the end of winter?

I didn't think I suffered from SAD. 

I think it's the snow that bothers me most, in the way that it's so restricting up here and lasts so long, slowly turning into ice. And I'm not the biggest winter fan, but few are. I dance my way to Christmas and then idly twiddle my fingers and circle my ankles while I wait for winter to slope off, tail between its legs.

But a few days ago, before it turned chilly again, there was the littlest touch, the daintiest spring of Spring in the air. And oh my goodness. I virtually skipped everywhere rather than walking. I unbuttoned my coat. The boys took theirs off. The green tips of emergent daffodils were beginning to whisper their yellow secret. And you should have heard the birds. They weren't singing to communicate they were singing a song. Suddenly it was like the whole of our little, 200m-above-sea-level world stopped, stood up and listened. From cheery daffodils still hidden in their winter coats, to small boys throwing theirs off and whooping: we all heard the sound of Spring.

I knew that morning that the day was going to be good. I knew I was going to tick a whole raft of limpets off my to-do list. That I would be a lovely mother. That I would smile at the villagers as I walked past, that I would be airy and cheery when my husband came home at the hungry-boys-witching-hour, that everything would be so gosh-darned lovely.

And afterwards, when the next day dawned swathed in cloud and washing cold air past my ears, I thought: perhaps that SAD thing affects me after all. Or affects most of us. And actually, I'm done with treading water while the world tips over the bottom end of the year. We're 5/6th's of the way through winter. The snowdrops have already popped up to say goodbye to it. The daffodils are waiting impatiently in the wings. I expect I'll spot some crocuses soon. We're all done with winter. Let's all tell it to head off where the sun don't shine.

Bringing nature in: walking, foraging, collecting and displaying - the journey of myevergreen sprigs

We walk a lot with our children. If they're not in school, we're off out with them. We love the outdoors; but on a purely practical note, we have boys and they need a daily dose of fresh air and exercise to stop us all going crazy! And sometimes when we walk, when my kitchen table is a little bare and I need a little outside in my indoors, I go armed with a shoulder bag and a pair of secateurs.

I have a theme in mind: wild flowers, seed heads, or in this case evergreens. There's not much about in January but the often ignored evergreens are sculptural and succulent, making a great centrepiece. Cut a sprig of holly here, some laurel there, ivy with its buds out, pine for its needles. Wear gloves: it's cold but a lot of your fodder is prickly. Cut the right sort of length for your vase and don't take more than you need - apart from anything else, detangling it all from your bag is a nightmare if you've not loosely packed!

Come home, warm up, put the kettle on. Fill your jug with water and detangle those evergreen sprigs that you've foraged. Arrange them in your vase, and suddenly your kitchen is - for free, yes, gratis people - adorned with a bit of the outside, a bit of nature, a bit of life. They'll be happy for several weeks if you're lucky. And so will you. 

A treat of a weekend: gardening, bringing nature indoors, re-upholstering an armchair, and other winter comforts

It's been a beautiful treat of a weekend. The weather has, for the first time in over a month, had a tinge of warmth to it. I got into the garden and cleared, planted and dug and it felt good. I don't know a lot about gardening but I do know that I really love it. It has the same feel as sewing for me - that when I'm engaged in the process it absorbs me and grounds me, and it's where I find my full self when I'm feeling a little off-kilter. I brought the last green fern indoors: I love their prehistoric sculptural shape, and it's best appreciated individually.

I've also been slowly plugging away at a re-upholstery project our bedroom. We were donated a lovely old armchair that needed updating and I thought, 'well I'll just have a go and do it myself'. It is far from a conventional re-upholstery job! But it's working nonetheless and I'm enjoying the slow, purposeful rigor of the process. (I'm using Anna Maria Horner's Raindrops Poppies in bronze, from her Field Study collection) (My three-year-old took that picture of me without me knowing!)

