In Joy

12/03/2026

🧡 Ewelina Dus 🧡

Ewelina is from Poland. She has been here 20 years with her children who are in school and were born in NI.
This is home for her, she loves life here although as her children have got older she reminisces about Poland, her family and upbringing with a great passion even though her early years were far from easy. She explains how when the children are older and more integrated in the local culture in Mid-Ulster it is harder to hold on to cultural heritage, she is keen to do her best and believes through the Heritage Journeys Project this is an opportunity to provide a cultural legacy for her family.

Polish traditions around holiday times for instance Christmas and Easter are very dear to her. When her children were younger she celebrated important events and incorporated many Polish traditions into family life. Christmas Eve traditions are recalled by her, the first star, the 12 dishes and she has passed these traditions down to her children. Although traditions have been somewhat lost but her cultural identity is still important to her.

Nowadays she speaks more English than Polish but her children did learn Polish and before Covid they often travelled to Poland for summer holidays.

She has a great determination and an incredible work ethic despite the many cultural and language challenges she has faced but her resilience has been demonstrated time after time and she is a great encourager to keep going. She has discovered a joy for cooking and baking and has developed a business around her passion. Her dream is to one day have a sweet and treat coffee shop. Her cakes are hugely irresistible!

“I would say to a young woman thinking about coming here to have an open heart. In 20 years everything has changed since I came first. I think it’s harder now and more scary but come with an open heart and an open mind and be prepared because anything can happen. It will not be easy. But it is ok not to be easy, that is how we grow and she will always be welcomed here”

“Home is where my heart is”

To watch her story interview click the link below✨
https://heritagejourneysni.com/profiles/ewelina-dus/

This beautiful portrait was taken by our photographer Catriona Corrigan Divine Photography📸

10/03/2026

Calling all crafters, local businesses or folks in the wellbeing circle to come along and show their talents, creations or advertising their business... Tables are £20. Please get in touch, everyone welcome 🤗

08/03/2026

To mothers, grandmothers,sisters, daughters, neices, cousins and friends!

04/03/2026

Another painting away home to where it belongs!

24/02/2026

A week squished into seconds!

18/02/2026

This is soooo important - please share.
Switch off Youtube and put on traditional type shows with a start and a finish

This is an edited piece from Professor Sam Wass who is submitting evidence for the Dept for Education recommendations on screen time use in early years – including this figure.

20 years ago:
Nearly 1/2 of UK preschool children watched CBeebies each week
Today, only around one in three do.

During the same period, there has been a rapid increase in short-form video content.

Today, 91% of 3-5-year-olds use video-sharing platforms such as YouTube

❌The analysis compares one single 25-minute episode from CBeebies In The Night Garden in 2006 – a popular show at the time and compared it with a 25-minute excerpt of a typical 4-year-old’s viewing content on YouTube Kids, recorded in a recent US study.

Instead of one storyline with one cast of eight characters, the child watching YouTube saw 10 different clips during the same period, featuring 37 different speaking characters in total. 🤯

There were also :
🤯large increases in light information (fast-paced light and colour changes)
🤯sound information (fast-paced volume and pitch changes
🤯Editing speed changed markedly – from one cut every 16.7 seconds on CBeebies to one cut every 1.5 seconds in the YouTube clips.

❗️The makers of screen content are increasingly using fast-paced movement and sound to capture children’s attention
♨️targeting brain mechanisms that automatically attract our attention to things that are moving in our environment-These mechanisms have developed, we think, because as early humans, movement used to signal threat (e.g. predators) or opportunities (e.g. food), so we have evolved to pay instant attention to movement.
Movement-based attention capture is immediate, involuntary, and does not require understanding of the content being viewed

❗️⚠️But there is also good evidence that this shift to fast-paced and unpredictable content may explain the well-replicated correlations between screen use and behavioural dysregulation❗️⭕️

Young brains are more slow-paced than adult brains.
In situations that are too fast-paced and unpredictable, our brains shift into ‘high alert’ mode, to mobilise rapid target detection – an automatic, evolutionary reaction to being in situations that are unpredictable, and so might be dangerous
Changes in the brainstem trigger overall increases in arousal and wakefulness and the sympathetic (‘fight or flight’) nervous system
❌Which is probably why, in the short term at least, children are ratty after they come off screens.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sam-wass-987513202_today-i-am-submitting-evidence-for-the-forthcoming-activity-7429107771125424128-0ACD?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&rcm=ACoAADyRRo4BbBItnyvwxb3jZapnL9koFVRa5Tk

18/02/2026

InJoy Forever - Keepsake & Memorial jewellery 🤍
This can be done with flowers,breast milk, placentas, loved ones cremains, pets ashes, pet hair, pieces of fabric...as a preservation artist I can help you with whatever is special to you and preserve it Forever 🤍✨

14/02/2026

🎶 "What the world needs now is love sweet love, it's the only thing that there's just too little of!" ❤️ Jackie DeShannon...

We had such lovely connections last night at Glow Girls Galentines ❤️🍒🩷🥰

We were cosy, we were creating and connecting ✨

I was asked a couple of times by the girls if i do this every Friday ✨❤️... Must be doing something right because they both said they would come every week if I did!!! 😉☺️👐

🩷 Remember to show yourself love too...
Everyday! ❤️

Much love
Yve xo

14/02/2026

12/02/2026

✨💕❤️ Congratulations DONNA KENWELL! Please pass on the good news and I look forward to having the lucky girl join us tomorrow! ✨
Thanks to you all for participating ❤️

12/02/2026

Apologies for not picking a winner yesterday we have been so busy with kids and a winner will be picked this evening!!