I know that for many people 2020 will not be a year they want to remember. However amongst the stress and disruption there are many positives I want to remember. These include the special family time we have enjoyed, the chance to get to know our neighbours and explore our local area, all whilst keeping safe at home.

We will have a few special souvenirs of this special year. As well as my blog posts detailing what we got up to each week we have the Coronavirus scrapbooks the children kept, photos from our Door Step photography shoot, and the one day diary we wrote for the Mass Observation Archive.

2020 The Year We All Stayed At Home

I haven’t been spending too much during lockdown but I did treat myself to a few things to decorate our home. We’ve spent so much time at home that everything is de-cluttered, the garden is tidy, we built a new huge wardrobe and got the drive paved!

It’s good to have a few nice things though. I love embroidery so couldn’t resist the 16cm diameter embroidery hoop which features the words ‘We ALL STAYED AT HOME 2020’ from Cotton Clara. I chose it in khaki green with white thread but there were other colourways available too. It was a quick and easy project to stitch and looks great on my hoop wall.

For the garden I bought one of the banners from the Posters for the People series. In Good Company, the Leeds-based street art project led by Laura Wellington, created some of the city’s most striking murals and installations and launched Posters For The People.

This brilliant project aimed to harness people-power to spread a wave of technicolour positivity across the country and raise funds for charities supporting NHS staff and key workers. I love the work of Rebecca Strickson and couldn’t resist a colourful banner to hang in our garden. You can buy the whole range here.

With two children our house can get quite messy but I risked a beautiful Summer 2020 glass tumbler by Rob Ryan. I love his work and the glass tumbler is hand screen printed in four colours and decalled and fired in his East London studio.

The base reads: This glass was designed, printed, decalled and fired at Ryantown HQ, 5-6 Teesdale Yard, London, E2 6QE www.robryanstudio.com in the month of May in the year of 2020 during the world wide Covid-19 Pandemic. We stayed inside our walls to try and stop the virus spread.’ They are available here.

Have you bought anything to remind yourself of this crazy year?