How is the 'journey to a dream' going? Pretty damn awesome! 🙌🏼

Hello friends!

I was going through my business blog over at www.ittybittybookco.com and I realised there is a lot of personal stuff in those posts! Those posts share how my journey to a dream is progressing and what is going on in my life... So I wanted to share the more personal bits here if you're interested (and miss out the more sales-y ones) so that any of you guys who encouraged me 4 years ago and believed in me can see that it's actually happened LOL so thank you so much for that!

Yup, I really have created a business that I love, is ethical, does good and supports my family... It's obviously not all rainbows and sparkles but most of the time I really do need to pinch myself :)

Here's a little breakdown - first the intro video we made at the end of summer - if the outtakes one tries to play after I recommend that hehe!



We took on some staff, to allow Al and I to step away from the day to day order fulfilment, production etc and to allow him more time to design (the business had started to feel like it really needed some new designs and products) and for me to get my head back into a creative space where I could strategise, bring new ideas into the business and focus on expansion -

https://ittybittybookco.com/blogs/blog/the-itty-bitty-team-is-growing

Love over Gold - as the business has been growing we have been able to reduce our production cost and we passed the savings back to our customers. More on the ethical side of our business here -

https://ittybittybookco.com/blogs/blog/love-over-gold

I was super excited to launch the #PositivityTakeover which is a fun 'pay it forward' type of movement :) You can read about it here -

https://ittybittybookco.com/blogs/blog/positivity-take-over-preview

But I think Instagram gives a better idea of what it really looks like -

https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/positivitytakeover/

As the Business has grown I've found myself becoming more and more interested in the science behind happiness and positivity - it's really quite incredible! Did you know that you can decide to be happier - that you can teach your brain how? Happiness levels are not just something we are born with or that develop and that's just it, if we want to we can change our happiness levels!

Gratitude is an easy place to start and to make it easier, we've created a printable worksheet on Etsy and a gratitude journal on our main site, which you can get via the links below. Do it for 21 days and see the difference yourself! -

Printable:
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/512267305/gratitude-download-gratitude-printable?ref=shop_home_active_1

Journals:
https://ittybittybookco.com/collections/gratitude-journal/products/itty-bitty-gratitude-journal

Tomorrow is Ché Phoenix's 4th birthday... and our 10 year anniversary 💜 So I'll be doing a little 'family life' post soon ☺️

How is the journey going for you? Are you balancing all the aspects of a happy/fulfilled life? As you can tell by the sporadic nature of my posts here, I've still not quite hit the sweet spot with 'me time'. The space I create for myself generally gets used up on long baths, exercise and seeing friends which is obviously just where my priorities lie right now, but part of me still misses the unique type of sharing and connecting of blogging... So I'm not giving up! Once again I'm going to try and make a little more time for it... The only failure is to stop trying, right? 😆

Love and happiness to you this Valentines Day 💕
From Astra ✌🏼

Camping in County Donegal, Ireland

We went camping again this summer (for last years camp trip click here ((the photos of Ché Phoenix are insane!!)) this time at Rossnowlagh Beach, County Donegal, a bit closer to home as someone isn't fond of car journeys these days!

We went with my sister Pippa (or Auntie Squeak as she's more commonly known!) and Al's sister Sel and her hubby James - 3 of the coolest people in the world. So it was always gonna be great :)

Ché Phoenix LOVED the beach, I mean look at that FACE!!! I have about 200 photos of him in the sea, rock climbing, digging, and just running free :) In 99% of them he is totally naked (even cuter!) but we'll keep those ones to ourselves I think, infact he spent most of the holiday naked, wild and free, thats my boy <3

County Donegal is on the North West coast of Ireland, its rugged, wet and windy (even in summer)! Luckily we had brought our market stall gazebo to make a communal area to hang out in at the camp and we still went on loads of walks and had an amazing time.

BEST PHOTO BOMB EVER!!!

