Any working woman looking forward to starting a family or thinking about maternity leave should also think about whether or not they will work after they become a mother. If they decide that they wish to return to work after maternity leave, then it is best to be prepared for this, both mentally and physically.When […]

My idea of winter gardening is locking the garden door mid-September so the kids can’t get out and venturing out in May to see of anything is happening out there.  My mum and mother-in-law are hardier sorts, so have cleared the garden of weeds, dead plants and junk and pruned back the Camellia and grapevine. […]

I have been trying to post Eid pics since the day after Eid with no success.  So I am trying to use my time better, start using my daily planner, try to monitor where time gets wasted and spread out my chores across the week a bit better.  In the meantime, here are some very […]

Just visited the blog of Sister Hijabee in DC and came across her efforts to help a sister abandoned by her husband and left with no money to support her child and her husband’s debt to deal with. She has set up a Paypal account to help the sister, so if you spare a little […]

Getting picked up from work by the hubby. Getting a burger on the way home. Having left overs for dinner Taking the kids for a walk. Ice-cream at the new parlour. Exhausted kids falling into bed. A quite night with a good book. Knowing I have tomorrow off from work. I need that kind of […]

I used to be a very light sleeper, until I had my children.  I don’t know if it is the busy-ness of my days or sod’s law (that the less the kids let you sleep, the more you want to), but now I can sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow and through […]

We usually throw one Eid party a year for ladies and children but in the last year or two I had found these getting rowdy and moving away from my aim of providing a halal environment for my Muslimah friends to meet, enjoy and in some small way remember Allah (SWT): Abu Hurairah and Abu […]

Quite a few sisters have asked me in the past how I manage my time or structure my day to get the most out of the day, or to even get everything done. This is something I have been thinking about a lot recently as I experiment with ways to get things done at home […]

It’s just over a month at my new job and I am still enjoying myself. I have been meeting community groups, brainstorming ways to celebrate diversity, learning about community cohesion, writing a guide to prayer room usage, updating internet pages and generally doing what my geeky self considers fun. The people I work with are […]

I first came across the idea of the Mastermind Group as a teenager in Tony Buzan’s book Buzan’s Book of Genius – And How to Unleash Your Own, amongst twenty traits he lists as characteristics of genius are mastermind groups internal and external. The idea actually dates back to Napoleon Hills books on success and wealth […]

One of my favourite things in Ramadan, being a bit of a greedy guts, is the lovely platters and dishes that friends and neighbours send each other. Although I cook mostly every day, having a big family, I do sometimes get tired of the taste of my own cooking and crave something else.  I like […]

Ramadan kareem everyone, don’t you feel the difference?I have spent the last few days fretting about how I will manage it all – work, the early morning meals, preparing iftar, praying taraweeh. So I went off on one yesterday and the better half had to calm me down.Then yesterday evening we got the good news […]

Orc’s is a fantasy novel set in the fictional world of Maras Dantia. When you think of Orcs, it’s very possible that you think of Tolkien’s The Lord of The Ring and this is exactly what this book is not similar to. The book is actually a trilogy, with all three novels in the series […]

The kids have been playing a nice little game with us, taking turns to throw up in the middle of the night (strip the bed, strip the child, bath it, find more bedding etc at 2 am). Although the older two’s stomachs seem to have settled down, the baby is still having his moments, so […]