Six weeks ago, the thought of spending a prolonged period offline terrified me. With my work relying on a secure internet connection, along with my addiction to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, I imagined a world offline as a dark, dark place. I saw myself as a shipwrecked sailor, marooned on a solitary island, with no clue as to what was happening in the outside world. (Never accuse me of being prone to the over-dramatic *cough*.)

We have now spent almost two weeks offline. In fact we are still, officially, offline. I am jumping on my family’s internet juice to write this blog post, but as soon as we return home it’ll be back to the solitary island again – for a few more days at least.

Here’s what happened while I was offline…

We moved in here: 

(I cried when we collected the keys to our very own home. I was expecting a fanfare of trumpets when we walked into the estate agents. Holding those keys in my hand was the final point in a long old journey of saving, working incredibly hard and being Sensible with a capital S.)

We unpacked: 

This is our family / dining room. It has a log burner, high ceilings, an original sash window and an adjoining window through to the kitchen. I think it might be my favourite room in the house.

We took delivery of a million logs: 

It took my three year old and I four hours to lug the huge pile of logs from the roadside through the house, stacking by the fire. We didn’t have time to move them to the log store in the garden as we had an oven being delivered that day. Never have logs proved so stressful. It was like Crystal Maze, but less exciting.

We chose a Christmas tree: 

Despite the pouring rain and gale force winds, the (self-proclaimed) Northern Love Machine decided wellies and coats were for wimps. “I don’t need a coat, I’m from Rochdale, we don’t wear coats up there.”

We put the tree up, finally: 

Better late than never, and all that.

We explored our new village: 

And found the pub: 

This Christmas Eve pub lunch was followed by some carolling round the village Christmas tree. The NLM moaned all the way there (“It’s not my thing. I don’t do singing” etc etc) but threw himself into the songs with gusto. Obviously.

We opened presents: 

 

Our first Christmas in our very own home. I won’t be forgetting it any time soon. Turns out life offline isn’t so bad after all.