The Dutch Touch

A little time spent away from home and nosing about in another country is always interesting and an opportunity to be inspired. Luckily for me I hitched a ride on my husband's business trip to the Netherlands and had a sunny weekend in Amsterdam. I came back with a few treasures and lots of fantastic experiences finding vintage shops with unusual and quirky stuff. I was very inspired and captured some brilliant ideas for Beardog and Joolz.

I will be writing other blogs in the very near future about my extra long four day weekend in Amsterdam, but for now, here are a few tantalising images:



The simple beauty of every day things:

Dinner Party Tips: How to avoid the DP Blues

The invitations have gone out, the menu has been planned, the shopping has been done and everything is in place for a dinner party bar the actual cooking. Dinner parties always seem like a good idea at the time. You get to thinking, 'gosh I haven't seen so and so for ages, lets' invite them over for a meal...' or you exchange invites one drunken night after a session in the pub and only remember the promise of a meal when they turn up on your doorstep expecting to be fed a week later. Or your husband hands out invites to dinner to all and sundry like smarties and every weekend you feel as if you're running a five star restaurant but with no tidy profit at the end to make it feel worthwhile. Things that are a good idea at the time are only ever good at the time, the brilliance of it fades with every passing second. The closest I want to get to a dinner party these days is watching 'Come Dine With Me'.

But sometimes there is no avoiding it: you either 'owe' a dinner to someone who fed you 6 months ago and has been hinting ever since that they "haven't seen you for ages not since you came over to ours for a meal" or circumstances mean you can't ditch the kids and take some worthy friends out to share an Indian and are force to cook instead. I use to make a right meal of a dinner party (ha ha) and by the time I dished up I would be completely exhausted and unable to enjoy the food and unwilling to engaged in dinner party chat. These day I am very laid back and these are my handy tips to put the fun and conviviality back into providing food for friends.

1. Are your friends coming to inspect your house or have a meal? Don't give yourself more to do or put pressure on your hubby to re-wire the house. There is really no need to repaper the downstairs loos or sparkle clean inside the under-stair cupboard. As long as your house is reasonably clean and hasn't been condemned by Health and Safety, all is well.

2.Keep it simple. Don't start planning an elaborate menu with a 6 bird roast or a Heston Blumenthal feast, don't even think about cooking something you've never cooked before. This is when you revisit your own perfected repertoire of dishes that you have mastered and made your own. I always make a Lemon Meringue Pie as pud because I can make it with my eyes close and one hand tied behind my back. Yes..it is boring to keep churning out the same dishes, but if you have perfected more than a dozen recipes you can mix and match for ages before anyone notices.

3. Get someone else to do the cooking: the other guests for example. It is quite charming for guests to be asked to be responsible for preparing one of the courses; clearly not the main course; but the starter or dessert can be palmed off on others. This gives you more time to focus on making the main course fantastic. You do have to share the glory but you are sharing the work, so its all good.

4. Don't reward the cook with a glass or two of wine whilst preparing the food. You'll end up a very sweaty drunken mess with a potentially uneatable meal on the table. Take it easy. Wait until the dishes are prepared and you've got a relaxing half an hour before your guests arrive: pour a drink then, you will have earned it.



5. Reward your kids with treats if they agree to set the table, walk the dog or keep their toys off the stairs. Every one in the household should be drawn into helping. There is always something you've forgotten to buy or do.

Follow these tips and dinner parties may end up being fun. Or like me you can simply get a family size bag of crisps and a bottle or two of pinot and amuse yourself watching other people sweat on Come Dine With Me.

Perennial Pleasures

Perennial Pleasures

Some pleasures come round year after year. We mark the seasons by some and renew our acquaintance with others which we have quite forgotten about and then are pleasantly surprised by, every single year! These perennial pleasures are as individual to us as our birthdays. For me, the year is not punctuated by commercial holidays like Easter and Christmas, but by the changing styles of the seasons and the delight each one gives. The seasons for me are marked by simple things, like the first journey home from work without having to put your car lights on. That is when I note that Spring is definitely on the way. Hearing bird song first thing in the morning is another.

The first smell and sound of a lawn being mown reminds me of the
rhythm of grass cutting, marking out the start of a love affair which by mid- summer has become an arduous chore. However mowing the lawn for the first time after a long bleak winter, gives a certain pleasure that is not easy to explain. Encapsulate in that moment is the very definition of the start of summer, a promise of hot, lazy days and passionate sultry nights to come.

Similarly having an excuse to light the fire and illuminate the room with candles always invokes a singular feeling of comfort and being secure at home. It is the only part of winter that soothes; the rest is a battle against the weather and the commercial hype of Christmas.

I love the stillness of summer’s afternoon, when the sky is aglow with heat, the blueness as perfect a colour of blue that no painter could match; the sounds of bees, of birds chattering and the distant drone of a lawn being shorn somewhere; the clink of ice in a glass and the gentle creak of a deck chair as you settle into the moment; this for me is the very definition of high summer.

These perennial pleasures are perfect markers for my year, each loved and exclaimed over when they are here and mourned and fondly remembered when they have gone.

A Few of my Perennial Pleasures:

First asparagus.

The longest day.

Summer rain (as long as it is infrequent and comes after a really muggy hot day).

Smell of freshly picked tomatoes. The perfume of blushing plums.

Foggy autumn day and the smell of a bonfire.

Finding beautiful and unique things for my home and for Beardog and Joolz.

Fireworks in the night sky.

