Hey friends!

I truly hope you had a magical and happiness filled festive period!

Its already the first weekend in January and I’ve made to executive decision to move my post day to Saturday, for a multitude of reasons but mainly that I always seem to be busy on Fridays and then rush posting. So I’m back for 2026 and my New Years resolution is to definitely try and post something every week without fail (a girl can dream right?!) I began 2025 by reviewing the previous years ups and downs and thought I’d try that again to get the ball rolling…

…and explain my total disappearance from the blog.

Ready?

Lets do this…

The biggest highlight of the year/things I did, I decided at the end of 2024 that I was going to learn something new, a language or a musical instrument – I picked up an old violin in a charity shop near to the beach at Perranporth and was totally set on learning how to play it (spoiler: I didn’t). Instead I learnt to drive!! Literally I’m so damn pleased with myself after finding an instructor I actually managed to learn how to drive in exactly six months. My mum has been a legend and was happy to chaperone me in the car every day for an hour or two until I had my test in the middle of October which I passed first time with only 4 minors!! If you’re reading this from the UK you might have heard on the news how hard it is for learners to get tests so I really didn’t want to fail and have to wait months to try again…I put myself under so much pressure which I didn’t need to and I was just so relieved to have the test over with that for about three weeks I was just randomly saying ‘I’ve passed my driving test!’ If I’m really honest it didn’t sink in for about a month and it was weird to not have to go and practise everyday come rain or shine. The post-learning-to-drive burn out is real though, I’ve never been so mentally exhausted and I got into such a tizzy that life could go back to normal and not just focus on this one thing, that I panicked and stopped blogging/a few of my others hobbies, so its quite nice now that I feel I can pick up all of that again.   

I still can’t believe the freedom I’ve gained by being able to just get in the car and go anywhere I feel like. (In the city I always used public transport but now I live in the middle of nowhere I really need a car!). 

Even when friends were asking what I wanted for Christmas all I could say was ‘I’ve got my drivers license what more could I want!’.

Literally I’m so pleased with myself.  

I also joined insta which in itself isn’t a big deal but I don’t really use social media so thats been fun to learn. (If you’re on insta I’m @artymissk). Here’s 9 of my favourite photos from this year! 2025 was such an amazing year for wandering with the butterflies and being out in the sunshine…hopefully 2026 will be just as good!

Lowlights and sad things, to be honest I’ve genuinely got nothing to moan about from the last year I’m a glass half full kinda girl and I’m truly grateful for the situation I live in, the health of my family is pretty good and there haven’t been any major disasters (beyond my air source heat pump dying but that was in the summer so I didn’t need heating anyway!).

I’ve had a few anxiety attacks which weren’t very nice but I was majorly stressing myself out so it wasn’t unexpected.

Blogging progress, this year has been abysmal, lets not pretend otherwise. I really am intending to put some major effort into my blog this year, I really treasure every like and comment and I really can’t thank my followers enough! So thank you very, very much for sticking with me all this time!

Current events/projects, I’m still working on my two projects at the moment (fun things as opposed to serious life/work goals) I’ve created 17 out of 70-ish needlework butterflies to decorate my house with – these are all twice life-size and in scale with each other…I reckon it will take at least another three years to finish them all!

Then I’m branching out to butterflies of the world!

My second project is to continue creating my own slice of Eden in the garden, its definitely working and there are so many bugs and birds…in the summer I met my very first Clouded Yellow and didn’t even have to leave my hammock. I’m planning to add buddleias, jasmine and I’d quite like a cherry tree for this year. All of my current plants (and weeds) are doing well.

Especially the nettles I think they’re on steroids.

I also don’t think the garden will ever be finished.

No matter what I’m doing and how busy I am I will always be searching the garden for caterpillars to raise, I miss the butterflies so much in winter that I’ve now moved onto raising moths as well (generally they are much easier to care for) even now I’ve got quite a happy population of both Ruby Tigers and Large Yellow underwings, which is exciting.

But over the summer I had massive amounts of success rearing caterpillars of some of our most common butterflies that I raised a whopping total of 269 butterflies, amazingly some of them are currently overwintering in my butterfly house as pupa and will emerge in the spring which starts the whole cycle again, so thats pretty cool.

These are just a few of the butterflies I raised this year – 

8 Orange Tips (currently pupating – butterfly tale coming soon!)

91 Large Whites (with 13 more pupating over winter)

4 Peacocks

1 Small Tortoiseshell 

18 Painted Ladies

56 Red Admirals

31 Comma

13 Green veined whites (currently pupating – butterfly tale coming soon!)

And 6 Random green fellas that moved into my butterfly house and became pupa (pretty sure they’re one of the brown butterflies – butterfly tale coming soon hopefully!).

It’s amazing to think that even though it’s winter I’ve still got like 70-ish creatures in my care. I also find it mind boggling that a butterfly that only lives a few weeks in the summer probably spent 6 months or more as a pupa over winter.

The world around me, I’m actively trying to avoid the news, I feel helpless in the face of so much anger and war, politicians talk about what needs to be done and never do anything and I feel I’m such a small cog my efforts will never make any difference, all I can do is pray for peace for those who are suffering and recycle/reuse and try to keep my carbon footprint as small as possible.

Thoughts for the next year, In 2025 I chose to set myself the goal of learning something new…which I actually did! For this coming year I’m hoping to be able to relax a little so I’m not setting any major goals.

Really try to post something on here every week – even if it’s only a random photograph or a poem. This will be a real blogging accomplishment for me – My idea is to try and always be a week or two ahead and actually plan what I’m going to post with enough notice to actually sit and type without rushing on the day! (ya never know, it might work!!).

Do more art – I’ve not really had much time to paint over the last year and it’s something I really miss.

Maybe learn to play the violin I’ve bought – it’s so pretty I hate to see it just sitting on a shelf in my room, but if it doesn’t happen then oh well.

Get out more – now that I’m able to travel at leisure there are so many opportunities to help butterfly conservation across the whole county and I can just hop in the car with my wellies and a packed lunch and go and make a tiny difference to the wild world out there.

And over the summer I’m going to France with my brother on a sibling/BFF trip, to the magical place with the castle thats run by the mouse and his friends (when I was younger people always told me it was super weird to actually being friends with my younger sibling but once we both got old enough we decided the opinions of those people didn’t matter). I can’t imagine not beings best buds with my brother and we both love Disney.

So thats something I’m majorly looking forward to as I haven’t been to Disneyland since I was about 9 years old and my brother was so young he doesn’t really remember it at all!

Also it gives me really good motivation to finish my Alice in Wonderland denim jacket embroidery! New update coming next week!!

Well, I think that pretty much wraps up 2025! I’ve experienced some of the best days of my life, achieved a major life goal and experienced real burn-out. I’ve met some amazing people and seen so many new things. Hopefully you’ll stick with me in 2026…Have you set any goals for the coming year? As always my friends I wish you a happy and prosperous year ahead. 

K

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