March Happiness Project Round-Up

If you’ve seen my last few posts like this, you will know that this year I decided to give my own Happiness Project another go after failing a bit with the last one I tried. If you’ve never heard of The Happiness Project before, you can check out my introduction to it here. I made a sort of bucket list for each month of things I would like to do and also national days I could celebrate. Some I came up with myself, and some I found on Pinterest. But I made sure not to put any pressure on myself to do them all because that would just take away from the whole idea of it being a project to increase my happiness! I said in that post that I would share my project with you over the year, so today I thought I would go through the things I did throughout March. I’m afraid I’m a bit behind with my posts (and videos) for this, but I’m gradually catching up!

First on my March list was to buy a pastel floral arrangement. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, something I have tried to include every month on my list is to buy some fresh flowers for my bedroom. So, each month I have specified the type of flowers to look out for – usually it’s something that fits with the time of year, and it gives me a reason to perhaps buy flowers I wouldn’t normally go for. I’m a big lover of pastel colours anyway, especially during the spring months, so this bouquet it definitely something I would pick out. I thought this mixed bunch of tulips from Waitrose were absolutely beautiful. I love that they have two different colours in each flower – I thought they were a bit more unusual than some of the others they had on the stand.

I have a ridiculous number of candles – in fact, I have a whole drawer dedicated to my candle collection (oops!) So I decided to set the goal of lighting spring candles for this month. I had a good look through my collection and picked out this Yankee Candle in Fresh Cut Roses, which just reminds me of a spring garden with all the flowers starting to bloom. Plus it’s pink, which obviously helps matters! It has quite a subtle scent when you burn it, but it’s enough to make you feel like spring is on the way. And it lingers even once you’ve blown out the flame, which I really like.

My next goal on my list was to do some spring-cleaning. Now, I did do a bit of this, but couldn’t really work out how to represent it in a photo, so you’ll have to trust me on this one! To be honest I clean, sort and tidy all year round, as I don’t like the idea of just leaving it until the spring. However, I think this time of year gives you the opportunity to perhaps do a bit more of a deep clean, so giving the house a blitz by vacuuming, mopping, dusting and turning out. Unfortunately I didn’t do as much as I would have liked, as my health and Uni got in the way, but the important thing was that I did something and that made me feel like I’d achieved something.

One of the things I was most excited to do from my list was to go and see some baby animals. There’s nothing cuter than tiny animals and the best time to see them is in the spring. So, I did a bit of research and found Finkley Down Farm, which isn’t too far away from where I live. I invited along my Mum, brother (David) and sister-in-law (Emma) and thankfully we chose a nice sunny March Saturday to head over. The whole farm was pretty easy to get around in my wheelchair and we saw so many gorgeous baby animals. I bottle fed a lamb, which was awesome, and we saw piglets, baby goats, chicks and ducklings – so cute! After our morning at the farm, we went for a little drive and found a lovely pub to have some lunch at.

Now we move onto the national days I managed to observe/celebrate in March. The 2^nd of March was ‘World Book Day’ and the only thing I could really think to do was to read a book! I’ve been finding it hard to find the motivation or time to read over the last few months, so I made sure to go up to bed a bit earlier than I usually would so I could just relax a read a couple of chapters of this Cecelia Ahern book. It’s something I really want to make more of an effort to do because I absolutely love to read – it helps me to calm down in an evening. Plus I have a bookshelf absolutely jam packed full of books I’ve bought and not read yet!

Then, on the 24^th of March came ‘Red Nose Day’. I didn’t do anything specifically for it – it kind of feels like once I stopped going to school I seemed to stop dressing up or doing silly things to raise money. Maybe I need to push myself to do something another year, although I do already do things to raise money and awareness for other charities. I was actually in hospital for day surgery on that Friday, but I did watch some of the programme on TV when I came home, and also caught up on some of the bits I missed (like James Cordon’s Car Pool Karaoke and the remake of Love Actually!) on my iPad.

Last but not least, on the 26^th of March it was Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, because I’d only had my day surgery a couple of days before, I wasn’t really well enough to treat my Mum to lunch out or anything like that. I spent most of the day sleeping – not how I would choose to pamper my Mum on her special day! I had ordered her some flowers to be delivered though, which she seemed to really love, and I also gave her a card. Richard and Lisa came over for dinner in the evening, which was really nice even if I did have to keep resting. So hopefully I can treat my Mum to something a bit more special at another opportunity to make up for a bit of a quiet day.

So that was everything I managed to do in March. I feel like I didn’t manage much of my list, but like I said at the beginning of my post, this isn’t meant to be about doing everything, it’s a way to hopefully help me find happiness in the little things. So there were a few more things on my list that I didn’t get to do – I thought I would share them with you too, just in case you’re looking for ideas for your own list. I’m going to hold onto all these ideas and either fit them in as the year goes on, or do the project again next year! I’d love to hear your ideas of how you would celebrate this month’s list of ideas – maybe you’ll give me an idea for my next project. The goals I didn’t manage this month were:

·      Mint manicure and pedicure (I really need to start painting my nails!!)

·      Try a new salad recipe

·      Take a spring break (I wish!)

·      Sip Spring drinks

·      Feed the ducks

·      Visit a Farmer’s Market

·      National Bed Month (to be fair, I spent a lot of time in my bed, but I didn’t feel it really counted!)

·      Time for a Cuppa (Dementia) – 1^st

·      British Pie Week – 6^th

·      Spring Forward – 8^th

·      Women’s Day – 8^th

·      Barbie Day – 9^th

·      Disabled Access Day – 10^th

·      St Patrick’s Day – 17^th

·      Macaron Day – 20^th (I wish I’d had some to eat!)

·      International Day of Happiness – 20^th

·      International Day of Forests – 21^st

I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing how I got on with my March Happiness Project. I’d love to hear your comments and it you’ve done/are doing a similar project I would love to hear all about it too! Keep an eye on my YouTube channel too for the video version of this post.

Have you done a Happiness Project before? What do you think of the idea?

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