Easter greetings

So, this is the moment we have all been waiting for...for FOUR months. We are finally complete, weeeeelll, nearly finally complete. We are complete in so far as the wallpaper and lights in the den will be done tomorrow morning and my sister and her children will arrive tomorrow afternoon. There is nothing like cutting it fine of course!

Flood!

Weeks into renovations

Complete looking towards the fireplace.

Complete looking towards the hall!

This is the hall with the flood, after the initial clear up and then the final finish.

Flood!

Mess and dark wood

Similar angle with the new lightened beams and white paintwork, fresh flooring...loving it!

I'm thrilled. The beams make the whole place look so much brighter and lighter. The pictures don't do it ANY justice whatsoever, so those of you who know us will just have to come to see it for yourselves.

Now our renovations are turned towards the path and the drainage and ensuring that the well is alarmed and pumped so that we don't flood again.

We are currently on Easter holidays and are looking forward to the arrival of the cousins tomorrow (the way that the children are acting at the moment I'm not sure if it's the arrival of the Kings in all honesty!).
I've managed to get a bit of work done in the garden; I've put in two new apple trees (a Discovery and a James Grieve), both bare root, so just in time. I also put in two more blackcurrant bushes and three loganberry bushes. Two of the kids planted up the first of our pink fir apple potatoes in buckets before we realised we'd only get three potatoes per bucket and need to drill holes in a few more. Luckily we found another six in the shed for Mr Beehive to get his drill into tomorrow morning.
Later this afternoon we went over to Baytree Cottage  where the children took part in some Easter baking. We learned to make hot cross buns and the kids made biscuits and easter nests.
Tomorrow I expect it'll be a cleaning day, making me a Hot Cross Bunny!

Have a Happy Easter!

Nearly there...

So, we're in and 'nearly there'! I say nearly because we're still waiting on the beams to be lightened and there's still some furniture shifting to do as the other room that was flooded isn't completed yet, but heck...the fact we're even IN this room now is a massive achievement in itself four months after the dreaded event! Look back at previous posts and you'll see the change!

We're curtain and blind-less as well and there are no pictures up as yet but do you like it? I love it. It's lighter and cleaner (in terms of no nasty artexy walls) than before. We've changed the radiators to these cool dark ones and have new stained wood skirting to try to get a more natural feel to the room. We've also opted for a red colour sofa instead of the chocolate brown we had last time, again to warm up the room.

The dogs have found their homes again...you probably can't see that they actually have a bed to the left under the rad, but they both prefer the fireplace!

In other news Mr Beehive and I managed to wangle a brief evening to go to a gig...and on a school night too tut tut! The very cool and amazing Grace Potter and the Nocturnals were on a European tour with the Avett Brothers and luckily for us, made a last minute call to run a night just for themselves at the Bush Theatre. It was fabulous. Again, luckily for us I'm not sure GP is that well known over this side of the pond yet, so there couldn't have been more than 150 people in the audience. The Bush Theatre is a small venue so it made it very up close and personal, although, showing my age, it took me until the weekend to recover from the lack of sleep!

The awesome Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

The groupies!

Outside we're progressing slowly as the weather is holding us back on our usual 'farm' business at this time of year. I've had course after course for the last five weekends, so therefore I've had only one day weekends which hasn't helped. But the weather..oh the weather? The rain really hasn't stopped since last September in all honesty. This time last year was 'the day that we don't talk much about' in terms of big birthdays and it was glorious. The sun was so hot that we were in sundresses and sat out until 9pm with the chiminea burning. This year it is even too cold to start the seeds off in the green house yet as I don't have a propagator or heating. I managed to leap out early this morning amidst the drizzle in order to prepare the bed for the beans and brassicas. I came in for coffee and when i looked out again...it was snowing!!!!!
Mr Beehive, however, continued to dig over the area for the new fruit bushes.
I can only hope that this disastrous beginning means that the summer will be wonderful and plentiful in terms of crops and sun.

As for the three stooges, they've been dressing up for comic relief! How red can you go?

A small peak into the last few months

Many Sundays are spent these days going for lovely walks around the local fields. The ground is gradually drying, although you can see the Little Miss and Pip still manage to get covered.

