day to myself....

But hub and bub are off to Drusilla's Park.  Oh I love a  day to myself in the house.  It is SO RARE, especially now that Hub works from home.  In fact, to be honest, I think we could both do with him getting out more.  He is such a home body, which is fine, I guess, but sometimes it would be nice to be here, on my own.  I think that however close you are with another human being, sometimes its nice to have some space.  We are not the same and we like things differently, our own way, once in a while


If it were just my place, I would play more music, more loudly, the bathroom would always be cleaner, The TV would never be on, there would be less to recycle, and more would get done. (why is that?!)

Still.  Here I am  FIP playing LOUDLY on the radio.  Just done some Yoga and am off to sort the bedrooms out.  Yes this house is my responsibility.  Get the stuff done!!

tell it like it is, Sadie baby!

division of labour - where next?

Its not going to happen just yet.  But I can feel where the division will be.  I am thinking and have been thinking for a while that my blog needs to change.  I have this whole creative side which needs to go fully express itself as it is, meanwhile I have this practical side that is all about the getting things done. I am myself in both these roles, but my actual blog is some sort of strange hybrid of both.  Perhaps it does reflect who I am - as a strange hybrid person.  But at the same time.  I don't know.  I think that its morphed from where it started into something else.  With my life now taking off in interesting directions - there is my art, my portraits, my creative business and thoughts and ideas associated with that, and yet the perenial, 'how to get stuff done' the day to day quest to manage my life,  achieve my dreams and my budget and my projects the keeping myself on track and that whole 'process' stuff.  Well this is finding its fruition in the potential role I have coming up in the company People Who Do.  I have this fantastic opportunity there, both on a professional and personal level to create a fulfilling and potentially lucrative and yet, crucially, part time, career.  I need and want to focus on that too.  My original blog title of Get Stuff Done fits so well with this side of my new career.  As part of my training and as a prerequisite to my being employed by PWD, I will be taken through their process, which I will then be required to implement in my life, then further to that, I will need to teach others this process and follow up on them implementing it in their lives.  Ultimately my role will be to teach and provide back up and follow up for their process and  also (again crucially) to seek out and bring in new business - as part of my role and in order to achieve the potentially lucrative side to this opportunity.  I need to do this.  Because if I can. When I can. When I am able to do it, I can work part time for a properly able to support myself income.  Which means that I can do work that fits around looking after my son, and allows me time and space to continue to develop my art business and practice.  And ideally to travel and do things like buy a horsebox roaming art studio and all. 

Oh and there is the Yoga.  Which fits into both sides marvellously.  Ah, brilliant.  Love Yoga. 

So as i said, its not happening just yet,  But it will. And this blog will return to source and be all about process and getting stuff done.  And the whole achieving dreams too.  Lets face it, what's the point of being organised and productive, unless you are moving in the direction of your dreams.  But a how to. an exploration of that how to, and also, of my journey towards being a person who does. 

I have long wanted a full on visual, poetic and beauteous blog where I can wallow in artistic ideas and influences and dreams and inspirations.  This blog is halfway there, but it is halfway practical too.  Not that my artisitc creative blog will avoid the process of creation or of being a creative business.  But it needs to fly free I think.  Somehow.

Anyways these are my musings on what and where I am going these days. 


And the Yoga. Its the union of everything isn't it?  xxx peace xxx

words to live by

revere the authentic
produce items of an exceptional standard
feel giddy while watching the sparks fly
life is an adventure -
there's only one way to find out
this too shall pass
magic happens
colorful and extraordinary
dream big, be brave, and manifest a life you love
Poetry, Beauty, Music and Stars
I am a firm believer in all things beautiful; all things unique; and all things with a story.
create like your life depends on it.
find a way to keep showing up
awe beauty horror joy
I am woman (hear me roar)
around the tropic of gratitude
making the time to be scared of more interesting things
an ambiguous and elusive sense of reality at a point of transformation 

