I don’t drink nearly enough water, do you? We’re generally advised to drink at least two litres of water everyday, but I know that I’m coming up short. At the beginning of the summer I made a real effort to get my water intake up, managing three litres some days and I felt SO much better. I had more energy, my skin looked better, my digestion improved, but I’ve let those good habits slip again. Some days I realise in the evening (usually as I’m pouring myself a G&T!) that I’ve probably had nothing else to drink but coffee all… View Post

Yes, I know, I know – this sounds like it’s going to be rude, but there’s nothing x-rated here, I promise. This post is about the principle of ‘touch it once’, much celebrated as a way to improve productivity and time management. It’s the idea that when you pick up a piece of paperwork, you deal with it there and then, instead of adding it to a pile that grows into a mountain and ultimately swallows loads more of your time to sort through. However, I want to talk about applying the ‘touch it once’ rule to housekeeping, rather than… View Post

You may remember the collaborative project with Sarah-Lou that we named The Everyday Spruce. We posted regularly for the first half of last year, and then the busy summer months hit us. We never managed to find our groove again after that, so the project got shelved. However, Sarah-Lou and I both fancy reviving it, albeit in a much looser form.  It won’t be a full-on as it was before – I may try to post something monthly but we’ll see. It’s more that if and when we think of something that fits, we’ll blog about it. Here’s a little… View Post

#TheEverydaySpruce – a collaborative project by lapinblu & growing spaces – | SIMPLIFY | CLARIFY | BEAUTIFY | The other day, everyone’s tempers were a bit frayed in our house – a combination of me being stressed out with work shoots and deadlines, and the kids suffering from that end-of-term exhaustion – and I couldn’t think how to dig us out of the dark hole of grumpiness. And then it struck me. I’ve recently written a feature for a magazine about mindfulness, and as part of my research I got hold of a few mindful colouring books. I dug out… View Post

#TheEverydaySpruce – a collaborative project by lapinblu & growing spaces – | SIMPLIFY | CLARIFY | BEAUTIFY | Apologies that The Everyday Spruce has taken a longer break than Sarah-Lou and I originally intended. Real life has taken over (as it has a habit of doing!), and while that happens, our blogs understandably take a back seat. But suddenly we’re well into June and we’re both keen to get it up and running again – it has already given me some fantastic ideas and focus this year, and I love the prompt to think in a different way and to… View Post