A third of the way through Winter!

 

I am sitting here at my desk, on a very wet rainy Winter afternoon, going through my list of Hygge activities that I can do to brighten up the day.

I had forgotten about my Hygge list, created 4 years ago, until I went through my old Winter blog posts. It was just what I needed 😊. So, I picked a few activities to do and set to work.

My first activity was to bake an "Easy lime and coconut cake." I found the recipe online on the Taste AU recipe website and luckily had all the ingredients needed to make it. This is the third time I have used my oven to bake something. It turned out nicely despite there being no temperature markings on the oven temperature dial! 

While the cake was cooling and waiting to be iced, I set about doing my second task which was to clean and rearrange my desk. I added one of the miniature cyclamen plants, which I bought a few days ago, for some cheerful colour.

My next Hygge activity was to dig out my favourite Gien filets bleu tea-set and make a large cup of Twining's English Breakfast tea with a slice of lemon in. The tea went perfectly with a slice of the cake I made. A bonus is that the cake was also liked by mum and dad.

As I had my afternoon tea I watched an episode of Gardener's World, which I really enjoy. And then I watched the latest Chateau Diaries vlog post on YouTube. It was lovely seeing the English Summer flowers and also the happenings at the French chateaux de LaLande.

As I looked out of my bedroom window, at the pouring rain, I felt happy and cosy inside and actually enjoyed watching the rain splashing on the deck outside. My cat Otto sat on my knee for ages cuddling and purring. Bliss. Otto then curled up and fell asleep on a chair by my side.

I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to start a jigsaw puzzle...

...But Otto was only pretending to be asleep. As soon as he realised that I was opening a jigsaw puzzle box he was there in an instant to help me!

Supervising me was quite exhausting work for Otto, and after deciding that I was capable of doing the puzzle by myself, he finally found a comfortable place to have a nap.

The last Hygge activity that I chose to do was to use the photos I took yesterday, of the new indoor cyclamen plants we recently bought, to create this blog post. Another thing that I love doing.

We chose a variety of miniature and large cyclamens in different colours, to brighten the house up for Winter. Our old cyclamens are dormant at the moment and are living in the potting shed.

I had a very lovely, relaxing time today. The Hygge things that I chose to do have left me feeling happy and cosy on a cold and wet Winter-day. 

Tomorrow morning I will plan what to do for the rest of the weekend. It is a long 3-day weekend. Matariki, the Maori New Year, is being celebrated here in New Zealand at the moment.

It is now time for me to have a warming cup of hot chocolate before bed.

I hope that this post finds you well and enjoying the season you are in.

Lots of hugs, 

Rose x

My cat Otto is up to mischief with jigsaw puzzles!

My cat Otto has taken to helping me with solving jigsaw puzzles. He knows the moment I start working on a puzzle and appears, on the table, from wherever he is in the house within seconds! I am sure that he has a built-in radar that senses the slightest movement I make around the dining table where I do my puzzling.

The funny thing is that when mum and dad work on a jigsaw puzzle, Otto isn't the least bit interested in it. It's only when I have a go that Otto has an irresistible urge to jump on the table and "help". I have tried to creep silently into the dining room when Otto is fast asleep, somewhere in the house, but to no avail. Otto is guaranteed to appear. 

Here are Otto's instructions for the different methods he uses in helping with a jigsaw puzzle:

1) Run across the table and stop abruptly on the jigsaw as it skids across and off the table. It is more fun if the entire puzzle lands on the floor.

2) Sit on a dining chair and paw one puzzle piece until it falls off the table. Repeat as many times as desired.

3) Sit or lie in the jigsaw puzzle box, full of pieces, and one by one pick pieces up and toss them onto the table amongst the pieces that have been sorted.

4) Pretend to sleep in the jigsaw box full of pieces, until Rose, who is also "playing" with the jigsaw, is off-guard, and then pounce onto the jigsaw puzzle.

4) Sit in the box and grab a mouthful of jigsaw pieces and run off with them, dropping the pieces along the way.

5) Lie on the puzzle, as part of quality control, to make sure that all of the jigsaw pieces are lying flat. 

6) If the jigsaw pieces aren't thought to be in the correct place, correct it by rolling over and over on the puzzle. Or bat the pieces around to rearrange them. 

7) The best way to "help" is when Rose is doing a vintage puzzle with all the pieces hidden in a calico bag. Proceed to push the bag around the table until it opens. Once the bag is opened take one, two or three pieces by mouth and chew them, then drop them and get more pieces out of the bag. It is more fun if Rose thinks that the jigsaw piece is going to get swallowed!  (Three steps of this process were caught in the photos above).

Luckily, I always, eventually, find all of the 1000 jigsaw puzzle pieces. So far, they have all been located in the dining room.

And here is Otto posing with his finished jigsaw puzzle. It only took him a couple of weeks to destroy complete!

Dad is now addicted to jigsaw puzzling too. We only have two more puzzles left to do, so mum and I went to the local Op shops (charity shops) today looking for more puzzles. We managed to find five 1000-piece puzzles which we thought dad would like. Most of them cost around $6 and $7 each. So much cheaper than buying them new, especially when we do so many now that we are settled into our new house. They are so absorbing and a good activity to exercise our brains on a rainy day or evening.

When we finish the jigsaw puzzles, we pass most of them on to my sister, who then passes them on to her friends, and they eventually get donated back to the Op shops to be sold again. I keep the Cavallini vintage puzzles, in the cylindrical boxes, as I get quite attached to them and find them hard to part with.

What do you do for fun on a rainy day?

See you again soon.

Hugs, Rose x