We've also had dear friends to stay, good walks in the last remnants of iced snow, warming soups and an unheard-of afternoon of reading papers and chatting while the boys played (courtesy of one of those soulless soft play places that children always adore and parents get a little peace at!) It's been a good weekend. I hope yours was too.

Arranging by colour : a rainbow to counter Blue Monday

Today is supposedly Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Depressing? Bah humbug.

I have a solution! Now that's a bit of an exaggeration. You can't fix your life by organising by rainbow colour order can you? But you can brighten it. And if you can bring together order and conformity on the one hand with expression and creativity on the other, so much the better. So I removed all the books in our bookcase (arranged by genre and in height order because I am a card-carrying very-slight-little-bit-obsessive-compulsive-in-a-creative-organised-not-turn-the-lightbulb-on-and-off-thirty-six-times-kind-of-way. And then I took said books, and put them back in said bookcase, in rainbow colour order. And suddenly life was better. Organised but bright and cheery.

And because I was also in a bit of a clothing funk, I did the same with my wardrobe. Oh how I wish I could get you a picture to show the bright shiny goodness of a wardrobe arranged by rainbow colour order, but my wardrobe is next to my bedroom window, in the shadiest part of my bedroom, batting the light back even more with a wardrobe door that opens across the window. So this grainy picture will have to do. Or I could use a flash. But apparently that would be the photography equivalent of taking a vegan wholefoods food blogger into a McDonalds for dinner.

So here's a collage of close-up and less close-up bookshelf pictures instead. You can't see a whole other shelf at the top full of white books and another shelf at the bottom full of black. But you can maybe read a few of my books and play spot-the-book-I-have-too with it. If your life is really exciting just like mine.

I saw an actual rainbow in a snow cloud over the weekend but my phone wouldn't work in the below freezing temperatures. No matter: I get a rainbow every morning in my bedroom and every time I walk through my hallway. Yah boo sucks Blue Monday.

January so far: domestic, healthy, and full of good intentions

Ah, January. Month of cold nights, chilly days, root vegetables, diets, abstinence, wool and good intentions. 

I have such an affinity with new starts, with plans and goals, but I do also feel that January is a weird month, containing so much overlap from the year before. We are trying to be healthier after the Christmas indulgences, we are trying to get our houses in order after all the decorations and new gifts to find room for, and we are trying to learn from our past troubles and mistakes to 'do better' this year.

 

Our January so far has been a mix of the domestic and the January spruce up. There's been a lot of cleaning (domestic drudge) and sorting out (January tradition). 

I've been trying to eat more healthily after the December crescendo, by which time a whole box of chocolates in an evening had moved beyond the craving category and into the standard diet one. Just look at that smug lunch above! 

We've tried to make our regular weekly date night more romantic, descending as it had in December into 'where are we with the present buying' catch-ups, punctuated by the munching of way too many crisps. 

But the usual jobs of motherhood have continued to roll on. Yes, I am referring to the picture bottom-right. Yes, those are the feet of the Tiny One, now three-and-a-half, and attempting to hide under our lounge coffee table. Yes, that is said table covered by biro scribbles - wait for it - after I had attempted to clean them off. He stayed under the table throughout the cross cleaning, sensible lad. Thank goodness it was a decade-old Ikea cheapy.

And through it all I'm still sewing. This morning, when I should've been working but I needed an easier route into the week, I quickly sewed up a doorstop for the sewing room door. The door that slowly closes while my back is turned and I'm leaning over my cutting table, until it nudges my back teasing "Stop me!" So I did. I don't use the word cute much but it truly is a cute little doorstop.

Where I've been

I took a little walk around my house the other day. I thought you'd like a little look at where I've been. And after that, we can get to business.

