Linchpins of our Lives....

Hi there everyone. Well, here we are in the month of February, and, my goodness, I am so glad to see the back of January. I am well aware that I say this every single year. You would think by now (and at my advanced age!) that I could come up with a way of dealing with that dreaded month .... but, no! Every month I moan about it (and I'm not really one of life's moaners - truly I'm not!!).

Anyway, here we are in the month of February, and the days are gradually getting longer. Oh, deep joy!  For some reason, this month always gives me hope.  I think it's because the garden is very slowly starting to awaken, with the pretty snowdrops everywhere, and daffodils starting to appear once again in the garden. 

I was casually thinking about life the other day, as you do, and thinking just what WAS important in our lives. I think this dreaded Pandemic has really focused our mind on that. Whilst lots of different things bring us joy and give us moments of happiness, I think most of us would agree that the linchpin of our lives are family and friendships.  I think the absence of hugs over the past couple of years, has been a really big thing. Thankfully, I am now getting hugs from the family again, but I've noticed that even very good friends are much more reticent to hug each other at the moment, which is quite sad. 

This next photo shows a nice cosy scene and the image after that is a pic of my Summer garden. 

I hope you are all looking forward to brighter days once again - although many of you, of course, will have Autumn approaching, and the shorter days - and so the Seasons come and go. I am just thankful to be able to enjoy another year of looking forward to Spring, to hear the birdsong and to see the garden bloom once again. 

I wish you all many happy and joyful moments in the year ahead, and I hope you will feel loved. 

Wishing All Joy at Christmas - From My Home To Yours 🎄✨

Happy, Peaceful and Joyful Christmas...

Hi everyone. I just wanted to pop in to wish you and your families a very happy, peaceful and joyful Christmas. 

It can be quite a hectic time of the year, but I hope that we can all take a moment to remember the true meaning of Christmas, and to honour it in our hearts.  Also, to be grateful for the family and friends that bring love and joy into our lives, and to remember loved ones that are no longer with us. 

For many, this can be a hard time of year to cope with. Many will be suffering with ill health, some may be alone at Christmas, whilst others may have lost loved ones this year, and many will be having financial worries, or even just struggling to cope with life in general. I'm sure we  all pray that these people may be given the strength they need. 

I shall be spending Christmas Day with my youngest daughter and her family. The two not so little ones are 11 and very nearly 10, so a lovely age to bring excitement to the day. I shall be thinking of my eldest daughter and her family who will be at their home in Ibiza. My eldest granddaughter was 22 a couple of weeks ago, so we will be missing them around our Christmas table, but with sunny skies and temperatures still in the high sixties, who can blame them for staying over there. Also, Christmas isn’t really a good time to be travelling, with the inevitable delays and perhaps the possibility of bad weather. 

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year” ~ Charles Dickens.

I thought I would post a couple of my favourite vintage Christmas images!

All images today courtesy of Pinterest.

So then, I will close again for now, sending you all my very best wishes for a very happy and peaceful Christmas. If you are travelling at this time of the year, or if loved ones are travelling to you, I hope for safe journeys and that the weather will be kind to you.  

Hopefully 2018 Will Not Flash By As Quickly As 2017!

     ~ Make the rest of your life the BEST of your life ~

So then, here we are again at the beginning of another year, and may I wish you all a very happy, healthy and peaceful new year. I hope the year ahead will be full of joyful interludes for you. Time spent with family and friends, and memories to treasure.

Are your decorations all packed away in their boxes for another year?  I’m keeping mine up for just a few more days. It all looks a bit bare again, doesn’t it, when all the pretty baubles and lights are taken down.  

This time last year, I had my 70th birthday coming up in a few months, so 2017 was quite a special one for me.  I fear that 2018 might be a bit of an anti climax, although I do have another trip to America to look forward to, so that  will be exciting. BUT! Who knows what might lie ahead, for any of us. As long as we all keep in good health, for that’s something that money just can’t buy.  

Unfortunately, here in heavenly Devon, it has been very wet since before Christmas, and the garden is looking decidedly soggy.  I don’t worry too much, though, because I know that, come the Spring, everything will start to come back to life again, and all will be right with the world.  It’s quite amazing, really, how resilient plants can be.  However, I am missing going out for my coastal walks.  Hopefully the next few weeks will bring some brighter days again. 

