'The Happiness Project' book

I never written a blog post about a book or it's effect on me but I will make an exception for this one because this book has made me a better person and made me more aware of myself.

How I came across this book? As you know, I have a reading list and this book was part of the must read books before you die. I don't like self-help books or books with lots of advice about how to live our lives but I made an exception for this one to see what the fuss was about. I'm so glad i bought it. 

The Happiness Project book was written by Gretchen Rubin who's mission is to be more happier over a year and how she introduces or changes things in her life. I had to have a notebook next to me to write down all the tips and fabulous quotes that I came across.

So I'm going to try and summarise what I changed for the better.

1) Understanding myself

This is a big issue for me. How can I explain myself when I can't understand myself? Till I had children, I was always compared to others which made me think that i was never good enough. My parents and husband always have high expectations of me and I always feel that I fall short of it. Being myself meant nothing to me. Since I was small, I always tried to be someone else. I based the way I dressed, spoke, behave, etc.... from girls which my parents were praising and comparing me too. It took me becoming a mother that i found out that I finally found myself i.e that I am as good as i am and there's only one of me!I can't please everyone and that is ok. How awesome is that?! It took me 21years to realise that! It doesn't mean that i don't  have those moments were I wished I was like someone else and doubting myself. My parents and husband are very good at reminding me that too. But I've developed such a good deaf ear for the past 11 years that I'm able to filter out their comments.. I also asked my best critics to describe me and the good things overshadowed the negative things. It gave me the confidence that I was good enough! i carry that list in my diary just in case i need a boost. Reading this book, reinforced that i was unique and if people don't want to accept me (my bad and goods), it is their loss!

2) Happiness to me

I've written a blog all about it here back in 2017 and looking back on it nothing much changed:

https://www.blogger.com/u/2/blog/post/edit/4124083420943040106/8167431094138906474

Reading this book made me also realise how hobbies are quite important and self-care. I've been investing more in taking care of myself over the last year. The hours after the kids have gone to bed are MY time. My commuting is strictly for reading or listening to song.  It has done wonders to my mood. If I wanted to learn something, I do it. I wanted to start making my own jewellery and lat year, I bought the tools and I have never looked back since! It also saved a lot of money. 

I loved creating memories but never had the time to document in a great way however after this book, I began scrapbooking and started making notebooks for everything off my interests. I have a reading book listing all the books I've read, a crafts book where I document all the crafts I've done with kids, a recipe book, a travel book, a notebook with topics that I want to learn about i.e. politics, inspirational women, the Eelam struggle, mythology, etc... since the kids 1st birthdays, i've been writing letters for the kids and emailing them frequently about things that i wanted to share with them here and there. I also want to start a photo album highlighting each their year and since this book, the daunting task of going through and organising my iCloud, usbs and mycloud has become a real joy! I've come across videos and photos that I've forgotten about and this is all thanks to this book. Imagine, the expressions on my kids' faces when they get to open all of these and see their memories being documented in such a manner! Lucky has already told me that if I die before I visit all the countries in my travel list that she'll carry my ashes with her and she'll make it a mission. Mahi has already claimed my recipe book to use when he's older! This gives me so much joy!

Not sure if this is because of kids but my artistic side has been flourishing. However, after reading the book, I thought I could become more braver with it. This year for Christmas I made my own personal gifts where I handprinted boxes and the kids loved that! They own mini keepsake boxes.

Traditions

The book emphasised on every family having their own quirky traditions as that's what makes us a family right?! It made me appreciate our family as a unit more. I love when my kids say for example "We don't do pancake day because every Sunday, it's our pancake day". Heres more of our traditions.

https://www.blogger.com/u/1/blog/post/edit/4124083420943040106/3257637408432528859

Living in the moment/making it count

I didn't need this book to tell me this as my job in cancer is a constant reminder that life is precious. However, sometime you forget and this book made sure that i remembered that life is fragile I don't like to think too much of the future as I don't know if I'll be alive or not. I enjoy everyday and make it count. I've come to a habit of praising a random person either on social media or in real-lie. For example, there's this lady on my commute who wears some beautiful skirt and I just went upto her and praised her on her skirt. The lady was so happy and that made my day. the feeling of making someone's day brings so much happiness. I have been doing that lately on social media too. On one of the FB groups, there's this lady repurposing old furniture and it is stunning. I just messaged her how stunning her work is and she replied with saying how it meant the world to her. That made me happy. Whether it's signing a petition a retweeting a charity/business, everyday I try to do something that will mean something to someone. I've become more conscious of using my phone around the house. I put my phone in my room and spend the evening fully focused on my kids. I started to hide all technologies over the weekend so we are not distracted. Little changes like this mades a huge difference.

Secure a future

Although living in the moment, some kind of planning the future is vital. When I talk of future, I talk of my kids futures especially. I try to make their adult life as smooth as I can. I've had life insurance for the past 8 years and savings for the kids.  The book reminded me to write a will although I have nothing in my possession and saving for myself too!!!! Thinking about others mean I forget about myself!