Repairs have also now started on the house, these are some of the early weeks in the renovations, before the plastering began.

Then

And now...

Then...

And now...  The work still continues so watch this space....

Visitors to our bird feeding station have included these greenfinches, robins, long tailed tits and blue tits.

The commencement of swimming pool staging removal. All the weird wooden structure to the left is coming out to make space for 3 new Loganberry bushes and a new apple tree. The conifer mid right of the picture is coming out so the beehives can go in that space.

 This is going to be where my swinging chair hammock and my full length lying hammock will go... Bliss on a summer's day (as long as we get a summer this year!)

 Some gratuitous chicken pictures of them and their new feeder! We now have 10 chickens and are getting a couple more, we've got a range of brown hybrids, three bluebelle hybrids, a maran hybrid and two lavender aracaunas one of whom was our only female hatchling last spring. They lay these beautiful blue eggs. I'm thinking of some salmon favourelle as our new additions, although their laying may be less than the hybrids, they lay a beautiful shade of pink egg.

Rhubarb forcers are bringing up a beautiful early crop - can't wait!!

Crocuses in the garden...this starts a sea of purple, then will become a sea of blue in later March as the bluebells come out.

The garden this morning. We've dug out some old gooseberry bushes in the cage to make space for three more black currant bushes. The joy of being in a permanent residence now is that you can evolve with your garden. We have decided that two blueberry bushes can live in large pots and we'd be better off with more of one type of soft fruit so that we actually get sufficient yield to do something with them. Blackcurrants are not commonly found in the shops and we can make such good jam, syrup, cordial or wine with them that giving up a few gooseberry bushes that gave us a mere dozen little berries last year, is worth the sacrifice. The carpet is warming the soil for the brassicas.

This year's plans are for french beans in the raised beds, brassicas where the beans were last year, beetroot where the brassicas were last year, potatoes in 3 ltr builders buckets, carrots in bags and courgettes in the shallow bed where it can grow rampant if it chooses.

Panettone leftovers

Sundays for us now I'm working again, are really precious. Most days since the New year we have spent taking a longish hike between courses of our Sunday roast and then at around 4, settling down to watch a family movie together with the wood burner kicking out heat.

Today, however, it really is pouring and we are doubtful we will make our hike this afternoon, so I have a few moments more to jump on and post a quick recipe for a delicious adaptation on a chocolate bread and butter pudding.

Thanks to the flood this November, items I bought in slowly for us to use at Christmas when we were hosting got forgotten about in the back of a cupboard as we had to go elsewhere for Christmas.
Yesterday I noticed a Chocolate and Orange panettone and decided to have a go making something for Sunday lunch from it.

So, here is a recipe to share with you all, it is calorific and delicious, true Winter Sunday comfort food, but ho hum...once the sun starts to shine again I will get out and run it off and the hikes will continue, but for now:

Italian Black Cherry Chocolate Pudding.

You will need:

1 Panettone
Chocolate spread
Butter
300mls cream
1tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg

I used a chocolate and orange panettone.
Slice it into medium slices, not to thick
Spread a light layer of chocolate spread over each piece and cut into quarters.
Grease a long oval ovenproof dish with a layer of butter and lay your first set of quarters into it, just as you would a bread and butter pudding.
Take a tin of cherries, make sure they are stoned, and pour them and the juice over the first layer of the panettone.
Then repeat the layering of another round of bread.
Next take around 300mls of double cream and pour it into a jug, beat in an egg and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Pour the mixture over the bread and put into a 180c oven for around 20mins.

You will notice I haven't used any sugar because I am not using normal savoury bread, the panettone is already a sweetened and it contains chocolate chips, there is also sweetness from the cherry juice and the chocolate spread.

Serve with either custard or a creme fraiche.

52 weeks, 52 books

Oh look, I'm back...temporarily because I have to say, I am completely enjoying not being quite so wrapped with this fixation of square technology. I have, however, jumped back on today to talk briefly about our new year challenge.
This year, alongside our Pollyanna jar (I'll explain that another time), our family is undertaking a 52 weeks, 52 books challenge.
I've given each child a note book and we'll be creating a blog space, to document the 52 books that they read over the next year. Television has never played huge parts in our daily life (it is there, don't get me wrong, but it's not on on a daily basis), but I am trying to gently guide my boys in particular, away from their obsession with Beano annuals and back to the beauty and joy of reading novels.