The feel and smell of sheets after a day on the washing line in the sun.

The smell of the sea and warm sand between ones toes.

A cup of tea and a bun enjoyed after an autumnal walk. .

Email us at Beardog.joolz@btinternet.com and share your perennial pleasures and the most evocative will win a 10% discount voucher to spend with Beardog and Joolz Ltd.

New life

There has been a lot of discussion in the old homestead recently, centred around the arrival of a new household member. This very special someone is due to arrive around June and already there has been a lot of changes because of this. This new arrival will need a room, a nice comfy bed and a copy of the house rules ( just as soon as we know what they are).

How to make your home ready for spring.

Spring cleaning is not just about emptying cupboards and de-cluttering, banishing cobwebs lingering high up in the stair well or cleaning windows inside and out. Spring cleaning also presents a good opportunity to review how well your housing is running generally and to adjust your organisational skills. Here are 4 steps to a spring clean sweep:

Once a year it pays dividends to take the time to review how you manage your home.
MOT your central heating boiler, water tank, and other regularly used household appliances like the dish washer. These simple checks will ensure that you avoid unexpected breakdowns.

Check your standing orders/direct debits for utility bills are accurate, ensure your meter has been read recently and your have no outstanding credits/debits.

Check guarantees for household appliances like toasters, vacuum cleaners are up to date, if not check out if further household insurance for appliance failures are available.

Sit down with a notebook and list the bare minimum needed to keep household systems flowing on a weekly basis. The usual tedious chores: washing up, the kitchen tidied fairly regularly, food shopping, laundry washed and ironed and put away, vacuuming, dusting, changing bedding and cleaning bathrooms and toilets. This is a list of the bare minimum health and safety standards for your home.

Divide your list into daily jobs and weekly ones. It is for example not necessary to change your bedding every day, but washing the dishes or filling the dishwasher is a daily task.

Next draw up another list for: Spring-Cleaning Tasks.
This should include some of the following:
clean interior windows - remove curtains/blinds (have those dry-cleaned).

Open windows (silly as it sounds people usually keep their windows shut all winter) air the whole house thoroughly. Keeping a house ventilated is very important to avoid the growth of mould. A damp house is essentially an unhealthy house.

Take all your rugs (if you have any) outside and take your aggression out on them by beating them thoroughly. (It is good exercises too). Carpet beaters are still available at old- fashioned hardware stores.

Move beds, vacuum underneath, also vacuum the mattress and turn it over to ensure even wear.

Empty out and clean all cupboards in the house: this is an ideal time to de-clutter and get rid of things you never use. Charity shops, car boot sales and ebay are just a few options of recycling your unwanted belongings.

Employ an Oven cleaner, but get a reputable company. They can deep clean your cooker so it looks like new.

Hire a carpet cleaner: choose a day when it is dry and you can leave all the windows open. Clean carpets in high traffic areas thoroughly. If you don’t have carpets, you can also hire a floor polisher to give your wooden floors a boost.

Use these lists to divide up chores between your household members and get started.

Reading by the fire

Reading by the fire is something I would recommended for cold wintry afternoons. There is a certain smugness about it, a feeling that all is right with your world. A cup of tea and a modest plate of biscuits enhances the pleasure. But finding the right book to read is the real purpose of this treat. It must be a book that is captivating, that has the power to transport you to the author's world completely and allows you to wallow in all the emotions unfolding in the tale.

It is so strange when you look up from reading a intriguing book to find yourself back in your comfy armchair with the fire blazing merrily when seconds before you had been lost on the forbidding Kilimanjaro volcanic mountain range, or fighting off a murderous assailant in a dark city ally way. I love those books that have the power to chill your bones and make you shiver just from the prose describing the snow, to make your heart race with fear or your eyes swell with tears.

I suppose that writing blogs is a way that we have to set down our emotions, to describe our lives, make observations on the world around us and engage with a wider audience, people we will never meet in real life. Yet so many of our authors feel like close friends, like people we know and love. That is the power of the written word. I have started writing blogs before and certainly kept on doing it even when I knew that no one was actually reading anything I wrote. Essentially I write for myself, for the cathartic value and to capture a snapshot of my life that I can reflect upon years later and assess how much or little I have changed.

Prose, Poetry and Lyrics

I love poets and poetry, I like prose that makes you stop and listen to the sound of the words resonating in your head after you've read them. I love lyrics that do not need music to touch the nerve endings of your heart and make your emotions fly. I love the sheer beauty of words and with them the peace that can be made, the humour that can be shared, the wounds that can be healed. Poetry saved me from my wretched childhood and swept me up on its comforts and took me far away, books were my friends, they were whole worlds that I could live in for hours at a time. The worst thing in all the world is to be shut out of the world of words, to be unable to express your thoughts in prose that will linger in the memory of others. I read poetry every day and today I read the following:

Candles
by C P Cavafy

Days to come stand in front of us
like rows of burning candles -
golden, warm, and vivid candles.

Days past fall behind us,
a gloomy line of burnt out candles;
the nearest are still smoking,
cold, melted, and bent.

I don't want to look at them: their shape saddens me,
and it saddens me to remember their original light.
I look ahead at my burning candles.

I don't want to turn, don't want to see, terrified,
how quickly that dark line gets longer,
how quickly one more dead candle joins another.

The Hardship of Accounting
By Robert Frost

Never ask of money spent
Where the spender thinks it went.
No one was ever meant
To remember or invent
What he did with every cent.