Author Archives: ameliaflorencesimmons

***Interlude***

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Things that make you go OOH.

On Wednesday this week, I got the call I’d been waiting for. As of Monday 21st February, I will be the newest Account Executive at a rather wonderful Ad Agency in Tunbridge Wells. I am madly overexcited.

Unfortunately, this has triggered a chain of events in my head. Because I will now be earning enough to finally move out, I’ll be looking at getting my own little place in good old T Dubz, if I manage to pass my probation period, that is….this won’t be for a few months, but what am I already doing? Looking up places to view, and choosing furniture. Shutup brain.

If the weather continues to be quite so disgusting, I’ll be forced to postpone this weeks gardening project, but I have a couple of other ideas up my sleeve, and also 10 days before starting the new job, and therefore a lot of time to play around with craftiness 🙂

Project #003: I like the flowers, I like the daffodils

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….I like the mountains, I like the rolling hills – as anyone who has ever done a drama warm up will chorus merrily back at you!

I’m feeling absolutely full of delight at the prospect of Spring. Yes. The sky is blue, the sun is out, and I’m frantically counting off the days on my sunrise/sunset calender, till we get to a point where it’s actually light at 6.p.m. Today, I even dug out my much loved floral Bayliss & Knight sailor dress! (Last seen circa August 2010.) Yes, and yes again. I have a spring in my step (badoom tsssch).

We’ve started to fill our house with flowers, and whenever I take a bath the room is filled with that heavy, enveloping scent of beautiful white jasmine. The kitchen is permeated with the faint but insistent smell of hyacinths, and I’ve started to dance around the house, filled with new hope, new ideas, and an uncontainable joy that I only ever get when the Winter finally starts to loosen its icy grip.

I had been struggling to think of a third challenge. My mind will grope around aimlessly, trying desperately to think of something, anything good, and then, the second I sink into bed, exhausted after a day at work, PING. There it is. That’s what happened last night, just as I’d disappeared into my nightly ritual of lying in bed with BBC7’s Comedy Zone floating out of my pink DAB radio, sinking into a stupor. But there it was – plant flowers! Nooooo, my tired brain argued – sssh, go to sleep! I’ve had enough of you and your “brilliant ideas”. But the little energetic voice was insistent, and wearily but excitedly, I reached for the well thumbed notepad by my bed, and managed to jot down ‘flowers’.

Come the morning, I’d just about managed to decipher this mysterious message from Tired Brain to Happy/Excited/Annoying brain. I have four things in my armoury. Peony tubers, a packet of seeds for growing peas, a sachet for growing violas indoors, and one for mustard and cress. Maybe not enough to create a Capability Brown style garden (Culpability Brown, maybe, when it all goes hugely wrong), but it’ll do for now. Peonies are my obsession. I can’t help finding beauty in something so blowsy, so stagey, attention-grabbing, and so elusive that they only appear for the briefest window each year. If I was going to garden, I thought, then it had to start with peonies.

My promise to myself was to try something new. And, really, the last time I planted anything was when I was in year 5 at school, and we were given our own tubs in the playground. I shared mine with my best friend at the time – a girl who, to this day, has absolutely faultless aesthetic taste – and we put little figures in that we’d collected (I’d imagine from Kinder eggs…) I don’t remember doing much actual planting, but I certainly do remember the following dialogue from a fellow classmate:
Know-it-all Year 5: Have you ever touched a worm?

Me: YUCK! No!
KIAY5: Yes you have. If you’ve been touching the soil in the tubs, you’ve touched a worm.

(Sound of my jaw dropping to the floor, then me running off to wash hands)
So, after than inauspicious start, I am ready to try again, weather permitting, this weekend. I’ll post results by next week, including a worm-report.
Thanks for reading. Wear your sunglasses tomorrow. Whatever the weather xxx

Project #002: Results

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  I have to admit, the second project didn’t take me nearly as long as icing all those cakes. But it was just as important to me, because as I mentioned before, it was for my little cousin-once-removed. I’d sort of mentioned I’d make her one, and the old me would have really genuinely meant it at the point in time, and for a couple of days I would have REALLY HONESTLY thought ‘gosh, I must get round to doing that jacket at some point; and as the days went on, I’d think about it less and less, and then I’d feel all guilty when I DID think about it, and eventually it would fade to a very distant memory indeed.