I've been enjoying the colour and life that a little of nature in the house can bring. My tomato plant (well, they're not tomatoes but they look like them, and I can't remember the real name!) was a gift from my boys at Christmas time and I love it. I just need to figure out a pretty way to cover that plastic pot it's in. The rose on the right was from my love on Valentines. Now let me lower my voice to a whisper: I don't actually like the standard traditional rose. I find it a bit ubiquitous and unnatural looking. But I love that his thoughts and heart were in the right place, so I'm always appreciative. But one year, if the lovely husband gets me a bunch of tulips or country-garden bouquet, boy, he'll really see what natural joy looks like!

We've been putting the Tiny One's pictures up in the kitchen. We all love them! He turns around from his seat at lunchtime sometimes, just the two of us, and says 'do you like my elephants mummy?' He's so proud. And yes darling, I really do. On the right is a bit of hastily decked Christmas paperchain in the Little One's room. Yes it's March. No, he won't let me take it down. I wonder if I removed it surreptitiously one day he'd notice?

Sorry, sorry, it's a potty picture. We've been potty training the Tiny One. He's a month off three. And it took him half a day. No kidding, two wee's and he was sorted. Now you may hate me right now but I should also let you know it took the Little One nearly two weeks and on one of those days he went through every single pair of trousers, underpants and pyjama bottoms he owned. So I was owed a really easy one.

We have a playroom but the boys keep bringing their toys into the lounge. There's usually more room and less mess. Fireman Sam was the toy of choice for much of their half term holidays. They played so long and so well together (once we'd purchased a few duplicates with their Christmas money!!) 

I've been making squares of blue, green, yellow and brown diagonal strips ready to be assembled into a quilt for my brother and his wife. It's a nice, manageable activity with the batting/wadding already added. But I'm a bit worried about the assembly part - they are really skewing in shape as I assemble them, and I think some uneasy easing will be required to get a regular grid of diamonds at the end.

My brother found this beauty in a skip. In a skip!! If they're that easily rid off, no wonder a certain upmarket high street shop fills its windows with rows and rows of them. I now have one for my own window and I think it's just beautiful.

You know that nature on the inside thing I said earlier? This is my current favourite. Budding pine cone branches and a feather in a vase. Sounds much less than it is. It makes me so happy to see it there every day in our lounge. I wish I could keep it forever but I feel like it should really go once spring is upon us, to be replaced with an Easter tree of newly forming leaves. You know me, I like to be season-specific.

What would've been time at the computer or sewing machine is now often time spent in our bedroom, painting. We're slowly getting there. I can't wait to show you it when it's finished, but the re-do also involved recovering the chair in this photo and that's going to be a bit of a beast of a job!

And last of all, I didn't want to miss out any references to the Big One, who has just got a glowing report at school but is driving me a bit doolally at home. That is his room just half a day after his weekly enforced tidying. I couldn't bring myself to show it to you the day before. At least the fact you can't even see the carpet then covers the fact that I haven't been able to get in to vacuum for several weeks. Rant over!

And with that done, it's time to look forward again.

Wandering: January walk by the reservoir

Just look at that:

We went for a walk along the reservoir with the boys. There are many reservoirs around here, pooling in the clefts of the Peaks, but this is our favourite for a little walk with little ones. There's a sailing club at its edge, which means we sometimes get to see races. It can be still as a millpond, like today, or choppy like the sea. A little path runs alongside it, on a wooded ridge between the reservoir and the stream, and next to that we occasionally pass beautiful waters edge houses that you would dream to live in. Sometimes, like today, we also walk along the reservoir dam, marvelling at the steep grassy slope to the other side and the fast rush of channeled water heading down to the natural river below. I tell you, Ratty and Moley would have the fright of their lives if their nonchalent river boat raced down those rapids.

The sun was not far off setting, but the birds and wildfowl did not seem ready for bed yet, and neither did the fishermen we passed. Neither did our boys for that matter. They consider this exploring territory. And there was the amazing skate ramps in the park at the other side. We had to drag the two-year-old away kicking and screaming, quite literally, as he just could not bear to leave the sight of the crazy Big Boys defying gravity on their BMX's. Something for everyone.

