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

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 1st September 2017

I Miss You Already

At the end of June when we hung up your school uniform and kicked your little black shoes into the corner of the cupboard, I thought the summer would last forever. I saw the unstructured days stretch ahead of us as an unknown quantity and felt just as daunted by them as you were excited.

And then we woke up on day one, and it was 7.30am. And I didn’t have to pack your lunchbox, or chivvy you into your uniform, or make either of us look presentable until we were good and ready for our day, and w

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 26th May 2017

A Wrinkle in Time

A beep on my phone, a message from my BFF across the the world, and the words that showed just how well she knows me: “So I know it’s an outrageous idea but…”

It was an invitation to join her and three other friends for a girls’ weekend in New York City. An escape from my perfect, beautiful life. A chance to leave responsibility behind and pound the pavements with some of my favourite women, shop at my leisure, drink cocktails on the rooves of tall buildings, laugh til my sides hurt, sleep thro

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 19th April 2018

Wear Flowers in Your Hair

It was 2.06pm on a Tuesday afternoon and she walked – late – into our First Year English lecture. I looked up as she smiled at me and slid into the seat next to mine, and what I saw was the kind of girl this world may have conditioned me to dislike. Blonde with long legs and big blue eyes, curvy in all the right places and almost unfeasibly pretty. She wore a brightly patterned sundress and had the kind of face that made people jealous of her before she even had a chance to open her mouth.

Unem

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 12th October 2016

Something wicked this way came

Definition: A storm with a violent wind, in particular a tropical cyclone in the Caribbean.

Origin: Mid 16th century: from Spanish huracán, probably from Taino hurakán god of the storm.

Hurricane Matthew was coming, and much the same way as I did before childbirth, I read up on the phenomenon we were about to experience. As with childbirth, I tracked its course as we counted down the days to its arrival, and made the necessary preparations. As with childbirth, the wait was agonising. And as wi

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 28th February 2017

Home from Home

I feel like a bit of a mutt, nationality-wise. My passport and birthplace call me British, my upbringing and my heart say I’m South African. Born in one place, raised in another – and now raising my own family here, there and everywhere – sometimes I’m a bit fuzzy about my national identity, about where “home” is.

I’m fuzzy, that is, until the exact moment, once a year or so, I step off a 747 on to the tarmac at Cape Town International Airport. And then it all becomes startlingly clear.

For me

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 8th July 2019

All The Things We Did Not Know

Looking back now at this picture of us on your first day of the school year ten months ago, a lump rises in my throat: I look at our nervous, expectant smiles and I want to cry. I want to cry for those two people who had no idea that the hardest year of our lives lay ahead of us. I want to cry for our unwavering, as yet untested belief that things would always go our way. I want to cry for all the tears we had yet to shed. Most of all, I want to cry for all the things we did not know.

We didn’t

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 23rd April 2018

One Might Have a Case of Baby Envy

Clever old Kate has given birth to her littlest prince this morning, on St George’s Day. And for me (as I suspect for many), all hope of productivity for the day went out of the window the moment I saw the news alert pop up on my phone. All day I’ve had Sky News Live on in the background as the world held its collective breath, waiting for the royal couple to emerge from the Lindo Wing to introduce their tiny bundle to the bank of cameras and news reporters waiting outside those famous doors.

W

Motherly • 22nd March 2019

My girls' weekend was more than a break from parenting—it was an eye-opening learning experience

I learned that it's impossible to underestimate the value of an old friendship and that my children were compeltely fine without me.

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 25th June 2017

The End of the Very Beginning

A September morning and a too-big school dress, a neat little ponytail, knee-high socks and shiny black shoes walking little legs through the school gates for the first time, her tiny hand held tight in mine. The first morning of school, and both of us brand new.

It’s been a year of so many firsts and we’ve navigated them all with a little help from each other and our friends. The first meet and greet with the teachers, now beloved friends and trusted partners; the first choosing of a locker (d

Scary Mommy • 7th April 2017

Dear Working Mom: You Are Amazing, And Don't You Forget It

I don’t know how you do it.

We’ve all seen the hilarious BBC interview that went so very wrong when a toddler and baby came running into the room while their dad was on Skype being interviewed about democracy in South Korea. It was my favorite YouTube moment of the year — until my friend reposted this on Facebook, a spoof of what it would have been like if it had happened to a woman — a working mom. And the reason I laughed so hard is that it so absolutely could have been true.

But actually, i

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 11th June 2016

Things to love about the Isle of Man

If you or (maybe more likely) your guy are into motorbikes, then you will know exactly where the Isle of Man is. If you’re not into motorbikes you might be vaguely aware of the island as being a tax haven, possibly somewhere in the Channel Islands (it isn’t – it’s off the north west coast of the UK – but you wouldn’t be the first to make this mistake). But if you pay attention to the news this week you’re bound to hear a mention of it. Because this is the week of the year when the Isle of Man tr

Littles, Love and Sunshine • 28th July 2016

Afternoon tea in London Town

I have a confession: no matter where I am in the world, however lovely the location, a little piece of my heart always longs for England. The place of green and pleasant land – and the afternoon tea.

Tea makes everything better. In my world this is fact. And tea accompanied by finger sandwiches and baked goods is, in my opinion, a thing of true beauty. It’s been a few years since I’ve lived in London, but when I did I made it my business to enjoy the ritual of a traditional afternoon tea at a b

Good-People.ch • 16th March 2021

Nannies: How to Find the Perfect Family

Finding the perfect family to work with is the surest way to fulfilment as a nanny. When you’re interviewing for different positions, you might feel pressure outshine your competition and prove you’re perfect for the job - but don’t forget one very important thing: the family has to be a good fit for you too. Committing to the perfect job can feel like a big leap of faith, but at Good People we’re here to help you along the way. Here are some surefire ways to find your perfect family.

Realise t

Good-People.ch • 26th January 2021

What to do when you feel overwhelmed

If you’re not feeling overwhelmed, the chances are you’re teetering right on the edge of it. Even in the most perfect of circumstances, the mental load is heavy - and in these extraordinary times, “perfect” feels a very long way off. With more on our plates than ever before, the to-do list is getting longer every day, and sometimes its hard to know where to start.

Whether you’re juggling working from home with looking after young children, or you feel paralysed by the global news, it can often