A Walk in the Blue

We headed out on an adventure yesterday, down to West Cork... bluebell woods are a spring family tradition...

I remember walking the bluebell woods with MY granny. Now my girls get to do the same.

This ancient woodland is right next to the sea with lots of little coves branching off it...

An ancient holy spring under a tree.

 The breath taking view from the top of the cliff which the walk emerges out onto.

Grandmothers, Paint and Books...

Lots of excitement here.

The new Dreaming Aloud website is moving ever closer, it's being created day by day... lots of lovely colour and fresh white space... I'm loving it and can't wait to show it off... only about 2 weeks to go till I get to share it with you!

Today we were doing a photo shoot for it... so I got to do some painting! Hurray!

Well done clever Mr Dreaming Aloud for the lovely pics. He is quite the right hand man - formatting, designing, photographing, editing... amongst his other rather wonderful skills he shares with me (wink, wink)!

So today I have been sorting through my grandmother Lucy Helen's papers, for a top secret project, and found so many wonderful letters of condolence on her death - she sounds such an incredible woman... I'll share more about her one day... suffice to say she was a paradigm-shifting creative rainbow mother, a fine cook, avid writer and thinker, and always had strong opinions on everything! But synchronistically I found a 5 page handwritten letter from Elizabeth David, the British cookery writer in amongst her letter, I did a little happy dance, as Ms David is one of my all time fav writers - and I am going to hear Jill Norman talk about her this weekend at the Ballymaloe Lit Fest.

Tomorrow I'm taking part in a full day food writing workshop at the LitFest - can't wait!!

PS: Just a reminder to local folk: my paintings are in a group exhibtion for the Mid May Arts Festival this weekend in the Courtyard Gallery, Midleton, and I will be doing a reading from the Rainbow Way and a signing at Midleton Books, 11.45 on Saturday.

Getting Sidetracked... Overcoming the Distraction Saboteur to Creativity

Getting sidetracked is my number one epic fail... as my dear son would put it.

I caught myself doing it last night. I was attempting to cook dinner. I then realised I had enough pastry to make a second quiche. And then put on sausages as well. I was helping our boy with his homework. Girl on the sofa demanded her tights fixed, and whilst I was looking for a needle in the sewing bag, decided she'd prefer to do weaving. Which I had to set up for her. Whilst our littlest suddenly decided that she needed to needle felt and have a drink of squash. At the same time.

I smelt the sausages singeing.

At THIS point I realised that I needed to say no. To everything bar making dinner. Rather than trying to keep everyone happy and help everyone.

I can only do what one can do... but what one can do, I will do it.

These words are my mantra.

But so often I get pulled off focus, my energy pulled off centre by the demands of others. And being a helpful sort of soul who seems to see their existence on this planet defined by helping as many people as possible, this happens quite a lot.

Happy May Day

Happy May Day! 

A day to celebrate fertility, and the Earth coming into bloom once more.

To celebrate there's 20% off all my books - paperback and e-books - today only from The Happy Womb - all books come signed and with a bookmark! 

Use code mayday20 at the shopping cart.