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Decor that is wintry but not Christmassy...  I like the neutral colours after all the bright red and green  A garland of white foxes!  There is a tiny Santa on his sleigh in this little painting (but he is on his way back home).  The first daffodills thrill me.  Hot plums, toasted flaked almonds and cream.
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the necessity of lockdown against this terrible disease. The stories of hardship and heartbreak can be overwhelming, even for someone like me lucky enough so far to be relatively unaffected. So it's one day at a time, and today is the twelfth day of Christmas so time to take down the decorations. Doing that and cleaning out the fridge for a fresh start took most of the day (work expanding to fill the time available I suspect). I took a walk too in beautiful sunshine - it was warm enough to sit on a rock on the beach for a while.  Isn'tit lovely to receive a thank you card, or letter/call/text... I am thinking about how to decorate the rather bare house for the rest of winter now. Daffodils bought at the supermarket will help and I have just remembered that I always say at this time of year that when I take the decorations down I notice how badly the rooms need decorated - not this year! They are freshly painted (September) - SO NICE! ..is how I am going to end this blogging year. 'Is your glass half empty or half full?' asked the Mole in Charlie Mackesey's book The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse. 'I think I'm grateful to have a glass.' said the boy.  I have a glass - a very pretty charity shop find...  and I am very grateful that it is full of Brandy Alexander! (A friend and I 'met' for cocktails last night.) I will raise a glass at midnight tonight to all my friends here and say a deeply felt THANK YOU for helping me through 2020. ..are my extravagances! You can get away with a lot on the housework front if you have candles and flowers I always think... I do spend on them, but I also grow and make my own. My favourite scented candles to buy for winter are St Eval Orange and Cinnamon, and White Company Fir Tree. I stock up with M&S tealights if they are on offer. and £2 pillar candles from Morrisons supermarket are very good and long lasting. Have you ever made candles? I've only made my own wax candles once but it was worth the effort, and the ice candles were easy to make with children and spectacular on the doorstep when guests were expected! (They are easier when made with a large and a small paper cup.) Winter is special and, although it will be different, I am going to try to make Christmas special too.  From the window this morning Oh, this is a hard one. To make amends you first have to accept that you were wrong in some way. Then you have to have the humility to say so to the person you wronged. And think if there is a way a way of putting it right. As I said in the list only you can handle this one. But to clear it from your conscience might set you free....which means forgiving yourself perhaps.  Snow!  Could not resist this throw from Next. You know that I love it when you talk to each other in the comments, but I just want you to be aware that Weebly doesn't know how to handle it and the replies can get all out of sync. Don't let that put you off! I adore flowers. There;s no such thing as too many as far as I'm concerned and I have posted hundreds of photographs of flowers in the house. So much joy! But also on a deeper level, beauty that sustains me. Do you have flowers in your house? I grow them, paint them, buy them and pick them from the fields and shore and hedgerows. I can be as thrilled with a tiny branch in a jam jar as an extravagant bouquet, and love both. Lately I have been buying a mixed bunch from the supermarket and dividing it into small posy glasses (shot glasses I bought ten of them for 50p each in a Habitat sale once upon a distant time). One sits by the kettle, one by the bed, one on the bathroom window ledge, one under the sitting room lamp...with a twig or two from the garden a £3 bunch can go a long way.!  They are the first thing I see when I open my eyes in the morning. A little spark of joy to start the day. What could be nicer? Will be thinking about you tomorrow PennyL. ..than candles and cosy socks! Its as least as much about family and friends, and could feel a bit hollow without them. (I currently can't see four of the people closest to me.) Who could ever have imagined that it would be illegal to be with them?  Still a quiet pleasure  Still comforting Now we have Friluftsliv (even harder to pronounce than hygge.)
