If I were a fairy

If I were a fairy, my season would be autumn, my flower would be sunflowers, I would magic in the harvest and paint the leaves of everything in the autumnal colours and I would play tricks on mortals around Halloween by tickling their ears with my breath!

I would smell like spices and apples and have autumn leaves hairclips in my hair and spiders looping their webs into my earring holes and dangling there as fashion models.

I would help the stork deliver babies in big pumpkin carry cots and corn husks as blankets.

Because, why not?

My familiar would be a fox or raccoon and I’d throw peach pits at people who disrespected nature and magically create an instant tree where it lands to serve them right if they walked right into it!

I love faeries; I could get really into writing a book all about fairy culture etc.  it would be smashing if I could do the art I see in my head as well.

But never mind.

I am overloaded with other projects right now that one can wait.

Thanks for reading!

Freeze treatment & spicy green tea

Universeodon is taking some getting used to, I don’t know how to find my followers or find things in general – but I am getting the hang of it, like I am trying to get the hang of other things too.

Such as, learning how to accept being cold and encouraging myself to sit around literally freezing my butt off, because I heard that it helps you lose weight faster by producing more brown fat rather than the horrible kind which makes you fat.

Brown fat reputedly makes you lose weight, did my own research on it and all you need is to sit around in temperatures below 19c  66.2F and eat or drink regularly the following – green tea (which I do twice a day anyway) turmeric, propolis, cinnamon and apples as a main thing – amongst others.  Oh and B5 supplements or B5 rich foods also helps with this, apparently. 

I am in pain if temperatures are under 21.5c seriously, because of my arthritis – but we all have to suffer for the sake of beauty and goals!  Anyway, I noticed the cold doesn’t hurt so much if I drink the spiced up green tea about half an hour before cold exposure, which helps! 

So I am seeing if I would lose weight faster by taking on these new simple steps, it will take two weeks to see an effect apparently, so two weeks of suffering the cold before my body regulates its own temperature.  I am not doing well with the cold, I am shivering and resorting to my fluffiest cardigans again and again, which defeats the object! 

I know when I was slimmer I was crazy enough to regularly have cold showers, but here that’s no longer an option because back in 2015 when the shower broke down, Paul hasn’t been able to fix it. 

I had the showers because I thought it was healthy for the heart to expose myself like that to the cold, also it improved my hair and skin.

I bought a new shower, but it’s been stuck in the box since 2016 and he doesn’t show any signs of helping fix that up.  So I have had to tolerate baths all the time and that means my skin has been suffering due to lack of regular exfoliation and shea butter treatments I used to do to myself.

Washing myself down twice a day at the basin is really not my idea of hygiene but until that shower is fixed, I have no choice, especially as baths use way too much water – so I have those every two days, again it’s not my cup of tea!  I miss my twice a day showers!

So I am freezing my butt off literally… drinking two cups of turmeric and cinnamon infused green tea a day, keeping to my high protein diet and trying to keep the house tidy enough for me to exercise in – but I am confined to a place I don’t like exercising in… the bedroom – because nobody respects what mama wants and needs to do in this house!

Still people are using my exercise bike as a glorified hat, coat and shoe stand and that really pisses me off!

Like today I finally cleared an area and was about to put my mat down to start exercising and Paul gets the vacuum out, he never does that unless asked!  So that idea was cancelled.

I sometimes wonder if it’s all deliberate, as Paul will suddenly become super-efficient when I am busy trying to do something in an area.  If I did nothing all day, neither does he!

Is this in my head or is he really up to what I think he is?

He tells me he supports me being happy anyway possible – but he does these things to stop me…

Whatever, all I know is I am getting sick of it, more than you know!

Something has got to change or else I am going to scream louder than the family banshee!

But hey, looking on the bright side of the heat or eat crisis!

Thanks for reading!

What is winter?

What does winter mean to me?

Cool crispy frosty mornings, where cobwebs are frozen solid, glistening in the morning sunlight forming prisms on the snow.

I’m like a dragon breathing smoke because my breath is hot in comparison to the air around me and I am snug and warm in fleece from head to toe.

I get to throw snowballs at my favourite people in jest and run after each other in tension that we might slip and fall down; if we’re lucky it will be powdery snow this year, not the sludgy wet kind.

Winter means lots of lovely filling hot meals, beef stew, chili, roast dinners, soups – all my favourite comfort foods and it’s plum season to boot!

Morning walks are more of a pleasure because of the icy beauty around us from the night before; everywhere has newly made crystals which shine like rainbows if you look at them the right way.  Skinny dogs are uncomfortable and need a coat, fatter ones are eager to stay indoors – but get the right dog and it is a heavenly time of year to go for a walk!

Just at the end of winter is the time where I start to think about the garden for the coming year, sometimes prepping seeds before spring in the greenhouse already, to give me a few weeks head start in comparison to other people, therefore a longer harvest time.

It’s a spicy season, it’s a sweet treat and high fat season – it’s not the season for diets!

It’s the season for hot water bottles and fleece blankets and cosy snuggles by the fireplace.

It’s not the season for cold desserts; it’s the season for cherry pie, French toast and peach crumble all washed down in hot chocolate, ginger or hot apple spiced tea.

Poinsettias around the house welcoming in Christmas with holly and ivy and red roses!

The house sparkles in the joyous illuminations of the season of celebration, hope, renewal and promise.

Families and neighbours come together to sing, to dance, to pray, to forget the badness of the past year and to give thanks, gifts, charity and love.

It may be the end of the year, the harbinger of death all around us as nature is laid bare – but it is really the busiest time for creation, planning and new beginnings.

That’s what winter means to me – it means hope – it means a new start!

Thanks for reading!

Life isn’t sugar sweet

The sugar has snapped

The honey’s gone hard

The fruit of my labours gone rotten

I’ve lost the zest for life

In this garden of strife

The spices of variety are forgotten

I have a house but it’s not a home

The chocolate has turned and melted

The things I savoured are far and gone

The pain of their loss has welted

Life is sticky but it’s not sweet

It’s cold and hard like stone

All the joy has been sucked from me

Am I to turn to bone?

Gypsy, spice and plums

It’s an autumn gypsy style day, for me!

Unfortunately today I can’t dress how I want to because I can’t find my gypsy skirt!  But, today I would like to be in a brown and pink floral skirt with a white or brown lacy cami top, sandals, and a lovely crochet shawl that is oversized.

Still want my beaded and wooden jewellery today and little dangles in my hair!

But I love the crochet and lacy stuff today!

A friend online got me thinking about “plum season” by mentioning cinnamon French toast – yum! 

I miss my cinnamon French toast with homemade cinnamon plum compote recipe; the plums don’t look good just yet in store.

But it’s a heavenly recipe I learned from Nigella Lawson on TV and the way I make it when the compote goes cold it often goes hard, like hard candy, which is a treat in itself!

The problem is (though it’s not a problem for me) it’s a huge aphrodisiac! 

I generally try to have this as a Christmas Day breakfast.

spices

Nutmeg and cinnamon, spices galore

Sweet cloves and cardamom are things I adore

Fenugreek and ginger, little pinch of bay

Lovely smells and flavors from cooking this way

How I love my spices, the scent and the flair

How I’d love to share them, with everyone and everywhere