Getting Rid Of Crap People In Your Life

No matter what walk of life we’ve come from we all have one thing in common and that’s people. We all have people in our lives; colleagues, kids, partners, husbands, wives, family members, acquaintances, friends. The list is endless. But some of these relationships are relentless in the impact they have on our lives. And let’s face it some people are just crappy human beings. So why do we put up with it? I literally have no idea!

I’v spent more of my life wanting to please others and begging people to love me than I have not. I look back now and think NEVER AGAIN! But in the midst of all these relationships and encounters I was blinded by their deafening roars. I believed I was not worth loving. I believed I was not good enough. I believed the world would be better without me.

In the last few years I’ve realised a lot of this was because of my untreated depression and anxiety BUT these shitty people, who by the law of DNA should have treated me better, much better, should have stepped up their game. But you can’t change people. As agonising as that is. It’s taken me a good thirty plus years to understand this.

Life is far too precious to waste it by letting toxic people ruin it and take away your happiness. Don’t let them. I know it’s not that simple but it really is that simple.

I had one major toxicity in my life. He hurt me over and over and over. Sometimes he had verbal remorse once or twice over 21 years. But nothing says sorry like changed actions, and nothing ever changed. He almost ruined my life. Almost. But he didn’t. He hasn’t. And now he’s a distant memory. A memory that will no doubt always come to haunt me but it’s something I have to bear. Because he will NOT ever ruin anything else for me. After 21 years I cut him from my life. It was an horrific time. It was hard. He made it harder. I let go of him and snatched back my worth. I realised it was not me who was the problem. I made a promise to myself that from now on I was in charge of my life.

It was THE BEST decision I’ve ever made. It was the start of freedom.

I lost a lot of people when I cut loose from this burden BUT it was still worth all I lost. The whatifs nearly stopped me but I couldn’t live in the toxic cloud of darkness anymore.

The last 34 years has taught me to accept all or accept nothing. There’s no fence for me. This had led other people to leave our lives too, but it’s been a mighty good riddance. I will never let people make me question my worth. Never. They have no right. And I most certainly will never let my children wonder about their worth. They are loved outloud. I’m fiercely passionate about that. I don’t want them to spend their adult life recovering from their childhood like I’ve had to.

I’m a big believer in second chances, but not third chances. My door will shut. Yours should too. Your happiness and peace should be your priority. You matter! You’re worthwhile. Don’t settle for a life of pleasing others or keeping the peace only for your own peace to be destroyed.

It’s never too late to change the direction of your life.

 

 

Easter Biscuits – Bunny Backs

We love a little treat over at Swords and Snoodles, especially a festive one so we decided to make some Easter biscuits!

Our Easter biscuits were Bunny Backs and they were so delicious.

They were real easy to make so I thought I’d share the recipe with you.

You will need:

  • 250g butter
  • 140g caster sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 300g plain flour
  • 1 medium/large packet of white chocolate buttons
  • Sprinkles
  • Bunny shaped cookie cutter

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 200C/180C Fan/Gas mark 6. Mix 250g softened butter &140g caster sugar into a bowl using a wooden spoon. Add 1 egg yolk & 2 tsp vanilla extract. Beat to combine. Sift in 300g plain flour. Mix in using your fingers. Once you have a good dough chill in the fridge for 20 minutes. Once chilled roll out to 5mm thick onto a floured surface. cut out your biscuit shapes using your cutter and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Bake for 12 – 15 minutes until a light golden colour. Once cool, melt to white chocolate buttons but keep aside one button for each biscuit you have made. Using a small spoon cover the bunny ears in white chocolate and cover in sprinkles. Using the melted chocolate as edible glue stick a chocolate button onto each bunny biscuit as its tail. Shake off excess sprinkles and serve.

A Video For The Mothers With A Different Story

What is a mother? A mother is a million things, all different, but all just as important!

Take a look…

Click to play this Smilebox slideshow

Whatever your story, you matter!

Share with somebody who you think needs reminding.

Kate Middleton, How Dare You Be So Beautiful!

The Royal Baby has arrived in the UK, and I’m guessing the majority of people (worldwide) have heard about it, read about it, or watched some related news regarding it. It’s big news whether you like it or not!