I should've taken a photo of them, but it didn't seem quite right to snap strangers and then stick them on the web, especially other peoples' children! Have a silhouette of a fisherman instead.

Wondering: The start of the day

These poorly focused phone photos are not from today. Today the rain lashed, the hailstones bounced, the wind whipped. And we three, then four, then five, all stayed at home. But a couple of days ago it was a glorious January day. The Tiny One and I took the Little One to school, and as we walked back home again - ah! just look at it!

I hate to be hierarchical about the weather, because a day like today - watching hailstones ping on the ground like they were dancing on a trampoline - well that has its own beauty too. But is there anything better than a cool, clear, crisp midwinter day with the sky the colour of a summer sea and the sun blinding you? I went right up to the top of the house with the Tiny One, who was rather perplexed at his view-drunk mother, opened the roof windows and took photos - one out the front, one out the back. Yes I knew they'd be grainy, just look at them. But those long shadows from the rising sun are there. The tinge of cold gold on the fields and houses. The start of something. The promise.

And it went on to be a good day. It lifted me up and sent me soaring onwards.

Wondering: kinda blue

January can be a pretty rubbish time of year. The high of Christmas has been dropped-off, lemming-style. Spring taunts us with the odd glimpse of snowdrop but we know it is weeks and weeks and weeks away. Up here, at least, you are almost guaranteed snow. And it doesn't just melt away. It crunches, it slips, it compacts. It changes from winter wonderland, sledges and snowballs to a health-and-safety nightmare. And there are 31 days of this bemoaned month. Oh those l-o-n-g days.

 

And yet this year, I can't help but feel we've been let of lightly. We almost got to the middle of the month without snow, and had even got through the first half of winter without it too. When the snow did hit, we had two strong bouts of it, about a week apart. And just when everyone was saying they'd had enough, a warm front threw a rainstorm over us as it travelled past, and the next morning the snow was almost gone. There were little full-stops of it here and there, where it hadn't noticed that the sentence had stopped speaking. And someone had run an italic pen of snow along the north-pointing, shaded walls on all the hills.

 

And today I woke with the winter blues. With the not-good-enough, can't-get-my-head-around-it blues. Then I got to thinking. Not always a good thing, but today it worked. You see, I have been spending a lot of time waiting for better days. I have been spending an embarrassing amount of time starting thoughts with the phrase "when we win the lottery..." or "when the boys are at nursery and school..." Then all of a sudden I realised how much good life, how much great life, can be missed while waiting for the better life. Small boys playing nonsense games and discovering the concept of a joke. Boys chasing and questioning, playing and imagining. Big boys discovering who they are and what they want to be. Husbands doing their best and not being told that it is good enough. Neighbour kittens tiptoe-ing in the snow. Rivers running tumultuously with the thaw. Friends noticing my croaky throat and showing genuine care for me.

 

And it's not only the simple joys that may pass me by. There are so many parts of the 'better' that can be brought into the now with a little creative thinking. The last two days, for the first time in our two years in this house, I have been decorating. We never won the lottery, so the decorators were never paid for. The crumbly walls were never re-plastered. But I have learnt the joy and the satisfaction of a house that humbly shows off the work I have done. The good-enough job. The polyfiller that I waited to dry and sanded down instead of the anonymous, characterless perfection of a stranger's freshly plastered wall. I am building a bit of the better, and making a good life for now.

 

And that is enough paragraphs starting with 'and', thoughts on today being yesterday's tomorrow, and blue thoughts being back-lit. My good enough life does not sit here at the computer. It is upstairs with a boy watching telly when he deserves a story, a floor wanting the quick sweep of a mop, and the to-do list that is waiting to cheer me up with all the ticks I can draw and the new tasks I can write, if only I could find the darned thing under the mess of a house that my parents have only just left. Time to turn off the computer and stir a little happiness into my cup of blue.

Wandering: around the aquarium

Just look at that.

