Pour 1 cup of hot water over blog, steep for 10 minutes and strain

Hiiii! Long time no see to all my invisible readers. How's tricks?

I've been in a funk! No denying it and I think practically every blogger saying - DON'T APOLOGISE FOR NOT BLOGGING. But let's be honest, I think if I'm apologising for anything it should be the fact I'm subjecting you all to my blogging again. Suckers...

I have a nickname - Hoople Bear... or on occasion Hoople The Gloopsing Bear. Don't ask me what a Hoople is because I don't think I can answer, but I love it as a nickname. It's one of many unusual nicknames I've picked up from my family over the years. But we don't stop at nicknames, we have weird words and phrases that seem to have been passed down. Kind of like hilarious and strange family heirlooms, except you can't take them on Antiques Roadshow (trust me, I've tried). I'm curious - does your family have any idiosyncrasies or quirks that simply don't make sense to people outside the family unit? Or maybe they don't even make sense within the family unit? I've got a few...

Take for example the fact we refer to our nose as a "schnozzleberrybug". Um excuse, but what?!?

As far back as I can remember my family has thrown around the phrase "if you do it on your birthday you'll have to do it all year round". So according to this theory, if you unpack the dishwasher on your birthday, then you'd have to unpack the dishwasher every day for the following 364 days (way to make me resent leap years...). For 25 years, give or take, I naively assumed that everyone subscribed to this birthday folklore. Apparently not so much. I kind of wish I'd thought the theory through - I mean if there is one day of the year that you are likely to splash out and do something out of the ordinary, it's probably your birthday. You eat cake, you see loved ones, you get presents! It's a nice theory and safe to say I'm not against people presenting me with gifts on a daily basis. I fully intend to continue this Ralston birthday folklore because it's ours and it's fun to bring up every birthday, even if it's not steeped in reality.

Speaking of steeping things... new teapots! (get it? you steep tea.... yeah possibly the worse segue ever). I've started to design some smaller, ready to ship pots. Customs take the wind out of my sails, even though my customers are the best - the pressure of deadlines and my incredible ability to procrastinate do not a happy Emma make. So I love these! They're little and they're fun - at least I hope someone thinks so! Without further ado...

You can have a further look see in my store (hmmm subtle).