Smelling the Spring

I have been away from the blogosphere for a long long time. Not because anything particular has happened, just general everyday stuff. However, I tried to embrace everything that life brings and enjoy the little things that bring a smile to my face and so far it has been a good year.

It seems such a bloggers’ cliché to say that I cannot believe it’s already February, but at the same time I don’t remember much of the January we have had, if I am to be honest. It just whizzed past us. Working, eating, sleeping, gardening, all the good things which I was enjoying rather than writing about for you to enjoy. So I am back now (only for a while though, before it stops raining and I can run to the allotment again).

From the very morning of the New Year’s Day we were frequent visitors on out allotment, plot 22A. One of the first things I did was to plant some primula plants that we bought the previous day. I decided that we need something pretty there to look at and keep us going whilst the other parts of the plot are in a bit of a state. We are still digging up weeds, re-potting plants that I grew at my in-laws’ garden, clearing brambles, setting up a new compost heap… However it is not as bad as some of those really neglected plots you see elsewhere online. All great fun and hard work but awesome exercise.

Apart from the green shed there were a few composters, some bamboo poles, a raised bed, a few slightly underdeveloped cabbages, rosemary, sage and some other herbs I do not recognise. On the front of the plot there are some spineless blackberries and what looked like blueberry bushes (later I found the name tags which confirmed that they are indeed blueberries). Wooden palettes and strawberry plants were scattered around the plot and even though the composters contained mostly plastic rubbish rather than compost, we have a whole army of earthworms in the soil!

We met many lovely people who are always happy to chat and offer friendly advice and we even happened to run into someone who was in the process of letting their plot go so they were clearing it out and donated a lot of things to us, such as a water barrel, functional cold frame, crowns of rhubarb and raspberry plants, just ready to pop in the ground.

I have moved all strawberries into a new bed, am collecting rainwater and planning to build a mini pond and a temporary outdoor enclosure for Rocket to enjoy the UV light and fresh food whilst I do my gardening. As I was weeding last weekend on a rare sunny day, I  realised that this time of the year, even though it was only January, felt more like March or April back at home. There was something in the air, the smell of soil and weeds (many of which I did not recognise but I definitely knew that I have smelled them before - funny how human senses and memory work, isn't it?) and it felt so warm and encouraging, like from now on we should not have winter any more and everything should just get on with it and grow.

The rhubarb crowns have definitely felt it, because they started pushing their leaves out and the raspberries are growing new canes from the ground. I have planted onion sets, garlic and broad beans and tomorrow is time for sowing radishes. I look forward to sharing more of my gardening adventures. Happy (almost) spring!! :)

Happy New Year

Sempervivum - Rocket - Avocado

Dear friends, I wish you all a great year 2018.

May you be hardy like a Sempervivum,

slow down and take your time like Rocket does

and appreciate life's little beautiful details like this leaf of avocado plant appreciates the sun.

Remembering 2017

As a teacher I find that the "real" end of the year is in July when the academic year finishes. That is when I truly get to sit back and take stock of the year that has passed and I start making plans for the next one and get to wind down during the amazing summer holidays. However nobody can escape the Happy New Year messages and resolutions being taken up all around. I have given up on resolutions fr now, I just want to be a good person and lead a good and possibly healthy and stress-free life, doing the best I can in every way.

However, earlier this week I visited London with a friend whom I have not seen for more than three years. We walked through cold and sleeting London for three hours before he got on a bus that would take him back home. After that, having been chilled to the bone, I have set up base camp at a nearby pub. It took a cappuccino, fried vegetarian breakfast and a cup of mulled wine to warm me up, but whilst sitting there, people watching and sipping the hot yummy drinks, I started thinking about this year and the year to come. Now that I am wrapped up warm and sipping hot peppermint and nettle tea at home, I would like to share my thoughts with you.

This was the year in which we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We cooked, had takeaways and ate out. I baked savoury treats for the Macmillan Coffee Morning. Whilst we relaxed at home we watched a lot of telly, explored the lure of virtual reality, I knitted blankets and baby booties, babysat and cuddled my niece, we planted potatoes and shared meals together and video chatted with my friends and family via Skype and Facebook messenger.

Educating my niece. We fed the plush tortoise some dandelions.

It was adventurous, too. I camped out with my students as a part of Duke of Edinburgh awards, barbecued, met some old colleagues and spotted badgers during a night time walk. I tried scuba diving in Woking pool and we took a trip to Lulworth Cove in Dorset.

