June Favourites // Little Loves

Ah! June... On the home front, a wonderful month of sunshine and blue skies, of longer days and laughter, of adjustment and recovery. We revelled in the heat and are now revelling in the cool. It has been a quietly busy month... a month of the return to normality and all that entails... back to life, back to reality. Three school runs a day, sports days and assemblies, being signed off by midwives and hospitals and starting to see a little normalcy for the first time in months. On the national stage it has felt quite a different story - tragedy, terror and unrest. These are uncertain times, times of big questions and perspective and prayer and proactivity - but more on that later...

Our little loves for June...

READ

One thing that's for sure and for certain is that with four children under 6, my reading time has been slightly impacted... I have had next to no time to sit down and read anything - no books, blogs or magazines this month at all. I haven't really even had time to miss it. But I know that will change. This is a season of sleepless nights, early starts and busy days that will not last forever. I'm just about managing a daily dip in to my Bible, but even that has been shorter and more curtailed than I would like! I have an ever-growing pile of books I'm so excited to read, but biding my time!

WATCHED

Poldark is back! I was a little uncertain after being a bit frustrated by the ending of the previous series (I'm not a fan of TV interpreting books to make it more dramatic), but I'm loving the new series already. A good dose of Ross and Demelza romance, stunning cornish scenery and some new characters... love it!

I've also been enjoying watching some lovely vloggers during the middle of the night feed...

(Clockwise from top left)
> Mummy Daddy Me - My lovely blog-friend Katie who has just moved house and is making it a home. I love a bit of DIY and interior design! All very exciting, with some very cute children too!
> Lisa Potter Dixon - My real-life friend Lisa who is as lovely in real life as she comes across on screen. As Head make-up artist for Benefit make-up, she has loads of wisdom to share, and is always just chatty and lovely and fun!
> The Michalaks - possibly the King and Queen of vlogging, their vlogs are like mini-movies and very inspiring creatively!
> The Meldrums - These guys are real and chatty and fun to watch, but having a tough time at the moment. As someone who has just come out of a tough pregnancy, I'm following their story and hoping for good news for them.

MADE

I'm not sure I can actually claim to have 'made' butterflies, but we did watch them grow, cocoon, fed them, and let them fly free yesterday. Unfortunately, my phone died right at the moment we did it, so I have no photographic evidence of their release, but it would have been totally wrong of me to delay the children's excitement for the sake of capturing the moment on camera - much better just to savour it with them in memory! So instead you have a picture of their empty net home! One lone cocoon still lying inside which we think hasn't made it - but we're going to give it one more night just to be sure!

We also finally put together this cork map that we have been storing for a few years and have placed little pins where all our friends and loved ones are. It's become a lovely source of conversation with the children. We love it!

My other little project in these past ten days was a little birthday workbench for Jonas... You can see more on my last post! It was a fun, fairly easy project, but I'm so pleased with the result!

WORE

I was given this gorgeous Birdy and Pearl teething necklace by my cousin and his wife when Elias was born (thank you cards should finally be on route soon 🙈) and although Elias isn't quite old enough to make the most of it yet, Jonas and my little teething nephew have been absolutely loving it. So nice to have an attractive piece of jewellery that can't be destroyed by little people. In fact, it's encouraged that they play with and chew on it! You can check out Birdy and Pearl on Instagram! They have some really gorgeous necklaces!

HEARD

We've been listening to a bit of Norton Hall Band on Spotify recently... Some old classic hymns performed really beautifully and brought up to date. Loving it.

We were also at my lovely friend Ali's wedding in North London at the weekend and they had the most awesome band ever at the reception called "Truly Medley Deeply"... They literally performed covers of every song imaginable under the sun in these awesome medleys. It was so clever and so fun, and I commented I wished they'd been around when we got married nine (NINE?!?) years so... Before I realised they were probably still at primary school then.

Man, I'm getting old.

AND LASTLY...

London just seems to have taken such a hit recently... And I just can't seem to get those awful images of Grenfell tower out of my head. It just seems so senseless. With the London Bridge and Finsbury Park attacks also happening, I'm just reminded what a broke down world we live in. How much need there is for hope, and love. We are praying for the gospel to bear fruit in the aftermath of these tragedies... And also for the victims. If you want to know the situation on the ground at Grenfell Tower and how you can still help, give @lizzieloveshealthy a follow on Instagram. She lives right by the tower and has been keeping us all updated via Stories. It's absolutely heartbreaking...

Let's hope the rest of June is a little more peaceful on the national and international stage... 

With love from me and mine xxx