Port Eliot Festival

What a lovely festival it is.  Like some kind of crazy bohemiam garden party.  Very British, very English even.  Set in the Grounds of this house, which is so like something out of a story of a bohemiam crumbling aristocracy littered with a past of tragedy, trangression and proper what you would imagine classic Bohemian life might once have been and here still is.  The historic mansion just about standing, a few rooms retaining their original splendour, with additional modern embellishments such as a chandelier made from faux flowers by a film set designer friend of the Duchess? Is she a duchess? a Lady? what? and a crazy mural in the round room, rotting chaise longues in the basement, servants bells still there but from another era.  And today, the Port Eliot festival, with Kate Winslet popping up to read children's stories only announced on the day,  with proper fashionistas making costumes out of rubbish, with a flower show and a scarecrow competition.  And gyspy types with a horse and cart helping the campers with their gear.  Wild swimming and mudlarking in the rivers.  Jugglers on the lawn and Jamie Oliver's Fifteen providing rather tasty parpadelle pasta with local lamb.

Turns out that Louis Eliot who used to hang out in Notting Hill when I did is so named because its his dad who lives in the house.  Its an extraordinary place and it was a gentle and quirky festival.

Ted loved camping and we hung out.  I missed most everything of the talks and acts and bands and so on.  But it was worth it never the less

I think I need a rebrand

Not me, nor this blog actually as its just my personal blog.  But I want to rebrand my portraits into something cooler and cuter and darker and more interesting.  At the moment they are just drawings of children.  And while that is FINE I just feel that it all needs a DIRECTION.  I have lately been utterly obsessed (in a good way) with the idea of THE DARK HOUSE.  Its like this total shift in the way I see things.  Hmm, I guess it has been growing for a while, but I so used to be about the beach house vibe, all bright breezy candy colours and now, this dark wood, slightly fairy tale sinister, cosy warm dark coloured thing.  And I want to up the price I charge for the portraits, and - well  - package them better.  Create a story around them, and more of a recognisable theme that is truly my own.  Maybe dark and twisted is not entirely the way to go with children's portraits.  But an element of darker colours, a touch of the fairy tale forest.  This is what I am thinking along the lines of.  And maybe starting a portrait focused blog.  Or a proper art blog.  And keeping this one as my own thing. I don't know exactly, I like being able to think out loud with this blog.  working it out as I go along. 

time running away with me

rocking out at Flo's house on Saturday night

see its nearly 11am.  i could have just had a lie in.  I haven't started anything.  and I am still tired out from drinking too much champagne and staying up to late and getting up too early on saturday night  / sunday morning.  pegged it back from london to check out my son in my carefully created 'space leopard' (his idea) costume to find that he had taken it off and was fundamentally clinging to his daddy's legs at the oscar's birthday party. anyway.  I made the effort eh. 


I have come to the end of the Getting Things Done book.  And it makes a lot of sense.  How about finding this 2 days I need to process my 'in box'.  And getting my home filing system sorted.  OWN DESK.  Hmm.  ha ha ha. 

No, I jest, but it is happening slowly.  We have moved Bub into his new room, we still need to sell another double bed / get rid of the double mattress / move his single bed into his new room / get rid of the sofa downstairs / get the delivery of the chest of drawers and new sofa from K / move our old chest of drawers into Bub's new room and assemble the new chest of drawers in our room / get the book shelves out of Bub's room and into MY STUDIO / get all his stuff out of his old room (MY STUDIO) and into his new room.  There are elements such as paint the old chest of drawers blue and also get the single bed down and paint that blue too.  see.  lots to do.  and here I am typing away at my blog.  with one hour before I am swamped with small people again. 

Off we go!

Spotify

I haven't really dallied with Spotify until recently.  When I found out that I can access playlists created by my friends on it.  SO COOL.  Am utterly loving Acorn a Canadian band I have discovered there.  I think I may have to join and pay the cash.  What a joy. 

