love happy

Linking in with Lou's Nature in the home series   In amongst the rain drops I couldn't resist putting on my wellies and picking the last few almost dried out lavender flowers and popping them into an old bottle for all to admire.      

This is what I am doing here       My last meal, hmmm, now let me think....ok here goes...   Nibbles Mixed olives stuffed with garlic and almonds Bruschetta with olive oil Avocado and mozzarella salad and a bottle of South African  5th Avenue Cold Duck  pink sparkling wine (cheapo stuff but I always loved this when I lived in SA)to have throughout my meal     Starter A goats cheese and caramelised onion tart Side salad of rocket & asparagus with parmesan dressing   Main Tofu Thai curry and rice   Dessert Pecan pie with dolloping's of freshly whipped cream and a pot of English tea     What would yours be?   ps. Having written this I can think of loads more food, it's almost impossible for a foodie like me to choose! Oh, and I am greedy for delicious food, hence all the courses.   ?   ?

What craziness...this week has crashed, bammed and boomed away. I felt miserable for a couple of days, tearful and emotional, but all is better now and I can focus on having the next week off work with Alice and Andy during half term hols. Yay. We have plans to have fun as well as relax next week. So, I did manage to capture my less miserable moments this week, here goes My woodland lunch break and a row or two of crochet on my new blanket with my internet ordered Drops Paris cotton. It suggests a 5mm hook or needles but I chose a 4mm hook to make it a bit more tight. It's a little "splitty" when you crochet with it, but generally I am happy with the resulting crochet. I'll show you more as this progresses hopefully this coming week. I treated myself to a new Moleskine address book. A sweet little red one this week. I don't know about you, but I have had quite a few address books in my adult life and they kind of represent a history of my life so far and whom I...

How beautiful, if not a bit blustery has our Autumn been so far? I was out in the countryside visiting patients today and the sun was shining a glorious yellow through all the countryside autumnal coloured leaves, I felt like I was on a bit of a nature high :o) When I stopped to have my sandwich at about 1pm I pulled over and found a pretty woodland spot to potter around in and found these pretties to contribute to Lou of Little Green Shed's new season  Nature in the Home series . I have loved seeing the previous series on various blogs and have been waiting to take part. As you can see my crochet goes out in the car with me. 10 minutes to eat my sandwich, 10 minutes to potter about in the woodlands and fresh air and 10 minutes to do another row of the new cotton baby blanket I am making for my sister-in-law who is expecting her second baba in March next year. I do hope that all these beautiful days of the earth changing her colours is inspiring you whether it be Spring or Aut...

This is what I am doing here Hello, it's postcard time again. I chose this title because I am hoping it will be a good conversation piece in the comments below as there are loads of things I am yet to learn from my funny old life and I hope you may be able to add one or two of your things that you have learnt from your life so far? So, here goes... Be kind It just goes without saying really, just be kind. It doesn't cost you anything and seems to have a ripple effect on those who you show kindness too, for they in turn will hopefully be kind to the next person they encounter. Have good self worth Knowing the truth about myself and that my self worth is not wrapped up in what other people might think of me. It's not always easy as doubt can creep in and sometimes it's easy to let someone make you feel like poo. I try not to let people whom I have just met or people who barely know me make me feel self deprecating thoughts about how I look, act and am. I like to turn thin...

Hello again, it's that time of the week to gather some of those sweet little happy things from my week.   First up was the fabulous news that I had won, not 1 but 2 giveaways! My goodness how did that happen? I love both the blogs that I won them on and just comment anyway because of their beautiful content. My first win can be seen here on Jen's lovely blog Hand Knitted Things. I am so excited to knit up these sweet houses. Thank you so much Jen. ?   My second winning was from lovely Gillian's blog Tales from a Happy Home  which can be seen here. Oh golly gosh, its a stunner and is on it's way to me as we speak. I'll show you next week. Thank you so much Gillian. What a lucky girl am I to win 2 special gifts, Christmas has come early this year :o)   We have been pumpkin and squash shopping in the rain to make some soup and I just got a thrill from seeing these beauties. Their colours, shapes and textures. Gorgeous!   I came home to a home made Tira...

This is what I am doing  here Ok, so I don't want to get too heavy here on this old blog of mine, but I did commit to doing 10 postcards and this title out of the 31 titles of confessions jumped out at me this evening. The hardest thing I think I have ever gone through was a weekend of seeing my husband (to be at the time, we were not married yet) having a breakdown and entering into a psychotic episode of delusions and paranoia in 2005. Convincing him that he needed to go to hospital and be assessed was heartbreaking and because we were living in separate towns at the time he had to be  transferred to where he lived as he was registered with his GP there. I don't want to go into all the details and immense emotional roller coaster that ensued, as I have compartmentalised them and they are safely dealt with and we have moved on. I just remember eventually after a whole day in A & E being transported to a mental health unit in Brighton where I had to admit him and then help...