I don’t know if any of you make New Year’s Resolutions - it’s not something that I ever do, but I AM going to try to do at least one constructive thing every day (I don’t mean everyday housework) - hence me writing this Blog Post today 

My eldest granddaughter celebrated her 20th birthday just before Christmas ....

Whilst my youngest granddaughter celebrated her eighth birthday shortly AFTER Christmas ....

I will leave you again for now, but I’m sure I will pop in again soon.  Look after yourselves. 

Quote from Pinterest.com

Happy, Peaceful and Joyful Christmas...

Hi everyone. I just wanted to pop in to wish you and your families a very happy, peaceful and joyful Christmas. 

It can be quite a hectic time of the year, but I hope that we can all take a moment to remember the true meaning of Christmas, and to honour it in our hearts.  Also, to be grateful for the family and friends that bring love and joy into our lives, and to remember loved ones that are no longer with us. 

I shall be spending Christmas Day with my youngest daughter and her family. The two little ones are 9 and very nearly 8, so a lovely age to bring excitement to the day. I shall be thinking of my eldest daughter and her family who will be at their home in Ibiza. My eldest granddaughter was 20 a couple of weeks ago, so we will be missing them around our Christmas table, but with sunny skies and temperatures still in the high sixties, who can blame them for staying over there. Also, Christmas isn’t really a good time to be travelling, with the inevitable delays and perhaps the possibility of bad weather. 

I’d like to thank you for all your support of my Blog over this past year, and look forward to seeing you all again in 2018!  

“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year” ~ Charles Dickens.

A Couple of Perfect Weeks.

Well, hello to you all once again. It keeps coming up on my Facebook Notifications that the people who 'like' and follow my Blog, haven't heard from me in a while, so would I like to write something - if I could think of something entertaining, then, yes, I would love to write something!

 

Having put that exclamation mark there, it reminded me of something that a teacher in my Creative Writing Class told me, many years ago, and that was, that I tended to use too many exclamation marks!!! (Surely not...).  She said that the sentence should speak for itself, without the need for my scattering of these punctuation marks 😊. I'm sure she was absolutely correct in what she said, and I do try to refrain from not using too many of them. I think that part of it, is me trying to convey my enthusiasm to you!

Anyway, it has been a rather busy but very special couple of weeks, with the occasion of my 70th birthday, followed immediately by Easter. 

 

I read somewhere that on entering your 70's, you are entering the sunset of your life. Well, I hope to have many more beautiful sunsets before I shuffle off this mortal coil. (See! I would have inserted an exclamation mark there, but I refrained from doing so).  

 

 

I did have a truly wonderful family and friends orientated birthday, celebrating in Ibiza (just a week before) and again when I arrived home, with lots of long, leisurely lunches, many by the sea, which I love. I must say that I do count my blessings every day for the love of my family and for the gift of my very special group of female friends, who can always be relied upon to provide fun, laughter, support and encouragement. 

 

 

Once again, I always feel that I should apologise to my Facebook friends, as they will have already seen the photos that I'm featuring today. 

 

So then, as you can see, I'm still here, albeit another decade older, but still up for being silly at times and wanting to enjoy every day that I am blessed with. A quote from one of my Facebook friends rather appealed to me, so I am including it here. Amen to that!

 

As part of my birthday celebrations, my number two daughter and I went to a beautiful performance of Madame Butterfly last evening. This reminded me of  when I last went to the Opera, and my Featured Post features this visit today. Just click on the link

At the top of the right hand side bar. 

 

I hope you're all doing well, wherever you may be, and, as always, thank you so much for taking the time to read my meanderings ❤️

Wishing We Had Thanksgiving ....

Hello....it's me....

 

Can you guess what I'm going to talk about today from the above picture?  Well, tomorrow in America, it's Thanksgiving - a day when families and friends come together ... to be THANKFUL, and I thought I would like to honour their tradition in my Post today. 

