Friday Happies

Making me happy on this chilly April Friday night:

:: A return to routine, to school, work, exercise and even - I never thought I'd say this - after school activities like swimming lessons. Our Easter holidays were a mixed bag and the normalising of our life is a good thing. My work is very busy, but I do really like my colleagues, and it has been lovely to catch up with friends and meet for coffee and things like that. A bit of everyday normal. 

:: 50p bunches of eucalyptus from the florist that are still going strong a week later.

:: Handmade curtain tie backs for the dining room. Such a small change but what a difference. Instead of curtains hanging either side of the patio doors - always right in the way when I've got my hands full with a basket of washing, always covered in the kids muddy footprints as they kick their shoes off on the mat there - I moved them all over to one side and gathered them up with this tie back made from string and wooden beads. It lets much more light into the room too. Little things.

:: Free courgette plants from a colleague. Can I just plant it in a pot or should it go in the ground? It's been hardened off.

:: Unbelievably beautiful biscuits from my friend Abigail. Almost too good to eat. 

:: Crocheting vegetables. Seriously, I cannot remember when I last enjoyed a crochet project so much. Lots of variety and changes in colour, nothing takes more than a couple of evenings to make - it's so much fun, and a welcome change after the long term more repetitive projects like the cardigan and blanket I recently finished. 

:: Styling and arranging these crochet vegetables into little scenes for no good reason other than it makes me smile.

:: An unexpected and utterly delightful gift which came all the way from Australia, from my blogging friend Susan, who  is a very skilled and accomplished quilter, as you can tell from this table runner.

 

I dream of one day being able to sew something as perfect as this. The colours and pattern are lovely, and I especially love the batik-style fabric the piece is backed with. Thank you Susan.

:: This sloe gin and tonic, which I've just finished. Also, it's a bank holiday weekend! I keep forgetting, it seems so soon after the Easter holidays. We don't have anything special planned. 

How about you, what are you doing for this three day weekend?

One last thing that has made me very happy - your lovely comments about my cardigan. Thank you. As always you are much too kind. Happy weekend folks. 

Christmas Happies

Hello and Merry Christmas! I hope you all had a wonderful few days break as we did. I've missed this space and it feels good to be back. We've lolled on sofas and gone for brisk walks. We've eaten a lot of good food, drunk a fair bit, played board games, unwrapped a lot of presents, laughed a lot, sometimes at the presents. A proper family Christmas. 

This weeks moments of happiness include...

1. Indulging in some Christmas kitsch at the local garden centre. 

 The expression "so bad it's good" comes to mind.

These tiny light up houses would normally send me running to the hills, but I found I was quite drawn to them, peering in to the little windows, examining the idyllic scene. 

I love how it's ok to have really bad taste at Christmas. 

2. Food. Oh, we have eaten so well this week! Too well. Christmas lunch was a roast turkey, plus a goose (just in case 14 pounds of turkey wasn't enough) with all the usual trimmings. Mmm. I love the trimmings. The roast potatoes, stuffing, pigs in blankets, bread sauce, cranberry sauce...so, so good. My mum and John cooked for thirteen people. I am frequently very thankful that I married a man who can cook.

For the first time we roasted some chestnuts. 

It was a bit of a faff to be honest, scoring the shells, wrestling the nuts out of their hard casings after they were cooked. They smelt and tasted amazing though.

They were cooked with sherry and pancetta and added to the sprouts. My verdict was that sprouts are still sprouts however you pimp them up.

3. It is very rare indeed that I get to see both my sisters on their birthdays (the 23rd and 27th December) and I can't think when that last happened before this week. I offered to make their cakes and had a glimpse of the kind of Decembers my mum must have endured during our childhoods, a marathon of baking and hosting, preparing and clearing up.

4. The most perfect walk on the beach this afternoon. Very cold, very sunny - just the kind of weather I want at this time of year. The sun set as we walked. The kids ran about, chasing the waves, collecting shells. Angus said it was his "best walk" all Christmas because he got to run around in the surf. 

I forgot my big camera so made do with the rubbish camera on my phone, but it doesn't matter, I can go back again and again!

* * * * *

I think I might make this my last weekly "happies" post for now. It feels like a good time to stop - the end of a year, the end of an era. I will however - and possibly somewhat ambitiously - be looking for and celebrating one good thing a day throughout January, that most challenging of months. There is so much to love about winter, and I'll be focusing on the positives that January can bring us. I'll post weekly again, with each weeks moments of goodness. I haven't really ironed it all out just yet, but I was just so excited about it I wanted to tell you.