Which is why earlier this week, I assembled my materials, and vowed to myself I’d sit down and get it done, wrap it up in silly amounts of hot pink tissue paper and pack it off. So, on Saturday afternoon, I sat down to a romcom on tv, spread the jacket in front of me, as well as a ton of rhinetones, an iron, and an old handkerchief (I just get so emotionally moved by these things. Just kidding, it’s to iron them on)

As I sat there, ironing on each rhinestone individually, I thought about how excited I’d be to tear into a pile of pink tissue paper, to discover something I’d really wanted but didn’t think I’d get. I’d have loved it! If I can make someone else happy because I took a couple of hours out of my week to do something for them, then I’ll be over the moon.

I really enjoyed this project, even though it wasn’t the most challenging. If everyone reading this blog decides to do just one tiny thing for someone else, just think how brilliant that would be. It’s a cliche but it really is true – the glowy feeling you’ll get from just doing something purely for someone else is repayment enough.

xxx

p.s. On a cheeky sidenote – if anyone wants anything embellished, to whatever design, I’ll be most happy to do it for you (for a small fee…unfortunately my financial circumstances prevent me from being THAT generous to everyone…)

Project #002: Starting with the man in the mirror

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My second project sort of landed on my lap. Blissfully floating around on the smug glow of starting a new blogging project, I was feeling a lot of love for everybody, and very amenable to doing nice things for other people. Last weekend, we had the family over, and I got to spend some time with the delightful daughters of my cousin. Are they second cousins? I always start to work it out, then get distracted thinking of that particular bit in Mean Girls….”So, you have your cousins, and your first cousins….wait, that’s wrong, isn’t it?” “That is SO wrong”….

Anywho, putting distractions aside, one of the girls was particularly taken with a jacket I’d embellished myself; a shrunken black blazer with rhinestones on the lapel. She did a Michael Jackson dance in it. She was BRILLIANT. She LOVED this jacket. And I felt horrible for taking it back from her, like some sort of evil Dickens character.

Ping! Second project, I thought. I’ll just make her another one! Since a large portion of this blog is about me learning to not think/worry about myself for a few minutes, and actually do something kind and positive for other people, it seemed like an excellent thing to do. Plus, because I’m doing it for someone else, it means -ohmygod- I’ll actually have to do it all proper like. Instead of this cycle:

1. get really enthusiastic about making something
2. spend heaps of money to equip myself with ‘essentials’
3. start out, still enthusiastically
4. do it haphazardly in my best ‘cheerful five year old’ manner (remember that kid who stuck out their tongue because they were concentrating so hard? Yeah.)
5 do far too much, too sloppily, in the first day
6. get bored of it, leave for a few weeks
7. attempt to finish, without finesse
8. FIND A NEW PROJECT.

That’s what I’m trying to break out of. That’s been my life up until this point. NO MORE, I tells ya! I WILL do things properly, and finish them, and you should too!

Look out for upcoming posts…stay cheerful…do something different.

Good luck! xxx

Project #001: Results

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So, here we are….I completed my first project! After hours in the kitchen, I produced a rather excellent afternoon tea, if I say so myself.
The best thing about it? Seeing faces light up/hearing gasps when they saw it. It was so much fun to do something completely frilly and frivolous and for no other reason than it was FUN, and it LOOKED GOOD.
What did I take away from it? A little warm glow of pleasure. And not very many cakes – they were all eaten by everyone else!

Project #001: The Best Tea Party in the World…..Ever?

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So, my delightful friend Grace has suggested I take on board Baz Luhrman’s suggestion of doing something every day that scares you. I like this very much, but I’m definitely sticking with 7 day long projects, otherwise you’ll all be sick of my constant posting. I think next week (aka Project #002) will be something that terrifies me, but this week I’m starting with a bit of a crossover project.

******* By the way, check out Grace’s blog at: http://graceholliday.blogspot.com/

It’s a lovely travel blog, and if you want an insight into what a real American college is like, check it out, NOW. You’ll already be feeling inspired. And amused. What are you waiting for??*******
Project #001: The Best Tea Party in the World…Ever?
This is a bit of an ‘easing in’ chalenge, and it’ll crossover with my cookery blog, where I’ll post all the recipes. I’ll be creating a pink, fluffy, pretty, sugary, rose petal-y afternoon tea, for my belated birthday party this weekend. If that doesn’t make at least one person happy, I don’t know what will. Below is my inspiration: