Saturday, 19th July 2014

Good Morning Readers,

I’m currently sitting in our kitchen as I write this and I’ve made the decision that this week’s post will not contain any DIY. So that’s my post for this week…

Well not quite, other things do happen in my life; we have had a glorious week of sunshine which has been lovely after a couple of weeks of rain. Sunday did start with pancakes for breakfast (with blueberries, bacon and maple syrup!!!!!) the rest of the day was very relaxing, watched a film, ate blueberry muffins that I made (with home grown blueberries) read a book, it was, all in all a very relaxing day.

Unfortunately the couple of weeks of rain has meant that I’ve got blight in my tomato plants. I removed one on Monday hoping that I had got to it before it spread to the other plants but unfortunately not. So once I’ve finished this post I’m off down to my veggie patch to rip them all out and to make some green tomato chutney. Bit disappointed as they were all going quite well. Apparently a lot of people cover their tomatoes here to stop late blight, especially when they have wet summers. It’s all a learning curve for me. However, the courgettes are going well, the corn seem to be going very well along with my cucamelons, capsicum (peppers) and eggplant (aubergine).

On Tuesday, my French class was unfortunately cancelled, but Pat’s wasn’t, but it meant that I got to sit outside of the café with a cup of coffee and my kindle reading in the sunshine for an hour. It was bliss. One thing I did forget to share was that the Tuesday before there was some event happening opposite the café with all these old citron cars. I’ve attached a couple of photos – they are not great as they are from my phone. We don’t know what it was all about, but it was interesting to look at the cars.

Thursday my usual art class was cancelled, but I went and did a watercolour taster class in a nearby village. It was fun I produced two pieces of work (photos below) which, while not fantastic, I’m still pleased with them. I’m also going to be doing another workshop with this teacher on home made cards – which have watercolour pictures on the front. That is in a couple of weeks so looking forward to that, and hopefully between now and then I might actually get a chance to do some more watercolour painting.

For those of you who read my occasional Facebook posts, I started an experiment a few weeks back. It was 21 days of gratitude, a small quote from my Facebook entry “Today while listening to a TED talk I heard about a study that was conducted in 2003 ( Emmons & McCullough), which looked at gratitude. My understanding is that it basically it boils down to if you write down 3 new things that you are grateful for, for 21 days, you actually can change your outlook on the world, looking for positives rather than negatives.” Last Sunday my 21 days was at an end. It was and is an interesting experience, I’ve decided to see if I can actually continue this and reach 31 days. The biggest problem is finding 3 NEW things. I can find 3 things each day to be grateful for, but 3 new things that haven’t been listed before is a little difficult, however I’m still going. After the 31 days I plan on continuing, I’ll write down 3 things I’m grateful for, but only have 1 new item each day. I have found that it truly does make you look for the things in your life that are worth being grateful for. The most fascinating thing I found was that it is easier to find things to be grateful for on difficult days, I think that is because good things can really stand out on horrible days, whereas good days, are just good. Does that make sense? So a few of my grateful things: a good cup of coffee; an incredible sunset; an unexpected gift from my husband; chocolate éclairs; a roof over my head; the feel of clean bed sheets. So a somewhat varied gratitude list, but you get the idea.

So till next week….

My watercolours

Mon première courgette

Cars – all Citroen’s I think

This looked especially nice

well… one diy item, my completed telephone table (formerly a chamber pot cabinet)