Well I am now fast approaching my 53rd birthday and I can honestly say that I don’t mind being in my 50s at all; I have a lovely family, am happy in my work (well it would be nice to be a lady of leisure but as that ain’t going to happen, I should be happy) and I have finally realised that as long as I’m a nice person to people round me, I can be who I want to be and not have to worry about what anyone else thinks. Oh yes did I mention that I got The Greatest Showman DVD and CD for my last birthday from my daughter’s lovely boyfriend and I’m totally obsessed by it. This is Me is a mind blowing track and the words have so much meaning that I’m not going to make any apologies for stealing them!

My blog was started after Kathryn set me my 50 challenges for my 50th birthday. I had always wanted to start a blog and had initially bought some reading material to help me. Reading about it actually frightened me; all these authors seemed to want to ram their ideas at you and whilst I understand and abide by the rules in life, why should I follow rules in something that I wanted to be fun. I decided to make my own rules; just do what I wanted. The year of my challenges was absolutely brilliant and I have tried hard to set myself challenges after this but I have somehow lost my way a bit. So I have decided a revamp is in order. I want this to be about my 50s so my plans are about to write about my 5 favourite things:

• Family, friends and favourite things
• Reading
• Cross Stitching
• Cooking and baking
• Keeping active

Okay, so I am cheating with the first one. It is giving me the power to write about anything I like: the theatre, flamingos, George Michael and the list goes on! As I say, this is me!

I have also been inspired to have a go at “bullet planning” after reading a book called “How to Bullet Plan” by Rachel Wilkerson Miller. I’m not a great person with lists. I get very scared looking at what I have to do. I know that to achieve a balanced lifestyle, I am going to try to bullet plan regularly and will share my successful (and hopefully not too many unsuccessful) attempts with keeping this up. I forgot to mention that another favourite thing is stationery so it has been a good excuse to get some lovely notebooks.

Over the next month, I will share my new favourite exercise DVDs, my Goodread challenge, my last baked in kit, my latest cross stitch (which I must challenge myself to finish) and maybe flamingos.

Speak soon!