So the latest FabFitFun box direct from the US was the boost I needed to lift a week that would otherwise have been just a little...well...meh. 

The box is a twist on the usual suspect subscription services I've worked my way though in the past. It only comes out four times a year, and it features a mix of beauty, homeware and fashion items. 

The brands featured are great quality, and each box is a mix of items you select and surprises. Because it's an American box, the featured products tend to be new to me, and it's given me the chance to try out a few things that are hard to get hold of on these shores. 

So what was in the summer edition of the box?

I turned 35 on June 1st, which is officially old. Its funny how you never realise when you're younger that you get to a certain point and don't feel any older, no matter what your passport says. 

The UK is still in lockdown, so I had a day at home with my kids and husband, getting all dressed up for afternoon tea and having a little disco in the garden.

I got some fantastic birthday treats as well, and felt very loved and spoilt in a nice way! It sounds silly but as we’ve been saving up for all the renovation work on the house and buying furniture and all that grown-up jazz, it was really nice to have some things that were a bit indulgent. 

When you get to 35 you’re not supposed to care about getting presents, but that’s definitely part of being a grown-up that I reject - I love presents! Although it goes without saying that the wobbly handmade card from your kids is the absolute best bit, of course. 

Hey, bitches. It’s my birthday! What better excuse could there possibly be to drink champagne and eat my bodyweight in cake? 

Usually, I’m not a huge fan of getting a year older (when I turned 20, I spent all day in bed hungover and crying, and it's been down hill from there). So sometimes I do a post about my day to mark the milestone, and other times I just sort of gloss over it - hey, it’s a Gemini thing, okay?

Today I turned 35, which isn’t a round number but still sort of feels like something. Perhaps it's officially being mid-Thirties (shudder) and not being able to convince anyone that you’re not really an adult anymore. 

And 2020 is a hell of a crazy year to hit the midpoint of your fourth decade. The world looks nothing like it did a year ago, and I never imagined when the UK went into lockdown back in March that we’d still be there when it hit June. 

But here we are. Bizarrely, it’s improved my birthday experience.

And that, my friends and fellow beauty junkies, is what we call a bold-faced lie. 

Rarely am I able to log onto one of these sites without getting the uncontrollable urge to hit ‘Add To Basket’ a few times. 

But what am I supposed to do when Charlotte Tilbury exists in the world? 

Aaaanyway, I bought things and I feel pretty good about them, so let’s talk about it. 

One of the aspects of renovating our Victorian home that we most looked forward to was tackling the kitchen. 

The Mr and I are both keen home cooks, and yet we’d never had a decent space to play chef in. When we bought our first home, the kitchen was just okay-ish enough that we never got around to tackling it before we needed to move. 

When we bought No.80, we knew we wanted to install our dream kitchen - but there was no point doing it before we could afford to build an extension.

The house had previously been subdivided into three student bedsit flats, so the kitchen wasn't the best quality. 

Life (and having kids) gets in the way of the best laid plans though. By the end of last year, we’d spent five years living with chipped worktops, badly designed cabinetry, scuffed lino floors and an oven that only worked sporadically. It was definitely time for a change.

OK, this lockdown thing is really starting to bite now. We’re entering our eighth week of self-isolation (my work decided to cancel all meetings and make people fully based at home a week or so before official lockdown kicked in), and up until now it hasn’t been so bad.

But with no end in sight, we can feel ourselves getting more and more burnt out trying to work full time and look after two under 5s who are beginning to get very cooped up and sad about not seeing their friends. It feels like no-one is winning at the moment - the balance for working parents is always very fine anyway, and it's just been completely eroded.

No matter how hard we’re trying to stay positive, often we end up feeling like bad parents AND bad at our jobs - and we can’t be the only ones. It feels like we’re approaching a tipping point now. Almost everyone in my network is beginning to crack under the pressure.

In this rather sad scenario, fashion has given me something creative to focus on. It’s very true that how you dress affects your mood, and as comfy as gym leggings and giant hoodies are, eventually they begin to make you feel worse.