Inspiration

Something for the weekend

[music] This is ridiculous and brilliant: Russian Unicorn (via my sister)

Warm spicy apple & carrot drink | spinach salad with warm bacon viniagrette | cosy winter warmers

Turn your Instagram shots into a fab calender for 2013

Fun and innovative iPhone docks | Ollo clip

Why a seven-year-old should help run your life — smartness from Nisha

[audio] Jen Louden & Christine Arylo talk about self-love

Vintage paperback Pelican covers

When it’s time to move on: Four powerful questions for honouring all that’s been — smartness from Rachael

How to sit with your emotions

Loving this DIY advent tree

This I believe: 43 lessons from 43 years

A walk down Bleecker Street circa 2001 (i love Bleecker Street!)

How to uncover your values (and why you’d want to) — more smartness from Tam

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Just a quick update on what’s coming next:

Registration for the January sessions of both Unravelling and Blogging from the Heart will open this Wednesday, December 5th. Check out this page to see what time you need to be online to register. I’m counting down the days till class starts as I’m at my happiest when i’m with my course peeps, making videos (in the new flat!) and connecting :)

Plus I have something extra special for you on Tuesday… here’s a sneak peek:

Have a great weekend, loves! x

Unravelling

One month later…

This morning I realised it had been a whole month since I left Bath and I shook my head, amazed. That went really fast.

When you decide to make a change it can take ages to get to the actual jumping off point. There’s all the preparation and procrastinating and fretting and double-guessing: is this the right thing to do? What if it goes wrong? And then the day arrives and you make the jump. You move house. You leave the country. You tender your resignation. You tell him you can’t live like this anymore. And before you know it time is passing and you’re living in your imagined future. You took your courage in your hands and made it happen.

You did it.

New beginnings are best when you embrace them. There have been several times in my life when I was convinced it was game over. That what had happened was surely earth-shattering enough to halt the sun in its tracks and stop everything. But no, the sun carried on rising and setting dispite what was going down in my little world. Time passes and we can either adapt to our new situation or flounder. Sometimes it takes a lot longer than you’d like, but you do reach a point where the new becomes the familiar again, even if the new was borne out of the fire.

New beginnings are a wild ride. I feel completely remade as I work my way through this transition, and the process has been far from smooth. I’ve swung between the highs of falling back in love with the city to the uncomfortable realisation that old ways of being just aren’t going to work in this new place. There’s always something that you hadn’t prepared yourself for, always an emotion or situation or possibility you hadn’t factored in. It’s never what you thought it would be, but in my experience it’s often better than you’d pictured. The trick is to stay fluid, to be gentle with your remade self and to lean on the familiar practices you can wrap around your shoulders like a cashmere blanket.

This is proving to be incredibly fertile time, for even as I’ve been turning round and round like a dog trying to find the right place to sit, I’ve been making notes towards something that’s been wanting to be born for a while — i just didn’t have the right headspace. Until now.

I’ll tell you more about that next week :)

Soul

Movember madness

The mustachio’d dude holding my nephew in the photo above is not a 70s porn star, but is, in fact, Noah’s dad, Steve. The ‘tache looks kinda natural on him, huh? Steve’s been raising money for Movember and, frankly, has been having a whale of a time. Never one to shy away from a challenge — especially if it involves comedy facal hair — Steve actually went to Boots last weekend and bought Just for Men beard dye to make his mustache even more awesome (if that is even possible). I watched the metamorphosis as it happened. It was thrilling, let me tell you.

I wanted to support the efforts of my mo-bro-in-law because he’s such a great dad to Noah, a passable husband to my sister (only kidding!), and an all-round diamond geezer, so if you don’t currently have a mo bro in your life and fancied supporting Steve’s tache-tastic journey, his Movember page is over here. Every penny helps :)

Love you, mo bro xo

Writing life

Something special for the holidays

I’ve been sitting here for an hour trying to find a way to write this post that doesn’t sound sales-y, cheesy or annoying. It’s not easy. So I’m not going to dress this up — here’s what I’m trying to say: if you have a treasured woman in your life and you’re wondering what to buy her for Xmas, can i humbly suggest my book, This I Know? As an author it’s important to promote your own books at this time of year but, to be honest, it’s more than that — I’d love for This I Know to to be gifted into the hands of women who need her. Women who are searching for themselves, yearning for a creative life, wondering if they are the only ones feeling the way they do. I shared my heart in the book because I wanted other women to feel less alone, so if you know a soulsister who might need a gentle read to take her into the new year, think of me and my wee book :)

There’s something else, too. Many authors sell copies of their own book but this was something i decided not to do as I felt the cost of the book + shipping from the UK (which isn’t cheap) didn’t make for a great deal. So, while I can’t offer signed copies of the book to give as gifts, I’ve come up with something just as lovely…

I have a small stack of Polaroid postcards that are just begging to be personalised and used as bookmarks. I’d love to send one to you to tuck inside the book before you wrap it, so here’s the plan:

1. buy a copy (or two!) of This I Know to gift to a friend(s)

2. send me a copy of the receipt by email (forward me the email invoice or photograph your receipt) with the subject line “POSTCARD!” — mail to: nita [at] susannahconway.ffm-01.clickwphosting.com

3. make sure you also include in the email:
— the name of the person who’s receiving the book so I can personalise the message on the postcard (if you bought 2 books I’ll send 2 postcards, etc)
— your mailing address

4. wait for the mailman to deliver the card(s)!

NOTES

— I’ll cover the cost of the postage for all the cards (they’ll be sent in envelopes to protect them)
— deadline for emailing me the copy of your receipt is THURSDAY DECEMBER 6th. All postcards will be sent on Saturday 8th — any later than that and you won’t get them in time for Xmas
— the postcards will be offered on a first-come, first-served basis until I run out of cards :) I apologise in advance if the cards go quickly and you don’t get one (on the other hand, maybe no one will want them… you never know!)
— to make it fair this offer is only for books purchased on or after today’s date (November 26th)

Looking forward to sending out some love notes xo

Present

Past

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