Catherine Dietrich

Lazazu • 20th April 2022

How long can I stay in Spain without needing a visa?

Many Brits choose to buy property in Spain with the intent to live or retire there, but as a result of Brexit, moving to Spain has become a more difficult choice. However, where there’s a will there’s a way, and with the right guidance and a good understanding of the rules, Spanish residency is within reach.

Residency rules have changed since January 2021, after the Brexit deadline. Before this, the European Union Withdrawal Act was in place, where there was a transitional period during which U

Lazazu • 29th March 2022

The ultimate guide to buying a holiday home in Ibiza | co-ownership

If you’re dreaming of sunshine days and warm nights, al fresco dining, the sound of cicadas in the olive groves and sinking your toes into the sand of some of the world’s most beautiful beaches, a second home on Ibiza could be exactly what you’re looking for. Whether you imagine a villa with sweeping views of the island’s stunning coastline or a Finca nestled deep in the hills of the Morna valley, on this idyllic Balearic island you’ll surely feel like paradise has been found. Continue reading f

Good-People.ch • 2nd February 2022

Building Self-Esteem in Our Children

If we could have one wish come true for our little ones, it would be that they could see themselves the way we see them: perfect, exactly as they are. But life can be cruel and as they grow up they will encounter challenges that knock their confidence. So how do we help them recover when this happens, and build their self-esteem so that they grow into strong, resilient, confident people?

Self-esteem is defined in psychology as a person’s overall view of themselves - how they perceive, appreciat

Instapeople • 20th October 2021

Slick Onboarding Tactics for Small Businesses

For small-to-medium sized businesses, there is no asset more valuable than our employees. And our employee onboarding system says everything our newest recruits need to know about the company culture and their own value. No matter the size or type of your company, an organised, deliberate and intentional onboarding system is vital - not only because it makes new employees feel welcome and eases the transition for existing staff, but also because research shows it leads to higher satisfaction lev

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 5th July 2016

To the Thirtysomething Mums

I see you in the supermarket, I see you at the playground. I see you at the school drop-off, I see you on the train and in the kid-friendly restaurants. Sometimes you see me too, and we exchange a little smile, an eye-roll, an “I get it” moment. More often you don’t see me – you are chasing your toddler down the aisles, watching your pre-schooler like a hawk as she climbs higher than you’d like, admonishing your kid for pinching her brother, reaching for a wet wipe, mopping up a spilled drink.

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 10th May 2019

What I know for sure about expat life

I never thought we would be the people who ended up leaving our home town and moving all over the world. As impulsive 20-somethings we left on a whim because I had a dream to live and work in the most exciting city in the world. I thought we’d be in London for a few years and then go “home” to Cape Town and live our adulthood as we had our very happy childhoods, on the slopes of Table Mountain amongst family and friends. But then one opportunity followed another and we kept saying “yes” to them…

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 28th June 2018

Keeping the Faith

It’s about now that I start to feel my resolve wavering.

Weeks away from another international move, we’ve reached the stage that I now think of as the special kind of purgatory that lies between decision and action. The days that stretch ahead where boxes are not yet packed and normal service is expected to continue – snacks to be prepared, playdates made, yoghurt wiped from the walls, toys pulled out and packed away again, dinner served, stories read, little foreheads kissed goodnight – all w

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 14th June 2018

Preparing for Goodbye

We didn’t come here for ever.

We didn’t mean to stay much longer than a year. We never intended to make the Bahamas our home; we didn’t mean to fall in love with it, and we could never have predicted that from the first moment we got that white white coral sand in our shoes it would feel like it had always been there.

But that was what happened.

Two years ago next month we arrived on this island with our belongings in 10 boxes and – as with so many leaps of faith in life – found that the risk

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 11th September 2017

Fear

Reader, ‘tis the season. As the mists and mellow fruitfulness begin to gently settle themselves on the hills in the place I was born, here we greet an altogether different season. Here we watch the hurricanes, and here it is the season of fear.

I imagine you too will have been watching the hurricanes this season. Harvey in Texas, where the flooding was as big as everything else in that great state. And Irma across the Caribbean where this weekend the tiny islands that make up paradise were left

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 10th November 2016

Marooned

As I sit down to write this, CNN plays in the background – Hilary Clinton has just given her concession speech, and it’s a strange day. As topsy-turvy as the world felt when I woke up this morning, my overarching thought today is, “It’s good to be back.”

Because for the last 5 weeks, our house has been a technological desert: no internet, no TV. It was an unfortunate series of events – a house move, a hurricane, a population needing to have power reinstalled (meaning our needs were rightfully l