Planning for the School Summer Holidays

For those of you in Scotland, the school summer holidays are now upon us!

As a single parent, and a business owner, getting organised for the summer holidays is no mean feat.

I put a poll up on my Instagram, and there were a lot of parents in my audience who are yet to get their holiday plans sorted, and were keen to understand how I do my planning.

So here goes…

• As a single parent, in the first instance I need to understand what my childcare rota is for the holidays. I had put forward a proposal to my ex a while ago, but it was only agreed now… so it’s delayed my planning somewhat. It’s also meant that some of the clubs locally for over the holiday are already fully booked out, and we also have the added difficulty that the summer club we have previously used isn’t running this year. Out of my control unfortunately, and so I just have to manage around these things.

• I’m a really visual person, and I like to ‘see’ the time that we’re playing with. Have you come across the visuals for a human life in months, or even weeks before? I’ve included a monthly version below for a 90 year old. It’s powerful being able to consider time in this way. Full blog post from Wait But Why here. Anyway, what I’ve done is I’ve created a planner for the summer holidays that breaks the weeks down into days, so that I can have a 1-page snapshot of what we’re doing each day.

If you want to get your hands on my summer holiday planner, as well as my other planning templates such as meal planner, daily habit tracker and my to-do list then you can head to this page on my website.

• My kids are older now, 11 and nearly 13 - so we had a family meeting to chat about what we’d like to do over the summer. Gone are the days when I could pick & choose by myself!

• I’m going to be taking the kids away on a few trips this summer, and so this is one of the first things that I blocked out in my planner. (I’ve got some campsites booked up now, and the arrangements are in place - can’t wait!).

• I am also going to have to do some work over the summer - I’m not yet in a place with my business where I can step away altogether for the full 7 weeks. So using my planner I’ll determine which of the days, or parts of the days, I’m going to work, and figure out what the plans are going to be for childcare on those dates… this might be summer clubs/activities, or play dates with friends etc. 

• Get creative! Can you offer to take a friend or neighbours kid for a half-day whilst they work, and then see if they’ll offer the same in return?

• Have a think about what activities you can plan and schedule in advance for your business that will take the pressure off over the summer months…. perhaps you can schedule your email marketing and social media now? Have a look at this blog post on being more efficient with your social media.

• Are there tasks that you can blast out in the mornings during the summer holidays before the kids get up, or once they are in bed - maybe get yourself an accountability buddy and get a few Zoom power hours scheduled each week?

• It’s also a great time to mull over what tasks you can delegate to free up your time. I’ve a blog post here on prioritisation that should be helpful.

• Lastly - have a think about how you want to feel over the school summer holidays, and make sure that the activities you’ve got scheduled will help you feel that way. I’m craving adventure, and so I’m excited to get away in our campervan, Verity, as much as possible.

Would love to hear your thoughts - how do you plan for the school summer holidays, and what exciting things will you be doing over the summer months?

{Free Christmas Printable Poster}

Don't you just love Christmas? For a while I didn't - it was all a bit upsetting with my mum not being there - but now I adore the festive season... even more so now I have my own children.

I've got our house decorated, and sadly enough I theme my rooms (I know, I just can't help myself!). So my hallway is 'winter wonderland' and it's full of silver, glitter, snowflakes and snowmen.

Here are some photos of my hallway...

This year I decided to create a couple of posters to replace my usual prints that are in the hallway and I thought I would share them with you. They are 8" x 10" files that you can print... They're in blue (to match my 'winter wonderland' theme you see!)...

You can download the files here and here.

Let me know how you get on.

{Christmas Wrapping - Done!}

I had created some Christmas printables that I had shared previously, and it was my plan to use these to create gift tags for Christmas gifts.

Here is a photograph of my first wrapped Christmas gift... (My tag is slightly different from the free one because I have personalised it to say who it is from and I've blurred out our names for the purpose of the blog. I've also have a different style of tree, but unfortunately due to copyright I can't share this one with you so I created my own tree instead in Illustrator). If I've time I'll try and create a few more Christmas printable designs that I'll share with you.

I've bought a few rolls of brown paper (I love brown paper!!) from my local Post Office, add to that a few bright ribbons from Country Baskets and my tag and I'm sorted!

How are you wrapping your Christmas gifts this year?

P.S. I'm not wrapping all my Christmas presents just now - I just did this one as a prototype to show you!!

{Chocolate Spider Lollipops - Done!}

I'd previously posted some Halloween Ideas, one of these were some pipe cleaner spider lollipops which I thought were a super cute Halloween favour for my son to give to his nursery friends. I also created a free Halloween printable that I have used to add a message to the spiders. I printed the design onto card, cut out the scalloped circle using a hole punch and attached it to the chocolate lollipop with a glue dot. Instead of a hard candy lollipop I bought some chocolate ones which I thought would be safer for 2 year olds. However, the chocolate lollipop is rather heavy compared to a hard candy lolly so it was a bit difficult to get the spider legs to sit right to hold it up, but the back two legs are propped under the chocolate to support it and I think it still looks ok.

Here is a photograph of one of my finished spiders. (My tag is slightly different from the free one because I have personalised it to say who it is from and I've blurred out my little ones names for the purpose of this blog. You could easily handwrite a message on the back of the free tag to say who it is from.)

I hope everyone at the nursery enjoys them (I must admit that I've eaten 2 of the chocolate lollipops - it was a quality assurance thing! - and they were yum. Not sure it's great for the healthy eating though!!).

{Christmas Printable}

Following on from my free Halloween printable, here is a Christmas printable that I've designed. It's available to download here.

Similar to the Halloween design, I'm going to be printing these onto thick card and using my Fiskars Seal of Approval Squeeze Punch (Extra Large) to make tags for Christmas gifts. I'll be wrapping my presents in brown parcel paper and making them look pretty with bright coloured ribbons & these tags. If you make a hole in the tags with a standard hole punch then you can easily feed through some ribbon for attaching them to gifts.

I've done most of my Christmas shopping and I'm looking forward to December when I can stick on the Christmas tunes and lovingly wrap all my gifts for putting under the Christmas tree.

{Halloween Printable}

This is my first free printable, so I hope it works ok!

I've created a design that I plan to print onto thick card and cut out into tags using a Fiskars Seal of Approval Squeeze Punch (Extra Large). I'm then going to tie the tags onto some halloween lollipops using orange ribbon for my son's nursery pals. I bought some chocolate lollipops at Dobbies Garden Centre yesterday and I'm hoping that I'll be able to make these into scary spiders as per my Halloween Ideas post. If the tags don't look good on the spiders, then they will be tied onto the lollipop ghosts.

You can download my free printable here.

I drew the pumpkin myself using Adobe Illustrator but I did follow a tutorial by n.design studio. I'm new to Illustrator though so please bare with me as I get to grips with it!

Please let me know if you have any issues with the file and I'd love to hear your feedback...good or bad.