Alison May's Blog, page 17
February 19, 2016
Brocante Bookmarks
On Love, Death, and No Regrets – Ellen Bard
Have you ever lost someone important in your life? Someone you loved dearly. Who one day was there, and then just…gone? It’s a hard thing to bear. Every little thing reminds you of them…
ellenbard.com
Whipped Sleepytime Rub – The Paleo Mama
Winding down at night can be tough at times. I know my mind keeps going for minutes and sometimes hours after I lay my head down on my pillow. The same goes for our kids. Sometimes we…
thepaleomama.com
Crockpot Italian Chicken, Quinoa, and Vegetable Soup
A simple (dump it and forget it) slow cooker meal featuring well seasoned Italian chicken, quinoa, and vegetables. It’s a well-known fact in my family that I could eat sandwiches, soups,…
[image error] chelseasmessyapron.com
Read // Eat: Pat Prager’s Peanut Butter Bars from ‘Kitchens of…
This post comes to us via my dear friend/food stylist Benjamin Plante! You can read his hilarious food blog here or drool over his Instagram here . Early last month I found myself at a…
yesandyes.org
Our Life’s Motto
Our life’s motto is this: live nimbly. According to Merriam-Webster, “nimble” means “able to move quickly, easily, and lightly.” What does this mean to us? We want to be free to change…
amylynnandrews.com
Chocolate Chip Cookie in a Cup – No. 2 Pencil
Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite, and my kids’ favorite too. So, after seeing a few recipes for individual cakes and brownies made in the microwave, I was inspired to develop a…
[image error] number-2-pencil.com
What Romance Really Means After 10 Years of Marriage
I’m an advice columnist, so sometimes people ask me about how they can “keep the romance alive” in their marriages. This stumps me a little because, by “romance,” I know they mean the…
[image error] nymag.com
50 Unexplainable Black & White Photos
Tagged: 50 black and white photos, 50 unexplainable, 50 unexplainable black white photos, 50 unexplainable black amp white photos, 50 unexplainable black and white, 50 unexplainable black…
[image error] buzzfeed.com
Elizabeth Bishop on Why Everyone Should Experience at Least One…
“One can never be alone enough to write. To see better,” young Susan Sontag wrote in her diary. In solitude, Wendell Berry observed in his magnificent meditation on stillness, “one’s…
[image error] brainpickings.org
My Life in Houses by Margaret Forster, review: ‘an ingenious…
An art homework assignment required Forster to paint “the view from my bedroom window”. Not confident with revealing the dreary actuality, “the coal bunker, the rope washing line” she…
[image error] telegraph.co.uk
Monthly Music Mix: Jazz, Darling – Darling Magazine
She saunters into the half-light, her emerald dress sashaying with each brush of the snare, unknowingly. His eyes quietly follow her path, carefully shaded away in his corner booth. Palms…
darlingmagazine.orgpowered by
The post Brocante Bookmarks appeared first on Brocantehome.
Crystal Paine’s Morning Routine
You know I’m all about my miracle morning right? And that I have been obsessing over it (and harassing you about it!) ever since I happened upon Hal Elrod’s inspirational book? I have in fact been obsessing, not just over MY routine, or even Hal’s, but over those routines of complete strangers. Those kind enough to share their routines on the interwebs and inspire us all with descriptions of meditative mornings and chia seed sprinkled breakfasts.
You see it seems to me that good mornings are where good lives begin and that when we fall out of bed in a be-fuddled mess we do ourselves a dis-service and cannot even begin to hope for betterment. And I don’t know about you, but being all about the relentless pursuit of betterment I do so hate to do myself a dis-service…
Crystal Paine’s Make Over Your Morning Course…
So anyway, there I was searching Pinterest for more morning routine delights when I happened across an entire site dedicated to collating the routines of many successful faces from the the web and promptly lost two hours to reading about their routines, making notes and stealing ideas from everybody from Ivanka Trump to Crystal Paine, whose morning routine advice is well documented in her lovely Make Over Your Mornings Course…
My favorite takeaways from MorningRoutine.Com ?
