Sadly I never have or will been an artist, one of my life’s regrets. However, rather than just type an Easter Egg hunt list I do love the personal touch that I have created above, my own pictures and handwriting. Its not perfect but its me and doing it made me happy. How rare is it for an adult to draw and write these days? We encourage our children to write and draw and express themselves creatively, but do we afford ourselves the some freedom?
I cannot resist an opportunity to bring some extra sparkle to our home , so have been busy this week decorating the house ready for Easter. Its a collection built up over the years complemented by this year’s school craft projects and Easter bonnets. the main decorations are in the Living Room around the fireplace and the Kitchen on a window sill. One of the essentials of my displays are bright, fresh flowers to bring colour, smell and vibrancy to the theme.
The above are the Kitchen decorations, our driftwood tree provides the centrepiece for the window with gorgeous bright daffodils and mementos from previous Easters, the yellow crochet chicks are handmade by Grandma and whilst on Easter Sunday will be sitting on a chocolate egg, for display purposes and to avoid temptation they currently sit on empty plastic eggs! Its not a great picture so its hard to see Little Miss’ Easter basket made at Rainbows and by the tree is a stone washed up on the beach on which I have painted a cross. To me Easter is an important religious celebration and this should be reflected in our decorations,
I do like my bunting, so there is more in the Living Room! I am a little disappointed with my tulips this year, the promise of the bright buds has not matured and at only a few day’s old I think they look like they’re withering. However there is plenty of cuteness here with the decorations. Finally here is Little Miss’ Easter card this year which I love!
This morning I have been busy in the kitchen preparing for Easter Sunday tomorrow. I love to potter in my kitchen and in here I feel my most relaxed, creative and happy. Apart from the functional use of the room, the kitchen is so important as Its where we eat as a family and share our day’s news. We use the table here for all our craft projects, playing board games and doing homework. Its where I sit in the mornings when the sun streams through the window and I read the paper or work on my computer. Its the room where I do my sewing and listen to the radio, or in the mornings entertain the children with my Mummy dancing as I make breakfast. It is my favourite room, the heart of our home.
Today I have been in the kitchen baking for tomorrow. I love baking and a morning in the kitchen is my idea of bliss. The recipes this morning were little chick cake pops and a few cup cakes topped with Easter decorations I made using a new mould. The mould was a recent purchase from Lakeland, one of my favourite shops full of inspirational ideas for the kitchen. This is the second time trying cake pops and I still quite haven’t mastered the art of the smooth chocolate around the cake, however I adapted my original idea and used a pastry brush to give a rougher texture to make them look fluffy! If I try these again I might look for an alternative to icing pens for the facial features, possibly small sweets etc. The moulds were excellent and if I make a Simnel cake next year may use these for some simple Easter marzipan decorations or make some fruit crème sweets for neighbours. Chocolate would work but there is so much chocolate everywhere its nice for a different sweet treat.
For a number of personal reasons I don’t use photographs of myself or my family online, the most prominent reason is that my children are adopted and I need to keep our family life private. I do find this a shame as I love to take photos (daily!) of my little family and our life and would love to be able to share these photos. However for my own peace of mind the images used in this blog are more general images which protect our identity. This weekend I have decided to try and jazz up my blog, by replacing the rather childlike avatar into something which reflects the real me (honestly I am a real person) I have had a little play on an avatar website and have come up with the above images, illustrating me at different stages of my life, on the website it doesn’t specify an age simply as now and future. I was quite impressed with the images, although I must stress that the now photo should have a few more lines. I’m comfortable and happy in my skin at 42, it tells a story of my life. However, I find it remarkable how your hair colour changes over time in these illustrations but your skin appears ageless. I suppose the now photo is me on a good day, hair recently straightened and coloured, wearing my Estee Lauder foundation ( a little bottle of magic) and my sparkly lip gloss which counts as my make up routine. I actually have a blouse like in the picture! So this is me, minus my silver hoop earrings and a few lines and blemishes but hopefully it adds a more personal touch to this site.
It feels that Spring has taken a long time to arrive this year, after a mild WInter the last couple of months have seemed dark, cold and long and coupled with an injury which has stopped my running and hurt a lot its been a frustrating and miserable time. I am looking forward to lighter, longer days full of a bit more colour and hopefully a bit more strength and vitality!
Easter is now slowly creeping up on us. The children finished school today so last weekend we were creating our hats for the traditional Easter bonnet parade, a tradition of over 100 years standing in their school. It is a beautiful tradition which parents and children take very seriously and some of the creations are incredible. Above are our creations for this parade, Darth Vader may seem an unusual choice for the Easter story but when you look at some of the themes in the films and the ultimate sacrifice in his death, there are more similarities than one may expect. Little Man was absolutely delighted to include Darth Vader on his hat and liked to think of the lambs as Easter stormtroopers! Little Miss helped me with the shopping for the decorations and chose the rabbits as her theme with a few extra details. We had a lovely session making the bonnets and will use them in our Easter decorations next week.
