Linaloo

It's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas....

I'm feeling in a festive mood so much earlier than usual this year. I wanted my house to smell like Christmas, so, in the spirit of Emma's Making Winter series, here's an easy recipe for a Christmas simmer pot which makes the whole house smell amazerful with just a few simple ingredients.

Mix of all the above ingredients with 2 cups of water and a cup of apple juice in a saucepan.  Gently simmer over a low heat for a few hours, making sure that the liquid doesn't evaporate. Once you're done, remove from the heat, let it cool and you can keep it in the refrigerator and re-use it again a few times. There really is no exact recipe, it's just trial and error...you could use cranberry juice, oranges, clementines,add a few sprigs of evergreen...whatever takes your fancy.

A striped wall

Before

During

After

We've been painting our bedroom.  It's taken over four years to get around to it and it's the final room to be decorated by us.  Between work (I'm now contracting part-time from home) and general other busyness, progress has been a bit slow.  Dark wood trim and closet doors have taken so much paint that I can no longer remember how many coats I've slathered on...but it's almost there.  The most exciting part was painting stripes this weekend.  Tearing off the masking tape to reveal this subtle effect was the instant gratification needed to motivate me to finish the room off this week. 

Just one more final coat on the trim to go.

La neige!

Nothing like getting in the holiday mood with the first snowfall of the season.  I like to document its arrival every year on the blog for posterity.  The children were excited, dressed and outside playing and making snow angels at 7:30am.   I stayed inside drinking my tea while my husband shovelled and dropped them off at school.   I'm a lucky lady.

Happy birthday to my sister and her eldest daughter today!  Lots of love xoxox

Paperwhites, marbles and beads

Forcing paperwhites in water ready for blooming in time for Christmas (they take anywhere between 4 to 6 weeks).  I pitched them to the children as a kind of alternative advent calendar  - hopefully they won't bloom too soon!
I've never grown them this way before but apparently you can use pretty much anything to anchor the roots to keep the bulbs stable and submerged, as long as it's not metal. I used dollar store rocks and the children made their own versions, with plastic beads and marbles.   And good old mason jars of course.

Christmas Stuff

Yesterday I made my cards and gift tags in preparation for Christmas. I'll just gloss over the fact that I haven't done any shopping or making of actual gifts yet.  Since I started this blog four years ago (I can hardly believe that it's been that long), I have stuck with the same simple and classic colour scheme of red, white and linen for all things Christmassy.   I mulled the possibility of switching things up a bit for some time before cutting, stamping and gluing this year's cards.

But it wasn't to be. 

Red and white, I'm still not over you.

Hello November

This is not one of those charmingly named barf-o-lanterns.  This is what a squirrel did to my son's pumpkin this afternoon.  Gross, but kind of funny too.

So my 30 day dress better challenge only really lasted 7 days having been hit with a nasty cold (still coughing), a weekend away and the realization that I'd worn pretty much everything that fits me and is seasonally appropriate by day 7.  I'm not sure that I have it in me to go down the daily posting/photo taking route...as tempted as I am to jump on the NaBloPoMo jumpwagon, I don't think I'd make it past week one.

So here I am, relaxing in my yoga pants finally having succumbed to pinterest.  I was holding off knowing that it was just another major internet time suck but the number of visits here via pinterest plus the convenient to be able to save things away in one place have finally broken down my resolve.  Of course, it's utterly awesome.

30 Days

Like clockwork, this week I've noticed the winter blahs slowly creeping in.  The upside is that because I've blogged about it every single year, I know that the feeling won't last too long.  One way of distracting myself while I adjust to the change of season is to shake things up a little.  Inspired by Claudia and Ali, and the What I Wore Wednesday ladies I am making an effort to dress better for the next 30 days and posting the results on flickr.  

This is not me attempting to be a 20 something fashionista, it's about resisting the urge to wear yoga pants or the same pair of jeans everyday.  (Although, I will likely wear jeans most days!).  

Today's outfit:
top - Next (thanks Mum and Dad), jeans - Oasis (I've had these 5 years!), boots - Winners.

Happy (hot) Thanksgiving!

   
We celebrated Thanksgiving this year with friends, family and enjoyed a spectacularly warm and sunny weekend.  I'm very grateful for so many things - including guests who were kind enough not to mention the overcooked, dry turkey I served up!

Canorama

 
Having a bit more time on my hands this year has meant more time for canning.  Not that I've made a whole lot mind you but tomatoes and applesauce have been made in the last week.  I don't have a pantry in my kitchen but a shelf in my basement dedicated to all things mason jar related including jam, chutney and honey.  And a few mystery jars of who-knows-what that I'll open one day out of curiosity.  I'm quite possessive of my shelf -I like to look at it but find it hard to actually open and use anything.

I'm weird like that!

I'm thinking Lorraine Pascale's chilli jam is next on the list.  I love everything she's made so far in her new series.

Je tricote, tu tricotes...

 
Tricoter = to knit

I am back at school two mornings a week trying to improve my conversational French .  My first assignment was a five minute presentation on a useful habit I have.  I chose knitting because, although I've only recently got out my needles again since a break in the summer (note to self: knitting socks at the pool during 40C weather leads to many mistakes and eventual frogging) I am in love with the idea of knitting.  I think it's the ultimate hobby.  Here's a rough translation of what I tried to say (with far fewer mistakes in this version I suspect):

It's creative - let's face it, to the uninitiated making anything wearable out of wool is impressive and most importantly, unique.

It's challenging -I love the accomplishment of working out how to do a new stitch. I'm very nerdy like that.  I finally worked out how to do a twisted rib on a sock cuff this week.  It only took me two years.

It's deceptively easy - all that K2, SSK, K2tog, K3 YO K1 stuff is actually very straightforward once you're brave enough to just have a go. I know many accomplished knitters who are scared of knitting in the round and I can fool them into thinking that I'm extra smart because I once watched a youtube video that showed me how. 

It's relaxing - I really switch off when I knit and find it very useful when I want to be distracted from the mundane things in life like cooking dinner, helping children with homework etc.  It never ceases to amaze me how long you can get away with "Just a minute, Mummy just has to finish one more row...".

It's practical - you can knit virtually anywhere (although not at an outdoor swimming pool during a heatwave - see above), I have knit at the skating rink, on the bus, in the car, in the Dr's office, waiting for my tires to be changed to name a few.

I could have added something about how special it is to give someone a knitted gift but I didn't because as I have previously alluded, I am a selfish knitter and keep it all to myself thank you very much. 

On the needles so far, are these socks and this cowl.  What about you?