Journal | February 2022

February brought with it a change of energy, it felt like I was waking up from a slumber. I wanted to channel my energy into seeding and preparing for a few projects I had been mulling over during the earlier part of the winter season. I spent the month of February bringing these ideas and plans towards the surface and did so by gently connecting with my life passions and spending quality time together as a family.

I spent a few weekends working on our garden this month. I weeded all of our planters and containers making sure the soil was clear ahead of bulbs making more of an appearance. I bought and painted some trellis to attach to our two planters on our decking next to our low boundary wall. The screen now gives us and our neighbours some privacy. The trellis will eventually have climbing plants covering it providing even more of a screen, last year I planted jasmine in one of the planters, and this year I plan to add a rose or clematis. I’m looking forward to this plant flowering and the scents wafting into the space where we love to sit in the sunshine.

I read one book in full this month, Enough by Jessica Rose Williams. I’ve been following Jessica’s blog for many years and was so delighted to hear she was writing a book and sharing her story of simple living. During mid-February I started reading Wilding by Isabella Tree and realised this wasn’t a book for a sleepy pre-bedtime read. Full of detail I wanted to savour the information and I have started to slowly read it.

My fabric stash came into its own this month. I’ve been collecting fabric for over 10 years and decided to make use of some of my favourites in my stash. Last year I started a new project, a hand stitched quilt for our bedroom using the English Paper Piecing quilt technique. I have been gradually making hexagons and had used up all of the fabric I had cut last year. I decided I wanted to add more of my favourite fabrics to the quilt and spent a few hours pressing and cutting hundreds of 3.5 inch by 3.5 inch squares ready to sew. The hexagons are an easy project to pick up even after a busy work day and I feel a real sense of satisfaction seeing the amount of hexagons increase. The project is one I will gradually work on over the next few years and will be an heirloom quilt for Chloe.

This month I gave Chloe her quilt I finished for her last year. The journey of making it had been an extended one, started while I was pregnant to her turning three. Her eyes lit up and she snuggled under it straight away and told me all about the colours, animals, and shapes in the quilt. I will be sharing more about the quilt in a post soon and sharing some photos too. I felt a huge moment of pride when Chloe asked to put it on her bed, and there it has stayed, an extra cover on top of her duvet.

With the weather improving and places opening up, without masks and restrictions, we planned a few weekend activities as a family. We headed off to the aquarium in the centre of Bristol and then enjoyed a lunch out together. It was an exciting and tiring morning for Chloe, she loved seeing the seahorses, clown fish, was fascinated by the rays and loved her pizza lunch.

On a Saturday morning we headed out to Uphill Beach near Weston-Super-Mare to enjoy a bit of time in nature and visit a beach during half term. Chloe has associated holidays with going to the beach and we wanted to make it happen in some way. We enjoyed the short walk on a breezy day, Chloe found a stick and drew on the sand, discovered small shells and we watched as dry sand blew over the wet sand in waves. The sky changed, the sun appeared behind clouds and we felt the cobwebs blown away by our short trip to the seaside.

My running journey continued this month and I managed to run for 36 minutes, it was the first time in my life I have run continually for this duration of time. I ran it two weeks in a row, the first week I didn’t start my Strava app at the right time and so wasn’t sure of the distance I ran. The second week I started logging the distance after my warm up walk and discovered I had run 5k. It was a huge moment for me and something I hadn’t thought I could do, enjoy doing or would want to do before I started using the Couch to 5k app. I’ve got lots to share on my running journey so I will save some thoughts for another post.

Last year I spent time rearranging our attic room, dismantled some shelving and found a new space for our home office desk. During February I wanted to make my home office space feel more inviting. We added a shelf above the desk and a year planner on the wall and found a way we can switch up the use of the space easily. Mr C and I can both use the desk for our different work from home days during the week and there is space for me at weekends to write. I moved a chair from our bedroom, added a trailing plant to the shelf, and have some aromatherapy oils on hand for concentration. It has become a space I love, a mini office tucked in a corner of our multi-purpose attic room. Just by adding some love and attention to the space it has made it a more enjoyable space to work in.

We had a few impromptu catch ups with friends this month which felt very nourishing. We spent a Sunday afternoon with friends who live a short walk away and enjoyed a delicious home cooked Sunday roast, we caught up over a glass of wine, and watched our children, all three are different ages, play together and race around. Later in the month we had the joy of seeing a dear friend for an unplanned last minute visit and spent a few hours catching up over tea.

During the month I headed home to stay with my parents and to attend a funeral of my school friends’ mum who left us far too early. I travelled by train for the first time in a few years, read my book, quietly poured tea from my flask and contemplated a few things on the journey there and back. It’s hard to put into words the feeling of the loss and how it has impacted me. It has made me appreciate life even more than I already do. It has helped me choose to be more present in each moment and strive to live a life that fulfils me, making choices to support it.

Mr C and I celebrated 14 years together this month, we had a delicious dinner at home, a great bottle of wine and toasted our time together and all we’ve shared over the years. Our most important and special achievement together is Chloe, we talked about how we are growing and learning to be parents, and how she continues to change, grow and surprise us each day.

February felt like a month when our lives felt more free, lockdown restrictions had pretty much ended and life felt more like pre-COVID times. With the freedom came the energy too. In a way I felt relieved and have been appreciating how our lives are now feeling more expansive for the first time in a few years. During the month I tried to capture the fleeting moments and memories, from the concentration seen by Chloe absorbed in her thoughts digging in the sand, to working on a personal creative project in the early stages, to the moments just after a heavy hailstorm in our garden.