The Half Boob Update

I feel like within every introduction to one of these paths I am going to share how absolutely insane I find it that we have already reached this stage in the year, but I cannot believe that we are already in the middle of October.

Only two minutes ago I was preparing the house for summer and now here I am thinking about what my Christmas decor is going to look like throughout. This is without a doubt one of my favourite times of the year and I cannot wait to share more with you guys as we get into some lovely autumn and festive activities as a family.

 

 

THE HEALTH UPDATE

On the 2nd of October, I had surgery to remove the mass within my breast. I was incredibly nervous, not so much for the Surgery but because I had to have general anesthetic. I have never had that before, and I had an irrational fear that I would not wake up from it. I put that down to being a mother and wanting to live forever for my little boy.

To cut a very long story short, the surgery was a breeze, and I was home just a few hours after going under the knife. My recovery from the anesthetic was rather smooth. There has been quite a lot of pain in my breast though. I have many stitches and because my breast is still rather large, it moves quite frequently and that means that the stitches do not stay firmly in place even when wearing a compression garment. It is now almost 2 weeks after surgery and I am feeling much better.

I have a review at the hospital next week, where they will review what happened in the surgery and hopefully be able to discharge me from their books and I can put this whole thing behind me. I do however want to request bring forward routine mammograms, as I think it will become something of high hyper fixate and worry about frequently.

 

THE BEAUTY BREAKDOWN

I don’t want to share a negative update, but there have been a few items I have tried over the past few weeks that I feel have let me down or not performed the way that I imagine that they would. I don’t think that this is necessarily anything to do with the actual products, but more for my own preference when it comes to the products that I use.

The first is actually a product that I wanted to try for a long time and that is the Vieve Skin Nova Complexion Balm. I don’t really know what I was expecting in terms of texture because I’ve never used something as a base product before that is described as a bomb. However, I do have to say that I was not entirely keen on the texture of it when trying to buff it into my skin. But I will say that once the product was applied and I had my additional items on top such as concealer, contour and powder, I did really enjoy how my complexion looked. I am just not sure whether I am happy to continue using not text you moving forward because it did make me feel rather uncomfortable when blending it out.

The other item was Makeup by Mario Soft Sculpt Shaping Stick. I have tried this product now paired with multiple different base products and no matter what I swipe this on top of, I feel like it always disrupts the products that have been laid down underneath. This is not an issue that I have when using other products.

 

THE FAMILY UPDATES

In terms of a family update, there isn’t much for me to share this month. I feel like all of us are in such a great routine, we know where we are going to be, and things are balanced really well. The only thing that we seem to be coming up against time and time again is a tidal wave of nursery illnesses, but I assume that this is something that we will be coming up with for many years until our little immune system is much stronger.

One thing perhaps with sharing is that this week we did pay privately to have our son vaccinated against chickenpox. During his 12 month vaccinations through the NHS, his nurse mentioned that during his next vaccinations he may be off at the chickenpox vaccine, however she did some calculations and predicted that he would just be out of the age range that will be offered it Due to when they are rolling out the medication as standard. With that said, we decided to go private and get the vaccination. He just needs two doses, and he has only had one at the moment. We just need to hope that he manages to stay away from those germs until he has the full Protection.

 

THE BLOGGING UPDATE

you guys may be able to tell that since my last update; the appearance of my site has changed rather significantly. In my previous update I did share that I wanted to try and alter my site ever so slightly to align with where I am currently as a creator, a freelancer, a professional marketer and a budding author.

There is still hell of a lot of work to do to make this hopefully the springboard that I want to be for the next step of my career. At the moment I am still working through a lot of issues in the backend of my side, removing those dead posts that do not feed my site in a positive manner and improving it for SEO purposes. However, in terms of the content that I am now putting up, I don’t think that I have ever been happier. I feel like this new format and posting schedule allows me to still talk about all of the different elements that I love, but in a much more direct, honest and healthy approach.

 

THE DAY JOB

For the past few months now I have endlessly praised my new job. And this post is going to be no different. I have now been there for three full months, and the role is everything that I wanted it to be.

I will say that I am very overwhelmed with the volume of work that I have on my plate. It is essentially a new company which has been set up with no marketing support. Because of that and my previous experience, their expectations are very high but the only person currently in my department getting through the high volume is very slow. That makes you feel like you won’t really get anywhere and that can be difficult when you leave work, and you don’t feel like you have achieved what you want to do. Thankfully, management of my colleagues are absolutely fantastic. I know that I am doing what they expect of me, I just wish the that could be doing so much more. But that is the perfectionist within me rather than an actual working issue.

 

THE FASHION UPDATE

This may not be the update that most of you guys are looking for here on my site, especially with how fashion focused I have been throughout the years, but I am really trying to move away from excessively buying design items.

I have shared many times here on my side that I feel incredibly blessed to have the funds available to support this lifestyle that I thoroughly enjoy being a part of. However, it isn’t until I look at my collection that I have to take a step back and realise that I own a ridiculous volume already.

That said in the past week I have actually treated myself to some new basic items from the High Street. After losing a large amount of weight this past year, I have been noticing that some of the basic items such as vest tops and T-shirts are now hanging from me rather than fitting me well. Mainly these have come from Zara but I’ve actually had a few steals from pretty little thing, which is somewhere that I do not normally frequent but after a very well targeted piece of social media advertising I found myself purchasing a couple pieces and I was incredibly shocked to see the quality was fantastic.

