Taxidermy, trophies or art?

When someone mentions Taxidermy to you, what do you think of? 

Festering old Stag heads protruding from the walls of stately homes, gathering dust? The cabinets of the Natural History museum filled with animals now extinct? Or... do you think of art? 

I have always had a fascination with Taxidermy. I enjoy showing bones of road kill and rodents my cat has brought in to my children, as how else would they get to see the intricate spine of a vole or the delicate teeny tiny skull of a mouse?
It doesn't scare them it fascinates them. They can tell you about the organs of a bird from gutting and cooking the pheasant we accidentally ran over once... its all in the name of Science.
Don't get me wrong, I AM an animal lover!

Polly Morgan is my artist idol. Her work is classically beautiful, macabre yet intriguing. It isn't your usual stuffed fox in a box, it a piece of art with a vintage twist, that would look amazing in anyone's home.
Here is a selection of my favourite pieces of hers.....

To Every Seed His Own Body

Still Birth (purple)

Systemic Inflammation

www.pollymorgan.co.uk

Rare species of animals....

Today I saw a Turtle, he was just ambling along without a care in the world. Last week it was a crocodile, eating what could only be described as a Giant's foot... Once I even saw a dragon breathing fire!

I love these days, the start of Spring, when the sun begins to shine again for us and you can lay on the grass with a blanket and look up at the fluffy white clouds trying to spot shapes and animals within them.

I look forward to Summer holidays lazing in the sunshine, bright blue skies with wisps of clouds floating steadily past... bliss!

OnlyRoses - Earls Court

OnlyRoses

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A spattering of brightly coloured rose petals adorned the pavement of Earls Court outside a slick black shop front. On such a beautifully sunny Spring morning they caught my attention, and as intended, encouraged me straight inside the shop. 

I have never been into a florists as amazing as OnlyRoses. The colours of the roses, some you could only imagine, ranged from deep plum purple to the duskiest lilac and each stem had their own unique personality. 

The Union Jack flag, made entirely from 'Infinite Roses', (roses that have been preserved in oils to last up to a year even without water), was the statement piece on the wall.

Of course by instinct I smelt every rose, and I admit that I was disappointed. All but three of these exquisite flowers that looked so wonderful didn't have a scent! It felt wrong, like something crucial was missing. It was like a beautiful perfume bottle filled with water. 

However the ones that did smell certainly made up it. If I could only bottle the smell for you now!!! 

'Beauty without virtue is like a rose without scent'.

www.only-roses.com/our-stores

blog.only-roses.com

Spring Cleaning the Kitchen

Roses - Aldi

Wallpaper - Wallpaper direct

Shelves - old vintage cupboard with doors taken off

Clock - B&M

Finally the kitchen has been redecorated!! It took a gruelling three weeks of blood, sweat and many tears (I'm really not exaggerating!) to complete. 

Gone is the Anaglypta puffy wallpaper and the grotty grey tiles and instead we have a lovely Spring kitchen! 

How better to finish it off than with a vase of vibrant roses.

It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.  ~Charles Dickens,Great Expectations

Spring is here!

I see fire...

There are not many songs that as soon as I hear them I have to stop everything I am doing and just listen. They make my stomach flip, tighten my throat and fill me with emotion. I don't just hear them, 'I feel them'.

'I see fire' by Ed Sheeran is one of these, it emanates through me, gives me what I can only describe as chills and touches my every nerve. It feels me with a sense of melancholy and... I love it.

When attending my CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) sessions I was advised to not listen to sad, melancholy music as my personality reacts very strongly to what I hear, but as the credits rolled on from The Hobbit, (part 2) I was glued to my seat. 

You may think it weird, a CBT therapist prescribing happy music, but there are actual music therapists out there who make money out of improving peoples health through them experiencing music as it is so powerful.

Not everyone will feel this type of emotion when listening to music. Apparently it is only personalities with the dimension of 'openness to experience' who feel the 'chill' factor. These people who are high in openness are creative, curious about many things, have active imaginations and like to play with ideas. 

Commonly people feel nostalgia when hearing a certain song or piece of music and it can transport you back to that moment or that person. Some will feel a strong sense of emotion; happiness, sadness, or anger. 

However, what really intrigues me is Synaesthesia!!!

I had heard of this before but when going to an Andrew McMahon gig, he sung his single, 'Synesthesia' which prompted me to think about this more. There are people out there who are able to feel music with MORE than one of the five senses! It is only something I can imagine however 4% of the population have Synaesthesia. This includes being able to see colour when you hear music or to be able to taste the music! Surely this would make the whole listening experience so much better, like watching a 3D film and feeling like you are actually there.

I don't know anyone with Synaesthesia, but as soon as I do find someone, I want them to describe everything to me...

Skinny Pigs

The new additions to our family are a couple of female Skinny Pigs! 
Mother and daughter to be precise, named Pineapple and Pippi.

I first found out about these bizarre creatures 5 years ago when I was at a friends wedding. A lady on our table was showing photographs of her new Skinny Pig babies she had been breading and I fell in love. The pictures looked like baby hippo's that were so ugly they were cute, a little like E.T!!
These adorable creatures are pretty much completely hairless except for a bit on their nose and feet after a science experiment in the 1970's in Canada went wrong!
The in's and out's of what went on in that laboratory are unknown, all I know is that I now have two very expensive naked Guinea Pigs!! Costing around £80 they are not an 'impulse buy', that doesn't include the expensive heat up mats they need everyday, or they fact that they cannot live outside so you need a special place for them inside.

Skinny Pigs are hard work!

