There is only one more sleep till Christmas! I don’t know if I will be able to sleep, the excitement in the air, stirs so many childhood memories for me. May the spirit of Christmas be in your heart at this time and all the year through.
(Images from Christmas in the Country, copyright 1950)
Today, I am busy attacking my house! Ironing Christmas tablecloths, dusting, vacuuming and putting away things I don’t have room for when all the Christmas decorations are out. We are going to decorate this weekend. I can’t wait!
The poor house has been neglected at the moment since I have been busy finishing up orders. But it is smiling and gleaming once again! I am still in my pajamas, listening to Christmas music and it is so frosty and bitterly cold outside today it has truly set the tone for a silvery wintry feeling!!
Well unfortunately the elves are busy helping Santa this time of year so I will get no help from them or the Kitchen Fairies, so it is back to work I go…..
(Image by Norman Rockwell, saying from “simple country pleasures”, Country Living)
I am laying in bed on this frosty night going over some vintage knitting patterns I want to try.I have found the most adorable one for a 50’s style “pixie cap”; it looks like something Doris Day would have worn in Moonlight Bay.
It is late here and everyone is asleep. It is so blissfully quiet outside that I can hear the church bells from the other side of the common chime the hour, ding-dong, ding-dong, ding they say, it is just after 1am.
I feel like the little girl from the Golden Books story, “Good Morning, Good Night”.She isn’t tired and wants to stay up, even though her parents tell her that everyone else is in bed.
She doesn’t mind being alone and goes to play with her toys, but they are sleeping. She is so determined to stay awake and decides to go play with her dollhouse instead, but everyone inside the dollhouse is in the land of as well.
In the end she concludes that it is time for her to go to bed, which is what I need to do to, but my mind is just buzzing with ideas tonight and I am enjoying the quiet.But, since there is no one to play with, I guess it is off to bed I go….
(Church image copyright Scrapologie, the vintage knitting pattern can be found for free download at: Baby Dee Vintage Patterns)
I love my little cottage, it is the perfect size for the two of us! But, there are times, especially when I am in crafting mode, that I wish our house was bigger, to accommodate the two of us each doing our own projects.
I would quite happily move into the “Baby Boom” house. I have always loved this yellow house with its blue shutters. I love the quaint country kitchen with the fabric lined cabinets and the fireplace, which I would have cheerfully lit and burning bright in the winter, while I was putting up my applesauce, of course!A house that looks perfect any time of year, and has such Christmas potential. I know when we do buy a house it will have to have Christmas potential, we can fix up anything, but I have to know it will look magical with wreaths hanging from every window and candles lit and a tree by the front door… It will be so hard to find the right house for us, we love so many different architectural styles, but, the right one is out there!
As much as I crave space at times, we are truly blessed with what we have and how much do you really need? So, there are days when I wish I wasn’t the dishwasher and I had more room to spread out my projects, but as evening comes sooner now and I close the curtains and light the candles, I can’t think of a cozier place to be than right where I am; cooking dinner, enjoying life and snuggling up on the couch with my adorable husband after a long day. Because, it doesn’t matter where you are, it is who you are with!
All Images used were taken from HookedonHouses.
I had to run some errands this morning and just as I was locking the door my jolly postman came by and delivered this wonderful catalogue into my hands. After, doing the few things I needed to do, I picked up a coffee and a cupcake treat to enjoy while I poured through the pages of this little book of happiness.
I had some spending money I brought with me to Cornwall and did not really spend any of it, so I am treating myself to a Cath Kidston Christmas item. I think possibly a Christmas tablecloth, as I don’t have one.
I have placemats and runners and fabric that I use but not an official Christmas tablecloth and this one is too adorably retro, I LOVE it! And, it will make my kitchen table look really cheerful.
I am now going back to cozy up on the couch, thumb through those pages one more time and then force myself to put it down and carry on working on my little bunny blanket.
Yesterday was breezy and sunny and the perfect day for me to change out some of the flowers in my garden. Our “yard” is only a small space in front of the cottage, so I do all my gardening in pots. I like to experiment a lot and mix things together, everything is very higgledy-piggledy. I buy what I like and plant it, that simple.
Because my ivy has taken over in some of my pots my solution was to plant the plastic containers that flowers come in, into my flower pots. Thus, making switching over plants easier and providing me with a little more insulation than normal. Last year I had a geranium that lived through the winter in my garden and I am convinced it was because of his cozy double insulation. It was an idea that came to me while visiting Versailles a few years ago at Christmas. In Marie Antoinette’s garden they had planted clay pots into the soil, leaving the rim just visible and had a mixture of primroses and ivy and other plants blooming away in the freezing weather.
To my delight I discovered the first olive on our potted tree. We have had him for 3 years now and every year we hope… but in planting pansies yesterday I peered through the branches and saw a little green olive no bigger than a pea beginning to form. Happiness.
The little grocery store in town always has a sweet collection of flowers in the store and yesterday I stocked up on pansies and miniature capsicum ( a fancy way for saying peppers) plants. The purple against the red looks very rich. They are the perfect plants and colors to move us from Fall into Winter. I find gardening therapeutic, making everything pretty, cleaning up the old to freshen up with the new. Gandhi said, “To forget how to dig in the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.”
Little, as it may be, I gain so much from my “garden”, I would dearly miss not being able to play in the dirt on Saturday mornings and the smile that coming home brings to my face when I see such cheery colors canvased against our cottage.
(Image above by Mary Engelbreit)
I don’t think it matters how old you are, the receiving of a package or letter from home is a treasure that brightens your day. It is almost the equivalent of receiving an Oscar when you are in College. After collecting your package from the school post office you carried it proudly all eyes looking at you, coveting it as you headed back to your dorm. Because, inside that box held much needed love from home. I received a birthday package from my sister yesterday and what magnificent bits and pieces it held.
In such a modern society there is nothing still more important to me than to not lose the art of letter writing and gift packaging. Everything inside my box was laid out so beautifully when I opened it. All carefully wrapped and purchased with thought. What is a better gift, no matter how big or how small that is bought with thought? W.H. Auden said,”none will hear the postman’s knock, without a quickening of the heart.” How true that is, an unopened package holds secrets yet to be told.
In some small way I can imagine the joy a letter brought to the pioneer families, they were brave souls. They were adventurers! What a welcome feeling a letter or package brings, it envelops you like a hug. It is these sometimes seemingly ordinary connections to home that make you feel so near to the people you are so very far away from.
Embrace where you are right now is a concept I try to live up to everyday. I am an American living in the London suburbs and married to an adorable redheaded Brit. I am surprised by how many Americans I know living here who only associate with other Americans. You are somewhere out of your comfort zone and that is the best time to search out a new experience. I live in a very sweet cottage behind a “racing green” colored door. The only yard I have is what I can grow in my flower pots in front of the house, as we live on a side street. But it is just right for us.
Living here I feel like a pioneer woman, the “Laura Ingalls Wilder” of London and her family in their first little sod home on the prairie. Not everything is as convenient as it is at home and so you learn to adapt. You adapt in many ways, your way of life, how you cook something. It is easy to make certain recipes at home with the ease in which you can gather your ingredients, usually half-way done on their journey to finish your dish, yet here, I find that I will have to often start from scratch and even though the process takes longer the finished product is something I have pride in, my hands have touched every step along the way.
I love to travel, especially to Paris, we don’t get to go to France as often as I would like but as the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar said, “To stay in one place and watch the seasons come and go is tantamount to constant travel: one is travelling with the earth,” and that is what I am being, a gypsy in my newfound hometown.