~festivities over yet?~

sleeping beauty~edward burne-jones



well the last week have been really busy for all the obvious reasons!

today i find myself in a kind of weird limbo with the new year coming upon us and a new year camp, incorporating a new year party which i am not really looking forwards to...i have my two coming exams in my head right now and although i will be taking my books and lap-top away to work on my essay i still feel it will be five days missed to my deadlines...

to be honest i want to stay in my little cosy home in peace and quiet, sleeping in my warm comfy bed...


i was given two great books as gifts...


i had an early night last night with a nice chamomile and spearmint tea and started to read both but my mind was not really focusing and so i only managed a page of each!

i was also given an ipod nano which i am struggling to work~how can something so small be so complicated? i am sure its just me and my 'techno-fear'!

~my daemon~

i love philip pullman's 'his dark materials' so loved finding this when i followed a link from caitlins blog...helloquizzy




You are shy and a little reclusive.
Big crowds and new social situations make you feel uncomfortable and nervous. You prefer to stick with your close friends and family.
You have a large personal space and you hate to feel crowded or overwhelmed. If you have been dragged out to a party, or have had a stressful day at work, you need to retreat to your own private place for a while afterwards to recharge.
You are very sensitive, and easily hurt.
You tend to worry about what other people are thinking about you. Often, the offhand comments that people make hurt your feelings. You tend to hide your feelings from people whom you are not comfortable with, like strangers, acquaintances or coworkers. You may brush things off with a joke or hide your pain behind a toss of the head. You try not to overreact to things, and you avoid conflict, especially with strangers. However, if you are pushed too far, you can defend yourself with a vengeance.
With your loved ones you are quite different. You trust them with your feelings and with them you tend to be more open and sincere. You are loyal and clannish, and while you hide yourself from strangers and acquaintances, you come out of hiding when your close friends and family are around. Or at least, you do for a while, before you need to retreat back into your private place to re-charge.
Your daemon would represent your secretive, shy nature, your dislike of conflict, and your ready ability to defend yourself or your friends, should the need arise. He or she would probably stick close to you when you felt nervous or uncomfortable, and provide you with humorous commentaries to keep you smiling.
Suggested forms: Coyote, Fox, Raccoon.

~christmas eve~


popping in to wish you all a peaceful time however you celebrate and whatever your beliefs

~bookworm award~

now for my bookworm award from undacova mutha
thank you very much lovely!

RULE ONE, I have to grab one of the books closest to me, go to page 56, type the fifth line and the next two to five lines that follow.
RULE TWO, I have to pick five people who love books and who could receive the Bookworm award with honor.

1-outlaw band under the major oak in sherwood forest. the tree is still
2-standing, although now propped up with wooden struts, and with a 20m
3-(65ft) diameter it can house up to thirty-four children in its hollow trunk
4-the area around hernes oak in windsor great park is still said to echo
5-with the call of the god's hunting horn (herne is a spirit of the trees, and
from 'the green man tree oracle;ancient wisdom from the greenwood' by john matthews and will worthington

as with my christmas meme i shall not tag anyone, i am sure you are all raving busy right now! but please join in, letting us know here, and let us see what book you have to hand and the words they give :)

~boho moms christmas meme!~

well i am having a day off from my exam preparation, and i am sitting on the sofa
with a christmas film on the tv...time to do boho moms meme

Here are the rules....
answer the questions and link them back to here.
choose 5 people to forward this to.
...

Do you celebrate Christmas? Yule? Winter's Solstice? Hanukkah? All of them?
i 'celebrate' christmas as a time to be with family, solstice i find difficult, i celebrate it as it was a significant time for the ancient people of this land, i am talking about the really ancient people, as shown in the building of sites that were aligned with the solstice.

Name your favourite christmas movie.

oh how to choose??! i have to go with 'its a wonderful life'

Your best christmasmas present ever?

a trip to lake tahoe snowboarding in 2003~my sisters boyfriend at the time had done some work for ibm and he paid for the four of us to go away for two weeks, that year we had not planned our regular trip so were all rather grumpy. he even conspired with our employers to get the time off of work!

Do you bake cookies? Or buy them?

both

How old were you when you stopped believing in Santa?

i never did

Your favourite christmas food?

cranberry sauce

Your favourite holiday tradition

everyone gathering at my mums with me and my sister as cooks, even though mum gets really stressed!