Spring bluebells in a forest in Surrey Hills

In summer I took the almost three weeks long trip to Greece on my own and fulfilled a lifelong dream of working with marine animals whilst I tagged loggerhead turtles with other volunteers. I missed my home and husband a lot and it made me realise not only where my roots are and where I belong but also how much I love where I am right now and what I do. It was a very good feeling.

Having lunch in the shallows on the last day of my volunteering n Greece.

I got out more. I foraged for blackberries, harvested bits and pieces from the garden, took our tortoise Rocket for outdoor adventures, saw Reggie Dabbs talk to my students, went to a food and drink festival and Ocean Film Festival.

The last of our beans, picked just two weeks before Christmas.

I have learned how to take better pictures and gave pottery classes a go.

I have tried and failed to go off my anxiety medicine, but on the other hand with the support of everyone around me I got well enough to overcome my anxiety and found a new dentist (and he is awesome!) and GP (she is awesome, too!) and even started taking driving lessons (my instructor is awesome too, I am starting to realise how lucky I am to be surrounded by so many amazing people) and I feel more connected to the world than ever before. I contacted some old friends and uni classmates hoping to rekindle our friendships and catch up on everything they have been doing.

Yes, there were rough patches but that is just life. I am hoping that the year ahead is going to be equally amazing, if not better. Driving, growing food for us all on the allotment, making more time for friends and family and who knows - maybe finally finding and buying a home of our dreams. I am sure the year ahead will be full of surprises and I am glad that I have people like you to share them all with.

I hope your old year was lovely and you made a lot of memories you will treasure and that the new one will be full of opportunities to fulfil your dreams.

Little Squares for a Little Baby

My evenings have recently been occupied by a ver cute and heartwarming little project. Just before Christmas one of my best friends let me know that she is expecting a baby. Of course, I immediately decided that I must make something for her and I started on a blanket. Earlier this year I made a silly purchase of three blue-ist and three pink-ish balls of yarn, not knowing what they will be good for but knowing I'll need a lot.

Since at first the gender of the new baby wasn't known, I started knitting squares from both colours. However my friend really fancied a boy, so as an act of moral support I was making more blue ones than pink ones.  More recently it turned out it really will be a boy! So now all that is left to do is wait. And knit and knit and knit :)

I look forward to spending more evenings in front of the telly or listening to music whilst knitting row after row of ripples that will eventually envelop a tiny baby.

Happy New Year! :)

I feel like the year never truly ends in December, even though our new calendar in the kitchen says so. Yes, it is 2017, but life still moves at the sluggish pace of Christmas holidays, at least for me. Everything will be different tomorrow, so I have to write this post today before the business of working days takes over.

I am glad for everything that happened in 2016. There have been moments when I felt completely free and there were times when I felt trapped. There were days when I was happy to be on the right path in my life and then there were some when I questioned whether this is where I want to be. It has brought many scary moments and annoyances but also the absolute joy of being someone's wife and having a whole rest of my life to look forward to things.

I am not setting and resultuions this year. I find that I can never keep them, because life, that funny thing, always gets in the way. Things are going to be changing. My friends are having babies, our niece is growing up way too fast, the flat we live in is being sold. We do not know where we'll end up in 2017, but I am excited about the journey and ready to embrace what will come. I hope you are, too. x

Our Wonderful White Slovakian Christmas

This year's Christmas was a very special one, because it was our first Christmas as a married couple. Yes, we got married and there wasn't enough time to blog about it, because things have just been crazy since then. So we took a week off for Christmas and went to spend it in Slovakia with my family. However, wanting to have some privacy as well, we booked a room in a little place in the town centre. Sleeping in, going out for dinners, talking about everything and nothing, taking long walks in the snow, building miniature snowmen and coming back to our room with red faces, being thankful for the warmth and calm. I love spending time with my husband.

The whle town was wonderfully decorated with massive hanging snowflakes along the Main Street.

The Immaculata (our baroque plague column) had new golden plates added to it and as always the Christmas tree was the dominant decoration of the town. The State Theatre (the picture on the right) was not decorated but the old-fashioned lights gave it a very eerie look.

I could look at the lights for ever. Especially when it was snowing. It reminds me of watching the snowflakes dance in the light of the horribly ugly street lamp in our street which I could see from my bed when I was little. I would just lie down and watch the snow fall until I fell asleep.