I’m not really a Royal fanatic, but I don’t dislike the Royals either. I can take them or leave them. BUT I’ve found myself feeling very protective about Kate Middleton, the future Queen, in the last 48 hours.

Hundreds of thousands of people have eagerly awaited the young girl going into labour with her second child. Will it be a boy? Will it be a girl? When will it be? The day finally came, and you can’t help but be a little bit happy for them. The TV and newspapers were filled with congratulations. A new baby, regardless of status, is always something to celebrate. Good news is hard to come by these days so it was a joyous occasion.

Kate Middleton looked effortlessly beautiful as she showed their new daughter to the rest of the world.

Their precious baby girl. It was a picture perfect moment. And a moment is all it was. People then decided to let the green eyed monster invade it.

The newspapers, the TV channels, the magazines, and social media all started questioning irrelevant details:

How does she look so beautiful so soon after giving birth?

Why doesn’t she look tired and worn out?

Why isn’t her hair greasy?

Who cares about the baby?

How is it possible to be standing their like that a few hours after labour?

And so on.

I’ve even read about surrogate conspiracy theories and even the birth date has been questioned.

Get a flaming grip will you people!!

The girl looked beautiful because she IS beautiful. All the make-up that Mac has to offer can’t fix ugly! Of course she had a make-up artist, but so what – wouldn’t you? I sure as heck would!

Of course she had a blow-dry – why not? I wash my hair and roll out the ‘good’ make-up just for family reading sessions at my son’s school and at his parents evening, let alone facing the whole world and being photographed by every Tom, Dick, and Harry.

Don’t hate on the girl for looking so good. Green doesn’t suit you! 😉

Why can’t we just say congratulations and well done, and leave it at that? People are allowed to look good, it isn’t a crime!

Who cares about the real birth date? Or how Kate managed to look so dam good? The fact remains that she looked beautiful, and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Charlotte.

As the saying goes “Haterz gon’ hate!” – but we all know why!

Come on fellow mommas and daddas – let’s not be a part of all this pettiness. Credit where credits due – and she needs credit for looking so good! I sure as heck didn’t!!

Congratulations Kate and William!

New Year’s Resolutions as a Parent

Twelve months is a very long time in the world of parenting. You cannot possibly count the tantrums, the bogeys, the amount of times you are vomited on, the tears you wipe, the hugs you give, the food you prepare, the chocolate consumed, the vegetables refused, the battles you won, the battles you lost, the times you’ve yelled, the times you were patient, the baths you gave, the cuddles you received, the car journeys you took, the holidays you went on, the food shops you waded through, the break downs you had, the bad dreams you banished,the budgets you didn’t stick to, the sacrifices you made, the butts you wiped, the rooms you cleaned, the idiots you’ve encountered, or the coffees you consume.

As the end of the year approaches you find yourself, as a parent, reflecting on the year you’re leaving behind and making your new year resolutions as a parent (whether verbally or somewhere in your subconscious). Were you a good parent? Were your children happy? Did you feed them healthy food? Did you yell just enough as to not cross the border into scarring them for life? Did you make fun memories? Did you laugh enough?

When I look back on my year I see a lot of things, both good and bad. I see a momma who yelled, but a also a momma who fiercely loved. I see a momma who wanted to curl up in to a ball and cry for a week solid, but I also see a momma who carried on regardless and made life fun.

We had treasure hunts, spontaneous tea parties, cinema trips, and outings to feed the ducks. We went crabbing, to the fair, on train rides, to theme parks, to the beach, to the forest, to firework parties, to birthday parties. We celebrated our babies birthdays in VIP style, and left no detail to chance. We made Christmas magical. We (my husband and I) poured every ounce of ourselves into making life an adventure for our little people.

The happiness will always outweigh the crappiness.

When I look back I see we had an amazing year, we had low points, sometimes very low points, but the happiness outweighs the crappiness, and always will.

The year ahead is set to be amazing, and by amazing (I am under no illusion believe me!) I mean it will be full of laughter, fun, tears, snot, poop, cheeky four year old’s, terrible two year old’s, birthday parties, wrestling, (a bit of) yelling, time-outs, family holidays, things getting broken, grazed knees, grazed hearts, cleaning, lots and lots of cleaning, meeting new people, saying goodbye to toxic people, not putting up with peoples crap, making fun memories, and making life a fun, secure adventure for my two little boys.