* This from Grace Bonner of Design Sponge fame…
My morning routine changed dramatically when I adopted our dog Hope.
I’d always wanted a dog (I’ve had a cat for eleven years) and I’m so grateful for the way her daily needs force me to get outside of my own head and actually leave the house to move, get fresh air, and meet other people who have nothing to do with blogs, which I love.
Because I am very bad at getting out first thing in the morning, and I think both Alfie and I would be happier if a walk first thing, instead of late afternoon was part of our routine…
* Then this from Eli Trier , author of The Gratitude Project.
Every morning, on waking, I make myself coffee in my beautiful old Emma Bridgewater cup and saucer – it makes me happy every time I lay my eyes on it. I generally have two or three cups of coffee over the course of the morning.
Which has inspired me to start the hunt for a mug to replace the vast and oh so pretty pink one my Mum bought me and I have since smashed. A mug I can look forward to.
This from Mimi Ikon …
My husband Alex and I wake up at 7:00am. Sometimes we snooze and cuddle for the next ten minutes. While we’re still in bed, we fill out our Five Minute Journals. They’re like a positive toothbrush for the mind and they always sets our day off to a great start.
In fact everything included in Mimi’s exceptionally glamorous morning routine video really, but particularly, The Five Minute Journal because I used to use the app religiously and have fallen out of the habit and as I know it is a singularly transformational technique I very much want to start it all over again.
Then this from artist, Karina Bania …
Last year I bought a stack of index cards, which I keep by my bed. Each morning and night I write my thoughts, ideas, intentions, memories, and fragments of life on a card and file it in the box. This is my shorthand journal. I reference it when I write longer pieces on my blog or need inspiration.
Because that just strikes me as such a beautiful, undemanding way to empty my head first thing in the morning before I set about filling it up all over again with emails, and news and Feedly and Pinterest… which recently is how I have been starting my mornings in the half hour before I roll out of bed.
And finally this from student Natalie Ainsworth …
The next chunk of my morning is dedicated to making myself feel beautiful. I take a cool shower, wash my face, moisturize with sesame oil, get dressed, apply some makeup, style my hair, brush my teeth, and roll a bit of coconut perfume on my wrists and neck.
Because though I like every other woman get showered and dressed in the morning I have never thought of it being about making myself beautiful. And I want to. I want to make time to feel beautiful. Instead of slouchy. I very often feel slouchy you know…
So there you have it. A little bit more morning inspiration for you. Do your own mornings start quite so effortlessly?
Source List1. Makeover Your Mornings by Crystal Paine. This deceptively simple 14 day email course will do more to change the way you start your days than any other resource you will find on the internet. Not least because Crystal herself is so very real. Sign up to start the course tomorrow morning for just $17.00 (£11.92). You won’t regret it.
2. The Five Minute Journal. Probably the most succinct, sensible way to organize your brain first thing in the morning. Buy the journal here or download the newly re-vamped app soon.
3. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. Buy it on Amazon.Com here and Amazon.Co.Uk here.
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February 18, 2016
A Spring Revival
“That is one good thing about this world…there are always sure to be more springs.”
Dear Lucy Maud Montgomery was right about all most everything. And never more than in the quote above, when she reminds us that just as Mother Nature shakes off even the darkest of Winters, so too can we come out the other side in to a Spring all of our own…
And so here I am, still so relentlessly hopeful. Ready to start all over again, after almost a year of the quietest of grief. I am de-cluttering the Spark Joy way. Making piles and excavating only deep-rooted happiness. Nibbling at Mazat Dark Orange chocolate. Spending hours in the library. Reading this. (Such fun!) Stripping everything away until only what is sacred is left behind. Watching Fortitude with my Dad. Drinking copious amounts of deliciously sweet tea, made by Finley who is suddenly old enough to show how much he loves me in this most British of fashions.
