That’s right, the lockdown continues and therefore, so do my posts on the little things that have been making me happy recently.

Part of me has been wanting to put ‘writing these posts’ in this but that seems a bit contrived – though it genuinely has been lovely sitting down and taking a step back from everything. Looking around with the perspective of looking at what has brought me joy, is a nice way to see the world. I mean if Marie Kondo came to my room she would struggle to get me to throw anything away.

This week, I am pleased to say my little Universe has been filled with a mix of nice things:

 

LOCAL COFFEE

I’d never really been much of a coffee person until recently (the name of this blog kind of gives that away I suppose). I’d got quite into getting a ‘fancy’ coffee on the way to work in my little reusable cup and so when I passed Perky Blenders (my local coffee roasters) the other day, and they were still open as a takeaway service, I excitedly bought not only two coffees (one for me, one as a surprise for my boyfriend – I wasn’t being greedy) but also some coffee to take home!

It’s super local and also super good coffee. I haven’t been going mad for it as I don’t want to be bouncing off the walls but it’s a nice treat, especially after some exercise.

P.S. These guys (Perky Blenders) also do a subscription/offer delivery, if it’s something you might be interested in! 

 

PINTEREST

I’m absolutely obsessed with Pinterest at the minute. Partially as a way to stop myself from buying things, although really ‘pinning’ something onto my ‘wishlist’ has just become a way of putting off buying things until a bit later…

But Pinterest is also a great visual moodboard for so many things – travel goals, nice prints, design inspiration; once we are able to, my boyfriend and I are due to move into our own place, where it will be so nice to see all these design ideas come together that we’ve been slowly pinning onto our shared ‘home’ board.

 

POPPY THE PUPPY

Last week our friends from the end of the road finally picked up their new puppy and as they were a bit worried about her becoming afraid of other people, they wanted to make sure she got to socialise, so they brought her round to see us (they kept their distance of course).

She’s a cavapoo and so, so sweet: she immediately jumped into my lap and settled down, which not a lot of puppies do! My dog is a cavachon, so also half king charles cavalier and I can see a lot of her in Poppy – I’ve been missing her a lot as she’s with my parents but meeting a new puppy really helped stave those sad feelings off.

Who can be sad when they’re holding a puppy?! We’re going to see her again this week and I can barely contain my excitement.

 

DRIED FLOWERS

We’ve had these frames for ages but not done anything with them – I bought them for my boyfriend after a trip to Portugal, where they had dried leaves in a similar frame and so I had intended to do something similar for a long time.

Now felt like the perfect moment as A) I have a lot of time on my hands and B) There’s a lot of beautiful little flowers out in the garden right now: I picked this handful and left them to try over a week in a jar, then arranged them.

It took a while to be happy with the finished project, partly because I may have dropped the first setting on the floor by accident (stupid clasp) but also as it’s quite fiddly! I’m happy with this though and it’s so nice seeing it in our room, knowing it’s something I’ve actually done myself!

CAPTAIN TOM

If you haven’t heard about Captain Tom, then where have you been?! Initially he was attempting to raise £1000 for the NHS by doing 100 laps of his garden however his campaign got a lot of attention, and in the end he raised nearly £33 million! As well as this he got thousands of birthday cards, an RAF flypast and an honorary Colonel title.

I won’t lie, seeing the flyover on TV and how happy he was made me tear up a bit (happy tears!)

MY LOCAL NEIGHBOURHOOD

The recent warm weather has inspired us to use our daily hour of outdoor exercise to explore more of our local neighbourhood – beautiful streets that I had never even walked down, I now dream of living on. In fact, our new life goal is to be able to buy one of the houses along these streets (ok that won’t be any time soon but it’s good to have something to aim for!)

It’s crazy how you can live somewhere without seeing so much of it – these streets are only a 10/15 minute walk from where we live and we probably never would have seen them without this time to, as they aren’t on route to anywhere we would usually go.

AND FINALLY, THIS SOOTHING TIKTOK:

 

What’s brought you joy this week?

 

Abi

X

@travelteav