Overwhelmed

I’ve been thinking about writing here recently. Right now, I could write this exact post all over again – Knit therapy

Life is all just a bit overwhelming right now. Mostly it’s good, very good, but very full and busy.

Last week we were on holiday in Cornwall, which was honestly the best holiday I’ve had in a long while and the most relaxed I’ve been for ages. We enjoyed seeing a different part of the country, and Cornwall is truly beautiful.

The boys being that little bit older now, we were able to get out and do some slightly more adventurous things together – long walks, a 20 mile bike ride and even a spot of parkrun tourism. We spent lazy afternoons crabbing in the harbours and eating fish and chips and fudge at the beach.

We nosed around craft shops and art galleries. I even found a yarn shop, though it was closed when we got there. The cottage we stayed in was lovely, spacious yet cosy, in a beautiful location. I really felt like I had space and time to breathe and relax. I read a whole book while we were there – Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier.

Coming home, with a return to clutter and chaos and a busy week of work and activities felt overwhelming and oppressive. I forget how therapeutic crafting can be, yet somehow it’s also part of the heavy weight of physical and mental clutter. I have so many projects half done, half abandoned, half intended, waiting in the wings for the right time or the right tools or the right space. I end up in a brain fog where I can’t get motivated to do anything at all, but just waste any free moments scrolling idly, uselessly through my phone instead, finding inspiration without motivation, ideas but no decisions. But yesterday I picked up some knitting that I hadn’t touched in months. I only added a few rows, but it felt good.

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Coffee table

Well, believe it or not, I’ve managed to complete a second project this week.

I bought this table for the princely sum of eight English pounds from a local charity shop.

I spent a few hours sanding it down, then spent this week painting the legs using a tin of Autentico chalk paint I had left over from the little desk I did up a couple of years ago.

I also used the same wallpaper on the under side of the table as I lined the desk with.  Probably, nobody will ever know it’s there, but I like it!

A coat of wax to seal the paint and finish the bare pine top and job done!

A quick project

I’m great at coming up with ideas for things I want to do around the house, not so good at deciding the details and terrible at executing the idea from page to practical completion. So this one is an exceptionally quick win for me!

When we come home from school, bags and coats get dumped on and around the stairs, shoes get kicked off wherever, or get lost in a pile in the cupboard, and books letters and homework get strewn around the house, leading to a mad panicked hunt for them when they’re needed the next day.

I decided we needed a sort of docking station for all school related stuff, to keep us more organised and hopefully therefore less stressed!

The space under the stairs has been a ridiculous dumping ground since we moved in and I’ve been trying to decide how to put it to better use, so this seemed like a good way to do it.

 

The games have been moved upstairs to one of the boys rooms. The wooden cupboard keeps getting shifted around and hasn’t found a home yet. Everything else got shoved out of the way to make space.

We have repurposed the white toy unit to make a hallway bench/ bag and shoe cubby. I dug out a couple of old empty magazine holders so the boys can put any books, homework or letters in them. A set of pegs above was the only thing I bought especially, and….

…voilá!

Everything is in one place and ready to go in the morning.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, the piles of bags and shoes are still there, just out of shot under the bottom of the stairs. My house is far from perfect, it’s a work in progress, but I’m happy to have achieved something this weekend and look forward to seeing how it works for us over the coming weeks. I’ll try to do an update later on.

What setups and tricks do you have to keep you organised?

Summer

Having struggled to fill it in previous years, this summer seems to have ended up packed full of activities and away time.

Shopping with friends for cardigan buttons and other goodies.

A little DIY in the kitchen and the saucepan lids have a new home.

A return to the family ranch is always good for the soul.

The tomatoes are coming along well and we have a pumpkin that has continued growing beyond golf ball size.

There’s also been lots of reading (Swallows and Amazons with Pumpkin is wonderful!), lots of sewing and still a few name labels to go! Lots of fun at the park and meeting friends, cinema, theatre, TV, Scrabble, all sorts! The summer isn’t over yet and there’s plenty more fun to be had.

Hope you’re enjoying yours!

A different kind of WIP

Since we moved house, our front room has been a playroom. It’s a pretty small room with not much floor space, so the boys haven’t really played in there much and it’s actually been more of a glorified toy cupboard/ hurl-the-toys-in-and-shut-the-door kinda space. In short, a total toy-filled pigsty.

So last weekend, Mr Jack and I set to work while the kids were away for a couple of days with the aim of turning this room into a study/hobby room.

Inspired by Pinterest we had grand plans of picking paint colours and shopping at Ikea for a desk, shelves and storage solutions, and generally spending the weekend getting the job done as fast as possible.

Desk, shelves above, drawers or cupboard underneath. And I’m loving the idea of using a really deep blue colour on the walls, with white furniture although it’s a North facing room so I’m not sure if it would be too dark. (You can tell I’m not really an interior designer!)

Unfortunately, the room is one of three in this house with woodchip wallpaper. We battled woodchip once before, when we first moved unto our previous house, and it was such a struggle to strip the stuff that we never bothered tackling the other rooms that had it! But in this case, and since we plan to stay here long term, we decided that if the job was worth doing, it was worth doing properly. So we hired an industrial steamer and set to work.

The first strips came off in large sheets so we were lulled into a false sense of security that maybe it wasn’t as bad as we remembered. But after that, every square centimetre was thoroughly steamed and scraped and steamed and scraped some more.

Halfway through the second day we were vowing never again and suggesting paying someone to do the rest. But, we persevered and finished the job.

Unfortunately, that was the end of our childfree time, so that’s as far as we’ve got. Another project on the WIP pile. Hopefully we’ll find time to get back to it soon.

In the meantime I’ll continue browsing Pinterest for inspiration and flipping through the Dulux brochure to try to decide on a colour. What do you think of dark blue?