Holiday Happies

Hello! Everyone alright? Thank you for sharing your holiday plans. I was happy to see how many involved simple things like yarn, going for a walk, spending time with family. I finished work yesterday. These last few days have been busy, but not as crazy busy as usual, and we are starting to slip into a more relaxed holiday routine. The kids have had some wonderful days already at the beach, seeing friends and cousins, staying up and sleeping in later. Five and a half weeks stretch out ahead of me and they're already almost filled but that's ok, they're not filled with work, they're filled with good things.

A few things that are making me happy this Thursday night:

:: Beach days. This was last Sunday, with my friend Charlotte and her boys. We swam in the sea and ate delicious lemon ice cream with bits of meringue mixed in. The beach is the only place you really feel cool at the moment and the sea is deliciously, uncharacteristically warm.

:: We ticked off the first thing from our holiday list and went out for a family dinner. We chose a local pub with a beer garden right on the edge of the harbour and the breeze was just lovely. The kids were up and down, exploring and paddling, having a wonderful time. It was really nice.

:: Spending a few hours cleaning upstairs earlier in the week. The children were at the beach with my parents and all their cousins and I made the most of the time, sorting and tidying bedrooms, changing sheets, mopping floorboards and cleaning windows. It was wonderful to come back to our bedroom later with clean sheets that were washed and dried on the line, a bunch of sweet peas by the bed, everything tidy and smelling of lemon. I don't like cleaning but I do, if you know what I mean. I like the results. And I love clean sheets. 

:: Overnight oats are my new favourite breakfast and I don't know why I've only just found out about them. I have tried Bircher oats/muesli before but didn't really like it (probably I just need to try more recipes!) but these are different, simpler and easier. Put 50 g oats and around 130 ml milk in a bowl with a little lemon juice and honey, cover, and leave in the fridge overnight. In the morning I just give them a stir and add some homemade blackcurrant compote. It's not like cold porridge as the oats, while soft, have much more texture. I don't know what it's like but it's ice cold and delicious. 

:: My sister gave me a huge bunch of lavender cut from her garden in exchange for a bunch of sweet peas cut from mine. The smell is just glorious - I think that lavender might be one of my favourite scents - and I've hung it for now in the porch where the scent greets me every time I open the door.

:: Giving homemade jam a a gift. When I first started making my own preserves, I was so proud and amazed that I'd actually made something that could be called jam or chutney that I would spend ages making the jars as pretty as possible, with toppers, ribbon and labels. As my cooking skills and confidence have increased, so the time I have to spend faffing with labels has gone the other way, and anyway things like bramble jelly are all gone within a few months - nothing sits in the cupboard for long in this house. But I'd forgotten how lovely it is to spend a little time making a jar of something homemade look pretty, especially when you're giving it to a friend.

:: A new addition to my mug collection by a local independent potter I recently discovered, Rebecca Williams Ceramics. I'm a sucker for anything with cow parsley on it and it's just the right size for a coffee. Her work is quite beautiful and I've seen lots of things on her website that I might have to add to future birthday or Christmas lists...

:: Today, on the hottest day of the year (it's disconcerting how they keep saying that, how the heat keeps on rising), I set aside some time to clean the kitchen. Obviously I clean it week to week, I am not a complete slattern, but every summer I like to clean it. I empty, wipe and organise cupboards and drawers, scrub the oven, take everything off the surfaces and wipe, run things like the extractor fan filters and utensil pots through the dishwasher, bleach whatever needs bleaching, scrub the dining chairs, mop the floor. Some of you are probably appalled that I don't do this more often, while others may think this is too much. That's ok, we all do what we think we need to make our own homes look and feel welcoming and, while I lost about a stone in sweat today, my kitchen is sparkling. 

Of course no-one is allowed to make any mess or cook anything in the kitchen ever again, so tonight we ordered Chinese take away, a rare treat, and ate it in the garden. I think we were all happy with that solution.