Bug Hotel

I bought this pretty 'bug hotel' a while ago and it has been happily hanging in the same spot now for at least a year.

Now that the weather is turning colder, I hope the bugs are checking in to the hotel and finding somewhere warm to snuggle throughout the Winter.

It would be lovely to have a mini fibre optic camera and to take a look and see what is going on in there.

For now I can just imagine Beetles lounging around in dressing gowns, Ants calling room service, Flys dressing for dinner and Wasps emptying the mini bar. In fact I have been keeping a close eye on the 'hotel' from the window, and this morning, I thought I saw an earwig with a bow tie walking quick toward it, I suspect he may be the manager. :-)

What A Gift

"Now is the time to know that all that you do is sacred."
- Hafiz

We don't need to climb mountains. We don't need to run marathons. We don't need to invent great things. We don't need to save the World.

. . . For just to be ordinary and love our lives and the people around us, to appreciate the beauty that is everywhere. To enjoy and be grateful for our friends, our loved ones, our homes. To do good where we see it needs to be done. To realise that it is all ok, that life is good and that everything is perfect just the way it is.

What a gift to ourselves and to life itself.

"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry."
- E.B. White

Candyfloss and Triggered Memories

"What we remember from childhood we remember forever

- permanent ghosts, stamped, inked, imprinted, eternally seen."

- Cynthia Ozick

When I was growing up, I lived a very safe, secure existence but secretly I longed for colour, sparkles and magic. Most of this desire was satisfied by losing myself in books, with tales of The Magic Faraway Tree and the adventures to be had in the ever changing worlds that appeared in the clouds at the top of the branches. Many hours were spent curled up on my bed lost in these enchanted lands.

So imagine my delight when a travelling funfair chose the large playing field in front of my home to set up its annual visit. From my vantage point on my bedroom window sill, I could see the lorries and brightly coloured fairground equipment arrive and quickly begin transforming an empty patch of grass into a colourful kaleidascope of lights, colour, music and smells.

Laying in bed at night I could smell the diesel engines and the fried onions. I could hear the sirens, as the rides slowed down to let off the hoards of screaming girls, mixed with the sounds of the latest pop records played loud. All accompanied by the flashing lights that I could see through my closed curtains, lighting up my safe little bedroom with the excitement I craved. I felt I had pulled this bright, edgy, impermanant world into my experience, and I loved every moment it was there.

As I became a teenager and wandered through this sparkly noise filled mirage that appeared annually yards from my window, I saw a girl not much older than me sitting in the glorious pink candy floss booth edged with flashing lights. She serenely twirled a stick on which quickly built a cloud of pink candyfloss. I remember being seized with longing. I wanted to be that girl, to live amongst the sparkle and noise and every two weeks to pack up my things and to travel to the next stopping place and do it all again.

Seeing this Candy Floss stall (in the picture above) at a recent event triggered these memories and bought them flooding back.

Memories of the girl I once was and of her craving for colour and adventure.

Making Mandala's (A Tale of Glitter and Glue! )

"Back on its golden hinges, the gate of memory swings, and my heart goes into the garden, and walks with the olden things." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

I was just going through some old discs when I found some photos of a forgotten project. It was about ten years ago that I got lost in for a couple of days in the making of these mandala's.

I started with 4 pieces of hardboard cut to 12 inches by 12 inches square, which I then painted with an undercoat and left to dry. While they were drying I raided the kitchen cupboard for some round things in a variety of sizes, I think I ended up with assorted small plates, a can of tomatoes and a small lid borrowed from a bottle of vitamins.

I carefully carried my haul back to my desk and with my various 'circles' a soft pencil and a ruler, I set about making my designs.

I tried pretty much to go with my first attempts, as too many alterations could start to make my nice white squares look grey and confusing.

So after I had completed the first design I was hooked! I still had other ideas that I wanted to try, so moved quickly on to the next. By the end of the afternoon I had all four pencilled out designs.

The next morning I began to fill in the flat colour, I worked on all four at once to save on brush washing between colours.

I had no plan in mind just kept working with a quite basic colour scheme so that all looked right together. Once the base colours were finished, I added some shading and texture with pastels.

Then came the messy bit! I have never quite got over my childhood obsession with glitter and sparkly things.

So with my pots of glitter in a multitude of colours, lined up in front of me and the little round mirrors (three of them have a mirror in their centre) layed out on the newspaper covering my desk - I reached for the glue!

Much later, there before me, were four beautiful sparkly squares, and they and my glue and glitter covered self! were finished.

I eventually turned them all diagonally and hung all four on my bedroom wall as shown in the main picture.

They are now languishing in a box somewhere but it is nice to remember the fun I had on the day - and the clean up operation afterwards. :-)

"Happiness...it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt