Blog Archives

Simply..looking back....

31/12/2011

I've taken the idea for this post straight from Jane Brocket! www.yarnstorm.blogs.com Do take a look, Jane's is a nice blog.

I spent a lovely evening browsing 2011's photographs (we were stormbound - again) and here is one for each month - meaningful to me and I hope interesting for you. Will they make you think about what you were doing that month I wonder?

I hope you have had as good a year as I have. There are sorrows to look back on (an unexpected death, an ambition thwarted) as well as pleasures (a christening and a wedding, travel and meetings with old friends) but we tend not to photograph the sorrowful occasions...

What were you doing in January as I was relishing a summer blue sky day?

In February we were chasing dragons in Wales and learning to swim...

The snowdrops in the village are increasing nicely.

April's promise

What were you busy with in May?

Lucy's June garden

July - honeysuckle,

and cake!

We didn't sit out at night often in August...how was the weather where you were?

departing painting....

Playing with the camera.

Showing a friend Charles Rennie Mackintosh before going to Berlin in November

The magnificent real tree in Jenners in Edinburgh...

SLAINTE MHATH FROM SCOTLAND - HAVE A GREAT HOGMANAY!

Simply Christmas....it's not over yet!

30/12/2011

That second children's book I bought this Christmas? (See 15 Dec for the first one.)

It's Peter Pan : a Pop Up Version with Sound, published by Templar books.

What I look for when I go to look at the year's Christmas books is that magic feeling that you are entering another world.

I'm first drawn to the illustrations. I then open the book slowly (I like endcovers)..and wait a moment. If I get the slightest hint of the feeling that I had when I was a child opening a new book, anticipating, holding my breath a little, then I know that the book has probably got 'it' - that special quality that makes it worth having in my collection. I do try not to judge too quickly, some stories need to unfold a little before you get caught up in them, but usually I know right away.

I can recommend this one as a magical book. It's very cleverly made and has enchanted both the children and the adults I have shown it to.

Big Ben strikes its familiar notes (If I was really clever I'd be doing the sound with this.....)

The children giggle...

The water laps and

           a very sweet crescendo indicates the happy ending!

     (Waterstones had it at half price today and I bought another -      second happy ending...)

Simple, simpler, simplest....

26/12/2011

Unless you truly LOVE making a big production of it (and at this point in time you will know!) this could be a good time to tell everyone you're making Christmas simpler next year - they might be relieved....

You really can make it what you want it to be.

Now I'm having a little blog holiday. I really do appreciate you reading and your comments - thank you so much.

Keeping Christmas Simple....

24/12/2011

Peace on earth goodwill to all men is a pretty big ask....

but peace in my home and love expressed towards all those I hold dear and some generous gestures of goodwill to those who are needy, can mean we spread our love a little wider than our own home and our own family. And if we all do this....

The fact that on this one day of the year so many of us try, all around the world, is in itself no small miracle.

I think maybe we get nearer it on Christmas Day than on any other? And I see that maybe this is why I love Christmas so much.

Wishing you all a very very happy day.

Keeping Christmas Simple....Resolution Four..

23/12/2011

Rest..

It is midwinter, take a break.

I know, I know, you're too busy, but plan it. If you plan it it might happen!

Think about what would be a rest for you, and make sure you do some of it over the holiday..

Maybe it would be a rest from the cooking? Let someone else try their hand?

variations on a theme....(see 5 Dec)

Keeping Christmas Simple....Resolution Three..

22/12/2011

Notice!

Yes, we're busy, but what's the point of a mid winter break if we don't notice the solstice (it's today), the phase of the moon (it's a thin thin sliver, a waning crescent just 7% of full), and the stars - when did you last go out and look up, or wrap the children in blankets and take them out on a night when the Milky Way is brilliant in the sky? Or get up early to see the sunrise? (I really should try this one..)

Browse www.earthsky.org or add www.calculatorcat.com/moon_phases/phasenow.php to your favourites. There are miracles happening out there - and we're not looking!

Keeping Christmas Simple....Resolution Two..

21/12/2011

                                                              Give With A Cheerful Heart

Presents should be a source of pleasure, but are often a source of anxiety, especially in the rush of Christmas. Gift giving is a huge subject, and can be a bit of a minefield. I put a lot of thought into presents. In fact I stress quite a bit about finding the 'right' present for each person.