I had a lot of fun with hygge, this one I'm not so sure...but maybe this is the challenge I am looking for?  l live in Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park which is a rugged landscape with a lot of commercial forest, much of it planted in the 1930's with wood intended for pit props in coal mines. It must be difficult to grow a crop which takes so long to mature that the world has changed by the time it is ready! Many acres became forest park although wood is still harvested, mostly for pulp. There are lots of circular walks and trails, and deciduous edges of a wide variety of species.          Living in a fairly remote place with a very small population has been a great advantage of late, and I can still get out and about albeit in a more restricted range (see out and about - the shore, here). The garden is not large but bounded by the forest on one side and the shore on the other there is lots of scope for walks, with lots of variety, and mown paths within the garden mean I can go for walks here too. (I am looking forward to bare foot frosty walks again!)        I've never taken it for granted, and I've never appreciated it more. Are you able to get out and about, to some degree, where you are? ...which is sometimes to say not a lot is happening here,  though I did get inordinately excited about the first cornflower seed which sprouted today!  Tiny symbol of hope for 2021.. ..is people in it!    I am deliberately not just putting things back where they were before the rooms were painted. I can't quite explain the need for this - it has something to do with a shift in energy and the feeling I have had that I was getting way too comfortable in my comfort zone. I am missing the vitality that frequent visitors to the house seemed to bring, I have to create it some other way for now. Here is what Andrew Marr said on a recent broadcast - Humans need crowds, the wisdom of crowds, and the foolishness of crowds, and gatherings and hubub and parties and jostling and hugs. I would have said I was someone who did not like crowds, but then I thought of the crush in the foyer of a concert hall before a performance - I love that, and the sense of communal anticipation. Or the buzz on the opening night of a new exhibition, the hum of conversation in my favourite restaurant, or our Christmas Tree parties with more than twenty of us crowded into our small house... In preparation for the people I love being in my home again - let it not be too long a wait - I will fill the freezer with home cooked food. New recipes perhaps. A project. I do like a project! Do you? Do you have one to help you through the autumn? And would you agree with Andrew Marr? ..so clean, so fresh. It has given me such a lift to have the house decorated. If you are thinking about it, I would urge you to just do it! It is bringing out the minimalist in me and I like it empty and am reluctant to put things back.... I will do it slowly, enjoy the process, and be very particular..    Like a few things in my house, the CD player worked sometimes, then stopped working all together. I spent some time today trying out all possible permutations of the controls, to no avail. I walked away then on an impulse turned back and lifted it up, turned it upside down and shook it a bit - telling myself 'This is silly Freda, it won't work'. Well, you've guessed it, it did work and the sparse notes of Alvo Part's Fur Anna Maria at full volume floated through the house, reflecting it's new spaciousness and simplicity. Magic! The sound quality is wonderful. I can create my own concerts this season. ..while the decorator paints my rooms.
My comfort zone -aka my home - is turned upside down. It will be fine. I am sure. Although right now I wish I'd never started it! :-) Advice, guidelines, rules or laws - it's not clear what's what! Stay at home and don't mingle, or Eat Out To Help Out and support all the people trying to earn an honest living and get the economy going again? I am going to feel pangs of guilt whatever I do. Have there ever been such mixed messages? Trying to be positive in the midst of this pandemic is proving to be challenging, isn' it? I can only manage it by setting my own house in order. I do have some control here and opinions I can trust (mine!). Having made a good stab at Kondoing the whole house (nearly completed though I ran out of steam with the miscellaneous category) I am now having downstairs decorated. I am shocked at how bad it is when I take down all the paintings and curtains and remove all the decorative things from the kitchen. sitting room and hall and stairs. While it is all being painted I will be socially distanced upstairs or in the studio or garden finishing off the Kondo process I hope. Expensive work requring scaffolding will be done on the chimney, and the hedges will be trimmed and the grass given its last cut before winter. Such an upheaval! But I am focussing on how it will feel in a few weeks time - fresh and tidy, water and windproof, and I'll be ready to snuggle down for the duration if need be. Are you managing to find a positive? Do share - we all need all the positivity we can get! It helps me so much to share my thoughts here. I hope it helps you too.  While clearing I began to move things around a little. (I do it with paintings all the time.) See if it sparks joy to select a favourite decorative item and put iit in a new place. And add a branch of something... Am giddy with excitement as I am off on a holiday! I will just blog every few days for a while, and hope you will enjoy my photographs of simple things!   If the stove is not lit I like to burn an incense stick or light a candle. Simple pleasure . ..last night as I was too busy chasing a tiny mouse around the sitting room and kitchen! I managed to catch it and put it out into the garden, but an hour later it was back again.
What to do... An online shopping spree that is. To be honest it's because my free trial of Amazon Prime is ending tomorrow so I bought in advance of need woodstain for the shed, white exterior paint for the walls, concrete floor paint for the studio - a job I have already started. My kagoul which hangs by the studio door fell onto the bit I had just painted, so I also ordered a new kagoul. I got some citronella candles which smell so awful I can't imagine using them, even outdoors, some nice paper to line the kitchen shelves, and a doormat which makes me smile. Last of the big spenders me..  Colour is key. With white or neutral walls a makeover is as simple as changing the dominant colour.. I chose yellow for the kitchen, bringing out or leaving out everything that is yellow and putting in the cupboards everything that isn't! No cost and no time at all. You can do it with a whole room or with a shelf or a bedside table. sparks a little joy for me.  ..on adding to that list (see yesterday's post), and doing Fly Lady's Weekly Home Blessing Hour - makes such a difference! Meanwhile the garden is at it's June best....    ..is creeping into my days. Inertia, inactivity, inaction, slowness, torpor. A pathological state of sleepiness, or deep unresponsiveness and inactivity. Oh dear! What to do?   ..along with comfort food are the order of the day as 40mph winds and rain give the garden, and me, a shock. Thank you so much for your comments on yesterday's post (and for the phrase 'comfort books' PennyL!) I am enjoying investigating the book titles and have already ordered Wintering by Katherine May - thankyou Gwendoline. I didn't want The Salt Path to end. It was a thoroughly good read. Raynor Winn's next book launch has been postponed sadly (see here) but will I am sure be worth waiting for. Do share more book suggestions here - a friend has already consulted them and I am still enjoying exploring them with a view to ordering another one or two, and my book group are reading The Salt Path. Or justt say a quick hello - there is comfort in knowing you are all okay :-)  There are often gales when the oriental poppies are out but so far they are still standing.. |
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January 2021
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