Bloggyness-whats in a name?

There are so many why this and why that blog posts at the moment it got me thinking about my own blog and there are a couple things i was thinking to myself, which i sort of thought i could share so that if you ever think...why the heck did you do that, then you'd know...or maybe have a bit more insight.

Its obvious I'm not any sort of professional writer, and i think as with most blogs i write how i talk, and so when if you were to bump into me in the street and i said something where you did think...ooh doesn't that sound pretentious/nutty/rude i could correct myself, but on here i cant...so that's the why out of the way!

Today i thought id say why i wanted to tell you all about the title of this blog...Homemaking Heaven.

I started this blog in 2009, but didn't really do much with it.  I remember it was only a couple of months after getting married and The Husband and i had visited friends on the other side of the country.  It was an amazing trip and i loved every second of it, although i was a bit frightened to go.  Yes, it was my best friend, but i had hardly seen her in ages and the meeting before last wasn't all i thought it would be....you see my friend already lived with her long term boyfriend, toddler and was pregnant again.  She lived in a big house in the middle of a small island.  It looked perfect and from the way she spoke it was.  I was much too caught up in my wedding to really get into asking her how everything was, although i know now that if i scratched the surface i could have seen it was all a front.  I wish i had done, but she had 'put me off the scent' and i fell for it.

My lovely sweet friend did what i guess lots of women do, she put on a front.  And on this particular meeting i soaked it all in.  She had spoken of her perfect makes, bakes, life, chores that practically do themselves and her perpetually happy look on life.  So when The Husband and i went to visit our friends again later in the year i was intimidated and then some!  I fell short of her in every aspect there could be.  My cakes fell in the middle, i covered them with butter cream or just filled them with fruit.  I never stuck to any make at all.  I grew inpatient and gave up, my makes went as far as tying ribbon to things.  The dust piled high in my house as i was always too busy either with the wedding, university, work and trying to spend time with my husband.

However when i met my lovely friend i saw her stories for what they were.  I was so ashamed I'd let her tell me these things.  I felt awful that my wonderful, funny and very witty friend felt she needed to portray herself to be all of the things she told me she was, and i felt awful that i got jealous. 

I started to think about what homemaking was.  Was it being perfect at everything, what extent of chores to makes needed to be done in the home by the woman or family in the house.  Could you be a homemaker who threw their hands up in the air and said they didn't want to do various things?  And that's where this blog came from.

I wanted to be a homemaker, but i couldn't do everything.  I wanted to make the best life for my family, but i didn't know how to.  I wanted to say at the end of my day that it was a success, but i was still scared to say i was proud to make house...i didn't want to be seen as a child at a plastic kitchen set and a dolly.  I wanted to be part of the growing number of women that know it is worth their while making things for their family. 

I guess this blog is all over the place, sometimes its busy and sometimes its quiet, sometimes i have lots to do and sometimes its a bit reflective.  I think and imagine it will change as i change, but it came from a tiny seed, and a tiny thought, it was about my friends, my family and my life....and a dream about how i wanted to make my own life.

luxury is....

luxury is....

time to enjoy the papers in the morning with a cup of steaming hot tea or coffee.  The tea must be deliciously sweet and utterly tempting, much too milky for others to wish for, but perfect for me.  The cup gets carried carefully back to a warm bed and the tinkling of china stops its bell like warning that I'm walking with hot delicate substances.  The Husband is waiting and we unfurl the papers.  The main paper goes to my partner and i tear into The Weekender.  The plastic packaging is thrown on the floor for now, only to be something I'll slip on later, but for now my head is on a propped up pillow and I'm happily gazing up at my new magazine.  Like all glossies i flick through all of the pages, abandoning the contents page for others, i find what I'm looking for...'readers comments'.  I laugh out uninhibited, for today I'm not on the bus reading, this weekend is the best type of weekend.  I am at home. 