Water in all fountains has been replaced by lights and at the Singing Fountain in front of St Elisabeth Cathedral there was an exhibition of ice sculptures. My favourites this year were Anna from Frozen and massive "visit kosice" in front of the fountain.

The trees were decorated as well. Simply magical :) And the next day we took the same walk, except in daylight.

Our Merry Little Christmas

This Christmas has been both merry and little. It has also been a bit chaotic, with some stress, but full of food and warmth and love.



On the 23rd December we have finally flown out of the nest and moved into a cozy two-bedroom nest of our own together with a teeny tiny Christmas tree. There suddenly wasn't enough time for all the Christmas cards, baking cookies, shopping for presents and tidying up and organizing and preparing for the new working year. But phew, we did it.

Well, did it about 70%. The remaining thirty are left for 2016. Merry Christmas, everyone :)

Potatoes Past and Present

As we have had potatoes grown at our cottage most years when I was younger, I always wanted to try and grow some. In summer I decided to plant some of the shop bought potatoes for cooking. They were not eaten and they were sprouting, so it seemed logical (even though every book about vegetables says do not do this). The result is this: roughly two handfuls of teeny tiny potatoes, the biggest pictured above.

I was surprised by how easy it was, the plants grew tall and strong and were probably the best looking plants in the whole of the garden. However, because I planted them so late in the year (July is not ideal - experience counts though :) ), the tubers did not have enough time to grow large and when the green parts of the plants died, they were still very little. Cutest baked potatoes in the world though J

Below is my entire harvest for the last year. It makes me feel sad for the seven fully grown potatoes that went into the ground to produce this pitiful amount. Well, we cannot go self-sufficient yet, because we would probably die. But I loved watching my plants grow and fantasizing about what might be hiding under the ground.

This year I am ready. I have already bought my seed potatoes, this time certified disease free and of a known variety. I have bought a large pack of King Edward potatoes and a much smaller sample pack of wonderful Red Duke of York potatoes. The patch is dug but needs some weeding and care and I am also getting ready for growing potatoes in tall bags. We will see... And I hope you will see too, if I do not fall into the lazy habit of not writing blog posts.Wish me luck.

Christmas Stocking Garland 2014

This year’s Christmas is long gone, but that isn’t going to stop me from blogging about my biggest Christmas creation so far. I have only compelted it days before the big holiday and determined to enjoy all the resting, good food and relaxaation, I wasn’t going to blog about it. But now I can.

Inspired by several nice blog posts and some images on Pinterest, I thougt how great it would be to make a Christmas themed garland. Originally I wanted to make the whole thing out of felt, but when I discovered this great fabric in Hobbycraft, I had to have a stripe. The fabric had 24 Christmas stockings on it, all numbere from 1 to 24 with different wintery festive pattern on each and lines to cut around them. Sold by 24-stocking sections rather than by metre, it cost me about seven quid. I bought a different fabric for the back sides in the local Singer shop (this I chose to be dark green with golden dots) and I started sewing.

I am probably one of the few women you will meet that was taught how to use the sewing machine by my fiance. I always thought it must be something difficult to do, but I was pleasantly surprised.

I was even superbly proud of myself when I wound the thread on that little bobbin. Of course, I did it by hand, not knowing that there is a way to do it more neatly on the machine (it worked anyway, but makes most sewers I tell giggle).

Once I sewed the two sides together, I stuffed them and attached two ribbons to the upper right corner of each of the little stockings. This way, they could be tied to a single piece of string to create a garland, but can also be used separately as ornaments on a Christmas tree or randomly hung around the house. And if we get bored with all the bright colours and patterns, thez can always be turned back-to-front so that they are dark green and dotty. 

We displayed them on the living room mirror, as our Christmas tree was tiddly this year. I am incredibly proud of myself :)

Wellie Selfies

I had some fun taking wellie-selfies in the garden yesterday. They are one of my favourite Christmas presents this year and it is only now that I realize how boring and old I must sound to my students during the "What did you get for Christmas?" discussions at school. I really DO love my new wellies though.

Back After Christmas

Hello again!! I had a little blogging break before and after Christmas. I enjoyed the break, the cups of tea, the baking, the reading, the decorating ... also the frost and the December gardening, watching the squirrels on the bird feeder and traveling to Slovakia for New Year and then back again. 

