Ten happy things – July 19

There’s much in my life to be grateful for but it’s also easy to get carried away with day-to-day life and forget to be thankful. That’s why at the end of each month I look back and reflect on ten things that made me happy. Here are my ten happy things for July!

Visited Facebook

The social media geek in me was delighted to be invited to Workplace for Good’s first birthday at one of Facebook’s offices. I invited along Jen from She gets around to be my ‘plus one’ and we had a great time! It was wonderful to hear how charities are using Workplace as a way to improve their internal communications and to break down silos. And did I mention there was a London bus pick ‘n mix sweet bar?!

Won a facial!

I don’t often enter competitions but I’m so glad I entered this one because I won! I spotted an Instagram Story by Sima from The Curious Pixie which was to enter a competition to win a Fortnum and Mason facial so I thought ‘why not?’ and entered. A couple of days later I found out I’d won and now I’m booked in for September. Whoop!

Working on something exciting

Together with CharityComms, I’m working on a wellbeing guide for communications professionals in the charity sector. I can’t wait for it to be published!

Discovered Cefalu

Whilst I do like returning to places we love and that are familiar, I also love discovering new places – especially when you just know you’ll visit time and time again. We stayed in Cefalu in Sicily for five nights and absolutely fell in love with it. It was bigger than I expected with more to do – especially if you visit the surrounding mountain towns. I can’t wait to go back!

Best beaches in San Vito lo Capo

After Cefalu we headed to San Vito lo Capo for four nights. Whilst I preferred Cefalu as a town, San Vito lo Capo definitely won on the beach front! Visiting stunning beaches like this every day was definitely something to be happy about. In fact, it’s made my ‘nine of the best Italian beaches’ list.

Discovered panelle

It’s not that often that I get to try completely new foods. When we were in San Vito lo Capo, we tried one of their local dishes – panelle. Basically it’s fried chickpea flour and it’s DELICIOUS. We had it once as a snack and then twice in a restaurant. It might not look like much (or sound that appetising) but trust me!

Third sector podcast

I have a monthly column with Third Sector but in July I was asked to go on their podcast to talk about social media crises and mental health. It was in a proper studio and everything! You can listen to the episode here – I’m on at around 23 minutes in.

Looked after Dandy

Our neighbour went away on holiday and asked us to look after his cat, Dandy. We’ve looked after him a few times now and I adore having him around. He is such a lovely, affectionate cat – although he still won’t sit on the couch with us yet. He really lifts my mood when he’s around! He loves to sneak into cupboards and this made me laugh so much!

Discovered a new podcast

Ok, the podcast is not new at all – it’s just new to my listening library! The High Low with Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes is a weekly pop culture podcast which dives into the week’s current affairs. That’s my news fix sorted.

Still running

Since graduating from Couch to 5k, I’ve been keeping up the running with at least two to three runs a week. Annoyingly it’s not getting any easier! I’ve started running outside and it’s so much harder than a treadmill. I’m determined to keep at it though.

So those are my ten happy things for July! How did your July go?