AnEssexWife, Author at An Essex Wife

19Feb 2015

How to get your home ready for spring

by AnEssexWife ⋅ Leave a Comment

With the nights starting to draw out and a hint of warmer weather just around the corner, while you’ve still got your winter coat on it’s hard to imagine that spring is nearly here.

Whether you agree with the Met Office that spring starts on the 1st March or you hold the more traditional view that it’s the Vernal Equinox around the 20th of the month that sees the season’s change and the official end of winter – there’s no denying that spring is only a few weeks away.

So, how can you get your family home ready for the new season

1. Spring cleaning

As the saying goes, a tidy desk is a tidy mind and the same can be said of your home. A traditional spring clean is a great way to clear away the clutter and debris of the past 12 months and it’s something that the whole family can get involved with too.

Being able to clearly see your living space will help you to envisage exactly what you want the next 12 months to hold. Read More →

19Feb 2015

Chilli Chocolate Pots

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Sometimes I get some very fun tasks on this blog…and today is no exception!

As you may or may not known the ICC 2015 Cricket World Cup is currently taking place in Australia and New Zealand and I have been asked to come up with a recipe relating to one of the countries taking part.

Now as a huge sports fan family this exciting cricket event is one we wont be missing, and there is nothing like a little cheeky treat to enjoy at the same time. So thank to the delicious African cacao beans grown in Zimbabwe I give you our very special Chilli Chocolate Pots. Read More →

11Feb 2015

How Can I Show You My Love? An Open Letter…. #SendTheLove

by AnEssexWife ⋅ 68 Comments

My Dearest Husband,

I am not what you would call a traditional romantic, I think I’m too much of a practical person for all that. The best thing is that you don’t mind, neither are you.

What I feel for you is a deep, eternal, unbounding love. When I sit here and think about how much I love you my heart races and my eyes well up, you are my whole world and more. But to show this in front of others, to make a public declaration of my love…how would I even start?

Flowers? Chocolates? A new shirt? Would that demonstrate how you changed my life and made it worth living again? A weekend away? A night at the theatre? dinner for two? Would that explain to you how thankful I am, from the bottom of my heart, that you chose me to build a life with?

I just don’t think it would do my feelings justice. I don’t think anything like that could ever do ‘us’ justice.

So how could I show you that my life would fall apart without you? That you are Read More →

04Feb 2015

#52Adventures Week 4: Girls Night At Faces

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Back in the day (I’m showing my age by even just using this phrase) Faces Nightclub in Gants Hill was where it was AT! Everyone wanted to be seen there. From C-list to even sometimes A-list, Faces has had its fair share of famous types through the door, and, as a (former) good time girl, it was the ONLY place I wanted to spend my weekends.

Thursday, Friday and Sunday (Saturday was always West End or local bar) I would be there, Gold membership in hand, ready to dance the night away.

Then, just after I turned 24, I met a boy, had a baby, bought a house and realised that my clubbing days were on hold. Not over, not by a long stretch, just on hold.

I moved areas, and my old stomping ground was too far away to get back to for a night out. Where I live now wasn’t the best in terms of nightlife until the last year or so. All we had before then were a handful of bars, few pubs and a sticky floored nightclub (Chinawhite it was not!)

Then I heard a rumour, Read More →

26Jan 2015

#52Adventures Week 3: Une journée à Paris

by AnEssexWife ⋅ 3 Comments

Sometimes the best ideas are the ones you just run with. No thinking, no worrying, just action. So when I tweeted ‘Does anyone fancy lunch in Paris with me?’, when Eurostar were doing one of their fab seat sales, I was extremely excited to have a ‘Yes!’ straight back from one of my very favourite blogger friends (and in fact now real life friend) Kate.

While I may be a mother, wife and general all round busy bee I am coming round to the idea that actually sometimes I need to take the day off. Escape. Recharge. It’s not me admitting failure, I see that now. It’s just me acknowledging that without a little investment my mind, body and soul will slowly start to fail, and that wouldn’t be any good for any of us! Read More →

26Jan 2015

Starting Phonics With The Alphablocks Reading Programme

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There is no better pleasure than getting lost in a good book. S is just as much of a book-worm as I am, which pleases me no end, and little O is following closely behind with her love of ‘reading’ us a story at bedtime memorised from her favourite Maisy books.