I've rambled on enough. Read the book! I assure you, you will learn something new in every chapter! We make our own happiness!

Making the most of Halloween in 2020

 I know it's been 2 weeks since Halloween ended but I thought that everything that I tried to make happen needs to be documented and that I tried to keep things as normal as possible in a pandemic.

Usually, on Halloween, we go around our neighbourhood and go trick-treating with friends which is the highlight of Halloween! The whole month of October, we go to various Halloween related events and get in the mood. We also do a lot of arts and crafts and decorate our home with it.

This year, we did the crafts and decoration but couldn't do much else. We did go Flip-Out for some scary jumping, The London Tombs again to be chased by psychos and on a Ghost bus Tour which was very informative and funny! But we couldn't trick-or-treat so I had to improvise. Thankfully, we now moved to a house with a lot fo space which means more hiding places. This gave me a wicked idea. What about a spooky sweet hunt around the house!!! I do this every Easter so I had clues to recycle and created more clues. As the days went by, my idea of a hunt became more and more bigger. 

Why not start the hunt with the kids beating a piñata which had some clues? So we made home-made pinatas, thanks to Pinterest for ideas and instructions, which were much more easier to make than I thought.

I'm also on this wonderful group on facebook called 'Housebound with Kids' where parents share a lot of thing including arts and crafts ideas. So with the help of this group, I made mystery box which basically was Amazon boxes with a square cut in the middle. In the mystery box, the clues where hidden in terrible things which the kids didn't know. I filled a bowl with orbeez, spaghetti loops and olives. The kids face was a delight!

We had to take our dinner in between as the hunt took longer than expected. We had dinner  by candlelight where we switched off all the lights. It was quite an experience! The final clues were in  a cream pie which the kids had to get to with using only their mouth! It was very messy but the shrieks of laughter from all of us was great!

The kids dressed up as Snappy from Goosebumps and a dead Indian bride. We also did introduction videos for each one of them! It was really spooky and innovative!

2.5hours later we were exhausted ad ready for bed but i was glad that the pandemic didn't affect our favourite time of the year. The kids even thanked me for delivering a fun Halloween night and how they can't wait for next year's halloween!

Traditions

 As Deepavali is upon us, I thought it'll be a great time to talk about our family traditions. This inspiration came from a fantastic book I read called 'The Happiness Project' by Gretchen Rubin which inspired me a lot to do a a number of things especially to collect memories. You'll see a lot of reference to this amazing book in my blog from now on.

What urged me to create blog is because I love writing but this is also my way of venting, sharing and basically being 'book' for my kids to look back on their memories, should I not be here for them to remember things (I know a bit morbid but in my line of work, there's not a day that goes by, where the fragility of life is reminded everyday).

Anyways, so while I was reading 'The Happiness Project' , I loved the passages about traditions personalised to our families. It made me think... what traditions do we have? To my shock, I couldn't remember much! I have failed as a parent was my first thought! What kind of loving, happy environment am i providing that all i can remember as family tradition is the deep cleaning every 1st of the month and watching a Tamil movie during the weekend. 

But then I remembered that I have 2 guinea pigs, which I'm trialling my parenting skills on, who I can ask those questions. To my utter surprise and pride, my kids rolled out a list of our uniques family traditions. How we celebrate all important religious dates as one, regardless of what religions. Our New Year Eve tradition of wearing new pyjamas, making home-made crafts for everything and decorating our home with these and much more (I can't reveal our family secrets).

This exercise was enough to make me confident as a parent and that I'm providing them with a warm environment where we are all creating happy memories and traditions! 

A lockdown too late!

 A 4 week lockdown has been announced in England over the weekend! I knew it was going to happen with all the covidiots roaming around and useless governments 'initiatives' but it came a little too late.

Just a warning that you may not agree with everything I have to say but would happily have a healthy discussion but no abuse please!

I knew a  lockdown was going to come when the 'Eat out to help out' scheme was announced when we still had the virus chasing us over summer! And the cherry on the top is when the PM accused the public for spreading the virus by using the scheme! Hahahaha! As I drove past restaurants from Monday to Wednesday, the queue were astonishing! But there were in nowhere longer than the ones I saw outside pubs at 5pm when the government announced that pubs need to close by 10pm. So not only have I had to weave through overcrowding on pavements, with most people in the queues with no masks or/and not socially-distancing, after work (not mentioning people getting drunk much more earlier), I've had people at 10pm still very drunk on the pavements and roads, disturbing the neighbourhood and helping spread the virus even more! But guess what, we still helped local businesses at the expense of our health! So it is a totally win-win situation for us.

We had a very expensive track and trace app developed and promoted as a big breakthrough to tackle the pandemic. However, it failed.... miserably. I still don't know what the point of it is to be honest. The biggest joke of it is that we are still paying towards it!!!!!!!! 