Sadly we don’t have a permanent ice rink in our neighbouring towns and cities, but one of the newer Christmas traditions has seen a rise in temporary rinks to allow ice skating over the festive season. Whilst most of these are outside and located near Christmas markets, the one local to us is inside at a large conference centre and rather than closing at the New Year, remains open until the end of the February half term holiday. This gave us an ideal opportunity today to introduce the children to ice skating in a quieter session. I love ice skating, from my childhood memories of Torvill and Dean dancing the Bolero to the best student job I ever had as a receptionist at our now demolished ice rink, ice skating has always seemed a special activity. Today’s visit to the ice rink only emphasised my delight for the sport. The hall with the rink has been decorated beautifully, blue lights sparkle against the snow white ice and a great play list only enhances the experience. The little ones took their first tentative steps in the mini rink and supported ably by the penguins (such cool names including Barry and Mark) they were soon whizzing around the ice, I think Daddy could have done with a penguin too as he clung to the side, adults don’t have the fearlessness that young children possess. Once our confidence and skills grew we progressed to the main rink, which was lovely to skate around. Our session was for an hour and I was so impressed by the children’s enthusiasm and interest in ice skating, nobody noticed the time and we were all a little sad to come off, full of ideas of what we would try next time.
Living on the coast, it is quite unusual to have snow, so I tend not to get too excited when it is forecast around the country. And so it was this morning, I was following my usual morning routine when Little Man rushed in to say it was snowing, I hadn’t even looked out the window! I presumed this was a little flurry but was really surprised to see lots of snow falling and the roads and pavements blanketed in white. After wrapping up warm, I left DH to do the school run and walked to work. The steam trains looked beautiful covered in snow and other features which normally look so ordinary looked special. School started a little later today but once we had all arrived, we decided to make the most of the weather and had one of those amazing moments when we all piled into the playground for a snow ball fight, the giggles, screams and exhilaration, a perfect moment. Once we had used all the snow, it was back into class to dry all our soggy gloves and to warm up with a hot drink. Sadly, that was the end of the snow, the temperature quickly warmed up and by 10.30am there was no sign that it had ever snowed. However it was the memories ( and photos) of the day that will linger on, an unexpected magic moment.
After the New Year’s Eve revellers have all returned home, January is a ghostly month in our town. Many shops and businesses shut for the month or only open a few days a week or with much reduced hours. It is essential to plan shopping for daylight hours in January! The town is full of road closures too as the authorities choose our quietest month for essential works. It is a quiet and eerie month. However among all the hush and stillness, the local drama company put on the annual pantomime which provides much needed laughter and sparkle. This afternoon, Little Miss and I went to the pantomime which this year is Cinderella. It is amazing how a small town like ours can put on such a professional and quality show purely from talented volunteers. It is not simply the actors who are talented, the scenery, lights, sound, costumes were all stunning, Cinderella’s carriage was so breathtakingly beautiful and it was clear to see how much work had gone into it, yet it was only on stage for minutes. The level of attention to detail was so impressive in all areas of the show. The play itself was excellent, a traditional pantomime full of humour, songs, witty asides and lots of audience participation and a perfect way to spend a Winter’s afternoon at the theatre. I hope that as the children get older they will participate in some way to the richness of our community life, clubs, societies and activities are so integral to our town.
I found the above on a pin on Pinterest and it seemed a great word to describe my preparation for Christmas. I have really enjoyed this Christmas and all the planning and preparing, I relish the anticipation and excitement of planning a big event, I am that person with the notebooks, coloured pens and lists, its me in my element. I have read a lot written about the stress of the period, the commercialisation and extravagance, yet I do believe that you are responsible for designing the Christmas you want. I try to focus on the simple pleasures of Christmas, time with family and friends, thoughtful gifts, crafts, good food etc.. I started thinking about Christmas in the Summer, I like to buy one new Christmas decoration a year for the tree and a Disney one seemed to perfectly reflect our year, full of sparkle and magic, we chose our decoration together at the Christmas shop in Disneyland and I like to think I showed great restraint in choosing only one! Over the year, I have listened to the children on what they liked and jotted down ideas in my Filofax. Little Miss’ joy and delight at a fan in her stocking which she had loved in a shop in the Summer was worth being that bit prepared. I do spread my shopping over the Autumn months as this does help the budgeting and being organised means I can spend December enjoying Christmas activities with friends and family rather than worrying about shopping. I also love browsing through the Christmas magazines for culinary inspiration and creating menus. To me it is a pleasure to cook for my family and our relaxed meals eaten in the sparkle of the Christmas lights are as special as the big events like seeing Santa and parties.
Christmas is a very special time and to conclude in the words of Dr Seuss …
Christmas eve is one of my favourite days of the year, as life has progressed, I’ve had different experiences but all have been special. Its a day of anticipation and excitement and a warm glow radiates throughout the day. As a child it was a trip to the cinema or local pantomime and lunch in McDonalds, which was a rare treat, as a young adult it was meeting friends at lunchtime in local pubs before heading out to a club or party in the evening and now its a day full of visits from friends and neighbours, pottering in town, cuddling up to watch a Christmas film and leaving goodies for Santa. Today has been lovely, I love the community atmosphere around town, everyone happy and excited, families reunited for Christmas. I do appreciate having an hour to potter in town on my own and soak up the atmosphere, today I had my time but then we all went down town later on together, it was lovely to sit in the gardens of the steam railway watching the trains and enjoying their Christmas songs and decorations. Now everyone is in bed and we’re just waiting to start spreading the magic of Christmas. Merry Christmas x
Seaside Sparkles 