L...

30 July 2014

...is for Lonicera...


...more commonly known as Honeysuckle, two huge plants blooming and filling my garden with its heady scent.  I have no idea what variety they are as they were in the garden when we bought our house.  They were looking a little sorry for themselves as they were being continually nibbled by rabbits, we have fenced them out and now they are both huge.  One sneaked into my photo shared for the letter H, rambling wildly over an arbour.

Joining in with the Alphabet Photography Project.  

Moments....

28 July 2014


....this week of...

...happiness swimming in the village pool, harvesting 9lb of blackcurrants from one bush, a family film night, finding caraway seeds in my garden, rain, bird watching with the children

...sadness at the continued loss of life in the world

...creatingproject off the needles, another cast on, strawberry peg people, blackcurrant pie

 ...reading finished The Year of the Flood and now reading the last book in the trilogy MaddAddam by the wonderful Margaret Atwood one of my favourite authors, to the children The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, and these picture books* you can read a short review of them here, 183. Don't Spill the Milk by Stephen Davies, 184. The Goggle-Eyed Goats by Stephen Davies, 185. Oso en un cuadrado by Stella Blackstone, 186. The Enormous Turnip retold by Cristiana Cerretti, 187. Owl goes to Town by Jenny Brown, 188. Beauty and the Beast retold by Michael Dahl, 189. Abigail by Catherine Rayner, 190. The Mermaid's Treasure Hunt by Dereen Taylor

...learning about buoyancy, gases, sonar, warriors

...thinking about fun things to do in August

...hoping to have time to do some sewing soon

...wondering whether I am going to enjoy being in the company of a few thousand people at the end of this week

...looking forward to catching up with a friend I haven't seen for ages at their birthday party

*as part of the 300 Picture Books Challenge

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I hope you have had a lovely week too......................enjoy the one to come!

Lately...

26 July 2014

...I have had another madly busy week.  Days when I have felt like I have met myself coming back.  My head is full of lists of food for meals that I won't even cook.  My car is sat waiting on the drive packed with enough food to feed 22 people for four days, poised to be dropped off later today.  Once again my time is being given to volunteering and this week has confirmed to me that a decision I made a few weeks back is absolutely the right one.  I have been tasked with sorting out the food for a group attending a week long, international Scout camp.  I myself will be going for the second half of the week and will take another car load of food for those days.  By the time I do go I know that I will have had enough of shopping it is my least favourite activity at the best of times especially when I have to to into shops I wouldn't normally, but six hours of food shopping is enough to tip anyone over the edge, right?

My busy week has been interspersed with quiet days.  Days when I had so many offers I could have visited four or five different families.  Offers that I, sadly, had to turn down knowing that if we did too much we all be tired and crabby and that would not be good for me or anyone else.  It is hard, this saying no business but it is the right thing to do.  Honesty is a good policy.  There was a time when I would have felt that I couldn't say no as I would damage my relationships or there would be no more offers in the future and I always had those memories of my early days of home edding in my head when we didn't see anyone from one week to the next.

Being at home a little more this week has meant that the radio has been on more than usual.  I have forced myself to sit still to relax and rest, and do a bit of knitting, oh how I have missed that these past few months.  But the radio has not been relaxing these past few days, or weeks when I have listened for that matter.  There is much conflict in the world, conflict that we don't always hear about that rumbles on continuously and then it gets much worse and it makes it into the news.  News that is difficult to stomach and hard to comprehend when you live in a country that is at peace and has been for a very long time.  Fingers are pointed, trust has all but gone, fingers are pointed and blame is apportioned before evidence has been gained, it makes for very difficult listening.

My own conflicts that I have wrestled with these past few months are not over yet.  The decision I mentioned before may have been made but my commitments are not over yet, one next week, one at the end of the month and another in October.  The time they take is time I am not spending with my children, and theirs and my friends but it will end, unlike the conflicts elsewhere.  So whilst I look a the detritus littering my hall, bits of food labelled and ready to be taken with me next week, shoes in abundance, a folded laundry box, my knitting, it is the same in the rest of the house, I know that this time will pass.

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Blogger has informed me that is my 600th post!  Can't quite believe it :)

K...

