In love with lilac...

... and bluey-purple... and violet... and anything in between!

For a brief, but oh so sweet moment today, the sun touched the souls of this shivering nation. Perhaps that is a generalisation taken too far. All I can really be sure of is that I was shivering in the icy wind and my light-yearning soul greeted the rays with open arms. So I did the obvious thing...

... stuck my tongue out to the polar gusts and went to the garden centre in search of spring flowers... 

Intended to later be planted in welcoming pots or baskets outside our front door, these pretty petals were invited to leave their polystyrene nests and come to play for a moment. Some tissue paper wanted to join in the game, and before I knew it...

... all sorts of spring-related paraphernalia had joined in the fun!

If the winds were still icy? Well, I wouldn't know... as far as my colour- and floral-fuelled senses were concerned, the world had just become a little bit warmer...

Wherever you are and whatever the climate, I wish you a warm and colourful weekend!

Dining with nature...

Dear blog readers,

My blog posts seem few and far between these days, and I do confess to struggle a little with my "blog-life balance". How do you squeeze family life, work, a bit of well-needed exercise and a bit of well-wanted blog time into a day with a modest twenty-four hours and a week with a meagre seven days? Any top tips from you "blog coaches" out there?

And if that were not enough to fill one's time, there is that itchy, itchy creative nerve, sitting there unwavering, whispering its nagging needs. Over the weekend, that particular nerve became a little overbearing in its demands, and I caved in. I could here erupt in a myriad of word plays, perhaps saying that "I branched out a little", or that I am "sticking to what I know", but I am not that funny... Instead let us focus for a brief moment on the idea, which I think I got from a -I think- French magazine a year or so ago, where wooden or plastic handles of cutlery had been exchanged for driftwood. Now, with no sea and even less driftwood in sight, a few twigs from the forest would have to do, with a coat of left-over wall paint. Some cheap second-hand shop cutlery, and voilà, creative mission completed on a next-to-nothing budget.

Hm, did it turn out the way I had hoped and do I know what I am going to do with these? I am not sure, and do they not look a little too much like skeleton bones or broken animal antlers? Well, the latter are very trendy these days, so perhaps that is not such a bad thing... However, if I let my twig-skeleton-antler-cutlery "sit" for a while, I think the best place for them will become clear...

Until then, I can play tricks on my boys and tell them 

that they are part of a Scooby-Doo mystery...!

Wishing you all a fabulous week, 

and to those of you who feel neglected by my 

absence in your commentary fields, I am sorry. 

I am thinking of you!

Raindrops keep falling on my head...

With dark, dark clouds making even the brighter parts of our house look gloomy and dull, it is time to flee into the room where our melatonin levels are most likely to be restored in a blink. Welcome to drink up the light with me!

Previous owners added the conservatory to the house. It is on a different level to the rest of the house, a couple of steps up from the kitchen. A sliding glass door has been added to appease Building Regulations - hence the rather odd-looking frame, and to serve the rather useful purpose of keeping the heat or cold from the conservatory from entering the rest of the house. 

On the wooden shelf to the right, you can see two Christmas presents from my very own Santa. An old, tall enamel jug and a matching - I believe it is called - corn scoop. In a house with a distinctive lack of corn, some moss and flowers seized the opportunity of a lazy Sunday in the scoop's embrace...

Behind my chequered star cushion in the armchair, rests my "Carte Postale" cushion cover, which I won in May-Liss' give-away just before Christmas. May-Liss is the lovely lady behind the Norwegian blog Malivas Verden, and yet another of so many warm and stylish blog sisters out there I have had the pleasure of getting to know through blogging. Thank you so much, May-Liss!

Ceiling fans are not on my Top Ten list of desirable objects, but this is a room that can reach some rather spectacular temperatures when basking in the summer sun, so the fans do justify their existence in this "green house"-ish room. Function before form? Well, maybe just this once...

Below is the rest of the conservatory, facing the garden, as it looked before Christmas. Think away the wreaths and the star lights and the pine cones...

Outside, the temperatures whisper of spring in the making. As for the rainfall with no end in sight, well, I'm thinking water lilies for the planting borders this year. What do you think?

All the best,

Helena

Persistent positivity or nauseating nagging...?