We go back up to Leeds tomorrow to pack up the house. I've basically been in moving denial for the past week. I need to focus. Wish me luck!

Friday Happies

1. Time. A small respite, an unexpected free day before Christmas. The moving date has been postponed until very early in the New Year which is a huge blessing as it gives us a bit of breathing space, but means the children can still start their new school at the beginning of term in January.

And with that precious time, I baked mince pies. 

Isn't the holly beautiful? Look at all those berries. It was a gift from a gardener friend and is our sole Christmas decoration on the mantel along with some cards. I'm not sure if it's lonely or minimalist.

2. This week we celebrated Bella's eighth birthday. Her party was last Sunday afternoon, and her birthday yesterday. The big day falling on a school day didn't seem to dampen her excitement in the slightest. If anything, it added to it. 

She said that one of her best bits from the party was blowing out her candles. My best bit was watching her blow out her candles. Every day, every year, just gets better and better. I think "This is the perfect age" and then the next age surpasses that. She is interesting, funny, bright and perceptive, full of thoughts and questions.  A joy.

Her cake was one I'd seen here and here recently and stashed it away in my head as an idea for a potential cake that was big on impact and low on effort. I showed it to Bella and she loved it, thank goodness, as I had my heart set on it. I like the way the banner adds height and impact. It's just two paper straws which hold up a length of yarn over which small pieces of washi tape are folded.

I made the cake from three round tiers of plain sponge covered in buttercream icing, with a little animal tea party arranged on the top. We raided the toy box for animals, made them hats from crafting paper and bows from ribbon and yarn scraps, and sat them at a table we borrowed from the Sylvanian Family cafe.

The little cake on the stand is three Love Heart sweets sandwiched together with dabs of buttercream. Bella ate it after the party. Eugh.

3. These beautiful contrails which caught the morning sun earlier in the week were spectacular.

4. It's been a week of farewells as we start to say goodbye to friends in Leeds in readiness for our move. I have a very secure and solid group of women friends here up here in Yorkshire, most of whom I met through the NCT and other baby-related things, and they are good eggs, all of them. I have been given some very thoughtful and generous leaving gifts and feel quite bowled over by it all. I am liable to cry at any moment.  I loved the way all these different people wanted me to take some of the best of Yorkshire down south with me, and they have all independently given me some brilliant things which I thought you'd like to see. 

Isn't this paper lantern wonderful? It shows a view of Whitby Harbour and is by the artist Kate Lycett, who is based in Hebden Bridge. 

This basket of Yorkshire produce made me smile, especially the tin of biscuits from Betty's, a real institution in this county, although John refuses to set foot in there as he says it's overpriced and full of tourists. I love it.

Soap. I do love a new, prettily wrapped bar of soap and the name of this one pleased me no end. 

These coasters show famous Northern landmarks. The top one is Salts Mill, one of my very favourite places to visit locally. I'm saving them for the new house. 

And how fantastic is this Leeds cityscape tea towel? Obviously I wont use it, no, but it will be draped over the oven handle and admired and I'll think about those landmarks and this city, and of course the people who gave it to us.

So, there ends my round up of this weeks happy things; mince pies, birthdays, cake, sun, friendship, gifts...it's been a good week.

I always breathe a sigh of relief when the autumn term ends and the Christmas holidays start. These December weeks are always so busy, no matter how hard I try to find some balance. But I'm not complaining, I love it all really. The packing continues. The house is chaos and it doesn't feel much like our home now, which is as it should be as it will be someone else's home soon.  We'll be spending Christmas with my family at my parents' house and we are all looking forward to it hugely, a whole week to forget about packing, just concentrate on being together and celebrating Christmas. Fairytale of New York is playing on the radio right now, my favourite Christmas song. Life is good. Chaotic, but good. 

I hope you have a wonderful weekend. 

Friday, I Mean Sunday, Happies

Hello! I meant to post this Friday, then yesterday, and now here I am on Sunday night. Life is relentless at the moment. I feel slightly spaced out tonight, as this afternoon was Bella's birthday party. I decided (wisely) to not try and do everything myself, as I usually do, and so they went bowling and then on to an American diner-style restaurant for tea. You can book this converted yellow school bus for parties, and it's all decked out with red and chrome tables and chairs. It's absolutely fantastic, they loved it. And no work from me, either. I just made the cake.

My moments of happiness this last week have mainly involved finding pockets of calm and peace amid the craziness. 

1. Buying the Christmas edition of The Radio Times. It always gives me a little fizz of festive excitement in my tummy. I know that I'll spend longer reading through it than I will actually watching anything on television, but it's a little ritual of mine. 