23 July 2014

...is for knitting


which I like to do when relaxing or chatting with friends.  I can pick it up knit a few stitches and put it down, depending on the pattern of course.  Like so many things it has its own language, I remember looking at the patterns my granny knitted when I was a child and could not make head nor tail of them, gibberish they were, now they make perfect sense.  This pattern is for a Langdale written by the very talented Lily Kate France who was just fourteen at the time.  I am so nearly finished, a few rows on the last sleeve, weaving all the ends in my least favourite job and a gentle blocking.  I told you knitting had its own language!  Blocking means shaping it after you have finished knitting to tease out imperfections and get it to the shape and size you need, it locks the stitches in place.  Whilst it is blocking (it takes a while) I will be casting on my next project using the stripy looking yarn one of these for my youngest as a Christmas present.  Yes I know it is only July but if I don't start soon I won't have everything made in time.........

Meanwhile head on over to see what others are sharing for the Alphabet Photography Project

Moments...

21 July 2014


...this week of...

...happiness watching my children playing with their friends, days spent outdoors in the wonderful summer warmth, harvesting potatoes for tea, knitting time, a quiet weekend at home

...sadness at terrible events across the world

...creating rows of knitting - nearly finished now, picnics, lego stop motion films, liquid soap, yogurt

...reading The Year of the Flood by the wonderful Margaret Atwood one of my favourite authors, to the children The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, and these picture books* you can read a short review of them here, 179. Alice the Tennis Fairy by Daisy Meadows, 180. Walking Through the Jungle by Debbie Harter, 181. L'Ours dans la villa by Stella Blackstone, 182. L'Ours a la mason by Stella Blackstone

...learning about whittling, bees, ants, adding, stop motion film making,

...thinking about blame and how it seems so many look to apportion this especially when trust has all but gone or broken down

...hoping to harvest my blackcurrants this week

...wondering about places to go for an overnight wild camp with the children

...looking forward to a quieter week this week

*as part of the 300 Picture Books Challenge

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I hope you have had a lovely week too......................enjoy the one to come!

Messy

19 July 2014

I grew up in a messy house, at least my memory of my teenage years is such.  My parents have had a empty nest for around eighteen years and moved into a brand new house recently and still their house is far from tidy so I feel I am safe to assume that my childhood home was messy.  I am not a fan of constant mess and clutter.

We used to spend time, every week, at a friends house which was untidy, no I am going to be honest, it was more than untidy it was cluttered, messy and dirty.  That is of course my opinion I would never judge anyone on the state of their house if I had I wouldn't have stayed friends or visited the house so often.  There were times, particularly in the winter when it was too cold to sit outside that I wondered what on earth I was doing there it was with mixed emotions that we stopped visiting a few months ago.  I felt relieved and slightly guilty.

In my own house everything has to have a home, a place it could be put away.  There is a finite amount of places that things can be put away in our house so usually, around birthdays and Christmas time we have to give something away when we receive something.  I was discussing this with some friends recently and the FlyLady came into the conversation, perhaps my friend and my parents need to heed her advice.

I have perfected worked hard at the art of decluttering my house but other parts of my life, well they are messy, not in a my life is a mess sense, but more in a disorganised, flitting from one thing to another sense.  I am easily sidetracked and very fond of displacement activities when I need to do something that I would rather not be doing.  I have come to realise I am hopeless at planning ahead and saying no, so I end up with too many things in the diary and not enough time to prepare for each of them, for different reasons I was in the exact same position last year.  Hmm perhaps I could do with learning from my experience.

Everything we do outside the house involves some form of preparation be it a few bits and pieces of clothing, a picnic or a fully packed car.  When I am planning what we will do I forget about this bit.  Over the winter we tend to do less outside or that involves lots of packing, but that doesn't mean we spend the whole time at home!  But come the spring and warmer weather and suddenly we are like caged animals and I go mad putting so many things in the diary that I forget the bit about preparation.   So in a need to do better kind of effort I have once again reached that time of the year when I feel like I am going mad and have backed off organising much for the rest of the summer to keep myself sane.  What I could with doing is remembering that in the Spring, keep the bigger picture in mind, and to remind myself constantly it is ok to say no.  I am not sure how I am going to remember this so if you have tips you can share.........

J...

16 July 2014

...is for Jam...


...strawberry, picked by me and the children at a local pick your own.  We have tried to grow them in the garden but they just don't ripen so we grow other plants instead.  We picked six pounds of strawberries and ate most of them!  We made just over two pounds of fruit into three pounds of jam, my daughter helped me, stirring the pan from time to time.  I hope she remembers it, in time, just as I remember doing the same with my mother, and she with hers the wonderful alchemy of jam.  Now I am off to make some scones, they are perfect with strawberry jam and cream don't you think?  In the meantime head over to PODcast to see what others are sharing for  the Alphabet Photography Project.

