Snapdragon's garden

Artistic half term

I was a bit worried about this week - back from a Trade show and straight into a half term holiday.  Only Isobel is in with me full hours this week, so I am having to be Valerie and Kit as well as Mummy.

We have some fun things planned for the end of the week, but yesterday was a stay at home day while I got down to some work.  I was dreading it , but suddenly my girls seem much more grown up, there isn't the litany of asking for food, drink, entertainment.  They are perfectly capable of doing so much more for themselves.

Zoe spent the day recording songs and layering them in some complicated way on the computer.

And Katie got out her art box and made this

a lino print - no guidance, no supervision (only one gash to her fingers which she sorted herself)

I was stunned.

This one is destined as a present for my Mum, but I have been promised my own version which I intend to use to paper the end of our pharmacy drawers in the big space.

When I compare these accomplished, immediate, strong images with the namby pamby self-conscious art that they produce at school . . . . (well don't let me get onto that hobby horse)

 

7 years

One lovely thing that has happened this year is that Zoe's best friend from nursery school got in touch with her via Facebook.

Starting school, moving here, busy lives, my inability to pick up a phone, had meant that they had been out of touch for 7 years. This weekend we arranged to meet up and Niamh, her youngest brother and Mum came round for the afternoon.

The girls may have changed from this

to this

But they didn't skip a beat - straight back into friendship.  It was wonderful to see

It was wonderful to see.  It was great to see Ellie, Niamh's Mum, too - and to catch up on all the events of the past 7 years.

It was also obvious by her reaction just how much our house has changed - when she popped round with a bottle of wine just after we moved in it still looked like this (excuse the blur as its from the estate agent details) and I think like many of our friends she may have questioned why we had sunk all our money into a 1980s bungalow.

It is now like this - the middle knocked out of the house, light and airy and how we want it.

Of course it helped that we had tidied up in honour of the visit ;o).

 

 

Well you knew we would didn't you?

Meet Dougall.

We drove him home from Yorkshire yesterday and we are all smitten.

More later.

Meet Finn.

You might remember there was some debate in our household about whether we should get a kitten or not.  (3 ayes to 1 no).

The ayes carried it.

Meet Finn

Kit's cat Molly had kittens just before the schools broke up - and we have taken one in.

Beautiful baby, he has taken up residence in a little wicker shopping basket.

Even the "NO" is entranced.  Thats kittens for you.

The big tent

Yesterday we went to our first music festival as a family.

I know!  I know! my music obsessed children are 9 and 13 - how can I have deprived them for so long? I know! I know! music festivals are largely child friendly.  And I know that there are lots of toddlers and young children who bob along happily at all these events but I have never been the kind of mother who remembers to bring wipes and calpol and a selection of jammy sandwiches.  I am very unambitious.  My trips out with the girls have always been a lot less crowded and time constrained.  I am, it must be admitted, a terribly lazy mother.

However years go on, children grow up, calpol & wipes become less essential, and suddenly they are independent beings demanding to go to music festivals.  I am so glad.

So yesterday we went to The Big Tent Festival - an eco-music festival in Falkland in Fife.

And it was wonderful.  The actual festival had been going on all weekend but we were disorganized and only made it on the last day.  And it was wonderful (did I say that already?)

There was lots of dancing

a bit of crafting

and a lot more dancing

The highlight of the day was Roseanne Cash -who gave an amazing and emotional performance as she connected to genuine Scottish roots and her father's love of Falkland and the lands connected to the Cash family.

 

It was amazing to hear her in such an intimate performance - we even managed to get our hands on the gift of a very beautiful printed and signed poster.

We are already seeing whether we can reshuggle next year's holiday plans to be able to go back.

Tomorrow we are going to the Big Tent Festival in Falkland - drawn there by the chance to see Roseanne Cash play.

One of the great pleasures of my life is Zoe's interest in music - she seems to be rarely without her guitar - it accompanied us in Bertie and it was wonderful drinking my coffee on the dunes and listening to her play Dixie Chick songs.

Every day the house sounds to her singing and playing.

I even have her working for me this morning - packing up button badges to go to Ness - on the promise of some tickets to see Amy Macdonald in concert later in the year.

It is wonderful to have my life full of music - even if it has to be by proxy as I am completely tuneless.

