Five Items Of Note
A list of things for discussion this July. Big floaty shirts, easy dinners to boost cooking mojo and why I am totally over making new friends. Plus going to bed early, home editing and good skincare.
This post is sponsored by Renew + Me, skincare that is individually formulated to work with your own specific skin type and concerns. If you like what you read and want to read more, then I would love it if you would consider becoming a free or a paid subscriber!
It’s been a long month but it’s been, overall, a good one. We’ve moved house, flown off on a mini break and the sun has shone almost endlessly here in Yorkshire which is a rare occurrence. Max, my eldest son, graduated and the ceremony was held in Liverpool Cathedral - most brilliantly, it was only an hour long which, as every parent knows, is the dream. When Ella graduated, it took two and a half hours and believe me, when you’ve clapped for that long, your palms suffer the consequences. Leo has managed to go almost six weeks now consistently waking up at midday, claiming he needs a NI number before finding a summer job, apparently (lies, damned lies). Ella has been on placement in a mental health unit whilst studying to become a Physicians Associate, at the same time that the NHS published The Leng Review, making it clear that the likelihood of her finding a job as one after five years of medical study is next to none and she might as well give up now and go and work in Sainsburys (and we wonder why our country is f**ked). And finally, the animals have adjusted very well to the move to a smaller home and have been found, in some instances, sitting NEXT to each other on the sofa. Unheard of scenes.
The animals are not the only ones reaping the benefits of living in closer proximity than previous. Despite the late rising, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen my sons so regularly as I have since moving home. The other day, Leo actually SAT with Joe and I to watch Squid Games which hasn’t happened since about 2018. There is less room for them to chuck all their stuff around and they have, astonishingly, become tidier, a situation that I could never have foreseen. And because we are a) closer to each other and b) closer to neighbours, they have been forced to turn down the vocal volume on their XBox sessions meaning that I don’t have to hear them shouting obscenities at their friends for hours. The golf clubs, however, remain in the hallway which makes me want to cut off my own head every time I come down the stairs so it’s not all communal joyousness.
But back to the point and I have, as always, managed to waffle on for way longer than expected this month, but do bear with (there’s also an excellent discount code for all at the end that you’ll want to check out). Here are five items of note that I have been contemplating this month and that I think you need to know about.
1. Don’t Stand So Close To Me, I Want To Go To Bed.
Earlier this month, we went on a three day break to Ibiza with our friends. It had been planned for about ten months, well before we had sold our house and embarked on a whistle stop tour of Period Homes Of York whilst we rented and bought a new one. The timing could not have been poorer - we moved the day after our return from this mini holiday meaning that moving day was spent in a daze of post rose excess. I can confirm that trying to manage a dog and a cat by shutting them in the toilet for hours so that they didn’t make a run for it before putting both in your convertible car and sitting in a traffic jam for 20 minute whilst they wailed is not conducive to partying recovery.
I say partying, but this was not a holiday of dance. The last time that we went to Ibiza was seven years ago and my husband - a man who spent most of his University years with a bong strapped around his neck - insisted that we hit a Super Club. It ranks as one of the most horrific experiences of my life, not least because of the 120 euro bill for six Redbull. This time, we said, there will be none of that. We’ll have long lazy lunches, cocktails, chilled laid back beach type action that doesn’t involve being anywhere near 25 year olds. We booked lunches for 3pm so that we could spend the morning by the pool and the afternoon eating good food and drinking nice wine whilst awaiting the Instagram worthy sunsets with the rest of the island. Perfect.
The second day, we had booked Pikes for a late lunch, the iconic Ibizan boutique Hotel that was created by Tony Pike over 40 years ago and which is home to Freddies, the suite that Freddie Mercury used to stay in and which is now a nightclub space. You can eat or stay there and come the evening, you can add yourself free to the guest list and go to the club. It was super relaxing and just as cool as everyone says it is, until about 10pm when about 348932579 party goers converged of all ages from all corners of the globe, it got super crowded and random people started making conversation and then, I had had enough. In the words of Sting, don’t stand so close to me. PLEASE.
I don’t think of my age very often but I DO think that when you reach 54, that you’ve kind of ‘done’ most of it. I have never been a clubber but when I was younger, I liked staying up late - before kids, we’d have dinner parties that would finish when the sun came up (the idea of this now makes me feel slightly traumatised). But I can see NO benefit at all to be gained from staying up very late partying now. Firstly, I need sleep, minimum six hours otherwise a) I cannot function and b) it takes me two days to recover. At least. Secondly, I don’t really want to talk to loads of people that I don’t know. I want to sit, with groups of likeminded friends that I’ve built up over the years and talk for hours over nice food and nice wine and discuss STUFF.
