FAMILY

 Long time, no see! I thought I would introduce you to our family.

A few weekends ago, we had a socially distanced family get together, here's everyone in their face masks that I made for them.  Well, apart from Natalie, who didn't have hers with her then!  We dragged the old kitchen table out into the garden to join our garden furniture so that we had more space.  I cooked a roast dinner and we served it up indoors so that we were not all touching everything. 

It's nice to be able to 'socially bubble' with my Mum, as she doesn't drive, and she can come in the car with me now.  So I am able to bring her over here, and we have ventured out to a garden centre or two, even having coffee!  It just makes us feel a bit more normal.  Husband Maurice is working from home all the time now, and has a lovely office set up in a spare bedroom.

Our son, Nicholas is getting married to the gorgeous Natalie in November.  They know it will be a small wedding.  At the moment in the UK wedding receptions are allowed for up to 30 people.  We are keeping everything crossed that that doesn't change - well at least get any smaller, before November.  They will live in Nicholas's flat, which is about 20 minutes walk away from us.

Our daughter Lucy lives in Southampton, (about 1 hour's drive from here) with the lovely Danny.  They are having their wedding next year, August 2021.  I hope all the limits of numbers of people at gatherings and social distancing are gone by then!   I am not holding my breath!

I am so looking forward to welcoming a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law into our family.

Taking photos in the garden

One of the things on my 'to-do' list in the lockdown is to take more photos.  I used to take a lot of photos of daily life and make albums of them, but recently I have simply run out of enthusiasm!  I took my camera out in the garden a couple of days ago and took some close-up photos of flowers.  Here are some of the best: 

And finally, here's one of my collection of houseplants in the dining room window.  They are on an East facing aspect so get the full sun in the mornings.  I haven't had houseplants for a long time because I kept forgetting to water them!  These have mostly been gifts and I am taking great pleasure in keeping them thriving with water and feeding.  

A close up of the orchid flowers.  They last for months!  

What I have been doing in lockdown

Lockdown here in the Uk has been in force since March 23rd.  We are only to go go out for food shopping, collect medicines, care for someone or once a day exercise.  We are now half way through our 5th week now, so what have I been doing to pass the time?

Exercise:
I have changed my dog walking routine, and now take Barney out about 4pm, instead of first thing in the morning.  I love how this is working out!  The weather has been wonderful, warm and sunny for the most part.  Here's a picture of the Ilex trees in the afternoon sunshine.

As well as my daily walk, I have been doing an online exercise class each day.  Throughout March I tried to do some yoga each day, which has stood me in good stead to carry on through April.  I have found 2 You Tube sites I like:  Yoga with Adrienne, and Fabulous50s.   I am alternating them each morning.  Here's a terrible photo of me attempting to do a 'tree' pose!   I have also done a few classes from my regular yoga teacher on Zoom. I have found that I really like exercising on my own in my bedroom.

Sewing:

My major hobby at the moment!  I bought several lots of fabric just before the lockdown, and have challenged myself to be more patient and take more care and be more perfectionist!  Here I am modelling my maxi dress, hat and rucksack all made by me in the last few weeks:

The hat is unfortunately a little small - especially with my 'lockdown' hair, which is much bigger than normal!

I had a little experiment making a couple of facemasks from some pretty fabric.  I am not sure whether we will have to wear them in the UK, but I am ready if we need them!

And of course, lots of gardening with the weather being so lovely!  After a really wet winter, we have had a prolonged dry spell, so I was happy to see some rain yesterday and today!  I love to see the ferns unfolding - such a promise of things to come in the garden.

Completed In February

Not to forget my word 'COMPLETE' for 2020 (although I didn't expect it to mean complete isolation LOL!)  Here's my list of things I completed in February.  Not so much sewing this month, but more scrapbooking.

My Vision Board for 2020.

I loved making this!  This was on the February 'to-do' list in the 'One Little Word' class that I am taking with Ali Edwards.  I am trying not to buy new magazines or books, so I asked some friends for magazines I could cut up.  I made it A1 size so it would go in a frame I had already in the dining room.  I use this room a lot for my sewing, so I see it often.  I tried to find pictures to example each aspect of my life, eg Family, my dog, exercise, crafting etc.

Analysis of our Expenditure.
I try and keep an excel spreadsheet of our bank accounts, so we can keep a track of where our money is being spent.  I got way behind for 2019, so made a point of completing it.  My previous way of working would have been to work on it a little each day, but my approach is changing this year and I worked on it solidly until it was complete.

Photos.
My photos on the computer are not too badly organised, and this is something I  want to keep up with this year.  I want to use a system each month:
*upload them to laptop from camera and phone
*delete any I don't want to keep
*tag them, so that they are easy to find at a later date
*print out the best for scrapbooking

Here's a look at one of my January scrapbook pages:

Memorabilia.
I keep all sorts of tickets, brochures, invitations etc!  A few years ago,I had a big sort out and put them into files according to decade.    Just recently, I decided to get them into my scrapbooks, along with the photos of the holiday or event.  It has saved quite a chunk of shelf space!  Here is an example of a wedding we went to last year (BIL married his Chinese bride) with the invitation next to it:

Linens Quilt.

Remember I made this quilt top with old embroidered table cloths last year?  I bought a duvet cover in a ditzy green print to use for the backing.  Unfortunately, it is not 100% cotton, but not all the table cloths are either.  I decided to hand quilt around the squares, as I thought it would pucker badly if I tried to machine quilt it.  I spent a lovely week or so of evenings sewing this.  I find hand sewing very calming.  I found the blue polka dot fabric in my stash, and had just enough to cut into strips for the binding.  I am really pleased with the finished quilt!