Planning a garden full of poppies. A herb garden and a vegetable patch. Laundry on one of those silly, spinny washing lines. Spring mornings on the garden step. A life with Ste.
Here I am. With another incarnation of BrocanteHome. A heart full of hope and feather-light spring in my step.
Spring… How lovely to have you back.
Source List1. Spark Joy by Marie Kondo. Available on 1.Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen. Available on Amazon.com here and Amazon.Co.uk here. 2. Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin. Buy it on Amazon.Com here . Sadly it is not currently available in the UK. So sorry." target="_blank">Amazon.com here and Amazon.Co.uk here.
2. Mazet Chocolate. Find it on Amazon.Co.Uk here.
3. How To Be Parisian Wherever You Are by Anne Berest. Find it on Amazon.Com here and Amazon.Co.Uk here.
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February 9, 2016
Brocantehome……A Life Without Internet
Well now at the risk of being one of those bloggers who spends many an hour explaining why she isn’t blogging, I have parked my bottom in the library to explain why I am not blogging the BrocanteHome way. you know: because I am one of those bloggers. Temporarily.
You see we have moved in to Dad’s because he is going to be moving out soon and it seemed crazy not to grab a house that suits us dearly, while we look for one to buy, and thus we had the internet cut off in my mini little falling down cottage while it is sold and Dad switched off his internet and we set up a new provider and that m’dears is where it all went wrong. They said one week and they meant three due to some kind of “line” crisis and now here we are, one step removed from absolute lunacy and rather upset about it to the degree that I have been tweet-shouting and Ste has spent many an hour on the phone calmly screeching at a company who are very sorry and very unwilling to try to speed things up.
While I have been worrying about BrocanteHome and Ste is generally demented altogether, it is the kids who have suffered most, because it has come to my attention Dearhearts, that our children are absolutely ADDICTED to the world wide web and can barely function without it so thoroughly absorbed are they in the lives of random overgrown teenagers like Joe Weller and in Finley’s case at least, (though I keep telling him that he is one step removed from an addiction to the Real Housewives of Beverley Hills) in what is going on with the Diva’s of the WWE network.
Cue tears at unexpected times. And the occasional tantrum. And quite a bit of outraged sulking, not helped by the fact that the majority of Finn’s bedroom is now lurking in Dad’s thankfully large garage, nor by the fact that Stevie stares in to space when he can’t stare at his tablet. It ain’t good and I do believe it calls for a new regime in terms of restricting access to the internet when it is finally back on and inviting our boys to experience more of what real life has to offer instead…
Luckily a new regime is very much what is on the cards. While I am in the midst of moving house I am also debating taking Finley out of one school and putting him in another and the very process of merely thinking about it is somewhat battering my head, because the enormity of shaping his future through academia keeps slapping me around the chops and making me feel responsible for something I was once so sure about.
Everything is changing. As we approach the one year anniversary of my Mum’s heartbreaking death, I am astonished by how many changes are occurring and indeed how very willing I am to invite change now that I understand how very cruel life can be, and thus why there is no time at all to waste in dithering. I am not scared of change but I cannot say I am particularly enamoured by it either. My entire being yearns for stability of the kind I have not had for such a long time and though we should not wish our lives away I know that in my family at least we are all so very desperate to speed through the next few months so we can experience what it is to live life without Mum in a period of settlement rather than the the changes her death has inspired…
All that and we need the internet. For it is apparent that life slows down to a crawl without it. Though I am loving watching Finley spend each evening playing chess with Ste and Dad, and thoroughly enjoying losing myself in the pile of books I got for Christmas, knowing that my business is stalling is disconcerting and I truly hate being out of this polka dotty loop of my own creation.
Rumour has it that the internet will be on come Friday and so I am going to say farewell for now: it is quite the oddest thing typing again a clock counting down the single hour we are allowed to commandeer the computers here in my local library, and I am so looking forward to sitting down with a cup of Joe and my lovely laptop once again next week.
Till then forgive my absence and enjoy, a putterily scrumptious week.x
The post Brocantehome……A Life Without Internet appeared first on Brocantehome.