I don’t want to meet ‘holiday friends’ and I don’t want to be cornered in conversation with a surveyor from Chelmsford or a lap dancer from Milton Keynes whom I have nothing in common with and will never see, or want to see, again. Yes, yes, I know some people love this whole new people, new experiences thing but NO. The older I get, the more precious my time, the more selective I am with who I spend my time with. I have less friends now than I’ve ever had before and this is entirely purposeful. So yes, give me the party, the fun, the conversation, but make it with people that I know and love and have it finish by midnight in a location where it’s easy to get a taxi home. That’s enough for me, thank you very much.
2. The Smaller The Space, The Less You Want, The More Selective You Are.
Moving from a bigger space to a smaller space has been unexpectedly liberating. I received endless messages asking me ‘what are you going to do with all of your STUFF?’ and until it came to the crunch, I hadn’t really thought about it. I talked in my post on Wednesday about Swedish Death Cleaning which is the concept of narrowing down your possessions so that when you die, your family don’t have to spend time getting rid of it all which I think is a selfless gesture if you’ve spent 20 years picking their pants up off the floor, tbh. But what I have found most interesting during our move this month is the amount of stuff that I THOUGHT I wanted to keep, but actually didn’t. After a decade of collecting, amassing and storing, I don’t even recognise myself, ha.
The less space I have, the more edited I find that I want to be. We are currently living accessory free until the work has been done - no vases, artwork, minimal decor of any description (there is literally no point in unpacking boxes when there’s nowhere for it to go and we have to repack it in a couple of months). I’ve had to reassess furniture, some of which I thought I was wholly bound to but it turned out I was more than happy to whack it on Facebook Marketplace. Joe got into bed to find that I had sold the bedside tables and his abundance of technical palaver was now positioned on a stool from West Elm. I stacked all my lamps into one room and worked out which ones I wouldn’t have room for - at 54 years old, I finally realised that there was no reason to keep a lamp if you were never going to have a place for it. Truly. I narrowed down the ones that I REALLY loved and sold the rest. As I write this, I’ve just whacked a rattan bench up for sale as there was no place for it in the house. I liked it, but not as much as other things that I owned. Madly liberating, I tell you.
But also, I’ve added. I sold my dining chairs to my sister and bought some new (vintage, but new to me) ones with the cash. I found a chair at the car boot sale to add to the table. I finally decided that Joe’s lack of passion for my Togo sofas meant that he could have a chair of his own (obvs I totally took control of this decision and discarded endless horrific eBay links that he sent me before finding one myself that was acceptable - Joe works in the car industry, he does not know mid century design or the faintest thing about interiors). I found a large, cream, seventies marble coffee table that although is looking a little boring at the moment, will be shit hot when the work is done and it’s stacked with my books and accessories. And a tubular green 60’s side table for the window. It’s also been really interesting to me that I have bought nothing ‘new’. I’ve laid five rugs down during this in between period before renovation (the rest are in storage) and it’s no surprise that four of them are Turkish, all second hand vintage. I always knew where my passion lay (I mean, I wrote a book about it, ffs) but I didn’t realise quite how edited my style was until we moved somewhere where I had to really think about what I was putting into it.
And the stuff I’ve kept that isn’t vintage is mainly investment items and unique pieces. Like the Shelved unit that has the plant trough on the top which is SO CLEVER meaning that I can water it with no worries that I’m going to spend the next half hour rushing for tea towels to mop up the excess (this is my life). Or the Alice Kelly tufted mirror that weighs a tonne but which looks excellent wherever you put it and always garners comment. Oh, and the plants. What I couldn’t fit in, I’ve passed on to my friend who is already sending me photos saying how well they are doing with her (yes, alright). But rest assured, my excitement at creating this new, smaller, far more edited space is extreme. Bring on the next year - it’s going to be good.
3. I’ve Basically Forgotten How To Cook.
Moving house has been a stress, but no more so than on my family’s diet. Our new home has an Aga, which I haven’t even switched on - it’s being repurposed by my friend Florencia (York fans will know her Yorkshire iconic sister restaurants, Partisan and Brancusi) who will know what to do with it far more than I. That’s not an excuse for cooking failure though, as the kitchen also has two hobs on the island and a vertical oven so really, it shouldn’t make any difference. However, what HAS made a difference is the fact we now have Uber Eats and Deliveroo at our finger tips which is a recipe for disaster, the ONLY recipe which has been going down in our house for the last month or so, in fact. When you have Clucking Oinks and Pasta Evangelists within twenty minutes to door, the temptation to just head to the little green icon when you’ve had a busy day is really quite overwhelming.
