So it’s time to take blogging more seriously. Life is about to get pretty tough. But I’m going to embrace this life change, and do great things.
What a month I’ve had.
Car crash. You can read about my experience here. Scariest day of my life.
Fast forward 4 weeks and I’m made redundant without notice. Yep that’s right. I turned up to work and they sent me home, unemployed.
I won’t go into details. I was almost made redundant in January but they managed to keep me on. So this didn’t come as a shock, I was however, shocked that it was instant. No warning.
Anyway I’m not dwelling on that.
I’ve got to look forward, and fast.
We’re down to one income, one very small income. If you read my post on redundancy at the beginning of the year, you’ll know my husband was made redundant in December. He’s now working as an apprentice electrician and is at college one day a week.
I couldn’t be more proud of him. He’s 30 years old and starting again. Everyone around us are pretty much in established careers, and well, we’re both now starting from scratch.
Both of us. Not one, but 2 redundancies in the space of 10 months. What are the chances?!
So what’s in store for us?
Financially I have no idea. I have bills, quite a few. I need at least £300 a month to cover them. I’m hoping we’re entitled to benefits to cover this. I’ll be calling them tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath.
I could look for another job, but part time jobs that pay 20k pro rata are impossible to come by. Trust me I’ve looked, a lot. And said job would need to take on a mum with a toddler and responsibilities… Yeah good one.
We have a small amount of savings that will help pay the mortgage for a couple of months, but this won’t last long.
I’ll be able to claim for unpaid wages, redundancy and notice. So should have a bit of money by December, but hey us part timers don’t earn much you know, so this won’t be much.
I can however, see a silver lining to this awful situation.
I get to work harder at blogging, build up my following and hopefully get some paid work. I’m already registered self employed as I’ve earned a tiny bit already (I mean really tiny), so I’m going to push to earn more.
I never thought I’d be a stay at home mum. Ever. I didn’t spend 6 years in further education to stay at home. But I’ll embrace the time with my son. I love him more and more each day and miss him when I leave him. It’s just not something I saw myself doing.
Then there’s my little business venture I haven’t quite announced yet (other than a few comments here and there and photos on Instagram).
I’m launching my own Lamb & Bear clothing line.
You may be reading this thinking, there’s your new career, what are you worried about?! But trust me when I say, I won’t be earning an income from it for a long, long time. And who knows if it will even take off? Although I’m confident it will, or I wouldn’t be doing it!
I’ve got to grab this opportunity with both hands. I’ve been given something so precious to parents. Time.
I now have more time to design for my clothing line. To write for my blog. To promote my brand. To spend time with my son.
My mother-in-law looks after Lamb on Mondays, and will continue to do so, he also goes to nursery on a Thursday (we’ve put him down to one day a week for obvious reasons).
I can’t take him out of nursery altogether. It’s taken us over a year to get him to a point of being happy to go to there, and he will be going for free in April anyway. So we’ve agreed to find the money each month to keep him in. He’s our priority.
That gives me 2 full days a week to work on the brand and blog.
It’s time to get organised. It’s time to schedule my time.
I can do this. It’s going to be so hard. Pennies will be tight. But we are both actually in a happy place and that’s what matters. We are spending more time together and strengthening our family bond.
So what if Christmas is cancelled this year? We have supportive friends and family around us that will help make it special.
So let’s raise a glass to the start of our new life.
And hope we can pay the bills!
Ax
As with the Halloween arts and crafts, we got a bit of help from Daddy. I love watching them together. Daddy tries really hard and is really patient with Lamb when he’s making a huge mess of things. Me however, I get a tad frustrated when he doesn’t stick things in the right place… perfectionist comes to mind!
We were sent the Joie Chrome last year to test for the Mother & Baby Awards and I really liked it. In fact, we’re still using it now! The Chrome is a travel system and can be bought with a car seat, carry cot, plus the standard seat (see photo) which can be parent or world facing. This pram is now sold as the Chrome Plus. What I loved about this pram was the huge storage basket which was easily accessible, it’s super lightweight and easy to push, and the seat sits up nice and tall for Lamb to look around. I would definitely consider buying the car seat and carry cot for this pram to use when we have another baby. Another bonus is you don’t have to remove the seat the fold down like you do with most travel systems. You can read my full review 
I do love Cosatto products. It’s so refreshing to have a brand produce such fun and colourful products. We absolutely love our Robot Cotbed which you can read our review on 
