I started my little business four years ago today on what would have been my nana's 100th birthday so I'm celebrating this morning with cake for breakfast! I like the fact that my nana is part of my company's story as she inspired me with kindness and creativity. She used to potter endlessly in her garden and would talk to us about the plants. If she wasn't gardening, she was baking delicious shortbread and cakes or knitting us cardigans and leg warmers or letting us play our new 7" singles on her old Dansette record player. I remember making pom poms with her and thinking it was some kind of magic that you could make this fluffy ball out of a piece of wool. And I remember sitting in the kitchen while she listened to the Archers and being told firmly to 'shush'!

Today, I find my company somewhere I didn't know it would be. My love for illustration has grown and grown over the last two years and while I still work in event management by day and write whenever the feeling grabs me, every spare moment I have is consumed by drawing. I am never without my sketchbook and have an ever growing collection of sketches for pretty little products that I am working on bringing to my shop.

I sometimes stop for a moment and wonder how I got here. It's like illustration has come out of the blue and said, "Pick me!" I find it meditative in such a good way. For me it's an antidote to the speeding world and has given me somewhere totally joyful to 'go' when I need to retreat.

As I wrote a few blog posts ago, I thought a lot about what I want my brand to be. I settled on warm, kind and cosy. I want my products and The Quiet Life blog to give people the same feeling I get when I'm drawing. One of complete contentment (often accompanied by cake).