Both my husband and I are avid readers, I was the desperation of an ex-boyfriend in my teen years, who laughed at my categorisation of my books with the Dewey decimal system (okay...that was theraputic letting you all know that!), I worked in a library as a teen and, much like yarn, I am content to sit for hours and stroke books or smell them (I refuse to own a kindle on this very guise, although I know that my days of denial are probably decreasing as the quantity of books one can take on holiday on a kindle far surpasses the need for smell once my suncream has blown up all over my books in my suitcase!) I am also well known for burning food as I'm engrossed in a chapter or falling asleep with a book on my face! So for both of us, books play a huge part in our family life and we have been reading to our children since the day they were born and still do read to all of them from a family reader as often as time allows.

I'm hoping that the blog will become inspiration for other parents who may have children at the same or similar ages, to find books that my children have read and reviewed in their own words. I know that the ages that my three are at, 8 (with a reading age of probably nearer 11), 10 (again, probably more like a 13 year old) and 12 (who was reading teen books at around 8), the contextual level for the challenge of the read are sometimes far apart.

This is no brag of their ability to read, merely that they found reading early and quickly moved - apart from my middle one, who hated reading from an early age, but loved being read to, and worried both of us. A proof in the largest of puddings that there is no need to fight with a youngling who is obviously confident and able in other things...just read to them, read to them, read to them and eventually one day they will pick up something and never stop reading from that point. The day his teacher told me his reading age, I fell off my chair and berated myself from doubting his own knowledge of what he needed to do, when. BUT, I digress!

However, confident and able readers that read above their age are not always at an advantage and, I return to my original wish for their blog, and that is that others may find inspiration for suitable books, with both context and level of interest for children who may well be avid readers, or even for those to whom reading is not yet wanting and where there maybe things to spark interest.

I will attach the link to this blog later in the week once I manage to get some blogspace for their words.
Thanks for reading ;-)

Here is the link to our new 52 books, 52 weeks challenge

2013

This seems somewhat of an odd end to the year post this year.
Partly because it's already the new year and partly because I don't have many photos of Christmas or the last few weeks to choose from so it'll be all words, and partly because I feel in somewhat of a limbo and fug at the moment.

I'm not going to make resolutions again this year as it sets me up to fail by about January 2nd, however I am going to come up with some things I'd really like to 'improve' on or 'better myself' with or new things I'd like to learn.

This was meant to be a big year this year, I turned 40 back in march and had so many big, big plans, but somehow, life had other ideas for me and many of those plans didn't materialise and more plans came out from the shadows and deviated me from my path.

It's funny, because the longer I live, the more I believe that your path is already set for you and, however hard you may try to change it, we are preset to live a life that is designed for us. That's not to say that we can't better things or change them slightly, but ultimately the BIG things that matter, are probably already pre chosen when we arrive on the earth.

I suppose many of the reasons why I feel this way is the fact that this was the year that I walked away from my dream and ended up back teaching, and oddly feel that this is the place I am meant to be. I have had dreams and even nightmares about leaving midwifery, there are times when I feel that I may have made a truly big mistake, but then other times when I know that what I'm doing now is the right decision for all of us as a family and that I feel safe and comfortable doing it. I've tried to leave teaching...to do something else, but seem to stumble right back into it each time.

Another reason is that despite trying for 4 years now, we just can't get pregnant! Weird isn't it! There is no rhyme or reason as to why, after we lost our fourth child back in 2008 and successfully having three healthy children that there should be problems, but...well, life has other plans. I'm now 40, 41 this year and feel that my time has come to an end now to be a parent to a newborn. There is a bizarre nagging at me in the back of my head that says that maybe there is another child there somewhere, but not a biological one and deep down, I ALWAYS knew I would have two boys and a girl, ever since I was about 12!

So, where am I now on the evening of the 1st day of 2013. Hmmm, well, I'd like to lose a little weight this year and do a bit more exercise (I say that every year). I'd like to learn to woodburn (pyrography is it's real name), I'd like to qualify as a Montessori teacher, but then...actually, I'd like to take what I've learned back into mainstream education. I don't want to open my own nursery like I thought I would. I am enjoying working with the little ones, but if we're having a post of me being honest, I want to be back with the older ones - reception - year three, that's my place. I'm going to sing every week with Rock choir. I'm going to sing my bloody heart out ! I'm going to truly love life.