A Life Without Internet
Well now at the risk of being one of those bloggers who spends many an hour explaining why she isn’t blogging, I have parked my bottom in the library to explain why I am not blogging. you know: because I am one of those bloggers. Temporarily.
You see we have moved in to Dad’s because he is going to be moving out soon and it seemed crazy not to grab a house that suits us dearly, while we look for one to buy, and thus we had the internet cut off in my mini little falling down cottage while it is sold and Dad switched off his internet and we set up a new provider and that m’dears is where it all went wrong. They said one week and they meant three due to some kind of “line” crisis and now here we are, one step removed from absolute lunacy and rather upset about it to the degree that I have been tweet-shouting and Ste has spent many an hour on the phone calmly screeching at a company who are very sorry and very unwilling to try to speed things up.
While I have been worrying about BrocanteHome and Ste is generally demented altogether, it is the kids who have suffered most, because it has come to my attention Dearhearts, that our children are absolutely ADDICTED to the world wide web and can barely function without it so thoroughly absorbed are they in the lives of random overgrown teenagers like Joe Weller and in Finley’s case at least, (though I keep telling him that he is one step removed from an addiction to the Real Housewives of Beverley Hills) in what is going on with the Diva’s of the WWE network.
Cue tears at unexpected times. And the occasional tantrum. And quite a bit of outraged sulking, not helped by the fact that the majority of Finn’s bedroom is now lurking in Dad’s thankfully large garage, nor by the fact that Stevie stares in to space when he can’t stare at his tablet. It ain’t good and I do believe it calls for a new regime in terms of restricting access to the internet when it is finally back on and inviting our boys to experience more of what real life has to offer instead…
Luckily a new regime is very much what is on the cards. While I am in the midst of moving house I am also debating taking Finley out of one school and putting him in another and the very process of merely thinking about it is somewhat battering my head, because the enormity of shaping his future through academia keeps slapping me around the chops and making me feel responsible for something I was once so sure about.
Everything is changing. As we approach the one year anniversary of my Mum’s heartbreaking death, I am astonished by how many changes are occurring and indeed how very willing I am to invite change now that I understand how very cruel life can be, and thus why there is no time at all to waste in dithering. I am not scared of change but I cannot say I am particularly enamoured by it either. My entire being yearns for stability of the kind I have not had for such a long time and though we should not wish our lives away I know that in my family at least we are all so very desperate to speed through the next few months so we can experience what it is to live life without Mum in a period of settlement rather than the the changes her death has inspired…
All that and we need the internet. For it is apparent that life slows down to a crawl without it. Though I am loving watching Finley spend each evening playing chess with Ste and Dad, and thoroughly enjoying losing myself in the pile of books I got for Christmas, knowing that my business is stalling is disconcerting and I truly hate being out of this polka dotty loop of my own creation.
Rumour has it that the internet will be on come Friday and so I am going to say farewell for now: it is quite the oddest thing typing again a clock counting down the single hour we are allowed to commandeer the computers here in my local library, and I am so looking forward to sitting down with a cup of Joe and my lovely laptop once again next week.
Till then forgive my absence and enjoy, a putterily scrumptious week.x
The post A Life Without Internet appeared first on Brocantehome.
February 2, 2016
No Internet…
Hello Honeybuns… Just dropping in to tell you that in this ongoing game of musical houses I am currently without Internet and muddling my way through with 3G on my phone.
Hopefully it will be switched on here at my Dads tomorrow and business as usual will resume.
Happy Tuesday.x
The post No Internet… appeared first on Brocantehome.
January 28, 2016
Essential Oils…Creating a Way of Life
I was complaining yesterday. I was moping about my Dad’s house feeling swollen and bloated and generally inflamed, and Dad took one look at me and said maybe you need to stop taking all this nonsense? And I laughed because ironically, the very reason I was feeling so darn awful was because I had NOT been taking my so-called nonsense for a few days and the proof m’dears that I NEED my nonsense was in the puffy pudding.
