Last year, I put together a list of Irish suppliers from whom I’ve bought and tried and tested products – I’m adding a few more to it this year, as the inclination to try to support local businesses continues. There’s nothing like a crisis to bring people together, and it’s heartening to see the effort people have been making to buy Irish, support local businesses, and spread the word about great Irish gifts again this year. There are fantastic gift guides out there from bloggers and in newspapers and magazines, and this is my small contribution – a gift guide with just 15 ..read more

Three years ago I put together a list of 28 books or series my kids love and two years ago, I added more to bring it up to 50. This year, due to an edits deadline, I asked my twelve-year-old if she would help out with adding more reviews. She said no. So I bribed her – would she write some reviews if I paid her? Would it be cash, she asked, not Revolut? Cash money it is then. So thanks to Nia, there are an additional eight books suitable for kids aged roughly eleven upwards, and I’ve added some that my youngest enjoyed this year too. For reference, when I first put this pos ..read more

The three things I’m asked most often, here on OfficeMum, and on Facebook and on Instagram, are as follows: 1. Which is the best campsite 2. How do you get into freelance writing and 3. How do you write a book – or: I’ve written a book, what do I do next. I’ve answered the first two questions in blogposts here and here, and I’ve answered the third question many times over in individual emails and messages, so it makes sense at this point to put it in a blog post (if only to save myself some future typing). Read, read, read Reading helps you understand what you like about particular books, and ..read more

There is a nice thread on Twitter today where people are remembering their mothers. This is my mum. I don’t often write about her. Actually, I never do. But today seems like a day to do so. This photo was taken before my Debs and I’m wearing a dress she made. I remember how certain I was that I wanted to wear a “cocktail” dress although the norm was to wear full-length dresses, and that I wanted it in a colour I called “burnt orange”. So together we went and bought the material and my mum made my dress exactly as I wanted. I have no photos of our trip to Hickeys to buy the fabric – I guess tod ..read more

This day last year, March 12th, at around this time, I remember listening to the radio and bursting into tears when it was announced that schools would be closing for two weeks. It felt dramatic and scary and surreal and as we all know, it went on for a lot longer than two weeks. It feels fitting that exactly a year later, I’m finishing the final moments of home-school with my 9-year-old, who along with my 11-year-old, will go back to school on Monday. I’ve just quit Teams, logged out of Zoom, and closed the Word doc on which I keep the SeeSaw codes, and with the end just minutes away (please ..read more

So. Here we are. Still here. Still here! What is it – week 6? Week 66? Week 974? Does it even matter? We’re just pushing through as best we can, knowing that there is an end in sight, and knowing that we’ve done this before and we’ve come out the other side. So what are the things getting everyone through? These are some of mine – what we’re eating, reading, watching, and arguing about. What we’re eating Eating has been going well in lockdown 3. First we became obsessed with Quadwraps (TM) aka taco trend or tortilla trend on TikTok (where we get all our info now, obviously). You make an incisi ..read more

Going to bed last night, I thought about the fact that everyone in the house had gone outside for at least ten minutes fresh air, and that there were no major arguments, and that nobody had cried during homeschool, and I felt like it had been a good day. This morning, I remembered to press the button on the (very loud) coffee machine before my youngest’s Zoom started, and figured this was shaping up to be a good day too. Then I read the thing about Level 5 possibly continuing till Easter and no clarity on schools and the “nobody cried during homeschool” thing is gone for today anyway. I f ..read more

It’s a Sunday night like no other – like thousands of parents up and down the country, we’re checking codes and devices and searching (and searching and searching) for that missing email (or was it an Aladdin message or maybe a text message) with the times for the call or the codes for the app. I keep telling myself it will be better this time, now that we know what to expect, and maybe that’s the only way to keep going – to believe and hope that it will be better, in spite of the worries. I know there are parents who are worried that their children are having too few video calls, and parents ..read more

It’s beginning to look a lot like (a very different) Christmas – especially for retailers and small businesses whose doors are still closed. But there is nothing like a crisis to bring people together, and it’s heartening to see the effort people have been making to buy Irish, support local businesses, and spread the word about great Irish gifts, ever since we went to Level 5. There are some fantastically detailed, comprehensive gift lists out there – I’ve seen brilliant ones from bloggers like MagnumLady and BehindGreenEyes, and the newspapers have compiled all sorts of lists too. T ..read more

“Have you near heard of Clearasil?” I was fourteen, walking across a green near my house, when a group of guys around my own age shouted this sage skincare advice at me. I had heard of Clearasil. I had tried Clearasil. But while it was a perfectly fine facial wash, it didn’t do anything to combat acne. The jeer across the green wasn’t a huge deal in the bigger scheme of things – I’m not scarred for life (though I am acne-scarred for life) and I know that kids deal with far, far worse than jibes about problem skin. But it was that stage in life when I already had close to ze ..read more