2 things of great beauty...

yesterday we fished a beautiful but dead toad out of our pond. it had the most beautiful eyes and lovely speckled skin. we looked at it a lot and determined that it was possibly killed by a giant crow (looks like a raven but do you get ravens in sheffield gardens?) as it was a large puncture wound that went straight through, rather than several smaller ones that might suggest a cat's jaws.

the second thing of beauty is my chandelier, happily installed in our fab kitchen. dishwasher arrives tuesday!

i have taken photos of both on my phone but i can't get bluetooth to work at present so you'll just have to imagine...

i love my washing line

last year colin erected the most fantastic washing line the whole length of our garden. it attaches to the house and to the shed - metres and metres! and also it's on apulley system so i only have to stand in one spot. it si so tremendouse that i think i will take a photo to put up on the blog.

new found respect for alanis...

how something so hideous:


be turned into something so awesome:


!?!

hello, my name is bea, and i'm a chaotic...

yes. i really am very chaotic. i have a to do list that's very long, and all inside my head. the irritating thing is that as soon as i try to put it on paper it all vanishes somewhere else until i'm in a place where i cannot implement any of them, and suddenly they all leap back.

interestingly, i am quite funny when i am in this chaotic place so now is a good time to hang out with me.

lots of great stuff is happening to me at the moment. more later. currently at mum and dad's (although dad is skiing at the mo) and my beautiful sister is cooking me a lovely tea.

alela diane

something for anyone who like joanna newsome, laura viers, devandra banheart or the be good tanyas - not sure how well known she is - i just happened upon it as it was playing in fopp yesterday and was one of 3 people in the queue buying it.

loving my larder!

oh yes, oh yes, OH YES!!!!

i have put food in my larder - it is lush! the whole kitchen is lush! my sister, charlie, and her boyfriend, jay, have been up this weekend and they've helped me paint the diluted first coat on the walls and also a couple of coats on the ceiling. we also went to weston park museum and stopped for a picnic on the way. it was lovely although robin got sooo tired from the whole experience that he screamed nearly the whole way home whilst straining at the straps of his pushchair - to the extent that when he finally fell asleep he was still in his 'forward-straining- position!!

we ate our first proper meal in the kitchen today - at the table!! it was a take-away from Gulijstan on walkley. never used it before as we were always hardcore loyalists to the jaflong in crookes until they changed their chef. we still stayed with them for a further year in the hope they'd return to their former chef. then we flitted around a coupld of recommended take-aways but didn't like any of them. at last we settled on the jeera, a new and very tacky looking one also in crookes. we were pleased and a lot surprised to discover it was fantastic but alas no more. it is shit and it has fallen under new management and i fear it has also got a new chef. well, we are not hanging around. we tried the gulijstan and it was pretty good - in fact, we really liked it. only snag is that they used tin spinach instead of frozen or fresh BUT the jalfrezi andy had was lush and the peshwari naan was lush too. we will go there again and see how they fare over time.

Easter tomorrow - He is risen!!! Amen!

this is my kind of worship...

i was thinking about my kind of worship. this week i've been re-exploring celtic prayer and worship and having some lovely times with God as a result. then i was on you-tube because there's a scary american family who have been documented by louis theroux. they take the bible in a very weird way and aren't opene to anyone else to challenge them in any way. fundamental to the extreme! their worship was very traditional, out of old hymn books with the music on the page as well as the words (no problems with this by the way, just not my style!) and it got me tinking about worship. the video below is one of the most amazing worship experiences i've had in a long time. it makes me tingle and really engage with a good God who brings energy and colour and creativity and craziness and gets into all the nooks and crannies of our lives. i hope you like it.

beautiful birds

yesterday while sitting eating brekfast with the boys i was watching the birds in the garden and they were beautiful. they seemed so happy and they looked like they were eating aphids - fantastic!!

there were:

3 great tits
2 blue tits
1 robin
1 wren
2 or 3 blackbirds
3 brown things - starlings?

last week or the week before we also saw a mistle(sp?) thrush as well.