Welcome to nonstopmama, I’m so glad you’re here – tea/coffee/glass of red?!

This is where my life of the last don’t-make-me-count-them years as a beauty and features magazine writer meets the working-from-the-kitchen-table-and-always-running-late mama I am today (which I wouldn’t change for anything. Although I once tried deliberately NOT re-setting my watch when the clocks went back to improve my time management. It didn’t work).

My family has affectionately named the shelf where I store those books with titles like Confessions Of A Happily Organised Family as “Nice Idea, Never Going To Happen”.

I remain optimistic.

As a child, my dream was to be Lois – “You’re Superman!” – Lane when I grew up. Or Maria in The Sound Of Music (a non-starter, as anyone who has witnessed me trying to lead a Sunday School class will testify).

I stuck with the writing, and have had the pleasure of working on a range of British magazines and newspapers, including the Telegraph, for whom I had a weekly column for several years (the closest I came to Lois Lane-dom, although I never really had the right hair. It was blow-dried straight to within an inch of its life for my byline photo. One friend accused me of wearing a wig).

I’m even more grateful for grace, faith, friends and the wonderful, immediate and extended family whom, truly blessed to have been adopted as a baby, I’ve spent the last four decades finding out about. They are all nothing short of amazing, wonderful and more than a bit crazy-balls (I have Italian genes. Which explains a lot, including the hair).

But that’s another story, and the book which I’m trying to get around to writing.

I have endless admiration for ALL those who care for babies and children – in any and every capacity – and those who mother them in all the different ways possible.

How to go back to beauty, fashion and the frivolous stuff from there?

More than anything, I really hope you’ll have FUN here!

What these pages are absolutely not about is aspiring to be a ’yummy mummy’, or anything or anyone other than the gorgeous, wonderful mama YOU ARE, right now and in whatever form that takes, At every age and stage of life!

But a new lip gloss, nail polish or super-flattering pair of jeans certainly adds to the fun, no?!!

Other ways to stay updated with nonstopmama: Like the nonstopmama Facebook page or  follow nonstopmama on Twitter! Oh yes, and we’re on Pinterest now, too (which is slightly addictive, isn’t it?!).

BIG THANKS and lot of love!!

Jenni Baden Howard

Mama, editor and author of NO books on organisation.