 

THE NOVEL PROGRESS

I am not going to lie, when it comes to my novels I am feeling rather stuck at the minute. I sit down in the evening with my laptop on my lap after I have put my baby to bed and the motivation simply isn’t there.

I don’t know if I have shared, but I have drafted six novels. This happened at a time when I was flooded with inspiration and as soon as I finished one, I quickly moved onto the next. I only when I began to think of the next steps did I think of ways of improving the structure of these novels, how the characters developed and other aspects that I have learnt during educating myself on the subject more And reading much more complex novel than I had previously done.

Now I am taking my very first of all that I would like to release and putting it into this more sophisticated structure, one that includes dual perspective. I feel like this is becoming incredibly slow moving because I’m trying to have my original draft open while restructuring and redeveloping in a new document. At this stage, I don’t know whether to read my original draft, take notes from it and then park up to one side and just carry out a simple rewrite, using those initial ideas but not being bogged down with trying to keep this new draft similar to the original.

 

THE HOME RENOVATIONS

Home renovations are moving very slowly. I feel like the past few weeks have been put on ice due to me having surgery, but also because of an issue that we have hard with our Plumbing and boiler.

To put things incredibly simply, we had a friend who is a qualified plumber fit as a new boiler a couple of years ago. We recently went to have the same boiler serviced and for them to take a quick look at a fault on our water tank. Turns out that there are issues with the entire system from the bottom of the house all of the way to the top of the house. Currently and bearing in mind we are in the midst of October; there is a large sign on the front of my boiler stating that it is unsafe to use. Not particularly ideal when the temperature it’s dropping, and you have a one-year-old to try and keep warm.

So, the money that I had set aside to spend on the house this past month is now going to be going on extensive repairs of our boiler, water tank and other plumbing throughout the house. It isn’t something that I really anticipated when we were getting our pretty new boiler Regularly serviced. But, these things happen, and we have no other choice other than to make these repairs and have a warm home.

 

THE MUSIC REPORT

In my music report for this month there is only one artist that I am going to mention and that is, of course, Taylor Swift. Her new album was actually released the day after I had my surgery. Which means that I was on a strict bedrest, and I had nothing to do other than to lay in my bed and listen to her new album on repeat.

I will say that I had to have a full listen through of the album before I really started to connect with some of the songs and work out what my favourites were. I think that since the release of the album there has been so much weird press around it and even though I am a Swifty, I am balanced enough to look at the general conversation and realise that people truly cannot be happy when they say an already successful woman absolutely killing it.

I also think it comes back into the conversation that I mentioned in one of my last posts about how in this day and age people choose to be outraged, listen to things that they don’t particularly like, just to have something to moan and whine about. When in reality I have another option of choosing not to listen, to do something that they actually enjoy and not spread hate or share negative opinion.

 

THE MENTAL HEALTH REPORT

In terms of my mental health, I would say that I am still in a very good place. However, one recent development is that my health anxiety has been causing me a few issues. I have always been the kind of person to worry excessively, even when there is no need to do so.

Since this issue with my breath, I am beginning to look into all different areas of my body and think about the things that could go potentially wrong and then I severely catastrophise them. I am hoping that this is just a wave that I am riding out and as I move away from this whole ordeal, health anxiety will begin to reduce. Only time will tell.

 

THE SOCIAL UPDATE

Every single time I share one of these updates, I mention to you guys that I want to be more sociable. And I am proud to announce that since the last time we spoke, I have actually been out, with friends, had a few alcoholic beverages and had a great time.

Don’t get me wrong, the entire time that I was out of the house and away from my baby, I felt incredible guilt. I thought about him almost constantly and felt like a terrible mother for choosing to be away from him, when I have the option of being with him. But as many of my friends reminded me, I need to have time to fill up my own cup every now and again. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and hopefully if I can get away a few more times in the run-up to Christmas, it may do me the world of good.

 

THE RECENT READS

For the first time in a very long time, I’m struggling to read. The last few books that I have picked up haven’t really engaged me that much and I’m finding myself chugging along whenever I’m trying to make progress with a book.

At the moment, I am trying to read the new release by Lyla Sage, I believe the title is called Soul Searching. Every book that I have read previously by this author has come from favourites which is why I am wondering if this is more of a me issue rather than a novel issue. I am going to keep trying, but it may be best if I just try to pick it up again in a few weeks. I do have so much going on at the moment, perhaps this is my mind telling me that something needs to be parked for a later date.

 

OTHER RAMBLES

One thing that I can share with you guys is that I am currently looking to change my car. I may have mentioned before that I currently drive a Range Rover Evoque and even though I am very fortunate to be able to own this car, it has never been my favourite vehicle. At the time, I felt quite rushed into getting it after my previous car was wrote off and I should have taken more time to shop around.

I am somebody that really likes cars, and I enjoy being inside a car that is a lovely environment. Which is why over the past few years I have opted for cars such as Jaguars, BMWs and Range Rover. However, there is a part of me at the moment that is toying with the idea of putting aside some of the fancy cars in favour of a more functional and cheaper to run alternative. Something is already telling me though that the bougier part of my personality will win and I will probably end up being a proud owner of an oversized, overpriced 4×4.