 

Thanksgiving originated as a Harvest Festival and the very first Thanksgiving was held in 1621, when the Pilgrims celebrated their first Harvest in the New World. This feast lasted three days and was attended by 90 Native Americans and 50 Pilgrims. It's interesting to me that the Pilgrims set sail from Plymouth, which is my home City.  They set sail on the 6th September 1620 and landed in Massachusetts after an arduous two month journey. This small group of people became known as the Pilgrim Fathers, the founding fathers of America. 

 

The commemoration stone on The historic Barbican here in Plymouth. 

 

The Mayflower Steps. 

I would like to finish by wishing ALL  my American friends a very Happy Thanksgiving and to say THANK YOU to them for being in my life. I have found the American people to be generous hearted, kind, thoughtful, caring, encouraging and supportive. 

 

So my friends, enjoy the companionship and the feasting tomorrow. I will raise a glass to you all! 

 

The Thanksgiving pics today are courtesy of Pinterest.

The following photo is of my two friends, Diane and Marcy, from Green Bay in Wisconsin, as they were preparing a Thanksgiving Feast for me when I was there in September, just so that I could have the experience! 😊

 

Sunday Solace

 

Well, where did that week go?!  The weather has been rather lovely here in deepest Devon for mid-October. I've managed to get a couple of coastal walks in, and also spent a few hours each day in the garden, cutting back and mowing and strimming. On Friday I dropped daughter number 2 to the airport, as she is spending a few days in Paris with her sister, daughter number 1, so it will be good for them to spend some time together. 

 Here are a couple of photos from one of the walks I did. My friend and I were fortunate enough to still be able to eat our lunch outside, overlooking the beach. It doesn't get much better than that.

 

 

The words for Sunday Solace today can be found on a Church wall in Upwaltham, here in England. 

"I will not wish thee riches, nor the glow of greatness,

but that wherever you go, some weary heart shall gladden at your smile,

or shadowed life know sunshine for a while.

And so your path shall be a track of light, like Angels' footsteps passing through the night."

For when all is said and done, isn't that what's really important in life?

I'll leave you with these words by Mother Teresa.....

 

Image courtesy of Pinterest.com

Wherever you are in the world as you read this, I hope you all have a good week ahead. See you again soon.

Just a little afterthought, I have started to do a Featured Post in the right hand side bar of my Blog. You might like to click on this to read a post from the past. 

Kindness

Be Kind to Each Other

Definition of Kindness : The quality of being warm-hearted and considerate and humane and  sympathetic.  To have a tendency to be forgiving.

Kindness is such a simple word and yet how much better the world would be if everyone always tried to be KIND. 

I am very blessed in that my two daughters are very kind and caring towards everyone they meet.  When my husband and I (along with my youngest daughter and her family) were with my eldest daughter at Christmas, she and her husband were kindness itself.  Nothing was too much trouble to make our stay really enjoyable.  It's quite a thing to suddenly have eight people suddenly descend on your normally peaceful family home, and to have every corner of the house invaded!

They were endlessly patient with the one and two year olds, trying to give their mum as much of a break as they could.  It was the first time that their little puppy had met the little ones, and I admit that I was a bit apprehensive about this, especially with the youngest still crawling, but little Alfred was SO good with them, and absolutely adored the one year old.  Likewise, she adored him, following him everywhere, even trying to get into his cage and bed with him!



Here is my daughter with Alfred.  It was a lovely photo of her and my son-in-law, but he doesn't want to appear either on facebook or my Blog, so, unfortunately, I've had to cut him out of the photo!!



Obviously, when you have to leave family behind again, it is always sad, but we phone each other regularly and text and e-mail, and will look forward to the next time when we can all be together again.

Going back to my Petey Award, one of the rules is that I have to mention the person who handed it to me three times, so I am now inviting you to visit my good friend Bouncin'Barb over at http://bouncinbarbs.blogspot.com/  I know you will not be disappointed when you read her posts.  She has been very supportive to me since I started blogging, and when you first start out on this blogging journey, you really appreciate it when someone like that comes along.

Including the post when I mentioned BB when she first nominated me for the Award, I think that this is the third time, but I am sure she will tell me if I have to do it once more.  Thank you Bouncin'Barb for your friendship.