But before we get to do any of that, I want to get my house back to normal. If there is one thing that has been rammed home to me harder than anything this year, is that I am a creature who likes to be organised and know where I am with things. I like to be able to carry out a plan and I don't like change or limbo! That's not to say, as those of you who have been with me the longest know, that I can't do spontaneity or live out of a suitcase for a short period, heck, I've lived in a caravan for a month, in a bed and breakfast for six, out of a suitcase in a house in the woods, nearly ended up in Japan, but arrived in Connecticut, have considered living in Singapore, Australia, and Cape Town, but I am a creature of comfort and like to have a game plan that follows through.

I think these last couple of months have made me realise that I like endings, I like closure and I don't like loose ends. Living in one room with a mess in the others hasn't endeared itself to me at all! I don't like sitting around waiting for things to come to me. I don't like people passing the buck and not just being honest. I am a bit crap with waiting too!

So, I may take a break from the blog for a while too as I feel I want to find myself a bit more in 2013. I want to discover who I am, close some loose ends and find the beauty around me again, which seems to be lacking a bit at the moment. Maybe I need less rain and more camera?


So I'm wishing all of you who read this blog a wonderful New year. Hang around, I will be back at some point, I think.

xx

The end of the world

So apparently the Mayan calender predicts that the end of the world is nigh on 21/12/12. That we are possibly expecting a cataclysmic event or annihilation; that aliens will be present to take a chosen few to a safe haven (as long as you can get to the top of a, now closed off, mountain in a little village in France).

 People have died in the name of this event, killed themselves with fear.

 One American shop owner has made huge profits in sales of 'end of the world' supply boxes, the sales of underground shelters in China has tripled!!!

BUT, maybe we are missing the point!

A conversation I had a few days ago with a teenager about the 'end of the world' on 21/12/12 led me to try to explain to her that surely 'the end of the world' is a relative theory. That somewhere as we were speaking, the world had ended for someone who had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, who had just seen a loved one die suddenly, who couldn't put food in the mouths of their adored children who were dying of malnutrition, whose baby was born sleeping...the list is endless

Then only yesterday, too close to home for me personally as I know Newtown, 28 innocent lives were lost to a mentally unstable young man with a vendetta. Newtown was the first town that Mr Beehive and I visited when we did our 'look-see' visit back in 2005. We stopped in this beautiful, quintessential New England town partly drawn in by the view over the trees and valley and partly to get an amazing sandwich from the deli on the main street. There was a Montessori school close by that we were also visiting and it could so easily have been the place we chose to live. It IS an idyllic place, until yesterday at least. Instead we chose to live just some 12 miles away,  In one short hour, those poor babies and their carers went to school or work as normal, not to see lunchtime. The whole of Connecticut went into lockdown in the schools, parents' hearts hit the floor as the news unfolded. The world ended.

In China, a mad man entered a nursery and maimed 27 innocent babies. Their parents' dropped their children off, maybe on the way to work, to receive a very similar phone call as those parents in CT, some 6000 miles away.

A mall in Oregon saw more people killed this week.
In Syria lives are lost on a daily basis, a conflict killing thousands, mainly innocents.
Belfast appears to be returning to the days of old with car bombs and shootings.
I could go on and on and on.

President Obama has promised 'Meaningful Action' in the wake of the Newtown massacre.

Let's just hope THIS is the point.

Let's just hope that the 21/12/12 sees a coming of a NEW AGE, a new world within which free access to guns in the US is heavily restricted, where sticking plasters of enabling schools to have concealed firearms is NOT the answer.

I hope that 21/12/12 brings a dawning where people begin to understand that we are humans first and foremost, it doesn't matter what religion people are, that we can live in harmony rather than using religion as an umbrella under which to fight each other. Religion should enhance, not destroy.

21/12/12 needs to bring an era in which children are safe to cross the road, go to school, walk to the shops, be at home with their loved ones without the fear that they might be kidnapped, killed, raped, attacked.