The best thing was that we forgot our iPhone chargers and so were completely unplugged and disconnected for the whole week, a blessing in disguise. I felt so present in the moment and relaxed in a way I know I couldn't be whilst being online and contactable. Lesson learned - holidays are iPhone free times :)

That squished up annoyed face with the up turned hand, whilst saying 'nuu' and shaking his head slightly is our favourite these days. It means 'it's not there anymore, its gone, not sure I'm happy about it!

Note: I may have pulled that face as we drove home from that wonderful family break...

Our plan :)

I've been missing writing on this blog, and the connection with people who know my 'journey' I often think about making time for it and sharing my journey again - we have come so far and there IS so much to share. I am just out of the habit of actually writing... Instagram is good (and bad) like that!

He literally takes me by the hand, pulls me down and pushes my face at the flowers! So cute!

So I'm sorry if this post is a bit all over the place but I feel like i just have to go with it and my flow will come back :)

Back to the beginning - our journey to a dream, I feel that Al and I have been really good at keeping our main goals in our head as this last year has progressed. Our marriage first, happiness of all three of us, family time, work time to be sure we are travelling in the direction of our dreams. We are becoming less focused on the 'dream' and more on the 'journey' lately. Maybe having your own family does that? I saw this clearly when a house round the corner from us came up for sale at a very reasonable price, it has only a small garden and so would have been dismissed by us in the past but we ended up chatting for a long time about it, and deciding buying a house like that would be great for us right now. We talked about how it'd be a good investment - its a great time to buy, maybe sell in 3 years or so, how we love the area where we live, how we plan to concentrate on growing our business over the next few years and how if we have another baby in that time we'd need the time we want away from our business to nurture our growing family :) Buying land to build a home this year and start our dream farm is just not the right focus of energy and time for us... Plus how would it even be possible, at this stage of being self employed? We want to keep working hard on Itty Bitty Book Co, it is bringing us so much joy and fulfilment :) We hope to be in a position to step out of the day to day running of the business and have the time to invest in our smallholding when we find it :)

We're happy with that plan, it feels right :) and its nice to write it down too, to share it with you guys :) I know theres a lot of smiley faces in this post but I really am smiling so :)

A rare shot of the 3 of us (all facing the camera!), at a lovely family wedding last Saturday :)

Ché Phoenix and I went on an adventure to find the sheep - I still love the closeness you get using a baby carrier, when he gets tired on our walks i put him in and he cuddles up to me and 'talks' and points at what he wants me to notice, birds, planes, cars... And I kiss his face every 2 seconds until he looses patience with me and then he starts telling me 'no nu' and shaking his head lol I love him so much... More on him in the next post :) 

Busy. Happy. I miss blogging!

I have really missed blogging the last month! I miss reading blogs, playing around with photos, writing posts... all of it! Ché Phoenix has been in a crazy sleep pattern the last few months of being up every hour and a half, and thats not an exaggeration. Our wee family business is just going from strength to strength, all our hard work is paying off, we couldn't be happier. So we've just not had time for anything except family time, work, sleep but last night we had a break through :) Ché Phoenix slept 3 hours straight, woke for a feed then another 3 hours!!! I feel like a new woman, full of energy and like we've got through the worst of it and it's just gonna get better and better :)

These photos are from the first ever time he ate solid food, spinach and peas from our garden, the photos are about a month late but totally still worth sharing :)

Rights of passage start early in our family :)

When I was pregnant I read about other cultures traditions around pregnancy, birth and children. We adopted a few of them for our own family, taking the parts we love out of religions and cultural traditions to make our own traditions. It's something we did for our wedding too :) 

So the one thing idea we loved was to make a big deal of the first time you place your baby onto the earth. How we ended up seeing it was, until you place your child onto the ground he is still more connected with the sky, the universe, and the heavens than with earth. So the moment you place his feet on the earth the ties from the sky break and new ties are created, ones that keep him grounded and connected to nature and fully part of this world.