Flowers

15 July 2014



I have been wanting to make some small thank you presents for a while now.  I have been hampered in this by too many distractions which I have now said no to, and a lack of ideas of what to make.  I wanted/needed them to be something I could make fairly quickly, with bits and pieces I had in the house and they had to be small enough to send through the post without breaking the bank.  A while ago I pinned a tutorial which I realised would be perfect as I had some brooch backs in the house! So not wanting to pin something that I would never make I practiced what I preached.


In the end these weren't made that quickly partly because I have so little time for any crafts or creating at the moment and partly because they are quite fiddly.  This could be because I made these with six petals whereas the original suggests five but I thought the pattern of petals with the materials I was using looked better with six, the next one I make I will try five.


I have punched holes in some card and painted on the word Thank you and there you have it a card with a wee present attached.  Now I just need to get them in the post.............

Joining in with Nicole



Moments...

14 July 2014



...this week of...

...happiness being outside with the children, finding the time to tend to my garden, saying no, watching a fledging bird right before our eyes, outdoor swimming

...sadness at excuses that are not addressing the situation 

...creating rows of knitting, fabric flower brooches, picnics

...reading an intriguing book, Nowhere People by Paulo Scott, to the children The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, and these picture books* you can read a short review of them here 177. The Ice Princess by Mandy Stanley, 178. Lulu and the Treasure Hunt by Emma Chichester Clark

...learning about wasps, birds, tanks, food, bodies, nutrition, 

...thinking about how important it is to be truthful

...hoping we don't exhaust ourselves this week as we are very busy!

...looking forward to meeting up with friends we haven't seen for a while


*as part of the 300 Picture Books Challenge

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I hope you have had a lovely week too......................enjoy the one to come!

Words

10 July 2014

I have so many words in my head right now.  They are a jumbled mass keeping me awake at night jostling around in brownian motion.  There are snippets of conversations, emails I have received or written in my head but never sent, information that I form together to make conclusions that may be completely wrong.  I wrangle with these thoughts and eventually come out the other side with a clear head and some decisions.

For the past ten years, no longer than that, I have been a volunteer.  Giving freely of my time to young people in my area who are part of the Scout Association.  I have watched children grow from young children through to adulthood and when I bump into them as adults it always gives me great pleasure to hear what they are doing with themselves.  The time I have given has changed over time, stopping completely when my children were babies.  Lately it has increased, I have not been pushed into this, it has been my choice and I have been happy with this for the most part.  Until I start getting emails from a parent which are frankly, rude.

I worked for ten years with volunteers, I managed them and paid staff.  I had a team of over eight hundred of them (and three paid staff).  Almost all the contact was by letter, phone calls or emails with the odd occasion face to face.  It was so important to use the correct language, as it is in contact with anyone, but with volunteers it doesn't mater how irritating or rude they are you must ensure that they always feel valued and included.  The data protection act meant that anything your wrote about them they could ask to look at we had to keep our opinions to ourself and never write them down!  The emails I have recently received would have been totally unacceptable in that organisation, I would not have lost my job but, there would have been serious repercussions.

So I need to make a decision, as added to this I am feeling somewhat taken advantage of.  I had been asked to organise something by one of the Leaders who it now transpires will not be present and has known for weeks they wouldn't be.  I am happy to organise stuff but I am not happy with the fact they have waited until this week to inform me, they had led me to believe they would be there and the rude email is as a direct result of their interfering with incorrect information with something I had already sorted out.  I have now made my decision and I know it will be unexpected, it is to me too, but I am happy with it and feeling very relieved.

It's easy to not notice small changes.  Children change every month, sometimes every week or even by day.  If we look away we miss them.  There are so many distractions to keep our attention elsewhere but when these distractions increase slowly they can become so absorbed into our lives that we don't notice.  It is as if it has always been so.  I am too distracted at the moment and my precious time with my children feels like it is shoehorned in between organising things for others.  I have decided no more.  My children and my family come first.  Saying no is hard, it can make us feel bad about it, we are letting people down.  But if I continue to say yes I know that I am letting my children down and that is not what I want.

Now I just need to sort out some of the words that have been said to me by friends and make sense of the pictures they have given me and stop the dancing going on in my head......

I...

09 July 2014

...is for imagination...


Does it look familiar?  Or just a load of rocks, water and boats?  If you have read any Arthur Ransome you will have come across this in one of his books.  I wanted to be the children in those books when I read them as a child, having adventures and camping over night on islands.  This is Wild Cat Island from the book Swallows and Amazons if you have the book look at chapter four, the picture caption is feeling their way in.  Whilst I had lots of amazing adventures as a child I had to wait until adulthood to have my own on the island, canoeing out to it for an explore.  You are not able to camp on it but we found a great beach on the lake to have our own camp out.  In real life this is Peel Island on Coniston Water a beautiful lake in the Lake District.

