Five Highlights From The Month of August

I’m one of those annoying people who believes that their birthday month is naturally the best month of the year, so I’m quite upbeat about September making an appearance in the near future. Although I have to say that August has been completely cracking. I had a two week stint of no London visits, which is practically unheard of in my schedule and that allowed to me get further ahead in my work than I have been in months. I’ve actually surprised myself by how productive I’ve been. I went a whole three days without watching a Buzzeed video! I’m not sure exactly what changed, but something clicked and I’ve been spouting out creative juice here, there and everywhere (well that came out wrong). There’s a newsletter in the making! I’m brewing business ideas! Video formats are magically appearing on a page when I touch pen to paper. Having some time on the clock and not feeling like a hamster in a wheel who is never getting to the end of their to-do list, has felt great. Here’s what else I’ve been up to…

Joining a co-working space. I’ve been prattling on about this in various different posts, but I have joined a local co-working space full of fellow female creative types. I love the social aspect of actually leaving the house to do a spot of work surrounded by others and the flexibility of the space means that I can drop in as little or as frequently as I want, which works for me perfectly because my workload and whereabouts fluctuate from week-to-week. I wouldn’t say that I’m at my most productive when I’m there because it’s a classic case of ‘Anna is easily distracted‘ as was often noted in my school reports, but it’s nice to leave the house and have a chinwag with a new mate. I’ve also vowed to walk there and back which adds an extra hour of walking into my day, (that is until the heavens open and then I’m so getting on that bus home).

Getting started on our bathroom renovations. We’ve now lived under this roof for two years with a bathroom and a hallway that we hate and are in desperate need of renovations (you don’t want to even think about the black mould round our bath), but we’ve been extremely lazy when it comes to jumping over the final few hurdles of our ‘do-er upper’. However this month we finally got our head around our bathroom plans; we’ve purchased a sink and a cabinet (got to love IKEA), have had tradesmen in for quotes and ripped out some shelving units which took up about half the bathroom. It’s baby steps, but we’re getting there and I’m sure that by the end of the year we would have ticked 95% of our to-do list off, which is good because after five years of flat-living we’re over it and get giddy at the thought of a garden. Next year we’re hoping to be on the move again and if the Grannie annex properties that Mark keeps sending me the RightMove link to daily are anything to go by, we’ll have a real project on our hands then.

‘The’ free weekend. In June I looked at my calendar and realised that my next ‘plan-free’ weekend was in mid-August. As someone who loves nothing more than lounging and afternoon naps, this made me cry a little bit inside. Now don’t crack out the small violin for me just yet, because the weekends until that time were filled with lovely occasions – like birthdays and BBQs and gin festivals (10/10 – would highly recommend) – but nonetheless, they weren’t particularly relaxing and often involved a car journey far enough to warrant a Burger King midway. However when that ‘free’ weekend came around it was bloody glorious. The sun shone, Mark and I had completed our chores by lunchtime on Saturday, we visited a garden centre and levelled up to ‘OAP and lovin’ it’ status and had we were in bed by 9.30pm on both Saturday and Sunday.

A day with the girls. I am forever grateful to Lily, Caroline and Ruth, and I’m not sure what I would do without them quite frankly. The messages they send make me laugh so loud that people turn around to see what’s going on on public transport and they’re always there for me whenever I have some kind of blogger related problem that needs solving, like, yesterday  – those girls can band together quickly, let me tell you. One Friday we shirked off our responsibilities and spent the day at Ruth’s, eating, playing with the kids, having a blogger’s therapy session and eating some more. Considering I’ve had my head down so much this month putting fingertips to keyboard, I didn’t feel too naughty for packing up shop on Thursday. Why can’t every Friday be like that, eh? 

Almost one year of ‘The Anna Edit’. This time last year I was sat in the lobby of a Stockholm hotel waiting to leave for our flight home, as it completely pissed down outside and I sat on my laptop recategorising 2,000 blog posts in preparation for the move from ‘Vivianna Does Makeup‘ to ‘The Anna Edit‘. I felt both excited and sick about it in equal measures, although that could have been the copious amounts of Swedish Fish sweets that I’d consumed. I’m going to go more into this on the one year anniversary of TAE which is officially on Wednesday, but after taking some time for reflection as I think about what to actually put in the post, I couldn’t be more chuffed with how this year has gone. Thank you for taking to the switch in a way that I couldn’t have ever imagined and embracing new kinds of content. Also did somebody say a newsletter? Sign up here…

Photos by Lauren Shipley

*Sign up to my new monthly newsletter ‘An Edited Life’ here*

SHOP THE POST