For so many, the end of the world has already come, it has claimed all that they have known and loved within it. For the majority, that wasn't Mother Nature, or their god's doing, it was the doing of another human being - a drunk after a night out, the son of a teacher in an elementary school, their neighbour in Northern Ireland or Syria.

The end of the world theory on 21/12/12 is a wake up call. Nothing is coming to destroy us.

WE ARE DESTROYING OURSELVES!

To everyone who has lost a child/partner/sister/brother/loved one today in the awful shooting in CT I extend the hand of love and friendship to you all and know my heart bleeds with yours.

Two weeks on and Advent day 9

Well, I have learned a lesson from our misfortune and that is how, despite feeling everything is going downhill, you can and must always try to find the positive in the negative.
Oddly this is something I always try to tell the children, particularly when they find it difficult with someone at school who is maybe not being kind or friendly towards them, but it was good for me to take an enormous spoonful of my own medicine for once!

So, we don't have a downstairs as such to live in, however, on the upside this has meant that we are eating meals together at the table all the time and this has meant that our family table has, once more, become the focus of our family and the candles and mindfulness that this is bringing back into my approach is warming me greatly.

It means that the children are crafting more and we have gone out this weekend as a family as we can't really sit in the house for long periods.

It has also given us a blank canvas to start again on the home that we are creating, this time we will be able to do the things we had wanted to do initially but time and money to an extent, were in the way. We will put down a proper wooden floor rather than laminate, the ghastly attempt at Tuscanesque/1950's pub plasterwork, will now become clean white, flat plaster, that just shows the leans and bends in the quirkiness of the house, rather than looking like a rather grim attempt to plaster when inebriated. The rug that I loved so much from the USA, will now be replaced by a very traditional braided Blue Mountain rug that really screams USA to me and we 'may' take the fact we're in a mess to get the black beams stripped back as

NOT our house, but wouldn't that be nice....just the rug I want

well...but I may have to work on Mr Beehive for that!

We may not have a tree or decorations in the house this year, but we went on the train early this morning to try to lift our spirits and get in the festive mood. We decided to visit the Birmingham-Frankfurt Christmas market.

007, eat ya heart out!

It was Mr Beehive's birthday yesterday and, given that we'd spent the day taxi-ing the boys and the Little Miss here there and everywhere (including Master Beehive the elder's first ball  - yeah, tux and a small tear, my boy, growing up so fast!), we decided that today was daddy's day and we'd spoil him with Gluhwein and Bratwursts!



Little Miss bought him a gorgeous snowflake candle spinning decoration. Many years ago my grandmother had one with cherubs on it that she would (or rather I would) put out on the mantelpiece each Christmas and it was the highlight of my days after school, to run home and fight with my sister to be the one to light it. As the heat rose from the candles it spun around making a cute ting, ting as it hit the little bell. When she died I think it went to my sister (I was sad!) but somehow we managed to find an identical one, so I now have that one and there is this little one for Mr Beehive too. He also bought a wonderful wooden carousel that does the same, only it is wood and has little figures. We won't be using it this Christmas, but it'll look lovely in our 'renovated' home next year!
So here are some photos of our day

So much candy, so little time!

.

I hope you're getting in the spirit of Advent, Christmas, Yule!

Update

Just a quick update on life in the Beehive.
We are feeling a little like the Borrowers at the moment - only we are the family living upstairs!

It appears - due to Mr Beehive's diligence and perseverance rather than any help from the Water board, that the issue was caused by a Storm drain that was blocked. This then caused a backup of water that of course found our well as the only escape route - that in turn was then bulging to capacity and presumably spilling out into any possible areas, and that may be over the top of our damp proofing and in under the floorboards in the den and flooding out onto the lower level hall and lounge.

So where does that leave us:

after many nights of worry and potential costs building and thoughts of neighbourhood wars, as one thought we had had was that our neighbours had recently pneumatic drilled up their cement front garden and could they have cracked a pipe. They aren't planning on staying, they buy, renovate and move on, would they want this issue, would they care...oh it's amazing what you can think at 2am.