Joining in with the Alphabet Photography Project.

Moments...

07 July 2014

...this week of...

...happiness a weekend at home with family, rain to water the garden, an evening of canoeing with local scouts working out well, weeding the garden

...sadness at having to spend a day in bed over a weekend of beautiful weather, it is the first time we have all been at home together over a weekend for a long time, but I do feel so much better now

...creating strawberry jam, homemade toothpaste, fabric flowers, rows of knitting

...reading an intriguing book, Nowhere People by Paulo Scott, to the children The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis, and these picture books* you can read a short review of them here 171. My Name is Bob by James Bowen, 172. All in a Day by Cynthia Rylant, 173. The Glass Heart by Sally Gardner 174. Fruits and Vegetables by Carrie Branigan, 175. My Amazing Body by Pat Thomas, 176. What's so Good about vegetables? by Ronne Randall

...learning about digestion, bodies, nutrition, norse myths, vikings, Robin Hood, bike maintenance

...thinking about the garden and the things I need to do this week

...hoping for dry weather for a BBQ this week

...looking forward to a walk with the children this week to a local waterfall


*as part of the 300 Picture Books Challenge

Lists

04 July 2014


I have had a few conversations with friends recently that have surprised me.  It takes a long time to get to really know someone so I suppose I shouldn't have been, surprised that it is.  But I was, because the information has changed the way I perceive them as people.  I read many blogs but only know a handful of those writers in real life, blogs often provide a snapshot or window into the writers life.  It is easy for the reader to be lulled into thinking that their lives are always that way, full of creativity, celebrations, beautiful homes and wonderful days out.  The mundane, the day to day is often absent, but it is still there in the background swamping us from time to time with their needs, crucial as they are to our existence.

I had one of those swamping moments earlier this week, with so many jobs that needed doing I wrote myself a list.  I used to be a compulsive list writer.  In the days when I was in paid employment I needed them to function and remember the many tasks I needed to do, although they were also depressing as I often crossed a job off the top of the list and wrote another on the bottom.  My list, written this week, was done so in trepidation.  When I became a mother I ceased being a jobs list writer, most of the time the list would bash me round the head with all the undone jobs on it.  I was  sporadic about cleaning and keeping things tidying, doing it when I had moments here and there or when visitors were imminent.  My children are a little older now and Mondays have turned into a morning for the house, a bit of cleaning, tidying and ironing.  This is all works fine until a few Mondays in a row we are not at home, or doing something else and then we go away, return, have a busy week and the house takes on the burgled look.

Last year we took a lot of camping trips, in the space of three months we did five.  Whilst planning these into the diary I failed to remember how long it takes to organise, the week before for preparing, then being away and the week after for putting away.  Three weeks for each trip and the whole of three months disappeared into a camping hole.  We loved each trip but it was too much.  This year I have had one trip in the same period but foolishly filled the time before and after with lots of other stuff so the putting away in particular just didn't happen.  What did happen is more getting stuff out so that my hall resembled a Kim's game, remember that, ha ha!  A kettle, a plastic cup, the remains of days out bags with coats, jumpers, waterproofs, paperwork files some of this in bags some on the floor and underneath it all I found a half emptied veg bag we have delivered each week.

So, I worked my way, not very efficiently through my list.  Hoovering that should be easy to complete but I need to tidy first play the game of moving things from one room to another.  The house is tidy, hoover is out and I am poised to start and my phone starts bleeping.  An alarm to check for an email.  I check the email and get sidetracked with a few blogs.......then the washing machine bleeps it has finished its cycle.  The washing is hung and another load in, back to the hoovering......no wait it is hungry time the children want lunch.  My hoovering did get done and the list was completed but in the future I think I will stick to meal plans and shopping lists and write a note to self to keep diary clear around camping trips......are you a list writer?

H...

02 July 2014

....is for Hammock...


...hanging in our garden.  We bought this hammock when travelling round Ecuador but we had no where to hang it for years.  When we bought our house the first big job we did was landscape the garden, it was a patch of grass when we moved in.  We my husband built an arbour with attachments for the hammock.  There is an unruly honeysuckle growing over the top, you can see a picture of it here along with others of the garden, and a small thyme lawn underneath.  I loved lying in it with the children when they were babies, nowdays they tend to use it whilst I am pottering in the garden.  

Joining in with the Alphabet Photography Project.