Thoughtful Tuesday

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Things I Love Thursday

Dear reader,

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Here’s my little list of gratitude and loveliness for this week.

ChinaKidz- an organisation I only recently became aware of but from what I’ve read they do wonderful work providing specialist children’s palliative care services for abandoned children. I posted off my package for this Christmas project this week. It’s such a privilege to be able to help with this.

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The fact that I can have hot water just about any time I want. Switch on the tap and water comes out. Fill up a kettle and boil water. Pour it out. How many people in the world get to do that?

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The invisible man (He paints himself from head to toe to blend into whatever background is behind him)-genius

This quote by Virginia Woolf which I’ve needed to remind myself of this week:
“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”

What’s making you pleased as punch this week?

Thoughtful Tuesday

You cannot plough a field by
turning it over in your mind.
Author Unknown

Things I love Thursday

Well it’s that time of the week again reader. Hold onto your hat, because this one is chock full of things I love! Just like every other Things I Love Thursday post!

Lots of happy birthday wishes- It was my birthday at the weekend and I was very lucky that the celebrations stretched across the whole of it. I had a great time surrounded by wonderful people and I’m now feeling very blessed.

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Tea –parties- A great big thank you to my beautiful friend Yen who hosted a tea party for my birthday. For anyone who’s interested I direct you across to her brilliant write up of the event here. I’m the one in the spotty dress.

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Drinking Pinot Blanc with edible flakes of gold floating in it (birthday treat from my aunt)

Pearls-If diamonds are a girl’s best friend, pearls are her lover. They conjure up images of Audrey Hepburn, all style and sophistication. More importantly though Pearls are created as a reaction to an irritation, such as a grain of sand or a parasite, they are a symbol of the beauty that can come from something plain, or something annoying.

Best of the rest…crisp winter mornings and beautiful knitted wool scarves, birthday cake with a cup of tea, feeling like a grownup when I run important errands and accomplish things like getting life insurance,
The sitting dance- Donald O Connor and Gene Kelly=sheer perfection:



what about you my darling readers? What's got you bubbly and smiling this week?

Thoughtful Tuesday

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitessimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Things I Love Thursday

Before I begin my list of things I love, I’d like to take a moment to pay tribute to all those people who gave and still give their lives so that we can be free. Today is Armistice day, or as it’s more commonly known Remembrance day, a day when countrywide people gather together to remember and give thanks for those prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country. Its ninety two years this month since the end of the first world war described as ‘the war to end all wars’ but in 2010 thousands of British troops are still risking their lives in places not least Afghanistan and Iraq.Today I’d like to share this poignant scene from ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’ in memory of all those who never came back:


So this weeks list:

Fireworks- Remember, remember the 5th of November...As a child I was a huge fan of ‘Bonfire night’ and as I’ve grown older the love has not really abated. This year I celebrated at a local display with a couple of friends we ate toffee apples, played with sparklers and were wowed by the pretty pyrotechnics.

Tequilla Salmon for dinner tonight- after a dull afternoon and with the encroaching darkness of a wintry evening outside I found the splash of colour from the salsa on my plate brightened my day.

Google Map directions –these have been cropping up all over my facebook news feed while not as hilarious as some people claim they have managed to help me raise a smile on grey rainy mornings…Google directions from Japan to China and look at direction #43. (Similarly, map directions from New York to Taipei, and look at #30 and #141.)

Having plans for meeting up with some of my favourite people over the next month.

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Spooks
This week was the finale and oh what a finale…the drama and Oh, poor mixed up potentially evil Lucas Thorntonski-spook. What more can I say without revealing too many spoilers reader? Well as Internal Affairs Specialist Alec White said to Harry ‘No-one wants to believe these things of the people they’re closest to’

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Warm drinks -When it’s cold and damp outside there are few things better than wrapping one’s hands around a mug of something steaming hot and delicious.

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What things do you love this Thursday?

Thoughtful Tuesday

The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
-Paul Valery

Things I Love Thursday

“And on the seventh day He created Things I Love Thursday. And he saw the post, and it was good.”

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Staying positive (even when I don’t feel like it).
It’s been one of those weeks really. Everyone has them where all the little things just seem to go wrong. The straw that broke the camels back was when I received a letter confirming what I already suspected- that I didn’t get a job I applied for –but I did get some great feedback. I decided that rather than getting upset, that it must not have been right for me and that something else will come along. Que sera sera etc.

This week I also love my cousin having a safe labour despite baby being a few weeks early. On October 31st, the world welcomed a brand new member of my family. He’s gorgeous and the twins (his older brother & sister) love having a new baby at home.

Mumford and sons-

A friend sent me a link to this song, following an msn conversation we’d shared the previous night, quoting these lyrics at the end of her email:
And there will come a time, you see, with no more tears
And love will not break your heart but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there
with grace in your heart
and flowers in your hair.
– “After the Storm” by Mumford and Sons

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Also: Candles, the First Squeeze of New Toothpaste, potato wedges with sour cream and sweet chilli sauce, beginning to get organised for christmas (I’m making a list and checking it twice…), persimmons

What about you reader? What's making life sweeter for you?

Thoughtful Tuesday

If you do not feel yourself growing in your work and your life broadening and deepening, if your task is not a perpetual tonic to you, you have not found your place.
-Orison Swett Marden