Settling Into Our New Family Home:

Hey… you are back here for my second blog post… so I can assume that you are definitely interested in my life and what is going on with me.

Well a few things have changed in the last month. We finally got the purchase of our very first family home done, and have now moved in and settled.

The area is ok, but we have FAB neighbors. This is something we have always been lucky with.. having great neighbors. Even in our old rental place, we had this elderly gentleman on our left called Ted, who lived alone. We ended up becoming friendly and my daughters absolutely adored him and he adored them back. Every birthday and Christmas we would pop around to his place and give him cake or homemade cookies and he would give a little cash to the girls as presents.

We became so friendly that after Ted had some minor heart issues, both me and my husband gave him our mobile numbers for him to call us if he ever needed anything, and his daughter put them in speed dial on his house phone and mobile. Thankfully he never needed it, but just him having our numbers gave Ted’s daughter peace of mind that her dad was safe and had someone to contact if he ever had an emergency.

And with our new house, we have great neighbors on both sides. One side is a mature couple.. wouldn’t want to call them elderly, as the husband did help us move the old fridge out of the house, so he isn’t  frail or anything, but still much older then me and hubby.

On our first day with the keys, me and hubby went over to sort stuff out of the new house, since we had somehow managed to get it almost fully furnished, with sofa, all kitchen appliances, a bed, desks and even wall art. This house was basically a show house and was sold to us ‘as seen’, which meant that we had to check if anything was damaged or unusable, and there were a few things. Such as the fridge freezer.

So we had to get rid of the fridge freezer, so booked a slot with our local council to pick up the fridge freezer and a double mattress (we were bringing our own mattresses from our old place) and then had to take the items out and out it in our front garden for collection. Now the issue was that we could no drag the fridge through the house and out of the front door as it would cause scrape marks on the laminated floors, therefore the only option we had was to drag it to the front via our back garden and the back area behind out garden. We did that, and hubby found it easier to roll the fridge on it side and slide it down the road, through the alleyway that connected the back area to the front street. We were dragging the fridge down the 4 houses on the Main Street, making a hell of a noise with the dragging, that the man who is our neighbor to the left, came out to see what the hell was going on. We explained what we were doing, and he asked us if we needed help, to move it over the wall into our front garden and we happily accepted.

This got us talking and me and Nitin introduced ourselves to them, and we apologized in advance for any loud noises that our daughters would make (both girls are very loud, especially when they argue, and they argue ALL the time). But the neighbors said that we don’t need to worry, as they have soundproofed their home as they have a stair lift that is loud.

With our neighbours to the right, its been much more interesting. I quickly said hi to our neighbor and her daughter one afternoon when they were getting back from the school run and that was it for about a week or so. I had heard that she had 4 kids, 3 boys and a daughter, but didn’t know more then that. The following weekend, my hubby bumped into her in the back garden and she invited both my girls to the birthday party she was hosting for her nephew. She had hired a bouncy castle that has been put up just outside her back garden, and all the kids playing there were related to our neighbors. Maanvi and Jia were the only kids that were Indian and stood out, but the girls ended up having a lot of fun, and literally were playing outside for almost 6 hours. They even were fed chicken nuggets and burgers at the party. Turns out the daughter of our neighbor is a year older then Maanvi, and the youngest son is a year younger then Jia.. so the youngest two kids have now become great friends with my girl, and all 4 kids plays out together almost every single evening after school.

Even better is that the daughter will be going to the same secondary school that Malachi want to go to next year, so when Maanvi will be in year 7, the neighbors daughter will be in year 8 and I will have no worries about Maanvi walking to the new school by herself, as she had walk to school with the neighbors daughter.

So with the house and the family being settled, I had to get back into work. I had initially booked a week and a half off from work to do the move to the new house and set things up, but had to extend it so I ended up taking the full 2 weeks off.

Initially I had planned to set up my home office in the single smaller room that we had in the house, but after moving the wardrobe and the girls bed into their bedroom, we realized that there was literally no room for me and hubby to put our mattresses on the floor since we were giving our master bedroom to my in-laws to stay in whilst there were here for the next 3 months. Thus our ONLY option was to give the small single room to my in-laws, as it was just big enough for a double bed and 2 side tables, and to put my office desk and chair in the master bedroom where me and hubby were having to ourselves. But I have made it work, and have been back working full time for 2 weeks now.

Things at work have been great since my last blog post. I have been smashing my targets every week, been given R&R (rewards and recognition) TWICE with a gift voucher worth £70 put together… have lead a team meeting once, and made a few new friends.

With the older friends I have made at work, things are going great with them too… we have a group outing planned for July to watch the new Deadpool movie that is coming out, and I recently found out that 2 of my friends are dating each other.. and I am 1 of 3 people who know about it. So feel really privileged to be trusted.

Apart from all this, life is going good. I’m making sure I take time to enjoy life and to try new things. Went to the theater with my mother in law to watch a production of a play called “Frankie goes to Bollywood’ and it was fab, and I’m planning to take my girls to watch ‘Wicked’ at the cinema when the movie comes out in September.

So yeah, I’m making the most of my life now after all the stuff that happened to me in the past that is in my book, and I’m gonna continue to live my best life now that I have completed my journey of ‘Breaking Free’

Life Update: New Job, New Home, and Book Writing Journey

So you have brought and read my book and want to know what I (the author) have been up to since I wrote it..

Well to be honest, quite a bit has changed. Ive now got a full time job in the civil service, I’ve recently started the process of buying my first home, and I am truly and happily content with my life right now.

So going back, I wrote ‘Breaking Free’ last spring/summer. The original plan was to write a bit and see how it goes. I had no plans to write the whole book in 16 weeks, and to be honest, the first few weeks were tough. I wrote the first chapter, but then struggled to write the second and third. I knew I needed help if I was to ever get this book written, so I turned to the group of people I knew I could rely on to get this book done and yep, for those who have already read my book, it was my girl gang from Hornsey, Tabz, Inaya, Ruzi and Jay.

We are all still in touch with each other and have our own little WhatsApp group, so when I told them that I was finally writing my life story, they were all over the moon. I even got a comment that it was about time. I asked them for help, and they happily agreed to be my first ever readers.

I knew the girls wouldn’t judge me, and maybe the book would help them understand me better, or at least the girl they knew from school, and I was right. I gave each of them a copy of each chapter as I wrote them, and they did nothing but encourage and support me. To be honest, if it wasn’t for these girls, I probably would not have gotten the book written as fast as I did, as they were constantly on my case to get the next chapter, to the point that I was writing one chapter a week.

Once I got into the groove of things, I aimed to get the whole book written by the time my girls started back to school in September…and I sort of missed that deadline, but only by a week, so not too upset about that.

The next thing was finding an editor, as I knew I had written an excellent book, but i also knew that grammar and punctuation was not my strong point, plus I knew I was gonna need help with the whole publishing the book thing. So I connected with a contact I had made during my ‘business’ days, Jen from Fuzzy Flamingo.

Jen is someone I have met through Mums In Business Facebook group, and I knew she would be perfect as my editor as she had been following my journey whilst writing it, and to be honest, Jen has been AMAZING! She not only edited the whole thing just right, she even made sure all the information that I had in the book was still relevant (such as the IMAX at millennium point, no longer being an IMAX cinema…). 

Jen started the whole editing process from October 2023, and meanwhile I had been applying for jobs.. well did 4 applications during the summer. Most of them were standard office based jobs, which I had gone for as I didn’t think that I would get a great job after being a stay at home mum/small business owner for the last 6 years… but there was 1 job, that my husband had encouraged me to apply for. Can’t go into much detail about it as its civil service job, and don’t want to get into trouble for saying something that I shouldn’t be. But it is a branch of the Ministry of Justice, so you can get an idea of how professional and rule abiding it is.

So I applied for this job, didn’t think I would ever be considered for it, but got an email for a formal interview, which I dreaded, as I suffer from anxiety, so when they said ‘is there any special requirements for the interview’, I said yes and told them that I suffer from anxiety, and that fiddling with something helps a lot, so can I fiddle with something during the interview, and they agreed. I did my research of the types of questions asked and made notes on them and stuck them around the table where I was going to have my zoom interview. Don’t remember much of the interview, apart from mentioning that I had written a book, which seemed to impress them. So I used my experience of writing ‘Breaking Free’ to answer questions about time management, sticking to deadlines, and setting realistic targets, and a few weeks later I found out that I got the job.

I officially joined the office on 9th November 2023, and went through 6 weeks of training, then 6 weeks in consolidation team (during which I was signed off sick for 2 weeks with a serious chest infection), made a few friends at work, and then joined my permanent team in Feb 2024.

And what a team! Everyone is amazing, my manager is awesome, and I absolutely love working there. My first month in, I was nominated by my manager for reward and recognition for my great work ethic, smashing the targets set for me, and for always trying my best, and was rewarded with a £20 voucher to use (still need to figure out where I can use it ..lol). But I am happy and working everyday is a pleasure and something I look forward to.

On another front, with me having a full time job, me and my husband were able to get a mortgage and start house hunting. We saw quite a few properties, that were ok, but we were always beaten when offers were given, that we thought we would have to settle for something that was a fixer upper and maybe not as close to the girls school as we wanted. Until we view this one house. As soon as we walked in, my jaw dropped. This was my dream house. It was decorated in a style that I loved, there was a sofa, small TV and artwork on the wall, that made it look like the perfect show house, the lounge was just the right size, as well as the kitchen, the back garden was tiled and perfect, and I wanted this house before I had even been upstairs. Even my husband fell in love with it, and whispered to me that he thinks we should put in an offer before we headed upstairs. The upstairs didn’t disappoint either… 2 great size double bedrooms, a single/box room, and they even had turned the old boiler cupboard into a home office space. There were built in wardrobes as well as beds, curtains, artwork etc… it literally was a show house that showed off the home in the best possible light.

So we spoke to the estate agent about its price and how long it has been on the market, she told the information and told us that it was £182k, but all the furniture was included.. unfortunately £182k was slightly above our budget, so we offered £180k, which was the max we could afford, and the offer got accepted.

We are currently on the last stages of the paperwork, and fingers crossed, we should be moved in by the time the next blog post comes out next month. 

So this is a snapshot of what has been going on in my life since the book was written. I hope you enjoyed this update, and continue to follow my blog as I keep you updated on my life.

Sign up to the mailing list on the homepage to get alerts when a new blog post is uploaded.

Memoir writing, girl gang support, writing process, editing services, career transition, civil service job, anxiety management, time management tips, home buying journey, mortgage process, house hunting experience, home decor inspiration, property offers, budget-friendly home buying, moving process.