I live in a small old mill town nestled into the Pennine hills in Yorkshire with my long-suffering husband of thirty some years. I have two beautiful daughters who have flown the nest (most of the time!). I paint and draw (a little) when time allows, make and bake sometimes but not often enough and garden and grow things as much as possible. I recycle and up-cycle, hate waste and I couldnāt live without my time planner and lists.
Just stopping by to wish everyone a very Happy Christmas.
My life is rather chaotic at the moment and has been all year…so many times I have tried to write here…. but to no avail. I am ever hopeful that I will be able to continue blogging next year, though January is already looking busy with dental, hospital and MOT appointments together with two birthdays (one a very important one as my mum will be 99), and a trip to the pantomime with all the grandchildren.
I have so much news as there have been many changes to my life over the year and mum continues to be quite challenging as her memory continues to decline and her rather complaining nature increases, as well as the amount of care she needs.
It will be a quiet, contemplative Christmas for us on Christmas Day. We have chosen to stay at home whilst my two daughters spend Christmas with their respective in laws and partners. I think we will be glad for an enforced stop and a chance of a rest. We will however be gathering together as a wider family for our ‘Not so Secret Santa’ buffet and present swapping festivities on Sunday. The four grandchildren are so excited and can hardly contain themselves…it is a joy to be with them.
As many of my readers will know my Creating Christmas posts have been a record of my activities up to Christmas and full of crafts and Christmas ideas and should you wish to see these click on the picture below. This year I have done very little worth posting about and what I have done was in such a rush I didn’t even have time to take a photo.
Until next time – Have a joyous and wonderful Christmas. X
Many thanks for all your lovely comments I only wish I had a bit more time to read and comment as I used to on the blogs I read. Everytime I think I might have some spare time looming on the horizon it is like that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – never quite within my grasp!
Over the last few weeks I thought I would never be able to say all’s well again. I had such a bad virus that kept coming and going and I had almost learnt to live with it. I have also had to have a few medical tests and scans recently (nothing to do with the virus) which had to be cancelled due to illness and rearranged but at last I have worked through all of them and I am relieved just to have a week without any appointments.
Last Monday we had a drive up to north Yorkshire to visit my mum. She has been a little bit less demanding over the last two weeks…in fact she is quite calm at the moment for which I am really grateful and it has helped reduce both my stress levels and blood pressure.
We spent about four hours with her and I can’t think of anything that she complained about, which is unusual. The TV remote was working, the carers have been on time for the evening call at 6 o’clock to get her to bed and they have all been the carers she likes…so no grumbles which made a pleasant change and a much more pleasant visit.
Last week she was most thoroughly told off by the senior wound control person who went to see her and discuss the options for the rodent ulcer on her leg which is ‘festering’ badly and not far from becoming gangrenous. She has been turning away the district nurses who dress her leg and won’t let them put the necessary dressings on and if they do get them on she removes them but to be fair the sticky edging to the plasters do make her skin sore. The nurses want to put compression stockings on as a way to help the healing process but mum would not hear of it – she says she would not be able to get her shoes on and they would look so awful when she goes out. Bearing in mind she wears trousers all the time now and can only go out when my sister takes her to the local park in the wheelchair or occasionally to a nearby Costa or Pizza Express for a pizza no-one can fully understand her reluctance to wearing the stockings. Anyway she was told by the wound control person in no uncertain terms that if she did not comply with the treatment then she would eventually be taken into hospital, probably with sepsis, and could lose her leg or not even come out again – it was up to her now.
Harsh I know…. but it has done the trick and she didn’t mention her leg at all yesterday – normally she would say how sore it was and throbbing and how awful all the nurses are and that they have no idea what they are doing and it is them making it worse, not the fact that she leaves the wound exposed and allows it to get more infected. So now it is all dressed and wrapped and she hasn’t complained once. Result.