I flick through again, and not finding anything to instantly take my fancy i move on to the next section of paper, and the next, and the next...piles of wreckage are strewn around the bed.  Crumpled sheets of paper, messily folded or crushed into squares surround The Husband and i on our once fortnightly life craft of sanity.  Its the best sort of weekend.  I'm not working and its one for pottering.  Everything is lazy and slow.  The roast is slow, our walks are slow, it is comfortable.  For two whole days we are the Lord and Lady of our own little manor.  No rushing, no buying, it is all our own convenience. 

The weekend is ours to prod fires, take afternoon naps and day dream with the dog on our knee.

Happy Birthday...no...unbirthday

Hello all!  How are you today?...we could do with some of the bright sunshine that kept April so glorious!
Today is my Official Birthday..twenty...ahem, something, something years ago i was born on this day.  However The Husband, as well as most of my family are either living in an other country or are away on holiday, or indeed, in TH's case, away with work.  Its most unfortunate, that's for sure, but it is the way the cookie crumbles.  So here i am all on my lonesome.

Aha...I'm not too sad though, well, not sad at all about my Birthday.  I do miss TH, but its work and that's that.  BUT i am going to do some very lazy, selfish, glutinous things today and not one single person can stop me!  Not only am i like the Queen who has two Birthdays, i am utterly untouchable as nobody can ever tell you off on your own special day.
Saturday was my Unofficial Birthday, or Un-Birthday Tea as Alice in Wonderland sat down to.  We had an extra special lovely day, followed by a very lovely Sunday morning and then TH jetted off and left me to my own devices.

Daisy and i will eat our own favourite food, go on our own favourite trips and i will certainly get to visit an awful lot more thrift shops than normal.  Usually I'm much too afraid as i know I'll spot something i want, and i know it will be too difficult to sneak into the house!
x

The Caravan Love

I turn left...i turn right...and its caravans, caravans, caravans everywhere....Oh how i wish i had one too!!!
The CK mag, other lovely bloggers planning trips away for summer sunshine, packing up the bare minimum and heading to where the clouds deem fit to part over good old Blighty!

We've got a little jar in the living room which occasionally gets filled up with two pound coins and the Scottish one pound coins when either The Husband or myself check our pockets and purse.  Every so often a note may get dropped into it and excitement fills the house the closer we get to filling our jar. 
However, just as soon as the jar gets filled up another unexpected bill or something or other pops up and the jar gets emptied again.  Hopefully it wont be like the pixar film UP, we will one day be able to get what we want!!
We're going to continue attempting to fill it up, and we need to clear out the loft, so hopefully we can put some things up in ebay and have some money squirreled away in paypal which will make us less likely to 'break into it'!
Maybe by next Summer we can have an empty jar...but a caravan in the drive way.
Good luck with all the caravan posts!! I'm ever so ever jealous, but i promise i wont be bitter.
x  

Hang whitewash

"The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing."  - Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Its done!! Its all been done.  I'm sure the very best of you...or indeed, the most diligent, were finished their spring cleaning many moons ago.  I, however, have only just finished, and i am still very proud.
 
I had a bit of a Mole moment and got to the point where i knew it just had to BE DONE.  It was done, but i also knew i had to just put the wet cloths away after a powerful wash and say that's that for now.
 
The sun has come, and is currently hiding, the windows have been thrown open so that it is pleasantly cool and every cushion and rug has been bashed to bits, all of the ornaments that get quick dusts at all other occasions got a good proper wash and at one point everything was in the middle of each and every room.  It is done.  It is time to let the sunshine in.  It is time for the adventures of Summer.

One million miles an hour

WOW, what an amazing couple of weeks, well, much longer actually...but doesn't everything seem to be 'happening'. 

In the world...THE Wedding, it was so beautiful and took up lots of time watching those beautiful pictures unfold, then crazy things happening in the real world.  You can bump back down to earth and see all of the horrid things about, but then you watch the news and pray that things going on in far away places will change because of massive changes all around.
Right here in our own little corner of the world we've been very busy.  The garden is coming together and its so exciting.  To see things you planted ages ago, things you buried in the earth with the hope something beautiful would come of it.  A small egg shaped grubby bulb, a packet of teeny tiny seedlings and lots of love and hope....