Dear fellow bloggers,

Some of you do not seem to agree with me in my plea for spring. You claim that your snow landscape is beautiful and you would like to enjoy it some more. I can respect that. I can even understand it. However, outside most UK-based windows, what we see is a different cup of grey. Not Earl Grey, just GREY, with water falling out of the sky, and the only colours on offer are the different shades of mud. 

So, dear winter lovers out there, look away now, for this is a floral fiesta dedicated to SPRING. Just to remind it what miracles it performed last year, and maybe bring out its desire for a repeat performance...

A warm, big thank you to Lise with the lovely blog Hasigamas Univers, who has been so kind and awarded me with The Stylish Blogger Award. I feel very honoured - thank you, Lise!

Wishing you a lovely weekend!

Ps. Thank you for all your comments on my last post. The shoot went well and the results will be seen in a knitting magazine later in the spring.

OK then, are you with me for Plan B...?

I don't know about your end, but where I am standing...

not a lot of spring has sprung since our last joint efforts in cajoling spring to do its spring thing...

I am grateful to you for trying, but it seems like we are dealing with a shy one this time...

So Plan B involves pussy willow, tulips and roses...

... which should be a safe bet for a successful flirt with the season of green and of growth...

All we have to do now is sit tight and wait...

...and remember, patience is a virtue...

Today has been a "long rain journey" into an equally rainy night, and taking photos indoors seems to only result in bluey-grey images, grainy and dull... Before you raise a hand to point at the seemingly bright light in some of the images above, let me just say they have been given a complementing lick of computerized make-up.

I do not know if it is my Swedish heritage of worrying about appearing boastful, but there is something about the Swenglish Home I have not mentioned here on the blog. The Swenglish Home is not just a place for  crash-landed paper aeroplanes, young boys blasting off into space in imaginary rockets, grown-ups collapsing in front of the telly after a long day of work and play. It is a house with a job of its own. 

Tomorrow The Swenglish Home hosts its seventh commercial photo shoot since it started its "modelling career" a year ago. By coincidence, we were approached by two different people, asking if we would be interested in becoming a "film and photo shoot location", and we decided to give it a go. I have met some lovely, interesting and creative people during these shoots, working for advertising agencies, knitting and cross-stitching magazines, a furniture company, to mention a few. Sometimes the shoot involves several models, sometimes it is just close-ups of the client's products. Sometimes it is a big crew (client, ad agency, models, stylists, photographers, hair&make-up etc), sometimes a small group of only six people.

Glamorous? The first time, which was also the biggest photo shoot, with over twenty people working here, was exciting, I admit. But more than that, it was so interesting to see how the advertising agency worked with their ideas, trying to take them from paper drawings to final photographic product. Now, we only look at these shoots as a job, and for me, it is a Cleaning job with capital C before each shoot. And believe me, trying to scrape the filth from every corner and every nook, not the most glamorous activity...!

So, whizzing around like a whirlwind trying to clean the house today, I found myself drawn several times to these pots of hope. Hope of spring to come and the world to be green once more. "Squeeking" the fresh tulip leaves a little, a quick stroke of a pussy willow, and off to hoover another part of a sensationally dusty house... Dirt, be gone! Looking around me, I see that the dust cloth and I are in for a long, cosy evening together, so I bid you farewell. But you will continue to help me with Operation Bring on Spring, won't you?! Together, we can do it!

Ps. If you would like to see some "Behind the Scenes" photos, visit http://www.theagencyonline.co.uk/behind-the-scenes#ciabatta-rolls-product-launch-q1-2010. In the third photo from the end, you might see a long purple scarf on a woman standing under the clock, hidden behind someone. That is yours truly... (Click on the images if you want them larger.)

I have a cunning plan...

Surely, if we all...

... every time we have dinner...

...bring some green twigs in...

... and use ONLY floral napkins...

... and wrap our small plastic spring bulb pots with laurel leaves from the garden 

(or any kind of green vegetation)...

Surely SPRING will come sooner...

Surely!?

THANK YOU very much for your kind get-better-soon greetings. 

My back is a little better, but it will still be a few days before it is completely "comput-able". 

Until then, spring-yearning grunts from The Swenglish Home,

Helena