This is what I am doing  here Ok, so there are plenty of worldly things I just can't handle like injustice, greed, suffering, lots of isms like absolutism, sexism, racism, classism, ageism etc. I cannot handle loads of human traits and behaviours like arrogance, rudeness, unkindness, cruelty, ignorance and stupidity. There are 101 things I could list here and bore you with, however I promise not to. This post of 9 things I can't handle are going to focus on the more "everyday" things that I just can't handle, so here goes.... :o) 1. Pressure on women to be a certain size This seriously freaks me out, I meet women who are wracked with so many negative emotions that cripple them on a daily basis. What on earth is going on here? All those hours, days, months, years wasted on obsessing about punishing themselves to follow poorly balanced restricted diets that do so much more harm than  good in the long run.  I am a Dietitian specialising in oncology care and in 23 yea...

Hello there The weather has turned somewhat in the past 24 hours and I was very surprised when Andy put the heating on for an hour yesterday evening as he normally likes to avoid it until we really need it. Must be getting old! Have you put your heating on yet? It's a sure sign that Winter has arrived in my mind. Pull our extra thick feathered quilts and blankets from the attic time. Yay, I love a candle light home with cosiness as the season changes. This week, I've had the displeasure of a head cold and had to have Wednesday off work, which did me the world of good, just resting, snoozing and reading. I need this weekend to fully recover though. I have, however found some sweet moments of happiness, mostly of the yarn kind...so here goes.... I finished crocheting these DIVINELY WARM bobble fingerless gloves and wrist warmers. Oh my goodness, this yarn that I bought from a local lady ( link ) who dyes and spins her own yarn, last December in a Christmas ma...

Here  is what I am doing Ok, so here goes my first postcard and why not start with number 7 on the list....the story of my first kiss.  It was the November of 1985, the beginning of another hot Summer in Durban, South Africa, I was 15 and a half and was in Standard 8 at school. My mum and dad sent my sister and I to a private catholic school called The Holy Family Convent and you may have guessed it, it was an all girls school and went from infants aged 5 to matriculation age 17/18 depending on what half of the year you were born in. Not a boy to be had in sight. I wonder now if my parents purposefully considered this when they sent us there despite saying it was for catholic pastoral reasons, they knew they were safe with my clever, studious sister who was 2 years ahead of me at school, but with me there was a streak of rebellion, mischievenous if you will. I thought all work and no play made me a very dull girl...

Dearest Blog I'm feeling like I need to shake things up around here. You are becoming predictable, prescriptive and quite frankly I'm getting a little bit bored with our relationship. Now don't get me wrong, I really do love you and all the visitors and lovely relationships you bring, but I am getting itchy pants to crank things up a notch or two. Lets talk about stuff, real stuff that I never really dare to confess or talk about here. Yes, there are many of your peer blogs that do do this and they are the ones to blame for inspiring me to getting down to some brass tacks...beyond knitting, crochet and sewing. Yes, you heard what I said, beyond those fabulous magical things I do with my hands. You even admitted that you are getting bored with hosting my thrifty finds and creations of the yarn kind and that you were hungry for an interlude of different posts before going back to my safe usuals. You see it all began when I discovered Veggie Mama's blog, she made me laugh...

  Happy end of the week everyone, we made it to Friday again, hooray!   Here are some of my little happies from the last week in September taking us nicely into October. ?   A visit to Hoop in Tenterton on the weekend. Its a gorgeous new yarn shop just into Kent from where we live in East Sussex and sells the really reasonable Drops wool and alpaca yarn in divine colours. Don't you just love the doily with their name in the window and I took some close-ups of those autumn embroidered leaves too. Such an easy seasonal thing to do. I love clever window displays. I made a little purchase with my WIP commander, Alice close by my side...she informed me that I could spend some money on yarn as long as it involved making something for her! So, with very little persuasion I bought some Drops yarn for her scarf she wants from this book I borrowed from our Library. She has chosen this yarn with a darker blue for the ends. To add to the happies was the casting on of course. I'm lo...

Hello lovely bloggers, can I be personal and ask you if you have ever measured the size of your head? I know this might sound weird to some of you and quite normal to others of you, but I am having an irritating crochet week all based on the circumference of my head! Now, I have to giggle when I remember graduating from my degree in South Africa way back in 1990. The story goes that when I went to hire my graduation gown and mortar board to wear on my head, the lady in the shop asked me my size and asked if she could measure my head size. I promptly allowed her and watched almost as if in slow motion how her facial expression changed as she revealed that my head size was one of the biggest she had had the pleasure if encountering in her jolly career! She eventually said that she would "need to go and look downstairs for a suitable one to fit my head". To this day I will never forget the look on her face and I always joke about it.  The school I went to involved wearing a hat ...