Sometimes I fall off my own bandwagon. This week in the maelstrom of PMT, school dilemmas, moving house palava and general headless chicken-ness, I let my extreme self-care ritual fall by the wayside and as Ste is currently having to stay at his Mums, I didn’t even have him to giddy me up and we all know what I do to myself when I am left to my own devices now don’t we?
I eat pot noodles and spend too much time hoovering in order to avoid the more necessary stuff of life!
So yes. I forgot to take my thyroid meds. I eschewed my magnesium and Vitamin D duo in favour of a glass of red (damn dry January to hell and back!), and I forgot do do anything at all with my beloved essential oils because I was too busy typing and washing clothes and generally wishing the next few months away. Which is quite frankly the worst excuse in the world.
Why am I owning up here? This darlings has long been my confession box and I would hate you to think that I am the epitome of Brocante perfection. I’m really not. I am prone to whimmery and chaos. And sometimes I just plain old prefer the bad stuff in life to the virtuous.
But here’s the thing: in meditation we are taught not to beat ourselves up when we lose focus, but to gently bring our attention back to our word and simply pick up the repetition of of our mantra again without self-admonishment. And in life that is exactly what I do: I lose focus and then when I notice I have lost focus I simply pick up the reins of my desired routines and rituals and get back on my horse.
For just as in meditation I want to transcend, in day to day life I want to live in a way that nurtures my well-being and as I get older I seem to have more and more clarity on what it is I need to do that. The dream sleep duo is one part of that and my essential oils an even bigger part of it. For it is with essential oils that I am replacing almost everything else that I have previously used to stay healthy, feel good and keep house.
And so over in my Brocante Oils Community today I have created a FREE download with 150 uses for the ten most essential, essential oils to have in your kit if you too are truly looking to banish the toxins chemicals you are co-existing with, and replace them with products so pure you can ingest them.
While I may have days when all my goodwill goes out of the window with the blue-bottles that seem to congregate on my Dad’s porch, for the most part I am so thoroughly enjoying introducing new oils and scrumptiously new oily rituals in to my routines that only the relentless menace that is PMT can have me temporarily falling off the bandwagon and I’m pretty sure there is an oil for that too…
Click here to sign up (it’s free) and grab your FREE download today…
The post Essential Oils…Creating a Way of Life appeared first on Brocantehome.
Creating a Way of Life With Essential Oils…
I was complaining yesterday. I was moping about my Dad’s house feeling swollen and bloated and generally inflamed, and Dad took one look at me and said maybe you need to stop taking all this nonsense? And I laughed because ironically, the very reason I was feeling so darn awful was because I had NOT been taking my so-called nonsense for a few days and the proof m’dears that I NEED my nonsense was in the puffy pudding.
Sometimes I fall off my own bandwagon. This week in the maelstrom of PMT, school dilemmas, moving house palava and general headless chicken-ness, I let my extreme self-care ritual fall by the wayside and as Ste is currently having to stay at his Mums, I didn’t even have him to giddy me up and we all know what I do to myself when I am left to my own devices now don’t we?
I eat pot noodles and spend too much time hoovering in order to avoid the more necessary stuff of life!
So yes. I forgot to take my thyroid meds. I eschewed my magnesium and Vitamin D duo in favour of a glass of red (damn dry January to hell and back!), and I forgot do do anything at all with my beloved essential oils because I was too busy typing and washing clothes and generally wishing the next few months away. Which is quite frankly the worst excuse in the world.
Why am I owning up here? This darlings has long been my confession box and I would hate you to think that I am the epitome of Brocante perfection. I’m really not. I am prone to whimmery and chaos. And sometimes I just plain old prefer the bad stuff in life to the virtuous.
But here’s the thing: in meditation we are taught not to beat ourselves up when we lose focus, but to gently bring our attention back to our word and simply pick up the repetition of of our mantra again without self-admonishment. And in life that is exactly what I do: I lose focus and then when I notice I have lost focus I simply pick up the reins of my desired routines and rituals and get back on my horse.