That's a giant octopus. And we were only a pane of glass away. Sometimes all the imagining of aliens seems just ridiculous, when you realise what strange, unimaginable creatures live in the depths of our oceans. I wonder why we so often ignore the watery mass surrounding us and instead aim up for the skies.

We took the two little boys to the aquarium for the first time. The Big One and I used to go at least once a year when he was little, but somehow in our countryside life it didn't seem a usual thing to do. The Big One was at a friend's, it was too cold to spend a long time outdoors, and we just rifled through the 'days out' leaflet collection and landed on this. I took a little persuading (tight wad) but I am so glad I agreed.

The entry price was made worth it the moment the two little ones entered the first room and galloped joyfully from one tank of large fish to the next, pointing and shouting "huuuuuge!" They really, really loved it. There was a lot of adventuring, gawping and skipping. While the lovely husband and I were mesmerised by the large creatures swimming over our heads in the tunnels, the boys just ran up and down laughing. They peered at all the fishes, frogs and crustaceans and repeated their names. They loved the sharks but they loved the divers even more.

We had lunch in the aquarium ampitheatre, watching shark after shark swim past the huge screen in front of us. It was the best 'tv dinner' ever. The next day the Little One drew a picture of a fish and octopus to take to his nursery. It's wonderful when you take your children somewhere and can keep talking about it and learning from it in the days afterwards. The Tiny One, at one-and-three-quarters, was definitely old enough to have a whale of a time (boom, boom). The Big One would have enjoyed it too, though I'm certain had a better time playing 'warhammer' at his friend's house. 

We went to Chester's Blue Planet Aquarium and highly recommend it. It's a little pricey if you're on a budget but it's probably only a once-every-couple-of-years trip, and comparable to most other days out to zoos or attractions. And it's a great one to have up your sleeves for the anticlimatic, long, cold and quiet month of January.

The week that was; the week that will be

A weekly list. And yes, I know I missed last week. My excuse is illness, as you will see...

Train fabric, Echino Nico, Etsuko Furuya, Kokka, available from Fancy Moon

Last week:

1. The Little One got better. The husband took two (unheard of) days off work as he succumbed. The Big One as usual avoided all illness. But the Tiny One. Oh the poor Tiny One. He is shrinking in front of my eyes as a nasty sickness bug ravages his beautiful, chubby baby body. He feels so sorry for himself. We all feel sorry for him.
2. So not much has been done but...
3. I did treat myself to a joyful half hour stacking my fabric stash by colour. I know, you must think I'm mad. But wait til you see it.
4. I also purged my filing and reorganised all the household files. Organising has been a bit of a theme this past week.
5. And, as the Tiny One showed the first signs of illness, we made the train trip to my parents' house for the second half of half term. The Tiny One then was terribly sick all over me three times on the Virgin train as we travelled from north to south. The two businessmen sat opposite us 'kindly' vacated their seats so the Big One could sit with us too. I think it was the smell.
6. I have had a little time to myself at my parents. Been trying to get on top of blog and sewing plans.
7. My mum let me loose on her old fabrics. I was greedy!
8. The Little One discovered what a sword was.
9. I have been reading fashion blogs. An old love is reawakening.

And this week to come:

1. We leave my parents' house on Monday. Sad to go; glad to return to the husband; hoping we are all well enough for the journey.
2. I am putting myself back on the pinterest diet.
3. I will get to work on the new facebook page to accompany this blog.
4. And the new pinterest page, all ready to go but waiting some technical changes.
5. There is some serious cleaning and tidying to do.
6. And a wardrobe reorganisation. Fun, fun.
7. And I will be sorting out clothes that I think I can alter or remodel (how to get a new wardrobe of clothes with no money for clothes buying).
8. If we are all well enough, I think we deserve a day out somewhere lovely.
9. I am determined that winter is coming to an end. Time for some spring cleaning and putting away the winter things. Premature, maybe. But I am not known for my patience.