Patio Dates

Aloha Sprinklerinos,

I shall have a flurry of beauty posts I promise, but today is a lifestyle one, because I'm in a lifestyle mood. Can't get simpler than that, can you?

Matt works full time as a Teacher and regularly brings his work home. I work full time as a Mummy, Homemaker and Vlogger/Blogger Extraordinaire (I like to think anyway hahaha) and Baby Glitter works full time as a dribbly, playful, mess maker. Mix that with a social life, boring errands, sleeping and breathing and you won't find a lot of time in bewteen.

A couple of weeks ago Matt and I realised we really weren't spending enough quality time together. Yes, we live together but it was getting to a point where we were just co-existing rather than enjoying one anothers company. Things had to change. In true busy-people (I never thought I'd become one of those!) fashion we scheduled a date.

Dates for us are tricky. If we go out we have to find a sitter and I struggle with letting other people take care of Baby Glitter, so our list of people we can call upon is very limited. So to combat this, I decided on a 'home date'. Nothing fancy, just something that wasn't what we do day in, day out and would allow us to catch up and chat and just sit back and enjoy what we have together. Feeling sick yet? Haha.

(As you can see, the wind put paid to any romantic candles I might have hoped for. Thank you British Weather.)

I had this grand idea that I would tie a piece of string from one fence to another, hang strips of crepe on it and they would flutter gently in the breeze, whilst creating a magical, colourful curtain for the patio, and thus create a little tropical fun zone of candles and foods and joy. In actual fact, it was windier than a gale on mars, the strips of paper all clumped together and whipped about, almost smacking us in the face and Baby Glitter thought it was the best thing she had ever seen in her entire life. Low on romance, high on comedy.

We sat on our (very windy) patio, ate bread with oil and balsamic vinegar, drank fruity fizz punch, lit candles many times over before giving up, chatted about daily life, laughed about memories, planned trips for the summer, put Darcy to bed and ended up eating dinner inside (much less windy) and watched a movie. Perfect.

 (Look at the potential this lovely patio date had!! Punch in cocktail glasses, candles, bread, dips, gale force wind, getting-tired-baby. Ahhhh the romance. Not.)

I think a lot of people expect married life to be idyllic and rosey. It isn't always. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's humdrum and sometimes it's downright difficult. I really enjoyed making the time to enjoy marriage and letting all of life's little things wait. I think I'm going to do it more.

What do you do to appreciate your partners/parents/pals/pets/imaginary friends?

Toodlepip!

xx

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