On this day Ten Years ago, I was sat in my bedroom about to travel up for Christmas at my parents' house, home for the holidays after my first term as a prep school teacher.  It had been a fun start to what would trun out to be a lovely career, but I had found living alone in a rural village hundreds of miles from close friends and family a challenge after years of having people close by.  The internet had become a real lifeline, a way to chat with people, keep up, and arrange meet ups.  As I spent more time online, I started reading blogs, and on the 20th December 2005, this blog was born.

It's been such a fun ride, and I've learned so much and met some truly amazing people through my blogging and writing here.  I consider myself very lucky to live in a generation where anyone can sit down and share their story, and I love being (a very small) part of the blog community.  This blog has been part of my life for a decade and I love having it as a record of the journey so far - some very big events (meeting my now-husband, buying our first home, changing careers) and lots of fun smaller ones (travels, parties, events) are documented and preserved on this little blog!  To celebrate this mini milestone I thought I'd share ten of my favourite posts - these are by no means the ten most popular, or even the ten best, but when I went a-wandering, these are ten posts which caught my eye and my imagination. I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane.

1. The List.  In 2007 I set myself a list of things to achieve.  I didn't finish them all but managed well over half and had some great adventures too.  I must review this in the new year and see what else I have left to do.

2. A Quiet Life.  Yep.

3. Literary Sisters.  Because I love me some book chat.

4. Project Life Tuesday: last week in November.  I used to love these weekly scrapbooking posts.  I'd love to get back into memory keeping like this.

5. A life of simple pleasures...a thought on boys....and some more shiny. I wrote this post in September 2008 after some pondering and included the fateful proclamation that I finally knew what I wanted in a relationship.  Three days later Matthew and I got together.  Foreshadowing win, blog.

6. Five Minute Friday: Real.  I used to love doing the five minute Friday prompts.  Such a fun, engaging way to write.

7. Ten years.  Sometimes things on the blog get deep, just as things do in life.  Writing on the loss of a dear friend was one of the hardest posts I've written, but if it helps just one person working through things, it was worth it.

8. All the leaves are brown.  A short and sweet thinking out loud post.  I've always got time for these!

9. Joinverne5s.  I was a joinee for six or seven lovely years, and writing up our Join Meets, where dozens of people converged on a city to catch up, do challenges, and do lots of random acts of kindness (RAoKs), was always fun.  This Inverness one was especially great as the lovely Naomi and my mummy came along!

10. London-Houston-Dallas-London.  Weddings have been a huge part of the last ten years.  Flying over to Texas to be part of Jenna & Chris's was brilliant, and was mine and Matthew's first big holiday together too.

Here's to the next ten years.