Fortunately (there are great reasons to being married to a man with a law degree!) Mr Beehive had all our drains checked out and they were clear and now we knew one pipe ran under next door before heading to the storm drain. So, he checked out liability etc and apparently since 1st October 2011, if a drain that feeds to a sewer (storm drain - not private drain off your roof to a soakaway), runs under more than one property then it is the responsibility of the water board, even if that storm drain is on private land! So, hooray!

As it happens, the water board this time, once Mr Beehive told them that the storm drain had caused a flood in our living area, were out like a shot - 20 minutes after being called on the phone - I mean...bloody hell, you can't even get fast food that fast!

They confirmed what we thought - however, they were not going to completely hold up their hands, no, apparently as the storm drain in question is on the road - it 'may' be the Highways agency's responsiblity - so watch this space as I fear this could be a niggle between them both for a few more weeks yet.

The rest of it is much as it was - black, smelly, just a shell.

Things are moving slowly.
A skip is coming on Wednesday to take away the destroyed wood and furniture and carpets.
Loss adjusters have agreed to all of it, but not settled - so we have to see what happens there.

Still, after falling down the last four steps on Sunday afternoon and having a damn good cry, I feel more up beat this week and am even taking the kids and Mr Beehive to the German Christmas market in Brum at the weekend - The Gluwein might still kick some Christmas spirit in me yet!

Flood

Not what we were expecting at 4am on Sunday morning 4 weeks before Christmas.
I can't blog right now as there are a lot of emotions whizzing around and I'm struggling with perspective.
I'll be back at some point

Birthdays and Birthday Traditions

 Today has been LMB's eighth birthday and I thought I'd share a few pictures of her day and of the traditions we have as a family.

She has been incredibly excited about her birthday this year, more than I have remembered her being in the past. This culminated in her bringing her dad and me a cup of tea and coffee in bed at 12am this morning, thinking it was time to get up and open her presents (softening the blow!) We didn't get up then, just in case you were wondering (in fact, I'm afraid we didn't even drink the tea or coffee!). Six hours later and she was snuggled in with us, I would like to say she was soon sound asleep again, but sadly, she was keen to play footsie with me to remind me of her presence (and presents!), whisper loudly to ask what time it was 30 seconds after asking before, roll around a lot and play with my hair. By 6.40 the dog had joined in, so we gave it up as a bad job...the coffee was reheated and the day began!

 I think we had perhaps caused some of her restlessness in the night by sneaking in to remove her old desk that came from the underneath of my sister's cabin bed and exchange it for this absolutely gorgeous old writing desk. Yes, we removed a 30 year old cabin bed desk and replaced it with a 50+ year old writing desk...it's character ;-) She loves to write and draw and all authors and illustrators need a beautiful desk with a story of its own in order to get the creative juices flowing. Her chair was just lost before, as was the beauty of her little room...now, it just sings with joy, just like its owner!

We always set up the table on birthday mornings with the birthday ring, the crown and, for her, the Rainbow Bridge story book that we read each year. These traditions, particularly for her, stem back to her days in the Steiner Waldorf toddler community and we love them so much, we have kept them as part of our traditions ever since. The Rainbow Bridge is an adaptable story that we tell each year, adding the most current year. There are adaptations of the tale on the internet, but this one explains it most beautifully I feel. 

For us it connects the meaning of a birthday with birth and life rather than just it being a day for presents and lots of sugar (although there is usually that too!). It's a nice reminder to them of the day they were born and what has happened in their lives to date.

We have also always used a wooden birthday ring. I love the simplicity of them, but they also have an added bonus that when the child blows out their candles, there is less likelihood of the latest cold going home in the party bag alongside a slice of cake !!

They can be as elaborate or simple as you like. Ours is a relatively simple one. We have the number the child has reached, the moon on one side and the sun on the other to represent the world. We have two bees...do I really need to explain that? and we buy a new figure each year either chosen by the child or to go with the theme of the party. This year our new figure was a pink flamingo...the theme being....

Alice in Wonderland!

 

An awesome Mad Hatter !

Happy Birthday Alice!

Not only was today a celebration for the smallest of us, but Master Beehive the younger won a silver medal today in his age group in Tae Kwon Do. We were just so pleased he had decided to take the plunge and enter the competition on the advice of his TKD teacher. What a proud mama !








Do you have any birthday traditions? If you do, please let me know!