As someone working in the NHS, staff had to have weekly swabs. Although I personally hated being swabbed (bad gag-reflex), I did it for the safety of my patients and my family. But guess what, mid September came and staff testing couldn’t be done regularly anymore because there wasn’t enough testing kits! We are paying millions towards an app that doesn’t work but we don’t have enough money on buying more swabs! Ouch! 

Schools reopening. My kids and me were relieved when they went back to school. Not for the education but more for their overall wellbeing! When I said another lockdown was going to happen, my daughter said that she couldn’t deal with another 6months at home! Although as a working parent, I was half and half about them going back to school but I’ll do whatever to make my kids happy so I was happy that schools are remaining open. But parents making pick up/drop offs twice a day, how is that going to help with transmission rates? Also unis. Why are uni remaining open when all their lectures are mostly done online?? Isn’t it safer to send uni students at halls back home? Imagine students, unable to go home, stuck in their flat?! I’m thinking illegals rave parties and a great breeding ground for the virus! 

For nearly 5 years now, I've been wondering how I would, hell, how my kids would have made better decision/policy-makers than the cloys we currently have in the circus that we call a government. They could have prevented this lockdown by being proactive. They could have prevented this lockdown by using their brains. They could have prevented this if they cared about us. Ours did things for the sake of doing it! The government doesn’t give a hoot about us and who’s going to pay for it??!! 

Brighton

 This year, we didn't have a shortage of beautiful hot summer days. We only went for a day trip with a friend. The trains were surprisingly quiet (we did go midweek so that could explain why). 

We had planned a heavy day to fit it all in in a day. Our first stop what the Sea Life Centre. I thought it was smaller than the London ones but it had everything the kids wanted to see. It was a beautiful setting too located in an old building. Some exhibitions were closed due to covid but it was still great.

When it got to midday, we jumped in the waters. Well the kids did and I took a break from swimming. We spent a good 2 hours on the seaside before we got lunch from a local chippies on the seafront.  

To burn off all those calories from lunch, we walked to the Toy museum, located below Brighton station. It was a cute little museum with entry prices in the single-digits. they had a trail going on which made it more exciting. Our favourite part was the puppet section which was beautifully set. They also had a nice section with model  trains. It was a nice walk down memory lane too recognising toys i used to play with as a child. 

We then headed back to the pier via the iconic Royal Pavillion. Unfortunately it was under construction so didn't see it in all its glory but your can still admire the building. Back at the seafront, we splashed around to cool ourselves down after the good touristy walk. 

We ended the day by going on the rides on the pier. I bought advance tickets online a couple fo days before as it was cheaper and it was an all access ticket. we did most of rides twice and some where really cool especially the rollercoasters right at the end of the pier as it felt like we were going to fall in the water. We did some rides twice too as it wasn't busy at all. 

We had an exhausting but fun day in Brighton! A perfect day trip!

Fruit Picking

A perfect playdate opportunity during the summer without being closed off within 4 walls. With friends, we spent a great afternoon chasing kids through sweetcorn crops and trying to stop the kids from eating all the fruits. We went fruit picking at Parkside Farm in Enfield. Due to the coronavirus, we had to pre-book online but the slots only open  days before and they were flying like hot cakes. The entrance fees are not expensive and the cost of it will be taken off your final bill after you picked your fruits.

A whole afternoon wasn't enough to be honest but due to restrictions, we couldn't spend a whole day there. The time we went, most of the crops were ready to be picked and boy, did we pick a lot. I didn't buy any fruits or vegetables for about 2 weeks from the supermarket. There were a wide range of fruits and vegetables to pick from. We had 4 excited kids running and playing across the crops including cheekily hiding and putting fruits right in their mouths instead of in the basket!!! They loved picking crops with lots of instructions on how to pick different fruits/vegetables best. 

The prices were so cheap compared to the supermarket prices.

We rounded the day with having ice cream from the shop and relaxing after a heavy day of being a fruit picker!

Hobbledown Farm

 I came across this adventure park/farm in Epsom randomly through browsing a website. Looked like some much needed active fun we wanted to shake off the lockdown blues. 

Not far away from London, the farm wasn't busy which was good to know. We first headed to the mini farm/zoo to see the various animals including meerkats, peacocks, wallabies, etc.... The farm lead us to the massive adventure playgroup with lots of wood houses and big slides. I couldn't resist the kids having all the fun so i joined in and god wha a work it was. I'm glad that despite me putting some kilos on, i still fit i those small tunnels and holes. It was so much fun running after the kids chasing them up and down those gigantic wooden houses. 

To catch our breath, we then headed for the bouncy mat which was fun. My kids have decided that there weren't done chasing me around so hey chased me around the bunny mat too which again was excellent exercise ti get rid off my belly fat. 

There was another play area where kids got to dig for gold and another play area with dragons and what looked like fairy houses which I couldn't climb into, much to my dismay.

There was a maze which was fun to run around in and the kids had a dizzying time in the zorbs!

We ended the day by doing a Go-ape obstacle course. While Mahi completed the course like a pro he is, i fell, much to my kids amusement, half way through and had to be rescued. It's ok, i still zip lined like a superhero!