Giving gifts or getting them?

giving! although i am rather excited at getting my iPod nano-chromatic this year (green of course) as it means no more filling my bag with piles of mini discs when i go away...everything will be in one tiny wafer!

now as it is so close to christmas i TAG anyone who wants to join in, just pop in here and tell us all so we can come over to your blog :)

~green meme #1~


this came from the lovely moonroot

the rules are simple...
2. link to whoever tagged you
3. include meme number
4. nclude these guidelines in your post
5. answer questions
6. tag 3 other green bloggers

green Meme #1...

1. Name two motivations for being green~my life long love for the earth we live on and the sheer horror of what has been done to our land in such a short time.

2. Name 2 eco-unfriendly items you refuse to give up ~my camper, although on a regular week we only use it once and my lap top

3.Are you at peace with, or do you feel guilty about no.2?~i dont beat myself up about it because i consider all the eco things i do will compensate for it

4.What are you willing to change but feel unable to/stuck with/unsure how to go about it?
if i could i would live in a totally eco house with wind turbines, composting loo etc etc but lots stop me, too much to bring up here to say nothing of money

5. Do you know your carbon footprint for your home? If so, is it larger/smaller than your national average? ~smaller by a third

6.What's eco-frustrating and/or eco-fantastic about where you live?~i can walk into the village and when i want other shops the next village is only five miles away, i am on the list for a local allotment (third in line) , building restrictions as it is now a nation park...frustrating is that despite this some people/groups seem to bypass planning restrictions to knock down lovely old houses and put up big hateful piles

7. Do you eat local/organic/vegetarian/forage/grow you own? ~yes, sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, i will when swampy has sorted me my raised beds and even more when i get my allottment

9. Do you have a green confession? ~nope!

10. Do you have the support of family and/or friends? ~oh yes, i have a fine collection of organic gardening books from them and mum has let me have a big chunk of her garden to use until i get my allottment

well now, given the time of year i am sure a lot of you are busy so if you are green and wish to do this please feel free

~a trip away~

spooky and i went off on friday to meet pa and his partner adele at folly farm b & b up in Tetbury, Gloucestershire to go an illuminated evening walk at the westonbirt arbouretum.
we went quite early and luckily missed the crowds.
but it is something i would reccomend and we are going back in the summer to see it all in the daylight.

spooky and i had our room at the end



the great tythe barn






tetburys old market house built in 1665, go here to see a daylight picture





we stopped for a drink at the snooty fox in tetbury and here we met fred, who can be seen above, made of marzipan and below with spooky





it was great to get away but great to get home to swampy and cody and wake up to a very misty mirkwood new forest this morning.





~green man tree oracle~



as some of you know, i have been working with these cards for some time now, i find them more suited for me than a regular tarot~my first tarot pack i bought about 14 years ago and just never took to them.


the green man cards i took to immediately. i first saw them in a shop and for some reason did not buy them straight away, instead walking away. but i could not get them out of my mind so eventually went to a coven of witches in nearby burley, where they had a single pack~of course i bought it.
instead of my three world spread i have started taking just one card and this card~the yew was given to me.
the green man wisdom states that perseverance leads to achievement
which is appropriate for me at this time as i am facing two exams over the next month and sometimes i feel like giving up, not all the time, just now and then when i am feeling unwell and think i wont manage to complete the work.
the yew also represents transition from 'death', in my case as i see it the rebirth into a new way of life
*perserverance to change and move forward into the new life*
this tells me to keep on with my work over the coming few years, to complete my degree and finally be able to do the work i really love

~of views & ponies~

a village road~nice and quiet


shaggy ponies


the hills on the horizon are the isle of wight~just the solent separates us




it was what i call a 'sparkly day' cold, bright and frosty




~oliver postgate~








like many people around my own age...and some older, my dad comes to mind...i was sad to hear of the passing of oliver postgate.



he created such wonderful characters that could never be re-created and were much loved.




my dad had a great fondness for ivor the engine, while i adored the tales of noggin the nog and bagpuss, to say nothing of the wonderful clangers and the little less well known pogles wood, which i absolutely loved.

so later i will take my noggin books off of the bookshelf~still in their little plastic bag, the much younger me kept them in nice and safe from harm, and re-read them...

