Lichen and moss - happy colours

I've been thinking about the little things that make me happy. The big things are obvious, but the other night I wrote down in my gratitude journal:

"Thank you for the moss and lichen colours on Frodo and Sam and the rocks." (We'd been watching The Two Towers, obviously.)

But when I set out today with the aim of collecting some Nature to decorate the house,

I had no particular intention of the Nature being licheny.

But lichen on fallen twigs is what came home with me and the dog.

Getting a few looks from other walkers, inevitably...

I arranged the twigs in glass jars and my enamel pitchers, returning the usual old hurricane lamps to the mantelpiece,

because all that Nature seemed to require a civilising influence once I'd got it in the house...

And there was my display, finished...

... until we shut the shutters and turned on the lights!

Then a whole new aspect of the twigs became apparent...

... for every twig, there is a shadow.

I am enjoying the colours by day and the shadows by night!

Mystery Object

Thanks for all your comments about Ben's granny's funeral - it went very well, and remembering a long life, well lived, is a positive thing to do. It was also great to see the closer and more extended family. But it's back down to earth with a bump today - SCHOOL! Shock, horror. As you have proved yourselves capable in small things (correctly identifying that the featured cake contained the Alpine flower fève, below), I now need to entrust you with larger matters: what on earth is this little thing that Son 2 dug our of our 'lawn' a few minutes before leaving for the airport on Monday?

'I've found a marble made of real marble, dad!' came the call as we rushed round shutting shutters, evicting the cat, checking that we'd evicted the cat, returning for counterpart driving licences, checking that the cat was still out, etc. With impressive patience, Ben took the time to look at the find and suggested that it was made of clay, not marble.

The find travelled on the plane with us (it did not set off security checks) and came home, where it is now sitting next to the computer. But what is it for?

Why would someone fire a slightly irregular ball of clay, around 3cm/1 inch across? Does it have a practical use in French tradition, or was someone making an over-large marble to play with? Any suggestions, wise or otherwise, are most appreciated!

j

Love

j

Floss

Fèves - would you like a clue?

I'm loving your suggestions for what was in the gateaux des roix in my previous post!So far we have two guesses for a rabbit, and one each for a life-size model of Nicolas Sarkozy (I guess it might fit...), a jelly-baby, a mime (which Son 1 actually got as a Lego figure for Christmas!), a mole (more on Mole later) and an inspired question from Serendipitychild: "Does the shape/colours give us a clue?"Well, yes, something on the cake does give you a clue!

So, here is a spotlight on our haul of fèves for this year - now take your pick from the following options:

An amorous pair of ladybirds,

A chocolate eclair,

A yellow Alpine flower,

Another beheaded figure (Bad, Bad Mummy),

A cow from a Nativity Scene (brought in from Son 2's extensive collection to replace the beheaded character),

A shepherd.
j

Let me know your choice and I'll tell you on Wednesday when we get back from the UK - we're setting off tomorrow for a flying visit to Ben's family, as his granny died (aged nearly 102) after Christmas and the funeral will be on Tuesday.

Three Kings, Three Cakes... and counting...

I've told you before but I'll tell you again - the French have a lovely way of beating the post-Christmas blues! Looking at these photos, I realise I could have entered them for a Splash of Colour, they are so jewel-like. That's very appropriate, because the cake is a crown, and is one of three varieties of cake we can buy at this time of the year to commemorate the visit of the Three Kings to the toddler Jesus.

On top of each cake is a paper crown, and inside each cake is hidden a little porcelain figure (watch your teeth!). The figures are called fèves, named after the beans that they obviously replaced at some point in history.

Traditionally, the fèves were models of figures from the nativity story. We still get those, but nowadays you also get characters from films (I broke off Harry Potter's head one year - Bad Mummy!). Can you guess what the fève in this pretty cake might have been?

Vintage Tins - but what's inside???

So, I had a bit of a failing for vintage tins before... ... and then I was looking for new storage containers for the Ugly Black Shelves and found a load more tins in the Troc Shop...

... and then I lost the list of what was where, in which tin, and the Ugly Black Shelves got a bit Uglier for a while, until I remembered, that inside one of the tins was:

Second Hand Magnetic Tape!!! One of those buys I KNEW was going to come in handy one day - and reduced from three pounds (silly price for a charity shop) to two! Unfortunately it was a bit old and less sticky than before, but perfectly magnetic, so out of the same tin came:

Double Sided Sticky-tape!
j
So very quickly, everything was back in the right tin and this time we can find it!

Gosh, I feel like a mixture of Angela and the Thrifty Mrs here, getting all organised in a low-cost way... And now I feel like Sarah, because I said 'gosh'! There'll be a 'golly' before you know where you are...

But what's inside? Well, glue, who cares? But I'm crazy about the rusty old Christmas tin, which is peopled with French santons, like the figures on a traditional French nativity scene.

Wouldn't you like a peep inside this one? You can see it all in my blog shop, here. But here are one or two of the items I've been very tempted to remove from stock and start using myself!

j

How French...

Lace, of course... (rather battered)...

A Coronation table cloth - very British!

THE peg bag.

And, bien évidemment, MOP buttons...

