A sheepish return

I'm back!

And I'm rather annoyed at myself for letting my blog fall by the wayside so quickly.  I do so want to be a regular blogger with readers and blog-friends and some kind of consistent output... Does anyone have any tips for having some kind of blog routine?  Do you have special blogging time at a similar time each day?  And what do you prefer to read, long and detailed or little and often?  I think I want to be a little and often blogger, but I tend to save up things to blog in my head and then have a lot I want to share when I finally make some time to sit down and do it.  Of course sharing a computer with my partner doesn't help!

Although I've been quiet on the blog/commenting front rest assured that I've been reading other people's with great enthusiasm!  What a lot of wonderful inpiration there is out there.  Special mention to Jen at Little Birdie and Lou at Little Green Shed for a) being awesome and b) introducing me to some more wonderful blogs - 4etg, My Rainbow Vintage Home, Scraps of Us, you're all fab!

So, what have I been doing if not blogging?  All the usual Sarah Activies - baking, homemaking, some very amateur gardening, daytripping.... in the spirit of 'Little and Often' there will be some more blog posts to follow with snapshots of my current doings!  A little sneak peak into some of the things below...

 More soon x

Oversleeping on Monday

 It may be grey and rainy outside but I have woken up in a tip top happy mood!  It's amazing what a couple of extra days off can do.  It's raining now but Summer will come, and this week is my birthday, and I have super fun planned - Lido, dinner with my oldest pal, pot luck party with (nearly) all my favourite folks, hurray! The sun is shining in my heart.

I've got the house to myself for the day so been doing some chores, in the search for some upbeat 'housework music' I've been working my way through my now rarely listened to collection of indiepop cds which soundtracked my early 20s, and come across these guys:

 

They might be totally daft but they can't fail to make me grin, I've been bopping around the kitchen like a kid who's had too much orange squash.  So turn it up loud and do it too!

Happy Easter everyone! xxx

Then there were three

Gosh, sorry for the gap in posts.  I've been a bit busy with various things, not least settling in the newest member of team 77.

Her name is Ellie and she's a darling! There were 48 very sad hours where we couldn't see her at all except for her two green eyes far far away behind our built in cupboards, but as George pointed out, seems a pretty sensible response to being kidnapped and transported to a new home with total strangers.  But after 2 days eavesdropping on us from the safety of her hiding place she must have decided we were A-OK, as she came out and made friends, and now she's just a total sop who loves ear rubs and laps and blankets and especially especially Ikea Poang chairs.

Ha, she's snoring away in her basket as I type. Very loudly for such a small creature...

A less cat-centric post soon!  Hope everyone's having a lovely Easter weekend, the extra lie in this morning was just blissful.  And 3 more to enjoy!

x

Table for two

Our dinner last night - stuffed mushrooms with quinoa pilaf and spring greens.
Followed by hot chocolate pudding and vanilla icecream.  All vegan!

I think I prefer special meals at home to meals out, I love getting out candles and a tablecloth (this one is from a charity shop in Stockholm) and putting on a nice dress just because.  I get it from my mum, she knows how to make the weekend special.  I wore a nice dress and George wore his pajamas.

You can't do that in a restaurant!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend x.

Sunday Blue Skies

Finally some sunshine! It's  been a grim week, mainly for reasons other than the weather, but oh the weather sure hasn't helped!  Never ending greyness somewhere between mist and drizzle, it really kept my spirits low.  But the weekend has been a nice break and finally this afernoon the sun came out and the skies were blue. 

I have acquired a good haul this weekend, a pretty juice glass and some Swedish sweets from my friend , plants and Swedish cake from Ikea (along with my regular purchases of coffee and jam!), 2 new coffee pots (for his and hers caff and de-caff), seeds for the garden and all manner of cat paraphanalia, some of which can be seen above.

Why cat paraphanalia I hear you ask?  Well because on Wednesday we are going to meet this little lady, and hopefully take her home with us...

It's been a long long long wait for cat ownership, but now we are no longer in a top floor flat the conditions are finally right.  I do so hope we like each other.  Times have been a bit hard lately and the therapeutic power of a warm, purring creature just cannot be beaten!

Right now I'm off to make a nice dinner for my dearest other half who has been away for the weekend, the plan is stuffed portobella mushrooms followed by 'self saucing' chocolate pudding, I might even crack out the candles and table cloth.

Sarah x

Spring-spiration

Less than two weeks til the clocks change!  I always get so antsy this time of year, can never just enjoy it for what it is, I'm always impatient for light evenings, warm sun and Spring Proper.  Especially this year, in a new house with a garden - I just can't wait to get out there and use it, my head is full of garden based daydreams involving pot luck suppers and tea lights and herb beds and after work card games with a glass of wine (my favourite). 

It's only a very little garden as you can see, but all the months spent waiting to complete on the house were spent obsessively researching courtyard spaces (I needed something to occupy my mind given how long it all takes!) so I have a lot of ideas.

I particularly like the whitewashed walls in these gardens from Ikea Live, they really brighten up the enclosed space - the back wall of ours is already whitewashed so we're halfway there, I'm hoping to do the others too.  And have lots of bright pots like the bottom picture - opposite the kitchen window so I can look at them when I wash up.

Roll on British Summer Time!

Cup of sunshine

 

Sorry for the gap in posts!  Since I last wrote I have been for trips to Poland and Cardiff, gosh!

Poland was a bit challenging in some ways, I felt inexplicably down the first couple of days, I think I've just had more than my fill of dark, cold, wintery-ness, so on reflection, choosing Poland for our holiday location may have been a bit of an error.  But it was nice re-visiting the places we went to on our first ever holiday together, drinking honey vodka in Alchemia - the most amazing dark little bar in the Jewish quarter, it looks a bit like a bizarre theatre set, filled with crazy knick knacks and an odd magical quality (the entrance into the back room is through a wardrobe!)

And it made it all the more wonderful to return to what truly seems like the start of Spring.  There is a definite change in the air - the evenings feel more leisurely now that I can walk home from work in the light, there have been moments where I've not worn a coat, our first daffodil is out in the garden!  I need to find where our nearest magnolia is, there were so many near our flat and they made me so happy to see them coming into bud at this time of year, with their strange, alien like flowers.

So our trip to Cardiff was warm and sunny and filled with cheer.  We went to see Jonathan Richman at Clwb Ifor Bach, and who can be glum when Jonathan Richman is singing about being a bratty teenager and shaking sleighbells in time with his hips just in front of you?

I had the next day off so I went to John Lewis and got these cute-as-a-button nesting tables I've had my eye on for ages... They'd sold out just about everywhere but lo and behold the Cardiff shop had one display pair left reduced to half price! Score!  Perfect for a Saturday morning tea break.

I forgot to take my Christmas vouchers with me, which while annoying at the time, means I now have to find £50 worth of things to buy in John Lewis, how terrible...!