They need cleaning out more often that your normal pet, they eat about quadruple the amount of a normal Guinea Pig and they don't much like to be stroked, (this is probably because they don't actually have any fur to stroke!!). They love fresh vegetables, and know when you are opening a pack of green beans!!

They look like baby hippos and squeak so much when you go into the room that it will make anyone smile. We get mixed reactions from friend when we show the our Skinny Pigs. No one I know had ever seen one before and when we took them to the vets they were shown around like celebrities as they didn't even know they existed!! Some don't like the feel of them whereas others can't stop looking at them!

Although they have no fur they are certainly NOT anti-allergen pets which is a common mistake! My daughters friend had to be rushed home after holding the Skinny Pigs and having an extreme allergic reaction.

I do love our Skinny Pigs, they are warm to the touch and feel like you are holding a baby and are our very own house hippo! But would only recommend to those who have lots of time and money on their hands to look after them correctly!

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Everyone will have been asked this one question when they were younger, 'What do you want to be when you grow up?'

There are some children out there who have a definite idea of who and what they are going to be, but I wonder just how many of those children really achieve that dream by the time they are older?
I was desperate to be a vet when I was little, I dreamt about animals, played constantly with toy animals and even drew up blue prints and leaflets for the veterinary surgery I was going to own. 
I am now a Special needs teaching assistant and I ask myself, 'just how did that happen?'
... life experience happened!
My expectations of myself grew more realistic as I came to recognise that Science just wasn't my forte, so studying it for 6 years at uni would not work! I needed to come up with a backup plan, a plan b... and yet there has been nothing else that I have aspired to be quite so much. I haven't ever known what I want with my life, I don't really have that passion other people have and it disappoints me.

My daughter asked me the other day what I had wanted to be when I was a grown up, I didn't know what to say. Should I have told her the truth and admit that my dream was always to be a vet and yet my dream never came true?
Or when she asked, 'If you could have any job right now, what would it be?' how come I can't answer that? 
My dreams and aspirations have not actually gone, I just have far too many to pin point exactly what would be best to get the most out of my life whilst also incorporating that fact I now have children. 
My dreams would be to travel the world teaching English in schools and starting up my own charity, however I now need to think responsibly, after all, it wouldn't be the the best thing for the two small children I have to think about. It is my dream, not theirs. Taking them to Vietnam last year was amazing but I can honestly say it was very tiring! 

So what do you think? 
Is it best to follow your dreams or is it best to be practical and responsible? 

I am certainly not content with the job that I have and it is far from being my 'ideal occupation', yet I am not about to give it up and travel the world to chase my 'perfect life'. Plus who is to say that actually perfection is in another country after all? Surely life is what you make of it and happiness can be achieved exactly where you are, you just need to find it. 
I admire all of those who have that opportunity (and the finances to be able to fund it) and drop everything to just leave, I am just not in the same position to be able to do that. I'm going to have to wait that bit longer than everyone else until the children have grown up and don't depend on me so much.

So for now, my dream is just going to have to stay as that for now... my dream.

Sleep well x

You are what you read!

"There's only enough room in this relationship for one reader!!" was my boyfriends response when I tried to convince him for the umpteenth time to read one of the novels I couldn't put down!



This has brought me to the topic of whether or not it is true - is there only room for one self confessed readaholic in a relationship?

I don't know about you but I always imagined I would end up with someone who would share my love for reading. Lazy weekend mornings reading together in bed...afternoons spent browsing bookshops and the shared love for the smell and feel of a good book, but alas, no! We share the lazy mornings in bed but he is more into facebook on his phone than one with any pages!
But when I think about it all my 'reader' friends are the only ones in their relationship that read, whether they are male or female, their other half just doesn't seem that into it. 

Could it be that someone has to have their feet firmly planted on the ground in a relationship rather than both lost in worlds of imagination for it to work?

I am very fortunate to have a boyfriend who is a photographer, this means I never feel guilty spending the evenings curled up with a book, detached from real life as he is more often than not, editing. 
He never complains when I forget to cook dinner (as I just need to finish this last chapter), or when we sit in silence in the car (as I need to get a few more pages in), and for that I think he is very tolerant and understanding, (or he is happy for a little peace and quiet)... I know I wouldn't be like that if it was the other way round!
So maybe he is right, there just isn't enough room for two readers as I know I'm not about to give up any room on my bookshelves!!

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Sentimental

My house is in chaos.

Not because I am lazy or because I want it to be, but because a rising damp situation in the living room has made it that way! 

To allow for the builders to do their 'thing' I had to remove every last item from the special place they have lived for the last four years.

It is amazing how much you can accumulate when you don't realise it. Ticket stubs, photographs, newspaper clippings and love letters hidden within the hundreds of books I have lining the wall, (all colour coordinated according to spine colour). I keep telling myself, I am not a hoarder or collector but I am very sentimental person so find it very difficult to let go of lovely and important things.

My favourite item I found was a diary I had managed to write for all of three weeks when I was 7 years old and living in London. I had forgotten my love for Queen and our holiday with our French au pair, but there it was, recorded on yellowing paper within a green hardback notebook with a ginger kitten on the front. I don't remember who bought me the notebook but I remember the sounds of seagulls in the morning on the holiday we were on, strange isn't it. The way our brains choose what information is important enough to store and what we can survive without.

How was I to know that keeping that diary would bring a smile to my face 21 years later.... or that I would be showing my children now 10 years and 6 years! 

I wanted to show my children in the hope that perhaps they could record a little of their history to look back on in 20 years time and see just how far they have come.

'Because sometimes we will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory.'