Hi Lovelies,

Welcome back! And welcome, if you are new here xoxo

How are all of You? I hope life is treating You well?

I myself am completely knackered, but since I love blogging so much, I still wanted to get a blog post out. Having just sent my kids back to school, I finally found a minute to actually sit down and work in peace for a little while.  This is actually my second Weekly Musings post, and while I’d like to link to the first one, I can’t – I lost it together with my first website, and as a true professional, I haven’t saved it 🙂  In it I wrote a long and heartfelt post about my life, the actual reason I moved my blogging day to Tuesdays, to the blogger life not being so glitzy and glamorous as people imagine. Even if I tried to replicate it, I can’t, because I wrote it in a spur of the moment – and every time I sit down and try to re-write it again, it doesn’t come out right, it feels dry and forced instead of heart to heart post I intended it to be. I have to be in the right zone to blog, because when I catch the tail of inspiration, that’s when I am at my best creative self, the words flow faster than I can write them down, and when I proof read the post prior to publishing it, I am happy with it on the whole, whatever kind of post it might be. Whereas when I decide I need to work on the blog to get one post or the other, that’s when I hit the wall, the posts come out dry and not my best. Plus all hell breaks loose around me, I find myself pulled into a million different directions at the same time and getting irrationally angry at not being able to get the stuff done.   This leads me to my next point, my new posting days – after working on the weekends only I found myself with too much on my plate on Mondays, from a cr*loads of housework post “Daddy’s Day” – we don’t have a nanny or anyone to help with child care or anything, really, so it is down to us two. Long story short, daddy started minding kids while I went back to work a few months ago. My job is on the weekends only, but he thinks it’s my job to clean up after them when I come back to work. Obviously I am not happy with that at all – you would think I’d have this area of my life in balance after two thousand years of marriage? Not so much. I think like most women I’d done a huge disservice to myself holding three corners of the house while working full time in the past. Now trying to change it and get my family to pitch in, I am met with resistance, obviously. Because if they had it that good so so many years, why would they want to work for free, right? This reminds me of a meme I saw on Facebook ages ago – it reads something like this – ” It is so easy being a woman – you get up at 5-6am, you make breakfast, get up family, serve them breakfast, help kids get dressed, prepare lunches, walk them to school, go to work, pop to supermarket for groceries after work, come home, prepare dinner, serve dinner, wash up after the dinner, supervise your kids homework, play with the kids, walk the dog, put the bins out,  bathe the kids, read them bed time stories and put them to bed, clean up the house, put on washing, sort out and iron previous washing, check & reply to email, pay the bills – and the rest of the time you are FREE to do what you want!!!” Well, something like that, I think I should put it into a meme actually 🙂 So, with all this in mind, and the pressure to do all the things right and on time, I made a decision to move my posting day to Tuesdays after doing it for so many years on Mondays. Being the responsible person I am, I realised I was stressing myself out for no reason – blogging is like a full time job, but I am not at that stage where it pays for itself, so I should take my mental health into consideration and drop the weight where it is appropriate. As my family pointed out, why work for free? And put pressure on myself to post on Mondays if I have the rest of the week that is mostly stress free?

Well, I hope I communicated this point right, I am not someone who leads this glamorous life, party hopping with a champagne in my hand – far from it. I am just a tired mommy who is trying to keep all her plates in the air, blogging included! Not-so-recent changes in IG algorithms did my nut in, the engagement level dropped dramatically, as well as my page became invisible to the people who didn’t know about me already, meaning I was concealed from the masses. Lots of smaller brands and bloggers were affected, not just me, but it was so disheartening that I thought of leaving it all together a couple of times. I also noticed a couple of bloggers finding a way around it by buying followers, something I would never ever do. What keeps me going is the desire to help people to switch to natural and organic beauty – that is the exact force driving me and my blog – not the fame and money, I think these things should come as a “side effect” of your hard work. And it is hard work, anyone who tried his/her hand at blogging, will know that. I decided bumps like that not to let to get to me – Your messages telling me I helped in some way or form to find your best natural products is the best music to my ears – even all these years, it doesn’t get old. It gives me wings to keep going!

