A clean chimney, a clean bicycle, and other joys of the season

Autumn leaves like little stars on the pavement

Here’s a roundup of some of the things shaping our lives at the moment, now we’re into our second month of being a one-salary/one-homemaker household.

Home maintenance
Based at home, Brian has been tackling some of our longstanding home issues, and uncovering new ones that we hadn’t previously been aware of. Among a big list of jobs, the main activities have been felling a big willow tree and dealing with all the material, and making a start on all the roof repairs: lifting the tiles, preserving the wood, putting in new felt and then putting some new guttering up temporarily while we focus on another job before we come back to the roof.

We have some damp issues due to the concrete around the house which is laid too high and in some places is sloping toward the house. This all needs smashing up, removing and some other solution put in place – we are not sure what!

Today we also did our annual chimney sweep. We took all our belongings out of the room, covered the furniture with sheets (and one over the fireplace with a hole in, after this photo was taken)…

Our living room ready for chimney sweeping

…and two hours later everything was swept, clean, put back in place and we were enjoying our liveliest fire of the year.

We like trying to spot faces and other shapes in the flames…

Helpful habits
One of the ongoing niggles Lucy has had over recent years is over bicycle maintenance – how often, how much, how to do it and how to motivate yourself to do it! The solution seems to be this: spend about 20 minutes every Saturday removing crud and grit, checking that the moving parts sound and look ok, oiling everything and pumping the tyres – whether or not it seems to need doing. Just do this every week. Then no problems will go unnoticed, and it’s always clean. It certainly seems to be working, and the bicycle ran really well last week!

The bicycle after it’s weekly clean

We can still do whatever fun things we want!
What’s becoming clearer is that there doesn’t have to be any limit on fun now our income is reduced. Most of the things we enjoy doing are free anyway – for example, we like reading library books about home design and interiors, discussing what we like and dislike about the styles, but this doesn’t make us want to actually go out and buy anything.

New books from the library

There’s also ways to make other occasions more affordable. This week Lucy took a day off to go on a family daytrip to a museum in another town, travelling by train – the museum itself was free entry (and the lunch ended up being a treat, but that was unexpected!).

At this time of year we are also starting to feel quite festive, not in a commercialised way, but because we can’t resist the cosiness and sparkle of the Christmas build-up. We’re feeling ready for the season: two Christmas cakes have been made and are being fed with brandy (one more still to make), Lucy has bought some good value (and low-chemical) sparkly nail varnish, and we love nothing more than snuggling up to watch a Christmas film, the more sentimental the better, because they are all about the best in people – and its nice to have a season where that is celebrated! (Click here for a post from the Positively Present blog which captures the messages of Christmas films. It’s not only us that love them!)

Thanks everyone for reading and subscribing. Enjoy the rest of this November!

Cosy Colourful Autumn

This weekend we stayed close to home with just a couple of trips out for food. This is always a colourful time of year, but this year one of the trees in our garden has given us a surprise display that we’ve never seen before:

These leaves are from our North American Hawthorn, and we’ve never seen this ‘traffic light’ effect before. We don’t know what causes it but they are stunning to look at.

At this time of year our attention turns indoors, and we’re spending more time reading and baking, but the garden is still beautiful with lots of things in flower – as you can see reflected in the window of our book cabinet!

Although we still need to clean our chimney for the year, we’ve started having fires and on a chilly evening the warmth and glow couldn’t be more cosy. One of the things we keep meaning to do is to light candles more often, but we usually forget – not tonight though, as we have been enjoying the first use of this candle holder which Brian bought years ago and has never used.

None of this costs much to enjoy, all it needs is for us to pay attention.

Lessons in Living Simply

This week has been packed full of little lessons in living simply. We’ve been swinging from losing ourselves in everyday stress, to returning and residing in a calmer place with appreciation of life’s wonders…before going down the hole of stress again, and so it goes on! Perspective can be really hard to hold on to sometimes. This is partly because we are due a holiday – we will be on staycation in a week, and we’re just tired. This is also traditionally Lucy’s busiest time at work.

One thing we never lose sight of is our privilege and the ‘first world problem’ nature of many of our worries. We are not struggling to survive, house, feed or clothe ourselves. Therefore it is even more important that we value simple pleasures, so that we are less likely to be wasteful or to buy and consume unnecessary things.

Here are some of our simple moments from this week:

Ducks know how to live

On a day out yesterday Lucy and her mum watched this beautiful male mallard duck having a very thorough and exuberant wash, with lots of head-dunking, flapping and feather-smoothing. If you need a boost, seek out a duck!

White chocolate strawberries

Brian made these white lemon chocolate strawberries as a Sunday treat last weekend – simple and perfect!

This week the smell of blossom has been very powerful. Every time we pass some and are hit by the wall of scent we know it’s Spring. On Lucy’s bicycle commutes, a regular blast of blossom aroma keeps her mind in the present moment.

Lucy has been remembering to check out the moon every day. At the moment it’s a daytime and evening moon, and is looking down on us for most of the day.

After the rushed breakfasts of working week days we always try to have some good long weekend breakfasts with radio and magazines. There’s something very relaxing about watching the steam coming off a nice cup of tea!