I looked up the meaning of 'gift'. The sheer simplicity of the definition took all the pressure off somehow :

                                         Something that is bestowed voluntarily and without compensation.

It was simpler after I read that, and a few decisions that I had been stressing over suddenly became easy.

If you are worrying Will they like it? What will they think? Have I spent too much? Have I not spent enough? Have I missed the last posting date? (You have!), take a step back and think of what it is really about.

It may be the religious festival, or just being together with family; taking a mid winter break, counting your blessings, helping others....What is it really about for you?

Focus on that.

And relax.

It's only Christmas!

Simply Beautiful....

19/12/2011

When the mist does lift it is so beautiful here that my spirits lift too.

These are the hills at the head of the Holy Loch a few days ago.

This is dusk from my window - the colours change every time I look out. I've yet to get a good photograph of the moon coming up over the mountain....

Simply Live....if you can stay awake..

19/12/2011

As we approach the shortest day my hibernation instinct gets stronger. It is a real struggle to get going in the morning. (It always is, but it's much much worse.)

There is a thick mist, the snow is dingy, the garden is mud. Passing the cards in the hall gave me a little jolt and I realise that one of the reasons for using red in winter must be to help keep us awake!

These perky little pegs for hanging the cards give a good little burst of wake me up colour (Paperchase last year) and work quite well. If you know of an ideal way of displaying Christmas cards, will you let me know?

Now, a good strong cup of coffee....

Keeping Christmas Simple....and making a resolution..

18/12/2011

Today is the last day of December's Making Winter Week (It's been fun) and what I'm making is a resolution (See www.thriftyhousehold.co.uk to see what others are making.)

Have you noticed how Christmas has s t r e t c h e d ? The celebrating and the over indulgence seem to start at the beginning of December and go on till twelfth night - that's a long time!

Of course when the shops start doing Christmas at the end of October, with goodies at half price and three for two and buy one get one free....it is tempting. That is what they are about - tempting me.

So my first Keep Christmas Simple resolution is :

EAT, BUT NOT TOO MUCH.

It actually feels nice to eat too much at first, don't you think? Well, it's Christmas (actually it isn't yet). I deserve it. Ease up. Indulge yourself. Don't be a spoilsport, we're all having extra pud/another drink/cream on it/a few more chocolates....

But after a bit it doesn't feel nice at all. And those few pounds which were such an effort to lose are going back on and it's not even Christmas yet.

Is it worth it? Not really. What's simplest? Don't overeat.

Funny how writing it down strengthens my resolve....

Simply Christmas..and Simply Fun....

17/12/2011

Making, photographing and writing posts about all these candles, lanterns and pretty things is a lovely escape from more urgent matters such as emergency plumbers, the computer screen message 'your hard drive is about to fail', avoiding fallen trees and salting icy paths, ordering and stacking more logs, replacing greenhouse glass broken in the gales....winter here is hard work at present!

I blogged about these lanterns last year, but that was before the 'blog hop' www.thriftyhousehold.co.uk so I hope it's worth repeating.

You take a few tin cans, fill them with water and put them in the freezer till solid (or just out the back door here today).

Then with a hammer and a nail you punch holes in a pattern, which you can mark with a felt pen first.

I found the easiest way to manage this was to sit on the doorstep holding the can between my feet.

Nine year old Ross helped make these ones.

The photographs were taken in the bitter cold, so are slightly out of focus!

If you were really patient and had saved up lots of tin cans, you could put a letter on each to spell out someone's name or a message....

Simply Christmas....instead of paper hats..

16/12/2011

Make a head size circlet of thin twigs - anything from the garden or hedgerow which is still pliable....just twist and weave them together and let dry overnight.

The men and the boys quite like to wear them just like this.

Or this (returning Roman Hero...)

Wiry starry tinsel makes a lovely one...so easy..

A tiny single strand for baby.

Or lots. I even added red roses one extravagant year..

You can buy all sorts of wired decorations which will suit - this was wound around a candle

This is the one I bought in a street market in Edinburgh which gave me the idea. Isn't it pretty?

A nice idea if you have time to prepare it would be to have the circlets ready and let your guests/children create their own with leaves, and tinsel - and gypsophila is gorgeous.

They last from year to year too. I have a little collection of various sizes....

Enjoy.

Simply Christmas reads..

