Tidy Home Tuesday - Hallways...

The Flylady tells me that this week I should focus on my hallway and the dining room. Why these two rooms are handled in one go I can't tell, but I suspect that in a lot of households the dining room doesn't see that much action. A lot of families eat in the kitchen and keep the dining room for 'best', right? 

Well, we also eat in the kitchen most days, but because the dining room connects to the lounge with a set of permanently open double doors it's more an extension of the living room. In addition it tends to be the place where most craft projects take place (since it is a fairly large table), and it's lined with bookshelves and therefore functions as a sort of library too. That's a lot of functions for one room, and it does look a bit battered at times...

The hallway also looks a bit battered - most of the time. This is probably the highest traffic area of the house, and I tend to pick up discarded shoes, bags, jumpers and coats several times a day. 

For ages now I've been thinking of hanging some pictures on the wall to make it look a bit more homely, but the truth is, it's not all that wide, and therefore the walls get scuffed quite a bit. Having pictures there is probably not the best idea. 

As it is this isn't a particularly loved space. It's OK, but it is definitely a space to move through rather than to linger in. But then again, unless you have a grand entrance hall that invites you to linger, isn't that usually the case? 

The Flylady asked me to spend 15 minutes in this space today, just picking up and sorting things that are not in their rightful place or things that should be binned. 

I can do this, I thought, and promptly managed to get rid of a few old pairs of shoes that were somehow still in the shoe cabinet even though they had been outgrown. I also sorted through some of the paperwork that littered the shoe cabinet / console table and then placed a little jug of allotment flowers on top. 

There, that wasn't too bad, was it? ;) 

Tidy Home Tuesday - Mission Bedroom

Bedrooms are funny. Magazines and blogs alike tell you all about how your bedroom is your sanctuary, your little slice of heaven. 'Look around your bedroom', the Flylady says, 'and ask yourself if there is anything laying around that you would consider trash if it was in a hotel room Your bedroom should be your very favourite retreat! 

I don't so much disagree with  that statement (after all, wouldn't that be nice?!), as feel the need to apply a reality check, because the reality is much more complex that that. 

Dear Flylady, I am prepared to give it a go and I admit that decluttering is a good idea, but there is plenty in this room that would look out of place in a hotel room.

Just saying...

Yes, the bedroom is the room you retreat to. It's private, and it's the place that sees the most tranquility of perhaps all the rooms in a home. 

But it also is the room that is not usually seen by guests, which means that it easily becomes a room that needs to be good for all sorts of stuff that a family accumulates and that doesn't look too decorative in the living room! 

And even more important, if you have children, the function of a bedroom extends. It's not just a private sanctuary for you, or for you and your partner, it's also a family room, shared by all. It's the first room your children enter in the morning, when they run in to wake you up and claim their morning snuggle. It's the room they sneak into in the dead of night if they had a nightmare or are feeling unwell. It sees children growing up from tiny infants to toddlers, to pre-schoolers, to school children, and it needs to expand in function to accommodate all their needs. Furniture gets added (cots, changing stations, nappy bins...), and gets removed again as needs change, toys and books get dragged in for early morning or evening play and reading sessions, ill children snuggle under the covers and watch Netflix on the laptop, morning coffees and hot chocolates get carried in, get drunk in bed, get spilt in the bed. Walls see their fair share of abuse (boy #3 may just have 'tried' his colouring pens on the wall behind our bed a few weeks ago... grrrr!). Pillows go flying in pillow fights. Covers get pulled off so they can be used in the construction of dens, laundry gets sorted... This room is meaningful to the family in so many ways that extend that boutique hotel notion of 'sanctuary'.

It is a sanctuary, but the word may just have to stretch its meaning a little bit to make room for everybody...

(Flylady magic - 15 minutes in the weekly 'zone' really does get a lot done...)

Allotmenting in September

Today I was working from home, mainly because I'm off to Leeds for the evening later on, and since we have no kids at home today and the weather is beautiful, D and I took ourselves off to the allotment for our lunch break. 

While D was cutting the grass I went around and harvested. This space continues to amaze me. This is only our first proper year of allotment gardening, and we are still learning, but this space truly keeps on giving. Even without any fertilizing, and with a constant battle against encroaching weeds, we've harvested so much here this summer.

This was my vegetable basket today:

So many courgettes, and cucumbers, and beans (the beans have been amazing - we've had buckets of them). There are even a few patty pan pumpkins in there. We've not been so lucky with the carrots - despite the netting there is some damage from carrot fly, and they are also somewhat woody and dry. I will have to read up on how to improve conditions for them.