Dilema OVer

I am now on a mission to get to POrt Eliot.  Hub of course doesn't really want to go.  That's not a problem.  I have tickets.  I would like help from the Universe to find me a fine travelling pal who wants to come with me.  I had it on my dream list to go to Port Eliot this year and I am now determined to make it.  Against the odds.  Its a long way, I was scared that Hub would be angry.  But he isn't.  Shame he doesn't want to go, but that is OK.  He is like that.  But me and Bub. We are going to go and have a fine ole time.  Roll on camping and festivals!!

Maybe someone would even lend us a camper van to go in?

port eliot creative festival

Dilema.  I have tickets.  I want to go.  I can't see how I can actually manage it.  Attempting to sell them.  What to do?? Well seeing first if I can sell them. Secondly seeing if I can persuade Hub that its a good idea. 



Dear Universe.  Please help me to decide!

street party

Saturday was the Islingword Street Party and it was blessed with some fine weather.  I do love a street party.  I love how the cars are taken away and the children can run around without fear.  I loved that doors were open and there was live music.  Bub had a brilliant time running around with his friends, doing crazy 3 year old dancing to the bands.  I drank apple pie cocktails and we all ate vast portions of chips between us adults and children for dinner.  Being outside with music and friends and children running and dancing, painting stones, getting covered in paint, me dancing.  LOVE it.  Am gutted that my lovely friend K and her daughter who is really great friends with Bub will be leaving Brighton to go and live on a boat somewhere between Bath and Bristol.  Leaving the most sociable street in Hanover.  Her house has been the hub for many an afternoon.  People dropping by, lots of tea drinking and children who finally, play happily together.  Its the kind of home I want to have and it and her being there will be much missed. 

I am very happy that E and family will be joining us on our Campin Extravaganza in August.  I like them very much and am delighted to have found new friends in Brighton. And we will both be going to see a friend perform a one woman show tonight at a local fringe theatre.  Happy.  Finding my feet and my friends here.

Lastly I read this article today.  About listening.  I liked it a lot.  In particular I liked this

If you find someone has something interesting to say, get up and change seats if you have to. Let people know you want to listen. Let them know you care

this week

diet has kind of gone out the window to be honest.  a last minute decision to dash up to London to go to a girly dinner party put paid to carb avoidance (french bread, risotto, pudding..... yum) it was delicious food and also delicious soul food to see my old pals and girly chat and guffaw about things that I can't possibly put down in print. no.  I can't.  people read this stuff you know.  but those sorts of conversations that you really can only have amongst girls.  very funny. It was a serious dash, like I got there at 6.30pm and had to leave again at 9.30pm.  But I got in some champagne and some belly laughs and I think it really did help shed the cold lurgy thing that has been lurking for SOOOO long.

This evening I managed to sort through my filing tray, file a 3rd of it, and chuck another third.  and put the last third back in, not quite sure what to do about it.  child tax credit things, some house and kitchen planning reference stuff. 

Got to call the bleeding insurance lawyers who are not calling me back and are slacking seriously as the cut off date for something was May 20th.  What IS going on.  Its supposed to be £2500 ish.  What has happened?  Hmm.

Oh and a bill for £2000 too.  Hmm finances are really taking a back seat at the moment.  I feel vaguely uneasy about the spending rate we are operating on. But I know that the conversation to halt it will be really difficult.  Hub's diet is not cheap, but his health is more important.  and then there is part of me that thinks I won't stop spending if he wont.  But dear Universe, we need some income very soon please.  Lots of it!!

getting things done. a list!

This is not part of the big picture Getting Things Done book and thorough sort through that it requires.  But a wee list inspired by the most impressively organised Move to Portugal.  Who really is rocking her pay off her mortgage early plan.

July goals
complete the portraits I have offered to the Mondo Beyondo gang
rack up at least one yoga class a week, pref 2.
lose 2kg
cost up SFO flights
find 2 days to start my GTD (getting things done book process)
15 mins yoga a day
set up my FFF account