15/12/2011

Every year about this time I have fun day in the city looking at this year's batch of children's Christmas books, and choosing what I think is the best one.

I've bought two this year. One of them is definitely for older children. It is Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy's The Christmas Truce , illustrated by David Roberts and published by Picador.

I can't do better than quote from the flyleaf :

'Down at the front, on a cold winter's night in 1914, amidst the worst war the world had ever seen, an inexplicable silence spread from man to man. Belief was in the air. Then the soldiers ceased to fire and the magic of Christmas took hold...

A few pages in I knew I was going to buy this book, and treasure it.

More Making Winter tomorrow....

Simply Christmas and Making Winter colourful....

14/12/2011

What colour is Christmas?

Red and green of course....so gather together all your red and green bits and pieces.

A basket of red towels in the bathroom with a bit of tree for scent.

The green green tree. Can you smell it? The smell is filling all of downstairs..

But for flowers at this time of year I like white. Last year I had roses (see under Simply Christmas 6 Jan ) this year a £4 supermarket bunch of alstroemeria and £1.50's worth of gypsophila and a lot of free birch branches in glass look wintry and romantic (well, in my eyes anyway) and will last for ages.

I think the proportion of the branches to the flowers makes this look generous and special - lots of branches and taller and wider than the flowers. It's easiest if you put the branches in first.

Silver is the other colour I like to use. I don't have a lot of things silvery, but they all come out at Christmas (out goes minimalism too!). I was going to spray the branches silver, but then I thought that was a bit too much....

At the Making Winter site this week www.thriftyhousehold.co.uk are lots of ideas. Click on the first of the thumbnail link photos over there - 'Becoming' - for a clever solution to a Christmas lights problem that will make you smile..

Simply Winter....and another Making Winter idea

13/12/2011

Yesterday, ice candles. Today, snow lanterns.

I have blogged about these before, but it seems like a good time to repeat it....I first saw them in a book about Sweden.

You make a circle of snowballs - about 6 or 7, leaving a gap big enough to get your hand through (on the lee side if it's windy). Place a second circle of snowballs on top and a third/fourth until you have a pyramid of snowballs. Place a candle in the middle and put a snowball over the gap.

On a cold night it will last for hours. It also looks very pretty with a red candle - will photograph that when the threatened snow comes - maybe tomorrow!

Lovely to look out on when you are inside and cosy! Or place where the children can see it from their bedrooms. This one was on my doorstep.

We've been stormbound today, so I've written all my Christmas cards and had lots of warm mulled wine.

Lovely Winter if you're lucky enough to stay home!

For more Making Winter ideas hop over to www.thriftyhousehold.co.uk

Simply Beautiful....

12/12/2011

Indoors last night....almost colourless at the top of the tree..

And unbelievably colourful out of doors this morning!

I just caught this rainbow before it faded, but the trees, the grass, the hedge and the gate were all so full of colour it was dazzling after all the grey weather and snow.

Fabulous.

Oh. I've just remembered that Making Winter for December starts today! Hop over to www.thriftyhousehold.co.uk for a look at what's happening.

More later.....

Later.

I shall post tomorrow's post today (if you see what I mean). Here are some ice candles to cheer a winter's night and instructions on how to make them.

For each candle you need two plastic disposable cups, some berries and leaves, scissors and tape and a jug of water.

Put a few berries in the bottom of one cup then put the other cup inside it. Slip some leaves and small berries and slices of little fruits in the gap between the cups, tape around to keep in place and fill the gap with water, not quite to the brim. Freeze solid. Remove cups (carefully!) and pop a tea light inside.

Obviously most suited to outside, on a cold night.

On an outdoor windowledge is lovely, or up steps to the door.

I think I got this idea from Country Living magazine some years ago.

like a beautiful landscape..

or an insect eye view by the light of a glow worm?

magical, and so easy to do....

Simply Christmas....preparing and waiting..

11/12/2011

Today was the Christmas Tree Party where the children all decorate our tree, we exchange cards and news, and try to pass the presents to the adults without the children seeing what we are doing. It was wonderful as always, with stories and conversation and games and lots of food. After the 18 guests left I lay back on the sofa and listened with delight to this piece of Advent music, which I want to share with you. The words are by Christine who blogs at http://blethers.blogspot.com/

Click and listen. You won't be disappointed. It is very beautiful.