Once I'd done the vegetable harvesting I went around my Dahlias and cosmos to cut flowers for the house. I love flowers in the house and my aim this year was to grow enough cut flowers that I wouldn't have to buy any for the summer months. The cosmos was slow to start with (lots and lots of greenery and no flowers), although it is starting to pick up speed now, but the Dahlias have been truly amazing. The more I cut for the house, the more seem to appear. When we got there today it was a riot of colour:

I cut most of them because as I said - the more I cut the more the plants produce - and we always find room in the house for a jug of flowers. This was the trough at the end of our short visit:

When we got home I immediately arranged them into various jugs:

Pretty, no? 

Keeping Chickens

These chickens, they love us. 

Honestly, before we had chickens I could never have foretold how affectionate and even downright clingy these birds are. 

Even when we first brought them home they were already pretty tame and put up with not only children but also cats relentlessly stalking them. Not only that, they even seemed to seek out the company, seemingly drawn to the activity whenever we were in the garden. They are so nosy! 

As they got to know us they grew bolder. They would hang out with us on the patio, would sit on the bench next to me as I drank my morning tea, would wait for scraps under the table when we had dinner outside. If you don't watch them they'll fly up to steal food right off your plate (and once right out of boy #2's mouth - he was not happy!). In the winter they mainly hung out on the patio, sitting on the bicycles stored by the back door, high enough so they could peer through the glass in the door and spy on us inside.

Then they decided that this really wasn't close enough. 

They started following us into the house. Nyla, the brown chicken, in particular developed a strong fondness of cat food and whenever the back door opened she ran across the garden to get there before the door was shut again. It's pretty amazing how fast chickens can eat when they put their mind to it! 

She will also happily follow me into the kitchen to hoover up crumbs under the kitchen table. I wouldn't miind this so much if she didn't poop every 5 seconds. I think there is really not much space in there - it's mainly all egg I think - so whenever something goes in at the top (which is constantly) something needs to come out the other end (which is therefore also near-constantly). 

Sorry, I realise this is probably more information than strictly speaking necessary.

This is Rex on the picture above - the boys named her when they were still convinced that she was a cockerel. They look pretty fierce when viewed up close like this. I read the other day that they are descended straight from dinosaurs and I think in a shot like this you can kind of see that. 

Anyway, I'm conflicted about the fondness that our chickens have for our company (and food) - on the one hand they really are good company and I love the way they will immediately start 'chatting' to you when they can hear you getting close, but on the other hand there is all that poop, and the bold food-stealing off the table... We have built a run for them at the back of the garden under the fruit trees and they are mainly in there now unless one of the boys lets them out. They like it well enough, although they still prefer to be with us all of the time. 

Embracing the home life...

I'm finally on maternity leave (yay!) and I've been trying to wind down a bit. It's hard, in particular as I still have an article to finish up before Tick arrives. It's in the final stages, but I do find myself fretting over it late at night after yet another visit to the bathroom (if Tick could just be a little more kind to my bladder we'd both sleep so much better...).

In preparation to embracing the homelife I am hoping to enjoy in the coming months I have splashed out on a few books though:



There is a Kath Kidston book on embroidery - I thought it would be a bit more about actual sewing, but it's nice anyway - and two cookery books. One is a lovely little book on homemade edible gifts - cakes, biscuits, chutneys, jam, marmelade, pralines, alcohol... and it's beautifully photographed. I can't wait to try some of the recipes. The other one is a cookery book based on the wonderful food that is always mentioned in classic children's books. Who can't remember reading children's books and, for hours after, wanting pancakes, muffins drizzled with melted butter, and homemade lemonade? The book is compiled and written by Jane Brocket of Yarnstorm, which is something I only found out after I had already bought it!

Hopefully all the cookery books will have the added side-effect of providing me with a few cheap x-mas presents for friends and family. I'm no good knitting things for a deadline, and I have a rather disasterous Sockapalooza experience to vouch for it, so I am not even attempting knitted gifts - they happen when they will, but not usually in time for birthdays, anniveraries, or x-mas - so I am hoping that perhaps I can make some luxurious chocolates and cakes and maybe bottle a few chutneys for people. The Bean will hopefully help - we've recently ventured into the real of cupcake making together. We made Postman Pat mini muffins and apart from the fact that he managed to eat quite a bit of the dough and about half the icing they were a great success.

I even have some knitting content today:


Yes, I've dipped my foot into the dangerous waters of sock-knitting again. This was an internet pattern that was knitted inside out. I will edit this post and give you a link once I find the pattern and can confirm the name. It was an easy enough knit, although socks are always painfully slow for me. Unfortunately, though, I don't really like the socks. Nothing to do with the pattern, I hasten to add, just that the yarn really didn't go with the style of the socks but once I had finished one of them and had realised this there was really no way I was going to unravel the whole thing again. It had taken me months to get to this point, after all!! Instead I quickly cast on for the second sock and finished it in record time, just to get this project out of the way. I will still wear the socks, obviously, but I really wished that I was happier with the result...