My New Year’s Resolutions

We all know a new year’s post would not be the same without adding some of my new year’s resolutions as a parent, so here they are:

  1. When one of my darling children hand me a huge bogey to dispose of I will not gag loud enough for someone on the next continent to hear. I will work on my gag-reflex
  2. When my name is called for the four hundredth time that hour I will not get irritated; I will smile and respond accordingly
  3. I will try not to yell at all ( or maybe limiting myself to 3 times a day seems a more attainable goal)
  4. I will wash my hair 3 times a week, even if it means showering with a 4yo, a 2yo, Nemo, the whole cast of Monsters Inc, and two squirting penguins. Dry shampoo should not be an everyday essential.
  5. I will brave potty training my little rascal of a 2yo
  6. I will discover a way to get my children to sleep in until 9am every single day. I will. I most definitely will!
  7. I will stay awake past 8.30pm at least on Fridays and Saturdays
  8. I will spring clean the house from top to bottom at least once a week (maybe once a month, or maybe bi-monthly sounds more achievable?)
  9. I won’t run away from the geese when we go to feed the ducks
  10. I will be more sociable. In fact I will be sociable full-stop.
  11. I will assume people like me instead of always assuming they don’t, unless they tell me otherwise.
  12. I will eat healthy. I’m laughing already at this one! Great start, great start, ugh!
  13. I will be more of  a ‘Yes Parent’!
  14. My husband and I will go on at least two date nights a month, and on one out of the two he may get lucky! (As in he may get to choose where we go! Come on! What were you thinking?!!)
  15. I will be less grumpy, even when I am grumpy
  16. I will learn to like wine. Wine always sounds so grown-up and sophisticated. Most taste like paint stripper to me. (I am currently gagging my way through a bottle – resolution completion in full swing!)
  17. I will learn to like watching a movie. Husband this is for you!
  18. I won’t bear a grudge against whoever interrupts my morning coffee!
  19. I will learn to love Lego. And quickly. I will be a Master Builder because everything is awesome!
  20. I will cry less
  21. I’ll love more
  22. I’ll conquer my fears. All of them! (Except spiders, roller-coasters, and wasps!)
  23. I will blog more

And there we have it, my new year’s resolutions a parent! What are yours?

Follow me on Facebook and share your new year’s resolutions as a parent with me!

A little insight into Swords and Snoodles

I’ve wanted to blog for a very long time, even pre-children. I’ve often started a blog, and then lost enthusiasm. That was until May 2014.

For some reason it felt the right time. I was passionate from the start. I love writing, always have. Even as a little girl I’d write stories, and poems constantly.

I think writing is a sort of therapy to me. It keeps me sane lol.

I’m now into month fourteen of blogging and  my passion is only growing. It’s hard to lose passion about sharing your daily experiences; the good,  the bad, the ugly. It’s lovely reaching out to people, and knowing they feel the same.

I pride myself in being honest, sometimes brutally honest, and those who know me will know that’s always been the case 🙂

It took a while to come up with a name for my blog. I wanted it to be personal and to stand out. After much brainstorming with my marketing mastermind husband we came up with Swords and Snoodles.

Swords is obviously self explanatory. My boys love being pirates. They’re typical boys.

Snoodles, however, isn’t very self explanatory unless you know us. Snoodle is the name we gave my first borns comforter bear blanket he had at 2 months old. From that moment it’s not left his side (it has but we replaced it undetected!) His brother also loved Snoodle, so we purchased a few more. They adore them.

We now own four Snoodles. My boys won’t sleep without them. My 4yo has one. My 2yo insists on three! They carry them mostly everywhere. Snoodle is a big part of our family and so are his three siblings 😉

Now you know who Snoodle is and where the name Swords and Snoodles came from 🙂

Does your child have any special names for their comforters? 

Becci of Swords and Snoodles

In the beginning

May 2014…

Once upon a time I had a blog, or two, and then life got in the way.

Almost four years into motherhood, and here’s to a fresh writing start; the highs, the lows, the joys, the tears, the worries, the fun, the happy memories, and the heartaches.

I’m looking forward to sharing my journey with you all.

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