2. I finished Mr Fox. He is wonky but still rather fantastic and I'm a little bit in love with him. I know making gifts like these might seem like lunacy given our current situation, but I can honestly say that making this toy for Angus has provided me with a very welcome distraction. I do find hand sewing very relaxing, and the process of following a pattern and losing myself in the stitches has been a huge pleasure this last week. Ok, except for the shirt. That was not relaxing, but damn I was proud of myself when I'd finished it. I'll do a proper post on it soon.

3. New slippers = cosy toes. Lovely.

4. These advent calender tea bags were a gift from my friend Debora. They're German, so I never really know quite what I am drinking, but anything that provides a moment to sit and be still right now is very good indeed. 

We've just ordered an Indian takeaway which will hopefully turn up soon as I'm famished. We're trying to run down the contents of the fridge and cupboards before the move, but think we may have slightly overdone it! Tonight I will watch some television and try to finish Bella's doe for Christmas. Tomorrow we'll see Bella in her school Christmas play and pack, pack, pack. I see rolls parcel tape when I close my eyes in bed at night...

Friday Happies

Aghhh! It's all got a bit much; too much to do, too much to think about. Lists. I have a lot of lists, with headings and sub-headings, highlighted sections. If I lose a list all hell will break loose. You see, the thing is, alongside all the usual Christmas mayhem, we are moving house. Before Christmas, too, which is sooner than we'd expected. If not before Christmas then straight after, probably at a date selected to maximise stress and bad timing. This is one of those things that has been rumbling along quietly in the background of our lives throughout this autumn, and I haven't wanted to say anything until we had definite facts and dates, and now suddenly it's all upon us. We are relocating to the south coast to be nearer my family, among other things. It's a big move, a scary and exhilarating one, but also feels like very much the right thing to do for us as a family. I am a whirlwind of emotions right now. So, as well as trying to remember that it was non school uniform day for Bella today, and Angus had a school trip (which I went on too - I'm shatterred), and they both had to take in something for the Christmas fair, and then they had the dentist at ten past four, and to have all John's family's Christmas presents wrapped and ready by this weekend when we see them, and a million and one other things, I am ringing removal companies and solicitors, ringing schools, sorting out the garage, ordering boxes. Oh, and I said I'd make Bella and Angus a fox and doe from here and I haven't even started them yet. 

I nearly didn't bother writing my happies this week as I thought, honestly, I've got nothing to say. I'm not unhappy, no, but I'm certainly distracted. But in among the craziness there are moments of calm and peace, happiness even, and they keep me sane.

1. Wrapping Christmas presents when the kids were in bed while watching my The Box of Delights DVD. It's a tradition of mine to watch this every year. I loved it as a child, and love it even more now. In an effort to have one less box to pack, I decided to use only paper, tags and ribbon I already had in the house. 

So it's brown parcel paper, any ribbon scraps I could find, and gift tags made from last year's Christmas cards.

It's what's inside that counts, anyway.

2. Mince pies. I love them and would happily eat them year round if it was socially acceptable, and I always do a little happy dance when it's ok to buy them. I don't think there will be time to make any this year so I'm embracing the supermarket ones. 

3. Soups and stews that simmer away on the hob, making the late afternoons less dark and dreary.

4. Watching the children's faces while they watched their Portable North Pole videos. If you don't know of it, you upload a photo and some facts (name, age etc) and a free, personalised message from Santa (or Father Christmas as I insist that he's known in this house - I realise I'm fighting a losing battle on that front) is sent to your inbox. Best of all, I think Bella is still a believer! I've never been one for queueing up in a shopping centre of theme park to "meet Santa" but this is a little bit of seasonal magic that I'm more than happy to indulge in. 

5. Being able to call some homemade gifts "finished".

A scarf for a man, in blokey colours, which by coincidence were all the colours left over from my blanket. This was my first time trying a granny stripe pattern too and I really enjoyed it. It's a satisfying pattern to hook up, and creates lovely tidy edges. 

7. Last of all, Angus has taken to wearing his swimming goggles in the bath and shower. Of course, it goes without saying that they've never seen chlorinated water, but it makes me belly laugh every time. He looks ridiculous. I'll spare you a photo of that.

This weekend will be bonkers. I am going out with some other mums from school tonight, we have swimming lessons then a day with grandparents tomorrow, the school fair on Sunday. Oh, yes, and packing!  I hope your weekend is full of festive joys and that you're not yet overwhelmed by the December rush.