Desigual

Just before my first trade show - big scale, commercial, Top Drawer at Earls Court - I worried a great deal about what to wear.

A couple of people advised me to invest in a suit, to project a corporate, efficient, non offensive image.  I recoiled from the suggestion with such a vehemence that I knew that I definitely should not buy a suit.  To me ( and I appreciate this is a personal reaction) a suit, especially the kind of suit I could afford, is conformist, bland, and corporate - the very opposite of freedom, creativity, quirkiness.

I wanted to emphasize that everything on my stand was handmade - I didn't want to look like a rep for a load of imported goods.

The answer came in the form of Desigual - a Spanish chain of shops specializing in printed jersey patchwork clothes

Bright, eye catching, quirky, easy to wear, but above all fun.  And that is what I like to think of Snapdragon - its fun, its quirky, its bright and life enhancing.  I knew that I would be comfortable, happy and bright in such a dress.

And it worked - in amongst the drones I stood out - the dresses gave people something to talk about, to break the ice.  I was so very glad that I didn't plump for the navy suit.

However - after my last trade fair, exhaustedly piling clothes into the washing machine, I forgot to unpin the 20 button badges from the bodice.  My dress emerged with a rash of tiny holes as though attacked by moths with a sense of symmetry.  Pretty unwearable without a jumper it has hung reproaching me each time I open the wardrobe.

Today, packing for my camping trip I was thinking of Jo Griffiths' twitter tales of her Mother's glamorous camping trips in the 1970s - Jo's mother traveled with sideboard and glasses, setting them up in the family tent and wore beautiful maxi dresses.

That - I thought - is what I need - a glamping maxi skirt - so I chopped the holey bodice off my dress and  . . .

My quirky, bright, patchwork jersey maxi skirt - now packed and ready for lots of glamping fun.

I am leaving the sideboard at home though.

Making memories

On Monday my elder daughter, Zoe, officially starts in senior 2.  In a few weeks she will be 13.  In 5 years she will have left school.

Terrifying.

Over the past year it has occurred to me more and more that really my main role in life isn't to beaver away here, it isn't tied up with spread sheets and order forms.  In the same way, Euan's main role isn't to tend to his patients or worry over surgery slots.  For the next 8 years, now that they are growing up, our main role is living a life that is full of fond moments, creating secure, happy, full, teen years that will form a blanket for our girls.

I am not daft enough to think that heading into the teenage years will be plain sailing - but we are determined to make an effort to have more days like these.

and these

and more evenings like this

So today we have been shopping and bought a tent.  For when we are away in a tent , I magically stop fretting about orders and fabric and figures and Euan stops worrying about flooring and prescriptions and mortgages and the girls don't miss the various screens that fill their lives.

I am intending to take up listening to Zoe sing and play guitar, playing elaborate card games and eating lots of sausages.

And through the week I shall be here fretting no doubts over fabric and figures.

It will be beautiful . . .

Six years ago when we viewed here we spent 10 minutes looking at the house and about an hour walking through the fields, the bluebell wood, and along the stream.

The house wasn't really the attraction - it is a bungalow with aluminium windows built in the 1980s with an eye on economy rather than aesthetics.

We thought at that point that we would sell our other house and use the equity to alter this one - possibly to knock it down and begin again.  That didn't happen and it has been 6 years of planning permission, building consents and remortgaging.  It has been 6 years of living in a house as though we were renting it - putting up with painted chipboard floors and mouldy woodchip ceilings.

This summer it all came together and builders moved in - transforming the garage into 3 bedrooms, bathrooms and a super utility room - so far so lovely, so conventional.

Then last week they moved into the main house and began taking down walls - to create this

This space - which used to be 4 rooms (you can see the differently coloured chipboard floors) - is going to be the kitchen/dining/hanging about space that will be the heart of our home.  Suddenly I am getting very excited.  A giant beam is going in and all those roof trusses are coming down.

As I say, very, very excited (again)

Because its not just Zoe who is back to school today

someone's nose got a little bit out of joint.
And when I thought about it I wasn't surprised.
But there are some good things about being a little sister,  & there are some good things about being small enough to still think Mummy making things is cool.

New school year, new pencils, and the chance to cover jotters.
I love this time of year.So there you are Katie - I have put a photo of you on the blog  :)