When it came to teaching S to read I was at a complete loss. I was all fired up to start with the flash cards my own mother used with me, thinking learning by sight-reading was still the way to go, when her pre-school teacher stepped in and advised that the teaching of letters and sounds was something best left to their reception teacher with all their phonics training. Being a first timer in all this school and learning malarkey I nodded and went along with what she said like that true teachers pet I am!

After S being in school for a month or so I have the phonics down, and felt confident that when it came to little O starting to read we could get a head start on the phonics at home.

A few months back, just as O turned three, we were offered the Alphablocks reading programme to review for the blog. Perfect timing if you ask me. We had already started working on a few basic Read More →

25Jan 2015

Being Thankful: Coming Home

by AnEssexWife ⋅ 4 Comments

‘One more drink….come on, lets just stay a bit longer’. Those words defined my early twenties. Going home was a painful reminder of how unhappy I was in life, how I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I had a mask, an alter ego, when I was out, but behind closed doors, when the mask came off and the insecurities flooded back in, I had nothing but the emptiness of my room.

The thought of spending a night in on my own would just fill me with dread. By 3pm I’d be sat at work desperately trying to find someone to go out with that night, every minute ticking by my level of acceptable evening company dropping. So what if he dumped me by text and then slept with one of my friends, he was free for dinner and I wouldn’t have to be alone. Just looking at the words now make me shudder, it honestly feels like that life happened to someone else.

These days home is my happy place. My heart aches if I have Read More →

24Jan 2015

#52Adventures Week One: Long Lost Family

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I come from what may be described as a blended family.

Growing up it all seemed quite straightforward. There was me, my mother and grandparents. Simple. Then, in my teens, I met me father and with him came two grown-up half sisters, a step-mother and four step-siblings. It was quite a shock to say the least.

Our new-found relationship was turbulent. Partly down to teenage angst, partly down to family drama and in a large part down my my fathers drinking. Oh, and the small fact that he lived in America!

It wasn’t untill I became a mother in my early twenties, and he began to spend more time in England, that I really started to get to know him. It’s funny what being a parent yourself does to you, but somehow Read More →

19Jan 2015

The Langley Girls – Jan 2015

by AnEssexWife ⋅ 3 Comments

About this time six years ago I had my friends round for a pre-baby girls night in (this was before baby showers were really a ‘thing’ over here) and I asked them if they had any advice. However, being only 24 at the time, not many of the friends in the room had children, but a few of my family members all come up with the same advice.

‘Enjoy every moment of them being small – it’ll be over in the blink of an eye’

Now, due to the fact I already felt like I had been pregnant for about five years and still had at least six weeks left to go, I found this very hard to believe. I smileed, inwardly rolled my eyes, and carried on eating cake!

Yet here I am, six years later, with my biggest girl about to turn six. She has thoughts and opinions of her own, she can Read More →

18Jan 2015

#52Adventures Week Two: Making Time To Read

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Sometimes life gets in the way of, well, life. You have plans, lists, hopes, dreams…..but then the day comes to an end, and you realise that while you managed to keep all the plates spinning, you didn’t actually achieve anything meaningful with your time.

That was me for most of last year. Being self-employed I always felt like I should be working, and that if I wasn’t people would think I wasn’t trying hard enough. I never switched off. I never made time to sit back and relax. I didn’t take care of myself.

Then I had a stark reminder of how short life can be. How one day there will be no tomorrow, and that day may arrive without warning, leaving many jobs undone.

I needed to prioritise my happiness. I needed to look after number one. If I wasn’t functioning properly then neither would my business or my family.

When I first decided to do the #52adventures project it was to take time back for me. Recapture the adventurous spirit hidden deep down beneath to-do lists and ironing piles. One of the things I was most excited to do was reignite my love for reading. Losing myself in book, letting the day fall away and my stresses evaporate while I spent time in another world for a while. Sinking into bed, for half hour alone time, and truly switching off.

Well I’ve managed it. In fact, over the past Read More →