The summer holidays have begun, and I’ve been spending lots of time with my nieces and nephews! I have found out what it’s like to shop with a six year old: think hiding inside clothes rails, a desperate desire to go up and down escalators, and the phrase ‘I want’ on repeat – but also the sheer fun of choosing tops emblazoned with cats, sparkles and princesses, doing star jumps during our lunch stop on the green, and lots of giggling. I also discovered that you can never have too much food in the house for teenage boys, that beans and sausages and pizza are actually a brilliant combination, that glitter goes EVERYWHERE and that singing along to Taylor Swift is actually very fun (but I knew that already)…

Here are some of the Small Things I’ve been loving lately…

~Reading: This post by Sarah Bessey. I love the video in it 🙂

~Having a house full of flowers.

~Listening to: My new playlist on my Kindle – the perfect backdrop to writing, cleaning, cooking… anything really! It includes (amongst others) a mix of Young the Giant, Switchfoot, Melaena Cadiz, Florence and the Machine, Rend Collective, Ben Harper, Of Monsters and Men, Imagine Dragons, Paolo Nutini, Duke Dumont, Jars of Clay, She and Him and Laura Mvula, so pretty eclectic, but sooo good 🙂 The only thing that would complete it would be the lovely Josh Garrels album, which I’ve mentioned before. Click on the links to hear some of my favourite songs… shame that at the moment I can’t share the whole playlist!

~Putting up tents. Don’t you just love that tent smell? And the satisfaction of having built a dwelling of sorts out of a selection of oddly shaped poles and canvases in the space of an hour at most… I was also very proud of myself for managing the camp cooking on a couple of disposable BBQ’s and a campfire.

~Eating Italian beans on toast! Got the recipe from the Gino book, and used some of our homegrown tomatoes. Forgot to include the garlic, and swapped Borlotti beans for butter beans, but it was still so tasty and satisfying. It goes brilliantly with bacon and eggs!

~Blowing bubbles.

~Flicking through the latest Simple Things magazine.

~Hosting summer guests – and that smell of freshly washed bedlinen when you take it off the line.

~Walking by the coast, feeling the breeze on my face and spotting seals.