Berenice Hart

If the children are still happily singing along to Old McDonald a farm then Sardinia offers some great opportunities for them to engage with farm yard animals. La Collina is home to a restored country estate, where the sheep go baa and the pigs go oink, and so on. There is a great deal of great self catering accommodation around, and the spot is near to some wonderful little beaches. I must admit, I generally abhor the self-help industry (and am also irked by the widespread use of ‘artist' to describe anyone who has ever made anything, from a film to a fancy dress costume) so I was wary of a book about ‘the creative process'. But I needn't have been concerned. By creative living, Elizabeth is not talking about, necessarily, a life that is professionally or exclusively devoted to the arts, but ‘living a life that is driven more strongly by creativity than fear'.  'I've spent my entire life in devotion to creativity, and along the way I've developed a set of beliefs about how it works - and how to work with it - that is entirely and unapologetically based upon magical thinking. And when I refer to magic here, I mean it literally - in the Hogwarts sense. I believe that creativity is a force of enchantment. Creative work can often involve persistence and endurance, she agrees, but it's also hugely gratifying. ‘Of all the ways that a human could spend their time on earth, you get to invent a non-essential luxurious item such as a painting, or a piece of music, or a novel. Who is luckier than you?' Brittany has some of the nicest little beaches in Europe perfect for paddling and picking up shells. And building castles with the crepe coloured sand. It's a beach made for gentle games of football and gentle recreation. There are many lovely vacation rental accommodation places around for relaxed evenings afterwards A vacation rental villa tends to be perfect for families with children under ten, the familiarity of the home setting, rather than the bewildering overcrowded hotel. For your own comfort you may find that as well you have your own space and are not stuck constantly in the same room as the child. Not many are aware of the prominence of children's literature available in Menorca, in fact for a child with a passion for words and stories it is almost a perfect location. "Authors in Residence" is a wonderful little literature festival catering for children, that offers some big names from the world of children's stories giving readings of their work under a thick Mediterranean sun. Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing partners. (I'm talking about all toddler lunch ideas dairy free here - artistic, scientific, industrial, commercial, ethical, religious, political.) When an idea thinks it has found somebody - say, you - who might be able to bring it into the world, it will pay you a visit. Mostly, you will not notice, because you're so consumed by your own distractions and insecurities that you aren't receptive to inspiration. You might miss the signal because you're watching TV, or pondering your failures and mistakes, or just really busy. The idea will try to wave you down (perhaps for a few moments, a few months or even for a few years), and when it finally realises that you're oblivious to its message, it will move on to someone else. Big Magic, by contrast, is more of an inspirational guide for creative living; dare I say it…a self-help book. ‘Yes, I'm happy for it to be called that,' she says brightly. ‘I wanted to write a giant permission note, to women especially.' A decade on, the 46-year-old writer is happily remarried, to Jose Nunes (known as Felipe in Eat, Pray, Love, the older Brazilian divorcé she meets in Bali), with whom she runs an imports store near their home in New Jersey, alongside her career in writing and, increasingly, in public speaking too. That things turned out well is something of an understatement. Elizabeth's story of her year-long travels to Italy, India and Indonesia, a healing solo expedition in the wake of a traumatic and protracted divorce, went on to sell more than 12 million copies, was turned into a Hollywood film starring Julia Roberts, and made the American novelist a household name. ‘Every once in a while, I'll be on a 14-hour flight with my husband and as we're drinking our second bottle of wine and watching another Bourne movie, I'll say, "Aren't you sad we don't have a toddler lunch ideas australia with us right now? Wouldn't it be better if there was a two-year-old here?"' ‘Eat, Pray, Love grew out of conversations I was having with my female friends,' she says. ‘What if I don't want to be a mother? What if I don't want to stay married? What if, what if, what if, what if?' The resulting book was not intended as self-help; it was a highly personal account of her own journey back to health and happiness. However, its message - of not settling for second best, and of ploughing one's own furrow - was one millions of women responded to passionately, feeling that she had seen into their soul.