Scrapbooked a holiday.
Another ongoing project is to scrapbook all our past holidays!  Here's a couple of pages from a weekend in Bruges which we took way back in 1998 for our 20th wedding anniversary.  It was the first time we went on Eurostar.  We had a lovely time except for the weather, it absolutely poured with rain all weekend!  Looking at these photos has made me want to go back and see it in better weather.

Well, that's it for February.  I'll be back soon with my list for March! 

5 things we did in December

After a wonderful Christmas and New Year, we really are back in the swing of things and back to normal routines!  All the decorations are down and packed away, and the house is clean and tidy.  Time to sit down and think about my intentions/goals for 2020 and the new decade.  But more about that in a later post.

First I want to tell you about some of the lovely things we did in December:

Concerts and film:
Early in December, we went to the Christmas Concert at Chichester Festival Theatre which featured the Royal Marines Band and the choir of Chichester Cathedral. 

It was a change from our normal routine of going to the Christmas Concert in Brighton, which we had been to for several years, and the change did us good!  The Royal Marines Band was fabulous, I was thrilled that they included some drummers!  Here's a little video of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkPDxy32ANg 

Chichester cathedral choir were lovely too, the choir boys singing like angels in the first half of the show, then just the adults in an acapella group in the second half.


Much nearer Christmas we saw our local amateur orchestra the Worthing Philharmonic, playing it's Christmas concert.  It was a lively concert with lots of Christmas classics including some of Tchaikovsky's  Nutcracker Suite.  Mum came with us and she was particularly thrilled when they played 'sleigh ride' as the encore piece!  I didn't take any photos this year, so here's one from last year.

Our local cinema showed the film of Nutcracker Ballet performed by the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden in 2016.  What a magical ballet this is!  The music and staging were so Christmassy!  I am always amazed at the things those ballet dancers can do with their bodies!!  Of course I would rather be at the live event for the atmosphere but these live screening events do let us see these eminent ballets/operas and plays at our local cinema.  None of the hassle of getting to London and back!

Party:
We invited our neighbours in for drinks and mince pies in the week before Christmas.  It went really well with about 20 neighbours turning up.  There was lots of chatter and catching up with each other.  Many of us have lived here since our children were little and now they are all grown up, we don't see each other so much.

Visited a stately home:
Mum and I drove to Standen, a National Trust property in East Sussex just before Christmas to see the house dressed for Christmas.  Standen is a lovely homely property decorated by William Morris.  The house was presented as though it was Christmas Day, and the family had just gone out for walk.  So there were half opened presents, and the dining room  table was as though they had just finished dinner.  It was really good!  Sadly my phone ran out of charge so I don't have many photos, but here's the main Christmas tree and the stairway:

Didn't cook Christmas Dinner:
Our daughter Lucy and her fiance Danny invited us to their house for Christmas Day.  With our son Nicholas and his girlfriend Natalie, plus my Mum, there were 7 of us, plus Barney the dog.  Lucy and Danny cooked a wonderful  turkey with all the trimmings.  Food, drink, and presents were plentiful, and we went for a walk and played games too.  We didn't get home until really late!

New Years Eve:
Some lovely neighbours who we have dinner with from time to time invited us with another couple to their house for dinner and games on New Years Eve.  It was lovely to be invited out as we have spent most NYEs at home on our own recently!  Here's a photo of our very tall Jenga tower, that's 31 layers!  And we did that after midnight after several glasses of wine! 

5 Things - October

In the hope that I might write some more blog posts, I am starting a monthly meme - 5 things.  So here's 5 things that I have photographed this month of October 2019.

First is a 'Tilly and the Buttons' Cleo pinafore dress I made in blue denim.  You can see that I had my little helper/photobomber Barney the springer spaniel with me!   I have included one of the outtakes too.  I topstitched the denim with orange thread and put orange buttons on to secure the straps.  I can see that I will wear this dress a lot, including with long sleeved t-shirt and tights.  In fact, I have just bought a pair of ochre opaques.  I am so looking forward to trying them out!

2 Autumn is really here now!  Some lovely red hawthorn berries spotted one sunny morning on my dog walk, and the grass sparkling with dew.   I like to imagine that the dew drops are tiny diamonds sparkling away!

3 I have been hand sewing little bits of my scrap fabric together in the evenings while watching tv.  Here's what they look  like so far.  I have put them away for now as I want to concentrate on sewing for Christmas (I love making little felt ornaments for the tree).  I am imagining this as a bed size quilt in a sort of rainbow colour pattern.

The other quilt I am making but have put away for now, is this one, called the X-factor quilt.  I am using up lots of autumnal colours for this one.  The pattern was in one of my (very) old quilting magazines.

4 Autumn in my garden.  I put my phone right down in the grass to take photos of these little tiny fairy mushrooms.  Or are they toadstools?  I don't know what the difference is.  But I think it is quite a good year for all types of fungi.

I love the colour that this vine goes in the autumn!  And look at the colourful purple berries on the Callicarpa bush!

5 Finally, our son turned 30 last December, and his sister bought him a supercar drive around Goodwood race track.  He finally did it last weekend.   Here's Maurice, Nicholas and his girlfriend Natalie.  He absolutely loved driving the Ferrari and Aston Martin and then was driven at high speed around the track by a professional driver.  Great fun!