Every Wednesday I have the very important job of collecting my niece Rosie from school.
It generally involves a trip to Sainsburys for some kind of snack or magazine and then home to watch The Worst Witch and pretend we work in a cafe/school/dance academy.
She quite happily spends the couple of hours we have together jumping around my house, flinging herself off of furniture with one main rule - Don't Hurt Yourself!

Every now and then I decided to up my 'Aunty Game' and plan an activity. At Halloween we made decorations (thank you Pinterest), at Christmas we made snowman decorations (thank you left over ghost cotton wool) and today we tea stained paper to write potions on because she's being Hermione for World Book Day tomorrow.

These are all lovely little memories that I'll have with her.

The thing with memories is that we tend to forget those little funny details. Those things that really capture what she is like as a grown up 7 year old.
So last week, after deciding it would a great idea to make cupcakes, I got out my camera and documented everything (and I mean everything).
These images capture so many things. Her inventive spelling, her choice of coloured pens, her giant pencil, pencil case (we all had one of them at some point right?!) The fact that she needs a step ladder to see the worktop and that she needs to use both hands to steady the electric mixer. Her lack of co-ordination meaning cake mix went literally everywhere.

Does it matter that my house isn't immaculate? Nope. Because my house isn't immaculate. It's the house we lived in, with the dog and the mayhem we had at that time of our lives when Rosie was 7.

So take the picture. It doesn't have to be perfect - in fact it's better if it's not. Real isn't perfect.

Take the picture.