Starting the week by writing the Happy List is something I’ve been doing for a while. This is my chance to sit down and reflect on the things that made me happy in the previous week, as well as to record some of our family adventures. It’s a post I always love to write.

Five Happy Things {Week 460}

The weather has felt autumnal all week even though we are in the beginning of August. We have been blackberry picking so many times that we have frozen bags full of them for later in the year. We did bake one blackberry and apple crumble though which was delicious.

Now both the kids are on their school holidays I took a day off so we could go into London together. Our first stop was Java Whiskers Cat Cafe Marylebone where we enjoyed a hot drink and played with the cats. My son loves cats and this is the next best thing to owning one right now.

My daughter loves dogs so whilst in London we visited Portrait of Dogs: From Gainsborough To Hockney at the Wallace Collection. The exhibition contained over 50 pieces of art from paintings to Roman sculpture and even a beloved stuffed dog. We actually laughed our way round most of the pieces because some of the portraits were just funny and some of the breeds quite unusual. We went round twice as it was quite a small exhibition, but sadly there were no portraits of a bichon frise like we have.

Over the weekend we went school uniform shopping. This is possibly my least favourite task, along with school shoe shopping which I’m leaving for another few weeks. In September both the children will be at the same school which means blazers for both, along with branded sports kit. It was eye-wateringly expensive.

Our dog walker has started dog training sessions so we booked a back to basics session. Our puppy training was interrupted by the pandemic a few years ago so it seemed like a good time for some refresher training. We all enjoyed it and have lots of ideas to communicate with him better.

Have a great week!