My Pocket

grateful for

Angie at Cozynest kindly tagged me a few days ago and I've been mulling over what to write since. 6 to 8 things that I am thankful for... I decided not to write a list of the most obvious and important things so here are a few, in no particular order, small things that I feel grateful for daily:

~ sunlight waking me up in the morning

~ D offering his shoulder to lie on at night

~ laughing with the cheekiest students in the school corridor

~ the rustle of the leaves and the light sifting through the branches on my after-lunch walk

~ finding sweet comments on my blog from lovely people

~ feeling comfortable in myself, my body and my clothes

~ seeing a creative seedling in my head turn into something real in my hands

~ developing yet another crush on this boy who sits opposite every supper

Thank you so much for tagging me Angie - I've really appreciated these days thinking about it! They're all relationships aren't they, what we are thankful for - to people, nature, ourselves, creativity, that underlying energy.

small adventures

For a small adventure we went on a rather quick trip to Brighton yesterday. We went strolling and window-shopping between the rain showers, stopping regularly for baby maintainance. She was happiest in the harness and missing out on too much action in the pram. Those delightful gurgling noises and highpitched baby squeals were new on the repertoire so she was busy rehearsing. Most of the time she was just taking it all in though, watching as us adults did too.

nap-time

You remember Sophie and Tindra, for whom I made the baby blanket a while ago? They've come to visit! We've got nearly a week to catch up on 8 years of life since we last met, which should mean long walks and endless cups of tea. And playing with a three-month-old (if she'll have me). :o) I will still be posting though, during nap-time. Take care!

ps. Once again my pictures have nothing to do with the content, but I'm enjoying the autumn theme they carry on in the background - that's what I'm seeing daily on my way to and from work.

days of play

We went to see our friends in London this weekend and had such a lovely time. Oh, I just love those kids! The youngest one is talking now and he's the most polite, wellspoken 2-year-old I have ever met. I kept expecting one-word-sentences in the form of commands but got: 'can you push me in please', 'excuse me' and 'can you help me please Caroline' (he couldn't climb up the slide himself without some assistance from the rear). He's the sweetest little red-head kid, smiling all the time and coming up to me regularly to show me this and that: 'Caroline, look at this! I made that!', or to have a cuddle.

They've got a climbing frame in the back garden with a soft floor for landing on and all three of the boys are clambering and hanging upside down from it. The little one will chant 'You tan't tat me! You tan't tat me!' (You can't catch me) while standing on the lower rungs. Bless! :) They're all excellent with climbing by the way, their parents trust them to know what they're doing so they've gotten really skilled, knowing they have to depend on themselves.

The middle brother who is five is the rowdy one, feeling he has to be loud and mischievous to gain attention we think. I just grab him whenever he passes by and hug him hard and long while he struggles unconvincingly and curses all girls. We had so much fun making up games with the oldest brother, like rolling chestnuts down the slide into a plastic bag (they make the most satisfying sound rattling in) and doing monkey bar tricks.

They live in one of those typically British houses with a thin facade facing the street, a tiny little front garden behind the fence filled with pots of lavender, ivy and geraniums, a narrow two story house and a small strip of back garden with a tall fence. Airplanes fly past low in the sky, green parakeets shriek in the trees and you hear some sounds of the city although they live in a very quiet corner. I love going to their house, I always feel safe there and I enjoy the city vibes for a while. I would like to live in a house like that sometime and it's one of my favourite things to look at the back gardens of those kind of houses from the train. I didn't bring my camera or I would have taken a picture of the house, but I took some of autumn leaves today instead.

fridays

Fridays don't mean what they used to to me. Every other Friday I go up to college for a weekend of lectures, which I like very much, and I get to go in shops on my lunch break, but it means my weekend is used up entirely. On the Friday I never get that excitement that weekends bring with promises of places to go, time to relax and projects to delve into. On Sunday night however I come back with that distinct feeling of anticipation - can I have my weekend now? No, but how's Monday morning? :o)

The Fridays I have free are more precious to me than they have ever been and I cherish the luxurious feeling of time to my disposal for crafting, walking or spending time in bed. :>) Doing full-time degree studies whilst working has forced me to look at what I want in life. To consciously choose what is worth my attention and live as I go along, not putting things off for later. Of course, I don't always do that. I have periods when I let it all go and pull the duvet over my head, stick my nose in an inspiring book, let my room overflow and tell the world to go away. I know how lucky I am to be able to do that. I have no children to depend on me or a full-time job to worry about.

I've always been a come-and-go person in life. It's what I feel comfortable with, since being a kid. I'll spend time with people but without an escape route I'll get uncomfortable. I was the aloof one: friendly, kind and caring, but if I didn't like it I'd be off like a startled deer. I often think I'll end up like one of those characters in books - you know, the old grumpy man or woman on the corner of the street whose apples you wouldn't dream of pilfering, but once you get to know them they are actually very warm and friendly. I like to keep to me'self, is all.

But I still have to clear up the mess, because it's time to reemerge from that duvet...

i like moss

I like moss.

And I like this song. Life is like that sometimes.