* r.i.p oliver postgate*

~happy again~

i am glad to say i woke up this morning to an other hard frost and a much better mood. thank you for your messages!

my chores were done enabling me to visit all of your blogs at last and as usual it was like an adventure~peeking into your lives and countries from my little new forest home.


today is shopping day, the one day a week (on a usual week) where we fire up pippin and journey out to get in our supplies for the coming week. as usual we are off to our little farm shop and then, as i need some cards, which i particularly want at our local hospice shop, we are going into lymington , which is 5 miles away...if you go to the site and click on the 'history in maps and photographs' you will see some lovely old photos of the surrounding area as well as a section on my village brockenhurst~looking at the photos gave me quite an odd feeling as many of the scenes from the early 1900's still have the same buildings standing today~and the level crossing, a two minute walk behind my home, remains the same except for the tiny building right in the middle of the shot!
*i hope you all have a good day wherever you are*

~irrational...~


















...illogical, senseless

why would i go from good mood to foul in the space of seconds?
maybe i am just being over sensitive to passing comments that mean nothing.
i try not to get in bad moods~i have nothing to get that way over.



maybe its my m.e being a bit touchy and making me feel horrid. i woke up this morning feeling so exhausted, it took me over an hour just to feel my version of normal. i have found a good indicator of my m.e is my writing and general brain funtion~today i could barely write and my brain has just been a mush of jumble...
to be honest i would happy go to bed right now...its not even 6pm here...and stay there until morning with no dinner, like a naughty child sent to be early...
these moods always make me so guilty as i then take it out on swampy...

so i am sitting listening to the piece of music guaranteed to cheer me up...
Luigi Boccherini's~La Musica Notturna Delle Strade Di Madrid No. 6, Op. 30
its the tune that makes my heart explode with its beauty, remember?

~december views~



i decided i needed a change around in my little room, so now sit to the right of where i was before, giving me a whole new view from my window. it feels a bit more 'open' and i can see different tree's (which you cannot see on the photo)




we have been out and about this past few days, it was ma's birthday on sunday so took a freezing cold stroll round to see her...this was the view of our front garden that day...a very hard frost...









yesterday we had to drive to our dentist for our twice yearly check up, which meant venturing out of the forest and to our old stamping ground of dorset and a four hour round trip in the cold. it felt really odd to be going back there...especially coming out of the dentist and not driving to our old home.





the forest was white with frost and as pippin has a very old heating system it was a very cold journey, but worth it for the views...

we passed plenty of donkeys, cows and ponies now~i was not fast enough with the camera!~ with their thick, velvety winter coats and the roads were quite quiet.


Hooray for finishing my present assignment!


i now have two more pieces of work to be in by the end of january, one of them is 70% complete and i am taking the next two days to finish the notes for the one that has to be in the week before i vanish into the heaving mass of humanity that is new york.

my plan is to have both done by that week so i can enjoy my trip without having that 'un-finished homework' feeling hanging over my head~plus i now have most of my books for my next lot of work, medieval history, which i start the week after my return from new york...two days after my 42nd birthday!

well enough of this~time to get my books out...

~our bird family~
















~blog award~

a big thank you to pixiedust for this award~huge apologies for the delay but as you know my mind has been like mush!
so today i am starting out in a lighthearted manner with the tag...although i cannot make 7 in some of them!



7 things to do before i die

see both the irland and wales rugby union teams play their home stadium

visit the villages in ireland of my ancestors

visit the grave of johney gaul in france

make a huge patchwork quilt

finish my family tree

finish my degree

do something useful with my degree



7 things i do now

worry

eat too many crisps

cant stay up comfortably beyond 8pm

write good history/archaeology based essays




7 things i cant do

type properly

sing very well

resist crisps!

ride a motorcycle

ski

make clothes

hear very well






7 things i find attractive in the opposite sex

humor

kindness

faithfullness

likes gardening

likes animals

politeness



7 things i say most often

oh crud

pants

sorry cant hear you

crisps please

a large one (mug of lemon tea!)

hello monkey boy (to cody)

wheres my glasses?




7 celebs i most admire

jeremy irons




7 favourite foods

crisps

lemon tart



those of you i choose to join in~if you have the time!
caitlin @ bridgets flame









Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)