Journal | August 2019

Welcome to my August journal. Each month I gather my musings and the stories from the month to document our life. For me it forms a way of creating my own regular gratitude and journaling practice. Journaling can be achievable in small snippets, you don’t need to write long prose to remember your time. I choose to document our memories by taking photos that capture the moments during the month and write notes about the time we have had. There are no rules to journaling. It is writing space for you to document in whichever way you choose.

August has been a month of organising and engaging with our daily rhythms. Here is my August journal…

…Cooking has been a big feature of our month. We’re so pleased to now have the storage and organisation that we have been wanting for quite sometime in our new kitchen. Our favourite cookbooks are placed in open wooden shelving in the kitchen and are really accessible, and by having them there it has played a part in reinvigorating my passion for cooking. Taking a look at a cookbook over a cup of tea is something I love to do when Chloe has a short morning nap. My cooking interest has grown athrough cooking nutritious meals and weaning our little one. I’ve added savory flapjacks, carrot muffins, kale and sweet potato croquettes, lamb tagine and fish pie into the recipes I enjoy making. I’ve created a menu to help us become more organised and to help ensure that Chloe has a balanced diet and gets to try lots of different foods each week plus it really helps with planning batching cooking and freezing portions for her meals that I can sort quickly in the week.

…Along the cooking theme this month we decided to get a yoghurt maker. We’ve had our milk delivered in bottles for over a year and a half which brought the amount of plastic we consume down considerably. We really enjoy yoghurt and Chloe loves it with pieces of fruit added so it was time that we invested in a yoghurt maker, to help reduce the packaging we bring into our home. We love the results and it feels great to be making natural organic yoghurt in the quantities we need.

…During the month I’ve taken time to continue to shape our home into a space that accommodates us as family as we are now. For me it about having excellent organisation around storage and using each space as productively as possible plus thinking about how we want the space to work in the future. We have continued to declutter our attic room and sort through pockets of storage throughout our home. We’re close to getting the house at a place that I visioned we would be in by this time this year. It has made me consider very carefully what is taking up space, whether it is useful to us and we really want it.

…I decided to refresh a few items in my capsule wardrobe for the summer season. We have a late September holiday planned in Portugal and since having Chloe my shape has changed and I don’t fit into some of the clothes that I had already curated into my capsule wardrobe. I found a couple of linen dresses and two light cardigans to match the dresses that will work perfectly for anytime of the day. I like to buy items that go together and can be mixed and matched with other things I already own which they all do. I chose shapes and styles that I can breastfeed in and are classic options that will take time to date, plus I know that if my shape changes they will continue to work for me and will be worth the investment.

…I started to gradually add more time slots into each week to write my book and work on parts of my coaching business. Having dedicated working slots feels great and a list of things to work on helps me jump straight in when I get 30 minutes to work on things.