow and sow. A kraft box pillow of heart chocolates a succulent for a window ledge and a poppy seed head full of seeds to sprinkle, all wrapped up in a sparkly polka dot envelope.

I absolutely loved spending time with my sister's best girls and spoiling her to bits. Now come on baby Broadley we are desperate to meet you! I have my "Go Bag" as Rich calls it packed and ready to head off whatever time of day or night and I can't believe I will get to be there when the baby is born. It is the greatest privilege to be one of her birthing partners and I will never forget the moment I saw Yasmin take her first breath and the absolute raw and powerful emotion of seeing my sister and brother in law become parents.

This is going to be a special year.

A big thank you to The Paper Hare for the beautiful invitations, cake picks and stickers, perfectly on theme! 

Heeeeeelllloooooo! Is there anybody out there?!!!!

My brother said to me the other day, "Wow you haven't posted in ages!!" And it's true, I'd believe you if you thought I was never planning to post again it's been so long! In the lead up to this Christmas time I knew I needed a rest. I needed to let my mind rest, if that makes any sense. Totally indulge in family time and eating and drinking without pausing to snap every moment and lose track of time.

Just before Christmas we went on a family holiday to the most spectacular mountains. I can't wait to share it all with you but it would have all been too rushed in the week of Christmas. It's funny because I thought that I had come back with a different feeling to our summer holiday. That my tired legs from shooping down the slopes had overshadowed that post-holiday relaxing glow that shone out of us all when we landed from Greece. People had said to me and I've said it in the past myself, that a skiing holiday isn't the same sort of relaxing as a beach trip, but it turns out I was much calmer than I thought!

We landed on Sunday 20th to a week of loveliness. A visit to Father Christmas with best friends and Sammy's sweetheart, then a big family party in Oxford, and then it was Christmas Eve! 

It's a strange feeling to consciously stop yourself from blogging. If you are a blogger reading this you will know exactly what I mean. It feels alien, almost frightening. What if no one comes back to read when you finally feel ready and refreshed?! I want to have albums bursting with photos like my mum has of us, but when I really thought about it, those albums don't have 30 pictures of the christmas dinner from every angle, they have one. There isn't endless pictures of us opening our presents, there's the shot of our tradition - laying the stockings in the lounge, and then there's the big family shot. The albums are full of people, smiling faces, piles of excitedly torn wrapping paper. They weren't photos taken for a blog post, they were photos taken for her, for us.

There's one of the Christmas table, eyes under paper hats too big for little heads. There's the tree, the games and cousins all lined up in a row. All the things that are most important to me are there and this year I tried to do the same. The moments I loved. Making pizzas before Grandma and Grandad arrived on Christmas Eve, my favourite new decorations hanging from the mistletoe from the school Christmas fayre. The year Sammy discovered cheesy jokes and thought they were hysterical, making up his own puns for the crackers and the little things that spark so many memories. The kindness of a stranger, well not a stranger but a lovely new friend, who slipped the boys a couple of vintage lorries with a little tree on top as I shopped for my festive flowers. Making our own mini trifles, taking time to lay the table with the ivy from the garden, sprinkling feathers collected from a wonderful new friend all around the house and snapping the most precious moment, cousins feeling their new cousins who we will meet in 2016.

On Christmas Eve, I should have shared a post in collaboration with a fantastic family brand I am representing this year, Slumberdown. They promote all the same values as I hope I do, and in the haze of cleaning the house ready for our Christmas visitors, signing for very last minute deliveries at 2pm, flinging cheese and salami around in the kitchen, racing to the village crib service to light our Christingle candles, then home for a "The Holiday movie" style disco in the living room, I ran out of minutes to open the laptop. The post was all about our Christmas traditions, traditions that when I scrolled through my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds I could see were in almost every house in the land.  

The plates of mince pies, the carrots, the handwritten notes, the Twas the Night Before Christmas bedtime stories. The flour and sugary snow sprinkled lovingly by fireplaces and front doors, little traces of magic and glitter for wondrous eyes in the morning. Everyone was busy making their own beautiful special memories and I realised it was so important to make ours instead of hiding away on a laptop writing about them. So I'm sharing this post, a snap shot of our Christmas, the little things I will remember from 2015.

I couldn't think of a better phrase to describe this festive period for me than conscious uncoupling. It might sound terrible that I needed to practically force myself away from the laptop but I did. Bar a couple of photos a day, and sometimes not even a couple to Instagram, I have taken a wee break from the internet. The holiday was the kickstart I needed to a real family Christmas. My brother and sister in law flew back from America on Christmas Day night and we had 4 days of absolute quality time. We build up my brother's trips back home so much that often we burden ourselves with expectation. I do it so often, build events up in my mind and almost give Rich and the boys, unachievable goals! Nothing is perfect and nothing has to be perfect. Kids will still spill drinks all over your beautiful table display but so what?! The boys will still have a meltdown, even on a day when you can't imagine that they would have anything to argue about. The dinner won't be served on time. Or in my case, even with preprepared veggies and microwavable bread sauce and gravy, you will still sit down an hour and a half behind schedule!

We save the presents under the tree until after the Queen's speech. We always have and always will and this year by the end of the seemingly endless pile from friends and family the boys opened our big present. And do you know what? The reaction was priceless. "Oh ok, a games table..." 

Admittedly it was still in the box, and maybe had it all been made up ready to play they would have been jumping around like the fleas we discovered on the dogs on the 27th! Urgh - I will spare you the details but in 7 years we have never experienced those pesky bugs on the dogs and hopefully never will again, but it taught us a lesson.