I don’t know about where you all live but here we have barely had a day without rain at some point and going in the garden to do some jobs has not been possible. I have managed one day so far and had a bit of a tidy up. Surprisingly, even with the bad weather it is full of colour with all the tulips, forget-me-nots and wallflowers and the amalancier is looking magnificent in full bloom.
On Easter Sunday we had all the family to tea and held an Easter egg hunt in our back garden…. in the cold although… the children didn’t seem to notice the wind chill whilst busy trying to find the hidden eggs. Master Freddie made these cute Easter baskets for us all.
On Easter Monday we went with all four grandchildren and their mums and dads to RHS Harlow Carr – even their garden was suffering from the cold and wet with many areas of the garden waterlogged.
Whilst the weather has been so bad I have continued with the major decluttering project – some things are hard to reduce in number – these little china mugs for instance – I did get rid of a couple and kept the ones in the photo. I have made a few sales already on Ebay – listing items can take such a long time… taking photos and then giving a detailed description and I find selecting the right postage a real pain with all the different parcel sizes and weights, but well worth it when our unwanted items go off to good homes and I get a little bit of money for our holiday fund.
I had to make a menu plan at the begining of this week that would leave us with an empty fridge by the time we leave for Scotland, so I had to plan carefully and only shop for the absolute necessary items to make a meal. The pantry is well stocked – perhaps a little too well stocked, but I had to buy some fresh fruit and veg to get us through the week. Over the last few weeks my stomach has not been good since the virus and the meals have been just a little of what I thought I could manage…..and that was mainly a baked potato – not the most healthy diet in the world – but thankfully all is back to normal again so curries, nut loaf and pasta bakes are back on the menu.
I am reading three quite different books at the moment, but the one I can’t put down is the Persephone book ‘The Village’ by Margharita Laski – I bought it with my Amazon voucher from Christmas and I really have to stop myself reading late into the night. The book about the Brontes was gift and How to Live is from my local library full of good advice, I just wish I could have read it years ago as the latest research on health and chronic disease is quite enlightening. I do try and implement gradual changes to my diet but isn’t the healthy choice often the more expensive. Being vegetarian we have always eaten plenty of fruit and veg but it is far more expensive now than ever.
Whilst in Sainsbury’s I picked up the May issue of Gardener’s World which has the 2 for 1 card. I was astonished to find it is now Ā£9.50 a copy and the free packets of seeds that come with this issue has been reduced down to four, though they are all seeds that I will grow – Zinnias have become a firm favourite and I love the jewel colours in late summer.
My next project when I return from Scotland will be helping my daughter arrange the Christening for baby Chocolate – how difficult can that be? Well let me tell you it can be difficult. We live in a parish of 4 churches, but only one vicar. One church has no heating, since the boiler broke over 3 years ago, we did have Master Freddie’s Christening there one November and yes it was cold – we took a hot water bottle for my mum. Another church (the preferred one by the village hall that we would like to hire) had a Christening last week and part of the ceiling fell down and we are waiting to know if it will be repaired, the other two have services much earlier at 9.30am (rather than the 11.15am of the others) which is quite early for those relatives that live a long way off and also for preparing the Christening tea beforehand. The dates offered are near the end of May or end of October – neither being that good for us – May is a bit too soon to organise and October a bit too late in the year….but we were told there is a possibility of a date in August and that would be ideal.
Is it just me or is life getting far more complicated and complex than ever before?
Hope you have a brilliant weekend with plenty of sunshine and welcome to my new readers – it would be good if you leave a comment without completing the form if you could put your name at the end of your comment so other readers know who you are.
Welcome to Scraphappy Day post for April. Apologies to readers for the long gap recently – any kind of craft work has been a challenge these last few months as I have so little time for myself. As I recently noticed my box of greetings cards is very much depleted I set aside an hour or two to make a few more, so this challenge is about reusing paper items such as old birthday cards and scraps of paper as an alternative to recycling them.