Well, having said all that, I think it might be my seasonal depression talking, as it always rears it’s ugly head at this time of the year. But then again, I think it is important that everyone in the family would pitch in in equal measures, am I right? Us moms tend to do the lions share out of love for our families, but it is a fine line to balance – family members take it for granted all too soon. I was listening to one of On Air With Ella podcasts, where one lady submitted her question and Ella and some psychologist, who’s name escaping me, spend the good hour talking about all the ins and outs of the situation. Basically, one middle aged lady with a husband and two grown up male sons found herself with a health problem that prevented her doing all of the housework she always did, and she asked her family to help and pick up the slack. Do you think they did? She soon found herself branded a nag and a killjoy if she repeatedly asked them to do what had to be done in the first place – how is that fair? And where’s the happy middle ground here? Comment below with your thoughts on this?

Moving onto happier subjects! November is my birthday month, so I am actually on the lookout for a present for myself. After all, I’ve been really good this year, so I deserve to treat myself, right? I am looking at Ere Perez Colour Pot in Harmony, as I really like the way it looks on my blogger friend Jana from Small Bits of Loveliness (see the Natural Beauty post in my old blog here), as well as Ere Perez Almond Oil Mascara. I chose both products from the same brand as I really enjoyed what I have tried from them so far (see review here), even though I am a bit sad they discontinued one of my favourite blushes, called Bondi. You know I love my Nars Orgasm Natural Dupes 🙂 I am also looking at these duo lipsticks from Emani, Xanadu (described as peach and pink) and Shangri La (described as soft pink with hot pink) – not too sure which one to get, as the photos from online shops look different to swatch photos, I am a bit apprehensive and confused. Let me know if You have any of those and how do you find them? Any feedback would be appreciated, so please send me the link to reviews or your IG swatch photos, anything, really? By the way, do you want me to do a full blog post on what else I want for my Cake Day and plan on getting? Do let me know and I will be happy to do that post for you.

What else is happening? I am happily testing/ judging for The Beauty Shortlist Awards 2019 and just submitted my judging form for CertClean Clean Beauty Awards as well. The best jobs I ever had, and I am hoping to do lots more of them in the future! That’s a dream come true and proof that hard work pays off. I gets loads of questions about it, and yes, I will blog about it in my own good time, and yes, the opportunities came to me and not the other way round.

What else is happening? It is not announced yet, but I am happy to tell you I am the new Ambassador for Inner Senses brand – over the moon about this, as I have been a fan for a couple of years now. I have actually reviewed the body oils last year, see the post here.

My love of books is well known, and I was really happy to learn that I can actually request any book I want at my local library – how come no one told me that before? I went on thinking I can only choose from what’s available in my local branch, which is tiny. I am on the maximum 12 book at any given time, but have to scale down, because that’s one of the areas I was stressing myself out for no reason. From now on I will try to be on two or three books at once – which is a very manageable number. Anyone else reading multiple books at once? My reading list can be seen in my Instagram a few posts back for those of you curious?

So imagine my delight when I learned I can also read magazines online, also via Dublin library – I felt like I won the lottery or something! There were times in my past where I actually had a disposable income, or play money (something that is next to nothing now) and I was buying loads of magazines every month, but losing a job put an abrupt stop to all that. Kids needs and bills come first, am I right? Happy to re-discover my old fave thing – the first day was spent drinking tea and reading all magazines I could squeeze into the few hours when the kids were in school. Pure bliss! This will definitely help lift my mood and feed my endless curiosity in the dreary upcoming Sickness Season, umm, excuse me, I meant Winter.

Umm, I am also on a few audio books – yes you guessed right, from the library! I imagine you rolling your eyes at me at this point, and yes, I can totally understand that, I probably sound like a broken record by now. But if You are like me and are committed to constantly better yourself, you will get me. Currently I am onto Jennifer Kries Waking Energy and loving it! The way I can actually fit it into my life is when I power clean in the morning post school run. I can’t remember where I heard this idea of power cleaning your house every day for 20 mins in the morning, but I found this idea perfect! I am a big fan of putting all the things we used that day at the end of the day, while my husband is errr, make-a-mess-all-week-leave-things-where-they-fell-and-then-spend-Saturday-cleaning-it-all-up-while-blaming-everyone-around-you kind of guy. So this technique was kind of like a saviour to me, and if I can feed my soul while doing mundane tasks, then it is thousand times better!

What else? I am hoping to manage to squeeze a date night with my hubby to go watch the new Queen movie! Have you seen it? Is it any good? I am hoping it is good, because Queen’s was actually a first album I ever bought, aged 13. I hope my idols won’t fall from the grace in my eyes, as there were a few places I skipped while reading Freddy’s biography.

That’s all for today, see you here tomorrow!

Lots of Love,

Renata.

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