30 things - Buy a plum tree for my garden

In this post here I listed 30 things I wanted to do before I was 30. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't been keeping an eye on the list but when I looked over it the other day I found that i've been doing lots of things on there already. One of the things on the list was to buy a plum tree for my garden, it's something that i've always wanted but when I was with my partner our plans were for this house to be more of a stop gap while we got some money together, paid off our mortgage asap and moved on to our dream home, so a plum tree was going to have to wait until we moved.

Looking back now, I realise that we really put our lives on hold and were forever living for the future. Strangely enough, since our separation, my views have completely changed and while a mortgage free future would be amazing i've realised that you still have to live for the present moment because, as cliched as it sounds, you never know what the future is going to bring. The fear of losing the house when we separated jolted me into realising how it had become a home for me, not just a stop gap. Needless to say, the first thing I did when I found out that I was able to keep the house was order a plum tree and bizarrely enough it arrived on the day I finally completed on the house.

Planting it was backbreaking work. The soil around here is a heavy, clay type the forms a rock hard crust if there hasn't been enough rain. I hadn't thought ahead to clearing the area of weeds and brambles so that had to be done before I could even think about digging a hole large enough to accommodate it's roots.

I suppose really this year has been a bit of a learning curve for me, previously the garden was largely my partners domain and i'd do the odd spot of weeding and pick a few strawberries or tomatoes but that was it, but to dig out a load of brambles, prepare the soil and plant a tree - that was completely unheard of! Anyway, I was quite impressed with the results, even if the plum tree (aka Twiggy) did look a bit wonky, i've even started to consider myself a bit of a gardener!

The plum tree look much happier now, it's started to sprout some leaves and hasn't blown away yet in the strong gales we've been having so I think I must have done an okay job.

Have a great Sunday everyone!

Table antics

I've been busy renovating my living room table and trying to give it a new lease of life. I started with this:

Which turned into this:

Which after painting with duck egg blue paint looked like this:

Then I added some funky sweet design paper to the legs and table top to create this:


Yummy!
Have a good Sunday!

Whoops!

Well I haven't been on here for ages, life and all it's busyness took over for a while...a very long while in fact. There were times when I thought about this blog and the posts i'd like to make but there has just been so much to do that by the end of the day i've been too exhausted and any attempts at 'posts' would have been nothing more than incoherent drivel! Over the past 8 months i've learnt that sometimes you've just got to stop, in fact I think that one little piece of advice has kept me sane. There really has been so much to do, i'm not quite sure how I managed fit it all in! I'm now officially a single homeowner after buying my ex out of his share of the house. Despite not being married there was still so much to do and the process of transferring the mortgage took a whopping 6 months to complete - the paperwork seemed to be lost at least 4 times which didn't make things any easier. Then the changing of names on bills seemed to go on forever and there were joint accounts to close too, combine this with various car problems and a nasty house leak, not to mention the actual process of coming to terms with the breakup and things seem to have been pretty much relentless.

However, it hasn't all been doom and gloom. In fact i've been quite productive over the last few months and i'm quite impressed with my efforts. I've redecorated the hallway, complete with a new carpet, and i've even made my own lampshades too! I've also had the kerb at the front of the house dropped so that I now have a driveway, plus i've bought a new car to go on it (yay!). I've managed to tame the garden, which sadly had been left to it's own devices since August, but which is now fully under control complete with a freshly dug over veg patch, a wildflower bed and plenty of seedlings sprouting in the greenhouse - i'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they'll keep growing. I've also kept myself well fed with plenty of home cooked meals, though I must admit that batch cooking has been a real saviour.

I'll update more soon, hopefully with some garden pics...but in the meantime here's what the wildflower patch looked like before...



and after my conifer clearing session...



I was quite proud of my efforts and I can't wait until the wildflowers start to grow!

29 today...