Simply Christmas....and a few of my favourite things..

10/12/2011

I love getting the boxes down from the loft and taking out all the treasures for the Christmas Tree Party once more. Here are some of my favourites :

This is the post box (Corn Flakes box) with the tinsel strap which goes over his head, in which Ross collects all the cards which everyone brings to the party and redistributes them all to the right people. He was just learning to read when he first did this, but 6, or is it 7 years on he still sees it as his special job at the party.

A shiny box of baubles and snowflakes.

The Christmas Tree Fairy in her tissue paper bed. The youngest child gets to put it on the tree.

And here are the birch branches, drying by the side of the fire, ready to be sprayed silver.

Christmas brings out the child in me.

Love it.

What are your favourite Christmas things?

Simply Home....and never so glad to see it..

9/12/2011

Cloudbursts, aquaplaning, floods, gales, snow, trees down, lorries overturned, internet and electricity down, no mobile signal, ferry off, Erskine Bridge closed, Rest and Be Thankful pass closed, diversion to Inveraray closed, hotels full....the last part of the journey, from Glasgow to home, which usually takes about two hours, took nine..

Our police and road workers are wonderful. Cheerful and kind, uncomplaining and helpful :

Away up the pub and come back in an hour - we'll have it cleared!

We did.They didn't. Another tree had come down.

A lone policeman with a torch, laughing into the gale, standing by a sixty foot conifer lying along the road :

Can we get through?

Aye, no problem! You couldn't a minute ago, but I got out the swiss army knife and sorted it!

This morning, gentle silent softly falling snow....

Simply Chill....in both senses of the word..

7/12/2011

Not enough rain to fill a duckpond here in Buckinghamshire! I wish we could give them some of our Scottish stuff....

Wish us luck for our journey home tomorrow. Snow and ice and winds with gusts of 70 to 80mph forecast.

Just hope the ferry is not cancelled (or the Christmas Tree Party on Sunday).

British winters....brrr. Hope you are cosy wherever you are..

Simply....well, there's nothing simple about the Victoria and Albert Museum really!

6/12/2011

Felt a bit like this little character myself after five hours in the V&A..

Overawed,

Almost overwhelmed.

It's no place for a would be minimalist!

I narrowed it down to the Portrait Miniatures of Nicholas Hilliard, my favourite Isaac Oliver, and Holbein. En passent, I was seduced by the fabulously displayed Jewellery and particularly enjoyed some 3 to 5 minute videos of an enamel brooch and a diamond ring being made. I rested my eyes for a bit after the glitz in the Japanese Room, and peeked out at the courtyard garden.

Then the excellent sixth floor Ceramics department.

With breaks in the tearoom (right).

Ai Weiwei has nothing if not panache!

This is his decorated Han dynasty pot.

206BC to 220AD.

Says it all, really. Am speechless.

Simply Chill, Simply Christmas, Simply Laugh..

5/12/2011

Spotted today!

To read about the history of the iconic British poster click here http://www.keepcalmandcarryon.com/history/

(I also liked - Keep Calm and Eat Chocolate....)

Simply Holiday....in beautiful Great Britain..

4/12/2011

Driving through rural Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire on a sunny winter morning I see a wooded, hedged and farmed landscape, with manor houses, ancient churches and cottages, jays and kites flying overhead.

It has its problems. Too many people! Not enough rain! But it is very beautiful and I love it.

About yesterday's post and self talk....Do you listen when you talk to yourself?

Our lives, says Tim Parks, are all in the head at the expense of our bodies, or as he even more dramatically puts it We have become cerebral vampires preying on our own life blood.

Would you agree?

Simply Chill....with a good book..

3/12/2011

One of the best things about a holiday is spending a whole day just reading.

I'm riveted, repelled, and very amused by Tim Parks Teach Us To Sit Still . He let's us in on his 'self talk' - that voice in our heads which is often, when we take the time to really listen to it, talking utter nonsense (which we too often believe to be true)....Susan Jeffers in Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway calls it the 'chatterbox'. Byron Katie in Loving What Is suggests you ask yourself what stories you are telling yourself, and Park's guru says 'Always ask yourselves In what way am I contributing to my own suffering?'

A surprisingly good read.

Thanks Lynne.

Simply Holiday....

2/12/2011

Waddeson Manor looking like something out of a fairy tale...

...no tripod, so leaning on a car!