We have always found the top of mountains particularly spiritual places so we decided to challenge ourselves. To climb Slieve Donard and place Ché Phoenix on the ground at the very top. Slieve Donard is 850m and a tough climb (without a baby!), it took us 4.5 hours to reach the top and 2.5 hours to get back down. We are so proud, the sense of achievement is still buzzing inside us and the hike was nearly a month ago! 

In the car park ready to go!

About an hour in, sandwich and milk time :)

Around half way, you can see the sea in the background near where we started

Looking forward from half way, at the top is the wall which runs along the peaks of the Mourne Mountains, when you reach there you know its only about an hour to the top but it feels like 3!

Giggles with Daddy at the wall :)

A fellow hiker offered to take these next two pics :) 

We made it! The very highest point for hundreds of miles!

The reason for it all...

love this shot! cape blowing in the breeze and everything! Epic!

We sent positive thoughts and love from the top to Nelson Mandela who was in hospital at the time.
We wished him peace and happiness he will always be one of the people who inspire me most to
be the change I want to see in the world.

We stayed at the top for about an hour, I could have stayed so much longer!
But the mist was rolling back in so we headed back down. Slowly, on shaky legs...

The lower half of the hike runs along a beautiful crystal clear water way, which starts as a spring and by the time you reach the bottom is a beautiful river with rocky waterfalls and pools, we sat by it for a while, Ché Phoenix loves to watch water. This was the first time his feet dipped in a natural water way :) On a side note it was shocking and disappointing to see rubbish in such a stunning pace so we filled our backpack with every piece we saw on the way down, starting with the can in this photo...

How do you find the time???

Sometimes I get frustrated with myself because I am so ambitious, I just want to do so much! Be the best mum I can be all the time, keep really fit and healthy, see my friends, have quality husband and wife time, chill out time, gardening time, cooking and baking time, keep my blog going, run and expand my new business... Plus enjoy each day of the journey to a dream of course :) My list goes on, and it is hard sometimes but totally do-able!

Making Itty Bitty Book stands with Ché Phoenix - he's a great helper!

When ever I'm feeling overwhelmed I talk it out with Al and we make a new plan, tweak our routine a bit to make time for what ever it is I feel like I need more time for. We are beginning to realise that for us, time management is a necessity and I'm starting to feel like I am doing all of the above now.

Keeping fit on a family hike in the foothills of the Mourne Mountains, County Down

Here's how we make time for it all, we've found you have to MAKE the time, it's never just spare, waiting to be used :)

• Up each day at 7am and we both work on The Itty Bitty Book Company for 2 hours before Ché Phoenix wakes up and then we have family breakfast :)
• During the days we alternate 'baby duty' so while he's awake at least one of us is fully focused on him, giving him the attention he needs :) During this time who ever is with him gets things like washing and odd jobs around the house/garden done.
• Monday mornings (after our 2 hours work) we head out to a local cafe and have a weekly strategy meeting, chatting about how last week went and what each of us needs to get done/focus on this week, we write lists and drink tea basically! Then while I'm at my mums and babes group Al works in the cafe.
• Tuesday and Thursday 9.30-12.30 I have computer time to blog etc and Al's on 'baby duty'
• Wednesday we head into town (after our 2 hours work) and while I'm at our baby sensory class with Ché Phoenix Al goes to the gym.
• Friday I'm on 'baby duty' all day so Al can work.
• Saturday and Sunday are family days where we go hiking, do gardening, see friends and family etc. On our day trips out we always see if there are any markets or gift shops to stop in on as well for The Itty Bitty Book Company so we hit 2 birds with one stone there.
• Our work day ends between 5.30 and 6, we cook healthy fresh meals together as a family every night and eat together. 
• Ché Phoenix is mostly asleep for the night by 9 and us by 10.30
• Some evenings I go out walking with my friends and Ché (catch up time and exercise time), other times I bake or we just chill and watch a movie or something :)

Choosing which story he wants before bedtime :)

Since writing this post about practicing what we preach we have been so pro-active in making sure we are living our dreams, making sure we are reaching our goals and it's easier than you think, you just need to set aside time to work on your dreams, every single day!

How do you fit in the important things when you think you have no time?