For just as in meditation I want to transcend, in day to day life I want to live in a way that nurtures my well-being and as I get older I seem to have more and more clarity on what it is I need to do that. The dream sleep duo is one part of that and my essential oils an even bigger part of it. For it is with essential oils that I am replacing almost everything else that I have previously used to stay healthy, feel good and keep house.
And so over in my Brocante Oils Community today I have created a FREE download with 150 uses for the ten most essential, essential oils to have in your kit if you too are truly looking to banish the toxins chemicals you are co-existing with, and replace them with products so pure you can ingest them.
While I may have days when all my goodwill goes out of the window with the blue-bottles that seem to congregate on my Dad’s porch, for the most part I am so thoroughly enjoying introducing new oils and scrumptiously new oily rituals in to my routines that only the relentless menace that is PMT can have me temporarily falling off the bandwagon and I’m pretty sure there is an oil for that too…
Click here to sign up (it’s free) and grab your FREE download today…
The post Creating a Way of Life With Essential Oils… appeared first on Brocantehome.
January 27, 2016
Surprise Balls
Do you know what a Surprise Ball is? No neither did I until I happened across them somewhere on the internet and now I am thoroughly charmed and desperate for an occasion to gift someone with a crêpe paper wrapped little ball full of teeny old-fashioned surprises…
They are I think, like a really pretty Pass the Parcel present: not the newspaper and wrapping paper monstrosities to be found at every kids party since time began, but delightful little balls of vintage inspired fun to be opened by the birthday girl, used as an all grown up Pass the Parcel game at a dinner party or simply gifted to someone in need of a little cheering up…
With a range of different Surprise Balls for different occasions throughout the year, they seem to range from the truly elegant to the deliciously kitsch and as you start to unwind the crêpe paper, gifts silly and joyful fall into your lap…
You see I do believe it is the little things that delight the heart and while Surprise Balls, bought or home-made might just be filled with frippery and nonsense, the very act of unwinding something so deliciously silly, is I think, what memories are made of.
As Vintage Housekeeper’s then we have the opportunity to make or buy a little stash of Surprise Balls to celebrate the teeniest of family joys: to award little school successes once monthly or to pop a Surprise Ball under the pillow of someone feeling a little down. We can make it a ritual to always have a Surprise Ball at the place of the Birthday Boy on the breakfast table or give one to a child laid low with chicken pox or something equally as miserable…
They really are adorable: the perfect mix of whimsy and child-like joy and so very BrocanteHome, for like the Christmas Crackers we lay on our festive table, they speak of both ritual and celebration and exist not for material gain of gifts worth having, but for the sheer fun of unwrapping something so mysterious!
The Surprise Balls featured here come from Tops Malibu, who stock a vast selection of these little darlings (alongside the equally lovely Wish Capsules), but you could of course make your own from crêpe paper and ribbon and personalize them with charms and toys collected especially for your intended recipient or occasion…
Just right for Valentines Day methinks.
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January 26, 2016
The Emergency Closet
This Is a Vintage Housekeeper's Post - Members Only...
“The lesson to-day begins with a story, a story with a moral, too,” said Mrs. Thorne. “Once upon a time, when I was a young and inexperienced housekeeper, it began to snow early in the morning, before I had been out to market. It happened that everything in the house had given out at once, and I had a long list of things to get, but as I had a bad cold I did not wish to go out in the storm.
I waited nearly all day for it to stop, as it was against my principles even then to telephone for anything, but at last, as it began to grow dark, I could not wait longer, and took my receiver to call up the grocery and meat market, only to find the wires were down. What to do I did not know. Even if I ventured out it was now too late to hope to have anything delivered before dinner-time, and I could not carry the food home in my arms and at the same time manage a dress and an umbrella…
Click here to read the rest of this (long!) post on the Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle…
Or read all about joining The Vintage Housekeeper’s Circle here…
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