I’m sitting here in my conservatory, accompanied by a perfectly made strong cup of tea – perfect – even if I do say so myself. Anybody who is anybody knows that tea tastes at it’s premium when it’s brewed for about 3 minutes, a small dash of milk and one sugar please! I’m writing this post whilst listening to the radio – Radio 2 – does that make me middle aged? If it does – does it matter? Seriously life’s too short to worry about trying to be cool! I’m listening to a pop quiz and they just played a song that reminded me of when I was about 16…It’s Monday the 5th of August and it’s pouring down with rain. But I’m feeling happy, chilled out and contented.

It’s lovely sitting here, we revamped our conservatory last weekend. Well I say revamped. What we have actually done is remove all the junk and moved the dining table and chairs in so we can actually use it as a nice space. I have put a few candles around on the window sill and we bought some chair covers to give them a summery feel – who knew chair covers were a thing! I’ve seen some fab ones that I would like to buy to use for Christmas! For now all the junk has been moved into what was the dining room but that’s out of sight out of mind for the moment. It’s so lovely to be able to sit at the table in the conservatory with the door open and to be able to look out into the garden.

Do you know what has helped me feel in such a chilled, happy mood? Well for starters I have had the weekend off work and had it mainly to myself so was able to catch up with (some) cleaning and tidying the house, I cut the grass (well half of it, Mr Rambles had to finish it when he got home from work as I was exhausted!!) and trimmed back some hedging and pulled a few weeds out too. I’m living the dream eh!! I went for a relaxing walk with the dogs in the village and caught up with a couple of TV programmes that I wanted to watch. My Mum popped round for a cup of tea on Saturday so it was lovely to have a little catch up with her too. What a perfect way to relax.

I have read a little more of my book about Hashimotos and have tried to be careful with what I’ve eaten – no trigger foods. I’ve also had a few glasses of wine in the evenings! Perhaps I am feeling particularly chilled because it’s only two weeks ago we returned home from our lovely holiday. Seriously why have I not had a holiday in so long – they are so good for the soul!

So the point of this blog post is just that sometimes it’s good for you just to be able to do the things you ‘want’ to do, rather than the things you ‘need’ to do. Yes the grass did need cutting and the housework needed doing, but I didn’t have to do it. There was no pressure on me to do it and I was able to do it at my leisure and at my own pace.

So today as I’m sat here, dogs at my feet, I think I’m going to make it into a self-care long weekend and just do the things I want to do today too. I will take the dogs out for a stroll, I may visit the garden centre for a mooch around and I may write another blog post if I have some inspiration, if not it does’t matter. If the sun does decide to make an appearance I will spend a little time outside, have a cup or two of tea in the garden and read a little more of my book.

You may also like to read Self care Sunday

What do you do to relax when you have a weekend off?