I don’t know why I have lost my cooking mojo, but I am trying hard to get it back. Don’t misunderstand me - I have been making family meals, but they are simple, thrown together, no effort situations and in many instances, quite poor. Flatbread with pizza toppings. Sandwiches (endless). Wraps with chicken. Dips that can be multi tasked with crisps and then bagels the next day (yes, I wrote an entire post about that last week, ha). I am missing making food that involves a bit more effort and less beige items. Sigh. I think that because I know the kitchen will be going in six weeks, I am not feeling a connection. Or, to use another term, cannot be arsed.
Anyway, my friends Sharon and Alice came over this week for a catch up so I decided I would push the boat out and make an actual meal from scratch. Well, sort of. It was one of those meals that looks WAY more impressive than it is and which takes, truly, about 15 minutes to pull together. I was almost back in the cooking zone, until I realised it was absolutely chucking it down and I didn’t want to get wet so fell back on an Uber Waitrose delivery (I know, I know, and it probably added at least a tenner to the cost vs going into the shop, but at least my hair remained non fluffy). Here’s what I made, which required no effort whatsoever but looked the part. Annoyingly, I forgot to take a photo of the finished product (who even am I?) but rest assured, it was excellent. Even if I say so myself, ha.
Goats Cheese, Red Onion, Pesto & Walnut Tart
You will need: A puff pastry sheet (ready made is the easiest as it comes wrapped in paper which you can simply lay on your baking sheet); two tablespoons of green pesto; a block of rined goats cheese, sliced; half a red onion, sliced thinly; a handful of chopped walnuts; a bag of rocket.
Method: Lay out your sheet. Spread the pesto evenly across leaving a small border. Lay your goats cheese across the sheet - you can use two blocks if you like and want to make it a bit more of a chunkier meal. Scatter over your red onion, then season well with sea salt and coarse ground pepper. Finish it off with the walnuts and a drizzle of olive oil, then put in the oven at 220 degrees for about 20 minutes until it’s puffed and browned. Remove, leave to cool for five or ten minutes, scatter a good handful of rocket over the top and drizzle with balsamic vinegar. Job done.
Whipped Feta & Roasted Tomatoes
You will need: 500g of mixed tomatoes - I used San Marzano (they are SO GOOD) cut into chunks and a mix of different coloured cherry tomatoes, but you can use what you’ve got; a block of feta, 50g full fat Greek yoghurt; juice of half a lemon.
Method: Drizzle a baking tray with olive oil and add your tomatoes with plenty of salt, pepper and another drizzle. Put in the oven at 220 degrees for about 20-30 minutes until the skins are popping and the juices are starting to run. Remove, leave to fully cool. Make the feta by whizzing all the remaining ingredients before adding olive oil slowly to create the a creamy consistency. Season well, then spread the feta into a bowl and top with the roasted tomatoes which will now be at room temperature. Final drizzle of olive oil and if you have some, some herbs.
Finally, I served it with Olive & Thyme Bread from Waitrose (yes, they delivered that too, genius) which was utterly delicious and between the three of us we scoffed virtually the whole thing. And what was left, I toasted the next day with piles of butter. SO GOOD. Anyway, I felt quite smug after serving what looked like a homemade meal so I am back in the saddle. Au revoir, Uber Eats it’s been fun. Although saying that, I am very partial to a Saturday night Yuzu noodle delivery so maybe I won’t be too hasty.
4. I Like Big Shirts & I Cannot Lie
This Summer, I have mostly been wearing big shirts. This is new for me. I am not normally a shirt fan, not in the slightest, in fact. But a few weeks ago, I forgot to take some shoes back that I’d ordered from Next - did you know they have a whole designer area on their site now? Seasons - outrageously tempting and an absolute disaster for people like me who have had a Next account back from twenty years ago (when it was called the Next Directory and was delivered quarterly to your door) which has never had a zero balance. Anyway, due to house move etc etc I was past the 28 days return so they gave me a credit - I was about to go to Ibiza so I grabbed a white beach shirt and some shorts for Joe, just so that I didn’t leave with nothing, forget I had the credit and lose it in my emails.