Old greetings cards, thank you notes, postcards and even those art cards you can pick up free at exhibitions and galleries can be turned into new cards. Here are some examples:-
Many of these ‘new’ cards have been made from old cards and the card at the bottom was an ‘art card’ from a gallery and cost me nothing.
I make a little label to stick on the back of the card just to tell people this is recycled.
When I was clearing out the craft room last month (and it is still very much an ongoing project) I found a stack of small colour photocopies I had taken of my own watercolour sketches and turned these into little cards too.
I also came across a sheet of rather lovely printed wrapping paper of vintage seed packets and I have no idea now why I bought this – it must be a few years old – though no doubt it would have been for some craft idea of mine back then and I never got around to it.
Instead of keeping it to wrap up a present I cut around each of the illustrations and together with this pack of handmade 3″ square concertina cards (a find at my local art shop that I bought last year) …..
….I decided to turn these cute little pictures into tiny cards – the idea being that I will send them to friends and family with a pack of flower seeds included.
And here they are in the making – not easy cards to photograph especially with the low light levels at the moment but I think you will get the gist.
It is always worth a visit to all the other ‘crafters’ that take part in the ScrapHappy Day they make some beautiful and inspiring things and below you can link through to their blogs. I am just hoping it is an up to date list.
By last Sunday morning my daughter had caught the virus from her husband and the baby – it was a toss up which one of them felt worse. We had Master Freddie for the day to give them chance to rest and he was as good as gold. It was far too cold / wet / damp to go anywhere so we settled down with the box of Lego and then played a game of Peppa Pig Monopoly (still the favourite with all the grandchildren). By mid afternoon I knew I had succumbed to the virus but managed to keep going until tea-time and then had to go and lay my head down leaving DH to cook his tea and take him home. I really haven’t felt well since.
By the next day on Monday tea-time DH was also unwell, he thought he wasn’t doing too badly but has taken a turn for the worse today. This really is a vicious virus, the baby is still unwell and it is over a week now and his temperature keeps dipping and diving reaching 40C at times and then normal again at others. Of course there is no doctor available because he hasn’t got a rash or had a fit! When my daughters were babies we always received a visit from our doctor if they were poorly. How times have changed.
This is the first day I have been able to have a shower – it was a challenge as I am so light headed all the time and find it difficult to stand for any length of time without passing out – both my daughter and son-in-law are having the same problem so I think it is just the nature of the virus. I have also got stabbing pains in my bones and muscles and feel generally quite weak. All we can do is sit it out.
It was going to be a busy week for us trying to do some of the household tasks like cleaning the oven (which is now long overdue). All our plans for the jobs around the house have had to be postponed and all the appointments cancelled. I just hope we improve by next week. Mum is frantically calling me a lot asking how I am, but don’t be deceived, this is not really to know if I am feeling better but if I am feeling better enough to go up and see her this Sunday because my sister is away again this weekend.
I would have to be in hospital for her to consider I might not feel well enough to visit…..and at the moment I really don’t and this pressure is not helping as I cannot relax. DH took a call the other night after she left a series of voicemail messages sobbing that my sister had told her we were never going to go and visit her ever again. What my sister actually said was that we may not get up anytime soon.
Last time I couldn’t go to visit when my sister was away she had a series of tamtrums everyday with the carers – sobbing, screaming shouting and throwing things – she is a most difficult patient and wears them all out….it is exasperating. I live in fear that one day the care agency will say they are not prepared to take all this abuse anymore and we will have to find another agency. I am sure other people out there are going through a similar experience with an elderly parent but I feel so alone in all this as there is no one to ask for advice on how to deal with all this.
Anyway enough of my problems – I know life will look better when I feel better and a good moan can be very cathartic – just ignore me!
I hope everyone is managing to keep well and maybe there is a hint of good weather coming along as I know everyone will be itching to go out into their gardens – me as well. It really has been a long gloomy winter.
where the journey takes me 2 