I Love.........

I Love the sight of my Avoca blankets stacked on the table, after being taken out for airing, ready for the winter.  The colours vibrant and cheerful to brighten the darker months ahead.  We bought the blankets when on a family holiday and the kids picked out the colours that they loved the most, Lucy the yellow and green chevron and Patrick the blue and white.  They remind me of one of the best family holidays that we have had and so I treasure them all the more for that.

I Love the label on these blankets and that it says "Weaving a Hug".  These were handwoven in Avoca in County Wicklow and even though they are pure wool, they are still so soft and are perfect for the sensitive skin of the smaller people in the family.

I Love to watch the stars at night, lying in the grass with my kids at my sides wearing only our pyjamas and fluffy slippers.  We may shiver or end up with soggy bottoms but it is worth it for the fun and laughs that form everlasting memories.

I Love to laugh and laugh heartily.  The type of laugh that shakes you to your very core.  I'm not ashamed to laugh while sitting alone on a train and reading a funny book.  Or to laugh along with the kids while we walk along the street singing silly songs or making up daft stories.  I love to laugh until my eyes water and my face hurts and I have to hold my stomach muscles together.  Laughter is truly the best medicine.  Worries ease.  My pain seams a little bit more manageable and all with a little giggle whenever my funny bone is tickled.  People are too reserved to let themselves go like this and they really don't know what they are missing in life.

I Love that my children tell my mother that I am a big kid just like them and that they prefer me that way because it makes me so much more fun!! 

I Love jazz music with a passion.  This is Dinah Washington and I first discovered her at the age of 14 and I've never looked back since.  I remember buying a collection of her songs on an old second hand cassette and listening to it on a battered old walkman.  Remember them??  So while my classmates were listening to Blur and Oasis, I was listening to the jazz greats  like Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Nina Simone.

I also love opera and classic music to calm or inspire me and I listen to it at times like writing this blog or sitting sewing or knitting at quiet moments.  My parents loved classical music and it was always playing in our house.  Actually there was normally different music playing in every room of the house.  I was great introduction to music from an early age.  I will always associate Maria Callas with baking with my mother on rainy Saturday afternoons.  Wonderful memories.

I Love to dance.  I will dance anywhere that I hear music that I like.  I don't care where it is or who is looking, which can embarrass my friends and family at times.  But who doesn't love a great dance?  When my body allows, I will put on some music on in my house and turn it up really loud and totally loose myself in the rhythm and tune.  And it is infectious, you know.  After a few minutes, I will be surrounded by my kids and sometimes their friends too.  It never fails to put me in a good mood!

I Love to read and have done since I was a child.  I loose myself totally in the story and get carried off into different worlds.  Reality eases into the background and becomes irrelevant at that moment.  The words become my reality to the point where I no longer feel like I am reading at all and the words just seam to pass effortlessly into my mind. Whether it is a detective story, a comedy or a biography, it makes no difference to me. I get sucked in every time.  My all time favourite authors would have to be Daphne Du Maurier and Oscar Wilde.

I Love sitting on the couch on a Saturday morning with my kids and watching children's telly.  All three of us, four if you include Molly, in our pjs wrapped up in a big woolly blanket with only three pairs of stocking feet popping out from under it.

I love the dark, intense aroma of my first cup of coffee in the morning.  It is an instant wake up and reminds me that there is a fresh new day ahead of me.

I Love how smells can instantly trigger warm memories.  The smell of a roast chicken brings me right back to my childhood and of Sunday roast dinners.  The smell greeting us at the door as we arrive back from the family walk in the forest.

I Love my little kitchen dresser.  Like the old woman of the roads in the poem, I have always dreamt of owning one with delf speckled white and blue.  I may not have the delf but a few years after moving into this house, we finally bought the dresser and I started about filling it with teapots, cake plates, flour crocks amongst an array of other things.

I Love Germany.  I love the people and the lifestyle that they live. I cherish my winter visits to my brother in Munich.  My brother makes it feel like a home from home for me.  I just wish that I was able to spend more time with him there.

I Love my stack of pretty fabrics that sit in the box in the corner of the kitchen.  I often take them out just to look at them on days that I need cheering up.  Their colour and patterns filling my head with inspiration and fresh ideas for new projects.

I Love to sit on the river bank and watch my husband when he is fly fishing.  The grace of the rod and line sweeping through the air as he casts the fly on the waters surface and whips it off once more.  It is a mesmerising talent to witness.

I Love how my husband supports me in my illness without any whimpering or complaining.  He just gets on with it and makes family life run smoothly.

I Love to see fresh flowers on my kitchen table.  Whether they are from the supermarket or from the garden, it makes no difference to me.  I just want to bring a little of the outside in to our little home.  Brightening and cheering in one simple placement of a vase of a few graceful stems.

I Love the sea.  I love it more than I could ever put into words.

I Love the vibrant ever growing Granny Stripe blanket.  I love feeling the weight of it on my knees as I add row after row of colour, dreaming of how it will look when it will be finished.

I Love that my 9 year old son comes to me when he can't sleep and asks me to lie beside him in the bed and hum to him.  Only one tune will do and that is the one that I've hummed to him since he was a baby cradled in my arms.

I Love Molly the dog and her ever so gentle nature.  I Love how she waits for a space to sit beside me on the couch and as soon as one of the kids make a move, she jumps up like a shot.  She pushes herself up against my legs getting as close as she can and rests her little head on my knees.

Most importantly of all, I Love my little family and all the fun that we have and the memories that we create together.  We laugh, we cry, we may even fight at times but all that matters is that we have each other and that we are happy.

Whenever I am sad or down or feeling upset about my pain, I'm going to look at this list to remind me that I have a lot to be thankful for.  I have a lot of special people in my life that make me very happy.  We have only one life and it is too precious to get caught up in all it's stresses.  It is important to take the time to cherish the ordinary and make it extraordinary.