It's my birthday today and with everything feeling like it's so up in the air at the moment with regards to my relationship and my future, I have decided to take some inspiration from the wonderful Susannah Conway and make a list of 30 things i'd like to do before i'm 30 (though i'm sure Susannah's list was slightly longer *wink* ). So for the past week i've been busy thinking about the small and not so small things i'd like to accomplish in the next year before the big 30 arrives on my doorstep. I plan to revisit this post throughout the year and tick off those things i've achieved and i'm sure i'll be blogging about my experiences along the way. So here's my list, why not make up one of your own?

30 things to do before I'm 30:
1. Meditate
2. Drink more water
3. Update my blog regularly
4. Learn to play the didgeridoo
5. Read more books
6. Eat healthily
7. Buy myself only beautiful clothes that I love
8. Take more photographs
9. Buy a polaroid camera
10. Make home-made Christmas gifts for my family
11. Learn to crochet
12. Relax
13. Rediscover myself
14. Spend more time with my friends and family
15. Try a new recipe once a month
16. De-clutter my home
17. Deepen my understanding of the Tarot
18. Make soap
19. Turn my house into a home
20. Do my reiki second degree
21. Recycle
22. Buy a new car
23. Exercise more
24. Grow my own vegetables
25. Find a career that I'm passionate about
26. Worry less
27. See Tim Minchin live
28. Buy a plum tree for my garden
29. Work through "A Creative Guide to Exploring Your Life"
30. Experiment with affirmations

Right, now to the important stuff - cake anyone?

Dreaming...

I have strange dreams, it's agreed between my family and friends that the majority of my dreams fall into the catergory of being weird or bizarre and they're often quite dark. I've been waking up at about 4am recently, it's frustrating as I tend to fall back to sleep around 6am and then I don't wake up until about 9am - luckily i'm on holiday so this isn't too much of a problem.

When 4am reared it's head this morning, so did I, and a vague recollection of dream-speak circled through my mind - "And you'll know it's me because it will be written in my voice". I can't remember much of the dream, only that I was going to leave a message for someone written on a wall. I've found myself intrigued by this statement as it has raised some questions which fit quite snugly with where I feel I currently am in my life, namely: What is my voice? and What does it say?

I've recently separated from my partner of 9 and a half years and as a result have found that I have lots of time on my own. As i've tried to ignore the hours ticking slowly by and the impending silence, i've started to question who I am and what I want from life. I suppose you could say, in dream-speak, that i'm trying to find my voice, a voice that represents me as an individual but also a voice that I will need to use to express my needs and viewpoints when myself and my partner eventually come back together to discuss whether we try and repair our relationship or whether we go our separate ways. So in a way my voice, the voice I adopt now, is new to me as it's coming from a different place, one in which I need to form my thoughts alone rather than from a shared viewpoint.

So now is the time for me to discover my voice and discover who I am. I think it's going to be an exciting journey.

Beary things

When I have enough time on my hands I like to make bears. I don't make many during the year simply because it takes quite a lot of time and committment to get them finished and, being a butterfly by nature, I tend to lose the flow and become distracted by other things. But there really is nothing quite like seeing a little beary character emerging and unravelling before your eyes, it's quite magical. No two bears are ever the same, even if I tried to make them the same by using the same pattern and fabric, they still manage to evolve into something different, developing their own personality along the way. The little chap above is Coleman, a bear I made about 5 years ago, who is now living with his new owner in Australia. At the moment I find myself wishing I was there with him too so that I can escape this dreary, rainy weather - can I order some sunshine for tomorrow please?

The first tentative step...

Welcome to my blog, my own little bit of cyberspace where I hope to share snippets of my life and things of beauty that I happen to stumble across - such as the beautiful artwork of FreyaArt who I only discovered yesterday but who has already captured my heart with her quirky style and inspirational quotes. The print below is one of my favorites, I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't like to be told that they are a "strange and magnificent creature". Strangely enough no-one has ever said this to me, but I think I might have to make it my daily mantra and say it to myself as a way of celebrating my own strange magnificence. maybe you should too?