It had all got too much. Present opening had become about opening, not about what was inside. So as mean as it may sound, we have returned the table and perhaps in a couple of years will buy it again. 

In these days between Christmas and New Year the boys have played and played. We've sat on the floor with Disney movies in the background, singing along to the Little Mermaid and Aladdin, been splatted with squirty cream whilst playing Pie Face and I have soaked up the memories of watching my brother lie on his tummy making Hot Wheels sets and rolling around with the little nephews and niece. 

We are away in my happy place, down at my family holiday flat in Southbourne with best friends and their boys and tonight we will stand on the balcony with sparklers and mis matched glasses of bubbly and toast the new year and I couldn't think of anywhere I'd rather be.

So I am going to end this year of Me and Mine with all of mine. These are my favourite people, the ones I want to sit and do nothing with, eat cheese at 10 o'clock at night with, people I love who aren't even here yet. Sammy asked us how you know when you love someone the other day. And we turned to each other and said what we have said for years to each other. You know, because when you touch that person, when you brush up against them, when you hug them hello or hug them goodbye, or hug them in the middle of the day for no reason at all, you feel something. In your chest, it makes you feel happy to be next to them, to cuddle up under a blanket. And that feeling that you can't quite describe, is love.

Wishing you all a very happy Christmas, an exciting, healthy and adventurous new year. Writing a blog is a privilege and a pleasure, that people want to read about your plans, that I get to record the places we travel to, the people we meet, the things that excite me and the companies I discover. I am so proud of the Me and Mine Project. Years now of family photos I absolutely would not have without the encouragement and camaraderie of my fellow hosts Lucy, Katie, Jenny, Fritha and Alex. 

I can't wait to share in their journeys next year, the new baby joining the Mummy Daddy Me family and share the new additions to my family. A little niece to be born in America and a little niece or nephew due in just 3 weeks! We won't be adding to our brood but we may add to our furry baby brood... my mum bought me a fabulous book for Christmas - a guide to keeping micro pigs! 

Come and share your family photo, and if in the madness of Christmas you missed snapping one, take this post as the perfect excuse and capture one today!

Over the last year or so I've poured my heart and soul into my blog, my photography, my Instagram and everything that goes with being this weird and wonderful role that is a blogger. I've fallen more in love with blogging if that was possible and over the last 18 months I have stopped introducing myself as a property consultant and instead I always start with, and proudly I might add, I'm a blogger.

I've made lifelong friendships with people which started as a Twitter chat back and forwards and worked with companies that quite frankly are dream collaborations.

There's been a lot of discussion in the blogging community lately about the purpose of your blog, getting back to the true essence of why you started, not succumbing to the commercial world that is so tempting as your follower numbers start to grow and taking more time out, to reconnect off line and embrace a slower pace of real life.

But I feel differently, blogging makes me feel empowered, as a parent and as a working mother. My blog is a way that I can reach people I might never meet, who can know me, know my family values, read my waffles, worries, celebrate the highs and get me through the lows of real life. I may not always share them, but they are there, in the background, estranged family members, heated arguments with my husband and tearful conversations with best friends when you feel like you are trying to do everything and failing and achieving nothing at all!

My blog is a way to involve my children in my working life. Not to put them to work - but give them a sense of appreciation and respect for what I do for 8, 10, 12 sometimes more hours a day, and a way for us to record some incredible memories. To show them how hard we both work, why their playroom gets taken over as a photography studio and why I think it's important to work hard and be nice.

This blog has brought my little family together.

I love that I have this record of their young lives, a digital footprint for them to look back on. They might not always be the focus of this blog but everything I do is with them in mind. To work to earn money to pay for house renovations, new clothes, Christmas presents, trips out with friends and family and making connections that lead to new family friendships and companies who we would be proud to represent.

This year it has been our great pleasure to be a Mark Warner holidays family ambassador and share what was honestly the best holiday we have ever been on. We literally will talk to anyone who vaguely shows an interest about a family holiday about what a game changer our trip to Lakitira in the summer was. We repeat the phrase we heard so often around the resort "Once you go Mark Warner, you never go back!"

It made us look at the meaning of a family holiday in a whole new light. 7 days to make you feel relaxed, refreshed, rewarded and reconnect with your children. It's hard to explain how a holiday with childcare helps you do that but it does. It makes you appreciate them more, because you want to rush to pick them up, you want to spend all lunchtime chewing their ears off about what water sports they have just learnt or what songs they are  for the end of week show. You don't want to pass them your phone to keep them quiet under the glow of the Youtube video. You really want to be with them.

I don't think it's shameful to admit a holiday is for you too. Time to be a family, time to be alone and time to remember the couple you were before your had your babies. For us there is no going back ;)

So can you imagine how hard it's been keeping a big secret from the boys?! Tomorrow morning we fly to Méribel in France for our first family ski trip with Mark Warner. I'll be taking over their Instagram account for the week and sharing lots of photos online so come along! 

I made a jigsaw and set a treasure hunt around the garden and it took a few minutes for it to really sink in. They were sort of in disbelief at first and then the screams came...!

2 boys find out they are going skiing!

I'm listening to them snoring in the hotel at Gatwick and I can't sleep. I just keep thinking of their faces when we land and get to the resort and they see the snow. Even at 6, Sammy can't really remember the snow storms we had in the UK a couple of years ago, he looks at photos and smiles but they are not real living memories. This is going to be the magical one, the one we talk about for years to come. We haven't even got there yet but I just know it's going to be extra special.

See you in the snow!