Winter Gold.

I've been thinking a lot about how difficult it is to keep the poetry in your life when you have small children. The irony is that it is never more abundant as then, but it is often so hard to take the time out to see it. It was fine before they started school, in fact it was probably most amazingly full-filling then as life was at their pace. But the madness of time constraints takes over and you wake up one morning and realise you have blinkers on! How on earth did that happen!

So here you are doing your best to make sure you check all the boxes that you set out for yourself when you had your first child: that baking and making and creating and appreciating beauty are all things they will learn to take for granted as part of the fabric of life. And it's SO HARD! It is essential to make myself stop every day, at some point and look, and breathe, and bring their attention to some little thing we could so easily have rushed past. And then one day one of them stops you and brings your attention to some little thing and your heart swells and you realise it is worth it. Their eyes are clear and amazed by life, they do see it,oh joy!



One way we keep gentle a hand of beauty on our shoulder, never far away from our thoughts, is music. We have a soundtrack to our lives and it clarifies and polishes the mundane. Sometimes it is silence, sometimes it's loud and joyous, sometimes thoughtful. And there's nothing like dancing madly to make everyone laugh and be joyous.



We help each other to find the gold that is always there, but sometimes overlooked.