Focus in Life - week 7: Beauty of Flowers

Earth laughs in flowers.

                                                          ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

I do love that quote, but until Sally used it in her prompt for us this week I hadn't known who it was from, and unusually for me in this age of Google and Wikipedia I hadn't got round to looking it up! 

The beauty of flowers was our photo prompt this week. I could easily have shown you the lovely red roses that T gave me for Valentine's Day, but it was my orchid that kept catching my eye when I got my camera out - not the best photo I'm afraid as the sun has refused to come out today! This orchid is something of a miracle. I maybe able to saw and shape delicate flowers out of sheet metal but I am most definitely not as good with living flowers but so far I have been able to keep my orchid alive for just over two years now. And not only is it alive but it has 15 buds in various stages of blooming as well as this lovely flower, plus new shoots growing. Heaven knows what I'm doing to it, but it seems to be working!

For more beautiful blooms follow this link!

Focus on LIfe - week 5: Capture Our Hearts

"Capturing our hearts" was the prompt Sally gave us this week for the Focus on Life photo challenge, asking us to look for hearts in our surroundings. I didn't have to go far to find these pretty ones! They are a birthday card from a lovely friend of mine, and they were far too lovely to put out with the recycling after my birthday last April, so they have been decorating my book shelf and making me smile ever since.

You can also get a snapshot of my reading tastes in this photo. The shelf at the top of the photo has my chick-lit, the books I go to for a bit of light relief. The shelf below has my collection of Anne McCaffrey books, including treasured copies that she signed for me when I was lucky enough to meet her at her home, over a decade ago now. I started reading her books when I was 13 (I'm going to be 40 in April!), and they are like old friends. A friend of mine calls books you love like this "literary teddy bears"! I may know every twist of the stories, but I still love reading them again. Other shelves contain everything from David Eddings (another favourite!) to Harry Potter and Jane Austin. My Confirmation Bible is there too, and a couple more far more well-read editions with rather beaten covers! You can also catch a glimpse of one of the many lego models Ben and I love to make on rainy afternoons when Jamie is napping!

Focus on Life - week 4: Create Art

 

Late again! Partly due to a very poor Internet connection over the weekend, being busy teaching and also, to be honest, hiding away a little as I've just had another biopsy and I'm waiting for the results, and it's hard sometimes to concentrate on other things! The results will be fine, I'm sure. My consultants just like to be very careful!

The prompt for this (last!) week was create art. I haven't got any finished jewellery to show you as everything that I've been making recently has either been for magazine projects and so have to stay under wraps, or part made examples for my classes. I've treated myself to a new crochet project though, so I thought I'd give you a snap shot of that. Hopefully the fact that I've shown it to you will make me finish it and not add it to my other projects in progress! If you'd like to see what I'm aiming for have a look here.

Focus on Life - week 3: Take Time

I'm a little late with my Focus on Life photo and post this week as I have been doing exactly as Sally's prompt told me to and taking some time out for me! Well, for me and T, as we have just had our first night away without children since before Ben was born, and those of you who have children will understand just how wonderful we found this weekend! Please don't get me wrong, we love our boys to the moon and back, but it was absolutely wonderful to stop being Mum and Dad for a weekend. It wouldn't have been possible without my parents though, as they not only had my boys to stay for the weekend but came and collected them and brought them back again so that T and I could have as much time as possible. They would have had the boys Friday night too, but the snow didn't allow that.

We went to the New Forest and spent Saturday night at the Cottage Lodge bed and breakfast in Brockenhurst in the New Forest. We are so lucky to have such a beautiful National Park right on our doorstep, and we really don't take advantage of it enough. Brockenhurst is a beautiful village, and the B&B was within walking distance of three pubs and some fantastic restaurants. Our weekend seemed to revolve around food - pub lunch on Saturday, then cream tea at Cottage Lodge after a long walk in the snow. Italian in the evening, and breakfast in bed (how luxurious is that!) on Sunday morning. After a visit to Lymington on Sunday we headed back to Southampton for lunch in a lounge bar I love - which is when I suddenly realised that although I had most definitely been taking time, I hadn't actually taken any photos of it! So, I just about managed to stop myself from eating my chocolate brownie long enough to a quick snap on my ipad!

If you are ever down this way, please do go and visit the New Forest. It is a wonderful area. Do watch out for the New Forest ponies though - they are a law onto themselves! And I really recommend a stay at the Cottage Lodge. The staff looked after us so well, and everything about the place was wonderful. We're already trying to plan our next visit!

Focus On Life - Week 2: Your Word

For week 2 of the Focus on Life challenge Sally asked us to focus a little on “our word” or “our resolution” for 2013, asking "What is the one word or resolution that is going to help you focus on your life this year, make you more confident in your abilities, make you happy?"

I'm not usually one for making resolutions, as whenever I do they tend to be lists of things I should do better, or things I should give up, things that at heart I know I should do but don't really want to do, and so I end up breaking them - and then feel guilty for it! But, having a word to focus on to remind me of what's important in life is a lot more positive. I said in my first post this year that I'm going to try and be a bit more relaxed this year, so that's the word I'm going to focus on.

Last Sunday was the perfect relaxing day. A family tea to celebrate Jamie's second birthday, with a very excited little boy who has just realised that the wrapping paper and boxes that are so fun to play with contain other things that are just as much, if not more, fun!

Focus On Life: Week One - Self Portrait

I always mean to take more photos. Afterall, I've got a good camera attached to my phone nowadays, and I've always got my phone with me! So, when I found out that Sally Russick of Studio Sublime had set up a photo journal challenge this year I thought it would be fun to sign up. Sally will be sending out an email once a week with a theme for the photo, and we're to publish them every Saturday. This week that challenge was to take a self-portrait. And the biggest part of that challenge for me was finding somewhere where I could take a photo without a little person wanted to "help"! So, I locked myself in our bedroom while Jamie was having a nap!

So then, this is me on a Saturday afternoon taking a quick break

between packing up the Christmas decorations and cooking pasta for tea!

This photo has made me realise just how much my hair has grown!