Monday 19 February 2018

Making me Smile ...

Hi there everyone

It's grey, wet and miserable here this morning and Martin is at work.

Whilst the renewed vigour that I seemed to find from nowhere last week, following starting to write down things that make me smile or I am grateful for each day, seemed to be hanging around, it's not quite so apparent this morning. Perhaps it's a weather thing.
Anyway, this morning's feeling of lethargy aside, I thought a post sharing the things that made my list over the last week might be worthy of inclusion in my new, more personal style of post writing so here goes ...

Food
If you know me well, you will not be surprised to find that food figured pretty frequently.

There have been home made soups, a Chinese banquet cooked for friends, new recipes added to our ever increasing list of favourites, hot cross buns and a meal at one of our favourite restaurants, which I will tell you more about later in the week.

Blogging
Having been inspired and re-energised by the discovery of a new favourite blog, Tales of a Happy House, I have spent many an hour reading through all of Gillian’s back posts. I was a bit sad to have finally caught up, a bit like that feeling when you finish a very good book.

Gillian’s blog inspired me to change things up a bit on my own Life of Pottering, which resulted in me posting three times last week, is it too much? I don’t know.

Anyway, not only did I post three times, I actually received comments, and not just one!! No, three different people commented on my Changing it Up post and two on my subsequent post about The Morning After. I even had a comment on my latest Will Sidney's War update. Thank you so much to those of you who commented.

Talk about chuffed to bits, I was over the moon.

My blogging mojo definitely seems to be back with all sorts of things inspiring me to write. Lots of, what I will call, 'everyday ordinary', but they are just piling up on my iPad, waiting for the right moment to publish.

The first signs of Spring

It has been so wet, cold and miserable for, what seems like ages and it was lovely last week to wake up to the occasional blue sky and sunshine. This kind of day really does seem to ‘lift’ me and I always seem to want to get up earlier and manage to get loads done.
After a bit of a slack spell on the housework front, over the course of a couple of days last week Martin and I managed to fully Spring clean the lounge, dining room, bathroom and one of the bedrooms and I even cleaned the upstairs windows, boy did that feel good. I think I’d forgotten how much I love being at home when it is at its best.

Having a mooch round the garden revealed the first signs of life too. Lots of green shoots and buds on show and the Hellebores and the Snowdrops are really putting on a show.
I love flowers and, whilst Martin isn’t one to turn up with a bunch, even on Valentines Day, having flowers in the house always feels lovely too. These were a gift from our friends Jackie and Phil last weekend.
Music
When Martin and I met we used to listen to a lot of music. Nothing new, I am a bit ashamed to say, we are both definitely stuck in the 90s and even further back when it comes to our taste in music.

Whilst we often will have the radio on, it’s been ages since we’ve listened to any albums and, no longer having a CD player, we’ve been trying to come up with the best way of making it easy to listen to our music more often.

We are not that au fait with the modern way of listening to music, by streaming or through Spottify or Amazon, and I definitely don’t want to be paying a subscription to be able to listen to my own music or for it to be interrupted with adverts.

Well, I think we’ve now solved our problem. We’ve uploaded loads of CDs onto iTunes and have downloaded them onto an old, old iPad. This, coupled with a bluetooth speaker that I bought Martin for his birthday a few years ago, seems to be working a treat.

So this week we’ve had M People, Tbe Beautiful South, Fleetwood Mac and Katie Melua on a bit of a loop.
Perhaps we do need to think about trying something a bit more modern, but hey, if it ain’t broke, why fix it.

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I don’t know whether it’s a coincidence or not but since I started jotting down the things that make me happy or I am grateful for I do seem to have achieved a lot more and feel a lot more like my ‘normal’ self. 

Not to say that I want to be running everywhere at 100 miles an hour, but I don’t want to be stationary either, so I think I’m going to carry on jotting things down for a while and just see what happens.

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How about you, if you are having a really lazy and lethargic period and it’s starting to get you down, how do you pull yourself out of it? I’d love to hear any ticks you have up your sleeve.

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5 comments:

  1. I like your post and very good photos.

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  2. I always stay positive by thinking about all the good things we do & have & how lucky we are compared to others with real problems like health issues x

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    1. Its lovely to hear from you Tracy. I know what you mean, we are really blessed compared to lots of other people 😃

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  3. Oh... & my dog, he’s so easy pleased!

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Thanks for taking time to comment on my blog. I love to hear what people think about what Martin and I have been up to.