Although this shirt is meant for the beach, I have worn it endlessly. With shorts. With skirts. With jeans. With EVERYTHING. It’s thin gauze but so light and comfortable to wear that this weekend, I went to Zara and bought a brown version in similar material that I wore to lunch yesterday (they do this in multiple colours, too). I now have so many shirts that I feel as if I am turning into my Mum with her white t shirt obsession (NO ONE in this Universe has as many white t shirts as my Mum, nor M&S carrot trousers. She could clothe an entire small nation in white jersey).
Anyway, there are a lot of gauzy type shirts out there at the moment - they’re great for hot weather as they’re light and cool to wear and also don’t make me feel as though my arms are massively on show. Everyone has their weak body points and mine is without doubt my arms which constantly annoy me (yes, I know they shouldn’t and that everyone should love their body the way it is, blah blah blah, but I put on about four stone the first time I became pregnant and my arms have never really recovered from this weighty addition, no matter how slim I am). Anyway, we are going to Greece next week and I am packing a significant amount of thin shirt outfits in my suitcase. Here’s a little selection of what’s out there at the moment (mostly in the Sale, too) - I own 1, 2 and 3. Ha.
1.Next, £24; 2. Zara, £22.99; 3. Toast, £150; 4. Mint Velvet, £39; 5. New Look, £22.49; 6. Reiss, £58.
5. Skin & Other Stories, Plus A Discount Code.
My Mum instructed me to cleanse, tone and moisturise from the age of ten so I am no stranger to skincare. I am slightly, admittedly, obsessive about it and can count on one hand the times that I’ve ever gone to bed with my make up on. I go make up free about 50% of the time to try and keep as hydrated as possible to stop it becoming dry. I have two battles here to conquer, the first being that my skin is aging and needs help to keep it supple. Fun fact of the day - from the age of 20, collagen production begins to drop by 1% every year, affecting firmness and elasticity. Skin cell turnover also dramatically drops as we age, taking more than 50% longer over the age of 40. At 54, I am definitely at the latter end of this spectrum.
The second unhelpful factor is that 12 years ago, I underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer - chemotherapy is proven to cause long term changes to facial skin, including sensitivity to sunlight, discolouration and dryness. As a result, I find that my skin is significantly drier than it used to be so it’s important to me to find products that combat this. There is nothing worse than feeling that tightness on your face and feeling that your skin isn’t as supple as it should be.
Anyway this month, skincare experts Renew + Me asked me to try their night treatment Serum-In-A-Cream. You may remember that I have previously trialled Skin + Me which is a sister brand - the team have taken learnings from this product about what women over 35 want from their skincare and what they need. The Serum-In-A-Cream is personalised and formulated to your own skin - you complete an online consultation form which is then reviewed by the Dermatology Team to design a skincare product that is tailored to you and your concerns, combining clinically proven active ingredients with soothing hydrators. These proven, potent retinoids smooth, firm and rejuvenate the skin, reduce pigmentation and inflammation and repair and strengthen skin density, as well as shielding the skin from pollutants. These clinical ingredients are up to 20 times more powerful than High Street retinol and are personally assessed in correct quantities for you by the Dermatology Team who approve that you are suitable for the treatment. You can therefore use it in confidence knowing that it’s tailored just for you.
It’s easy to apply - it comes in a twist tube that dispenses exactly the amount that you need, once nightly, and promises visible results after one week, with lasting results after 12 weeks. I’ve been using it for two weeks and my skin noticeably looks smoother and firmer - the lines (and there are a few of those!) have diminished and it feels super hydrated. I put a lot of store by how a product feels when you put it on - the Serum-In-A-Cream feels silky but not greasy and there’s no residue. My skin feels well moisturised and hydrated and I’ve been applying it every night before bed. It feels really good knowing that just one product is doing the work of many!
You can try it yourself by using my code - LISASKIN - that will give you the first month for £4.99, saving a huge £30. You can complete your consultation via this link.
Thanks so much for reading! Quick Note: This is a free post for subscribers but you can also become a PAID SUBSCRIBER to receive four free Saturday posts a month but also eight EXTRA posts a month (including a weekly Design Dilemmas and all the updates, inspiration and moodboards for my new home renovation) plus Chat threads so you can join our blossoming community. I would thoroughly recommend it.
As always, HUGELY appreciative that you are here and reading - if you have enjoyed, then please do HEART like, comment and most of all, SHARE by using the little recycle button - it really does help with visibility on this excellent platform. Thank you!
Please note that this post contains affiliate links.
You have amazing legs ! I love the white shirt with the sparkly skirt ❤️ Have a wonderful holiday .
Your shirts look faband you look great in them. I always fancy trying but I've never been a shirt person either. What do you do with the collar on the white shirt, it looks great like that?