Do pop over for a browse if you have some Christmas money to spend - I'm buying something from Silverpebble's shop with mine!

Golly!...

A bit of frippery

Prompted by Niki's Nostalgia at No.1 calendar, I've sought out a few French soap boxes, silk roses and some swansdown today.... A bit of fun!

Have a suitably frivolous day...

Drinking-in the Sunset

Does that sound like a crazy idea? Son 1 took these photos a while ago now - he and I have been going for evening dog-walks together, for human and dog exercise, and to give him the chance to chat and unwind from the stresses of the day.

Given that he's been suffering from stress, leading to hair pulling (which is getting better with treatment), and that I've been dealing with my mum's death and a general tendency to get ratty for no good reason, we've been working on appreciating nature and getting into a calmer frame of mind.

Some days we've appreciated the patterns made by branches against the darkening sky - like stained-glass windows, Son 1 says.

Other days we've listened to the ice on the lake 'sing' as he threw stones or branches onto it. But on this particular evening we were admiring the sunset.

I was so glad he'd taken the camera with him. Another chance to drink-in the beauty of our local area - the decorated roof is on the Tuilerie, the former tile-maker's home.

Splash of Colour January 2011

Over at Silverpebble, Emma has been encouraging us to cheer up the dark winter months with a splash of colour. It would seem that the Victorians had exactly the same idea! The earliest, and most exquisite, cards in my collection are totally 'un-wintery'.

I posted about most of them last year (lol) but I decided to save the most colourful, floral, summery, lacey ones to join in Emma's Spash of Colour week.

Happy 2011, folks, and thanks so much for your kind and encouraging comments on my 'calendar year' post!

A Calendar Year

As most of you know, I absolutely revelled in Niki's Nostalgia at the Stone House Calendar last year, and used its pictures as inspiration for a monthly collection of vintage goodies in the dull patch under our stairs - coincidentally the first thing you see as you come in though our front door, so a good area to keep looking interesting! I'm going to use a picture of each month's display to do a little review of my year, as I currently remember it. Enjoy the pictures or the text - they tell different stories, so it's up to you which you prefer...January was the month that I got ill, rather than merely under the weather, from my thyroid infection. Not a great start, but a real chance to stop and think, and to begin reading Simple Abundance.

February was ill month number two. Lots more stopping and thinking, most of it very valuable indeed! The boys and I also staggered over to visit my parents, and whilst there I started to get better.

In March things were getting far better for me, although I was still taking steriods which left me rather frantic! I got back into work and learned about how to keep the house rather tidier, partly thanks to my manic spurts of energy... I also really enjoyed the Pause in Lent blogging event with a number of you - a real part of my learning this year.

In April I got over to see my parents again. I bought lots of Roman Mysteries books for Son 2 in the Edinburgh charity shops, and Serenata helped me greatly by sending the last two that I couldn't find! The kindness of bloggers.

May saw a lot of Vide Greniers, including one in our own town where our boys sold off their old toy cars - a bit of fun! I went over to see my parents again - looking back over this year, I'm so glad I went so often. Ben was wonderful, looking after the animals, sometimes the boys too, and sometimes with the help of his excellent mother.

June was my birthday, and we celebrated with a fantastic afternoon tea with friends, using my real(fake) Limoges tea set and with contributions baked by all family and visitors. Ben baked a yummy swiss roll which was upstaged by Son 2's incredible chocolate cake!

July was another month when I took the boys over to see my parents. Once home, we had a wonderful camping trip in the Ariege, where we all truly relaxed. Sometimes it's hard to realise how tense we all get until we can force ourselves to do nothing!

In August Ben's parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary with a gite holiday for all the family - an incredible experience and a most wonderful vintage gite.

September saw a lot of new starts for me - the work I was doing in a school folded, and my hours with a Business Language school took up the slack - so I've gone from working with 11 - 15 year olds to chatting on the phone with very professional English-speaking French business people! I still do a good amount of private tuition with children and teenagers, though. It was also Ben's birthday and we had a really wonderful family visit to the Jardin des Martels to celebrate.

October was the month that my mother's health, which had been blessedly calm over the summer, reached its worst. She died on October 20th in St Columba's Hospice in Edinburgh, following more than two years of coping with cancer. She is the reason that I started this blog and you will notice her influence on it everywhere.

We kept November deliberately calm - returning from my mother's funeral at the end of October meant that we just got on with life and work, taking Son 1 to his many appointments to help measure and deal with his dyspraxia inbetweentimes. It wasn't a bad month. It was a good one to focus on what mattered.

And December has been another opportunity to focus on what matters! The Pause in Advent with the blogging community, and our family Advent and Christmas activities at home, especially with my Dad (miraculously) joining us for Christmas, have been so important.
So what will 2011 bring? It has already brought my new Nostalgia Calendar! And, noting the word 'fragile' on my lovely recup' box here, maybe a bit more admission of my own fragilities. While I was blogging to cheer my mum, I really couldn't mention anything that would cause her concern, about the boys, or about me, or anything... Now, I hope I will be able to think things through more openly, now and then. Nothing too grave - I love a cheery blog! But I know I can count on my blogging friends to bear with me (lol) if I occasionally admit to a frailty... Happy New Year!