You can make a plan
Carve it into stone
Like a feather falling
It is still unknown

Until the clocks speak up
Says it’s time to go
You can choose the high
Or the lower road

You might clench your fist
You might fork your tongue
As you curse or praise
All the things you've done

And the faders move
And the music dies
As we pass over
On the arc of time

So you’ll nurse your love
like a wounded dove
in the covered cage of night
Every star is crossed
by frenetic thoughts
that separate and then collide
and they twist like sheets
‘til you fall asleep
and then finally unwind
It’s a black balloon,
it’s a dream you’ll soon
deny

--------

To the deepest part
Of the human heart
The fear of death expands
‘Til we crack the code,
we have always known
But could never understand
On a circuit board
We’ll soon be born
Again, again, again, again…

Arc of Time, Bright Eyes

evening light comes early

room inside

This is the last of the posts on our place, from the outside. I told you already that we live on the first floor, up the stairs, and that we share the cottage with other people. There are four flats all in all in the house you see, and within one flat (unless there is a couple like us living there) there are two staff members of the community living in one room each and sharing a kitchen and a bathroom. So basically we know all our neighbours very well, working with them over at the School or the Centre, which is lucky as the walls and floors are very thin! :o)

There are entrances to the bottom floor flats on the other side of the house as seen below and our porch opens up to the field and woods. Must admit we don't do much at all to keep the flower beds tidy... It's one of my absolute favourite places of our home, that porch step when the door is open. Half inside, half outside, listening to the birds and lapping up the sunshine.

There is a small building, the annex, behind our cottage (to the right in the picture above) and it has two rooms for mature students at the School.

That's our common laundry room behind the little door to the right in the photo. The cottage is surrounded by lawn, apple trees, plum trees, raspberry bushes and of course the woods running the length of the garden to the left.

It's a lovely little wood, with oceans of bluebells covering the floor in the spring, cherry blossom petals drifting out across the field like snow early summer, copper beeches turning dark wine red in the autumn and dusky green ivy covering the trunks of the trees in the winter.

Well, that's the end of the corners of my home to show. Hope you enjoyed it - I did! I'll be away at college this weekend, so I won't see you for a couple of days. Wishing you well. May the small things in life make you happy :)

room to cook

Last of the rooms, the kitchen. My least favourite room unfortunately. When we first viewed this flat I gasped as we looked into the kitchen with its 70s wooden slat cupboard doors, brown sink and irreparably grotty tiled work surfaces. I need inspiration and inviting surfaces to do my cooking. D was the one to gasp when we got to the wood panelled bathroom sauna - he loves his showers. Since then the kitchen has been refitted a bit, not looking much better, but at least it's clean. I don't feel like showing more pictures of the place though, the window is the best part, a breathing hole in that tiny cramped space. It's a lovely feeling standing right by the open window while cooking, looking down at what is going on in the little open patio below.

We put up shelves a while ago, which made a big difference to how I felt about being in there. Having everything accessible and presentable in old fashioned glass jars just gives me good vibes of quality and simplicity. I think it might partly be due to being Swedish, feeling fussy, I've still not got used to the British standards in accomodation - drafty, poor maintainance and more often than I'm accustomed to: *cough* bad taste. The house in itself is lovely however and there are many old houses here that are wellmade with little flourishes to please the eye and with lasting quality. I love the metal handles on the windows for instance, the small swirl (you can see it better in the bathroom photo).

To finish off I wanted to show you my new lunch box! Isn't it great? I like thermos flasks, I used to bring my lunch in one every morning at uni. I like the autumn leaves on this one and it makes it obvious to people when I leave it in the school fridge that it is mine, no mistake.

room for sleeping

On the other side of the stairs is our bedroom. We both slept on floor level beds before we met, have done so together for years now and we still love it, especially being under the window. I have the sun lighting up the room in the morning to wake me up and at night I might watch the stars for a while.

Actually a lot of things are floor level at our place. We used to sit on the floor to eat our meals or on a cushion in front of the window for a long time before we got a dining table this spring. We've both done yoga for years (though I haven't for quite a while now) so we both have our yoga mats, blankets and props lying around.

I've only recently 'grown up' and felt a desire to have proper tables and chairs and D wanted some arm chairs. Since I was young I've wanted things simple, spartan and tidy. I didn't need reminding to clean my room - I remember age 8 straightening the tassels on my rug, it being the only untidy part left in the place. That's a bit embarrassing... Took me years to relax my standards and for signs to begin to appear in my living spaces that someone was actually living there, using the facilities. :o) As a teenager I removed all furniture except the mattress and a stereo on the window sill to have a room with perfect emptiness. I loved it. White walls, large window and wooden floors. I went through most of high school homework lying flat on my tummy with my books strewn around me.

Nowadays, well it's a different story as you can see from the pictures. I still like having a tidy-up regularly and I like my living area light and spacious, but the cleaning is on the backburner unless someone is coming over and I take silly pride in being a bit cluttered and disorganised, not having been able to do that for so long. Having belongings doesn't freak me out as much though I still have times when I ruthlessly go through inventories in my mind as to what is actually essential and what needs to go to lighten the load. I'll think of Thoreau's quote of men "creeping down the road of life, pushing before it a barn seventy-five feet by forty" and shudder. I'm still very much inspired by gypsies, nomads and the Japanese - having few, simple and functional belongings and very few pieces of furniture, spending much time on rugs or mats on the floor.

I'm so glad D has the same sense of simplicity and quirky sense of interior decorating as I do. I began this stone collection blue-tacked to the wall above the light switch and he has added to it.

And, he doesn't mind my friends hanging around.