I was born and brought up in East London and have supported West Ham for as long as I can remember. Though they’ve never been super successful, I’ve always loved their footballing philosophy – their enthusiasm and the way they always try to play attractive football.

Today a young and newly-promoted West Ham side played against Liverpool in their first FA Cup Final for 26 years. And lost. On penalties.

It was a thrilling game and they played so well; played their hearts out and very nearly won, leading 3-2 at the very end of the match before Steven Gerrard scored an incredible equaliser on the stroke of full time. And then they hit the post in extra time.

And I know it will mean nothing to them tonight, but this afternoon they really did themselves, their club and their supporters proud.

I’m still gutted though.

It’s probably just post-Tuscany blues and pre-having-to-get-everything-ready-to-move-to-Seattle hysteria, but I’m feeling a bit meh at the moment.

Like there’s a huge brick wall up ahead of me. I’ve been pretty much running on adrenaline since the beginning of November, and there’s always been something to focus on next – Christmas, Valentines Day, Mothers Day etc.

But now summer seems finally to be here and people have got better things to do than online shopping, so I’m expecting orders to tail off quite a bit.

I know I should be taking this opportunity to make all the improvements to the website that I haven’t had time to make, buy in lots of gorgeous things for Christmas, sort out all my admin, work on my search engine optimisation etc. but I just don’t seem to have the inspiration or motivation.

I want something EXCITING to happen, or failing that, just to go and lie under a tree in the park with a trashy novel and forget about search engine optimisation altogether.

I want my groove back.

Early morning mist

A thought occurred as I looked through all the photos I’d taken in Tuscany.

So many of them were pictures of vast landscapes, even though I know full well that no photo will ever do justice to such a scene. So few of my photos are of details – even though such photos are often the most evocative. I just don’t see them even when they’re right under my nose.

I wondered whether the pictures one takes are actually a reflection of one’s approach to life. I know I’m a ‘big picture’ kinda girl – always full of big new ideas, always having to force myself to execute ideas I’ve already had. I do know that the devil is in the detail, but sometimes I feel just too lazy to look for him.

One of the reasons I love reading craft and design blogs is that they are often full of photos of tiny details, often taken from an unexpected perspective. Is it because ‘crafty’ people are ‘details’ people and is this one of the reasons they do what they do?

Two blogs which are fabulous examples of this are Cally Creates (check out her recent photos of Edinburgh) and Tongue in Cheek, which I read because her daily photos are just so evocative of France and fill me with nostalgia (I’ve just noticed that Corey from Tongue in Cheek has written a post about how she’s not a details kind of person, so I guess that blows the above theory completely out of the water!)

Finding a little animal corner, also in Kew Gardens, where the children were allowed in the pens to stroke the piglets, lambs and kids. Have never seen the Minx so happy. Am starting to think I need to buy this girl a pet. (This post was meant to launch while I was in Tuscany, but RocketPost went haywire, so you can read it whilst I do the washing).