Now we are back at work, enjoying the routine and the people again. Right now, at about half past ten in the evening, we have just finished watching a film about living in tiny houses (called "Tiny"), sharing the last bits of gingerbread. It feels good to be at home again. I love our simple little life. 

Merry Crafty Christmas

December Gardening with Queen of the Night

Gardening with a cup of tea - my type of gardening!

I have almost forgotten about these lovely dark tulip bulbs that I had in my gardening box. I have always wanted black tulips (even though I do know they are just dark purple) and they have just started sprouting, so I put them in the ground yesterday afternoon.

Sprouting Queen of the Night tulip bulbs

Queen of the Night are not the only bulbs that are sprouting in the garden. It seems strange, since it is not spring yet, but I guesss this is what the British weather does to plants.

Do you remember my graduation bouquet? I have a feeling it is waking up as well. I put the bulbs into the ground last February and they did not do much, but they are definitely growing now :)

"Mystery" bulb plants sprouting. We will see what they are in spring.

The Garlic Patch

I finally had a nice light afternoon to take a picture of my new garlic area. It looks bare and sleepy right now, but hopefully will be full of life in spring. I can't wait.

My First Attempts at Growing Garlic

Getting back home in the dark hours every single day has really bitten of a huge chunk of my gardening time. Almost all of it, really. However, when I rushed home from my weekend job this Sunday, I managed to get just enough gardening time to plant some garlic. Finally! I've been waiting for this for over a month.

Left: "Casablanca"   ;    Right: "Early Purple Wight"

I planted two bulbs of "Casablanca" into three lovely rows of cloves near the shed where the potatoes used to be (I managed to find one more potato) and one huge bulb of "Early Purple Wight" which also amounted to three rows of big fat deliciously smelling cloves. Now all of them are resing in the ground quietly until their time comes in the spring.

Even in the biting cold, this little bit of gardening brought me a lot of joy. The touch of the soin, the delicious smell of garlic bulbs being broken in my hands and the look of the garden, slowly falling asleep as the winter is creeping over it made me realize how lucky I am to  witness it all.

This is the first year I attempted planting garlic. I am hoping that with some advice from friends and lots of research on the internet, I can be successful.I am already looking forward to spring and summer and autumn, when I get to use the products of my gardening efforts and lookking forward to putting the fresh cloves into all sorts of delicious dishes. Yum yum.

More Soft Round Baby Toys

I have finally created something wort selling in my Etsy shop, so here are some pictures! Originally, I planned to make a one-colour ball, but looking at so many lovely colours laid aside, I had to give it at least two : )

Find the listing here 

To me they are suer cute and super colourful and I cannot wait for all those babies to arrive!

Soft, round and colourful

Two for Bubs, one for Matylda and one for sale ;-)

What is it?

Year 6 science curriculum includes invertebrate phyla, so in order to keep them curious, I presented them with a challenge right at the beginning of the schoolyear. I showed them the following objects and told them that whoever guesses what this is, will get an extra A mark, which can help them with their final mark at the end of the year. Five months have passed since then and so far nobody answered correctly. I guess it is too hard for twelve year olds, but out of curiosity, whoud you know? Comment on the post of you think so.

Note: The winner (the one who guesses correctly) gets one FREE beaded Christmas decoration. Keep guessing!!
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UPDATE: These are the egg cases of a praying mantis.

Baby Toys : )

Back when I started making stuff for Etsy, I had a distant dream of creating something useful. Sure bracelets are pretty and beaded decorations help the Christmas atmosphere, but they are not useful. Nobody needs them. I wanted to create something that would be pretty, but also functional.

At the end of March, a new baby will come into my boyfriend's family, which inspired me to think about making things for a baby - sort of a training stuff so that I know how to make it when we expect our own baby one day.

On Thursday night, I sat down in my bed with a bunch of pretty cotton yarns and a crochet hook and started making a blue-and-purple toy. Originally, I thought it could be a long worm, but I got a bit bored on the way, so I terminated it and turned it into a stuffed ball.

I filled the inside with a 100% polyester toy filling wrapped in a nylon piece (reusing some older washed tights) so that the polyester fibres do not come out of the ball. To be honest I am terrified of a baby playing with these or even inhaling them.

Later that night I created a different one. Since the gender of the baby will be unknown until it is born, I tried to make the balls gender neutral, but colourful.

They can be for playing, throwing, squishing, rolling, but also for colour learning when the child is older. It is very exciting for me to create something that a little family member will use. And I also think they are very pretty, what do you think?