Have yourself a slowly slowly Christmas

Christmas is sweeping through our lives right now.

Maybe before all the hype started, your re-emerging idealist self realised that much of the aspects of this holiday are a bit crazy. Maybe your thoughts have been to buy less, to spend less, to change your perception of enough, to close your ears to the adverts and comparison.

BUT maybe old conditioning and feelings have crept back in and overtaken you.

You might even notice that this feeling gets especially strong as it gets closer to the finish line, the all singing, all dancing, shiny day of Christmas.

Sound familiar?

Please do not beat yourself up right now!

Instead. Slow down and reflect.

When we slow down we have time to notice what is really going on around us. We might notice where we have given too much and made ourselves ill or powerless, or where we have neglected ourselves and our loved ones in the race for more and better. Or we might feel our best self has gotten lost along the way and we've failed to honour the most important and ideal aspects of our lives.

I invite your to sit with the discomfort of this conflict within yourself.

And ask...

What if I thought about Christmas differently and in turn acted differently? What would be possible then?

What if I visualised how I would like this day to feel in my heart and soul? What is the most precious moment of this day for me?

What if I slowed down this Christmas day and let it be?

What if I asked for help? What if I admitted I couldn't do it all?

What if I set a strong intention for how I would like the holidays to be next year, and started sharing it with my loved ones now? Would we be much less likely to get caught up in it all next year?

I've often struggled with the same thing too and definitely seen members of my family struggle with the heavy expectations they feel are being imposed on them.

But ultimately we get to choose.

I like to remind myself and anyone I see floundering with this at this time of year,

If in doubt keep it simple.

With warmth, wonder and peace for the holidays

Jaimie xx

Motivating minimal magic

At the end of October I went to hear ' The Minimalists' speak locally and it reignited my fire when it came to minimising the unnecessary and 'just in case' stuff I have in my home. 

Joshua and Ryan spoke of their own journey in minimalism and shared a 30 day challenge that I instantly decided to take!

I've always been an advocate of having less stuff taking up precious space but thinking about it now it was as mainly a 'purge, build up, purge, build up' approach, instead of a habit to consistently keep the clutter out. This challenge felt like a great way to build my habit of less.

The Rules- During the month you have to get rid of the number of items of the date. so day 1 = 1 item, day 2= 2 items etc. If you make it to the end of the month you will have cleared 465 items from your home! If you want to join in during December you can get someone to play the game with you and if you'd like to post on social media it's #MinsGame.

#MinsGame all the stuff that has been banished from my home by me during November! 

I just took part in the November challenge and I DID IT! 465 items GONE from my home and space left behind! It feels GREAT! 

It got tricky once it got into the 20's but I persevered, making lists of places in the flat I still hadn't explored and even started photographing items that had memories attached and getting rid of the things themselves. Sometimes, not having had much time during the day I would stay up late and have that extra motivation to 'win' the day before going to bed. I was 'competing' with my boyfriend too so it made it all the more challenging and fun. Actually including his declutter efforts we have cleared 930 items from the flat! Result!

Spaces have started to appear, I'm thinking about those 'just-in-case' items very differently and I'm starting to place limits on the amount of any one thing/type of thing I own. For example, all the pens have to fit in one tin and one small pencil case, all the electrical cables have to fit in 2 small boxes in the hallway, and all the medicines in 2 small baskets in the kitchen. 

I'm going to do the challenge again in the 2015 but in the mean time I'm setting myself a goal of getting rid of 3 things per day from home for 21 days during December.

I can't wait to get rid of more things and distractions and create more space for the important and meaningful. 

If you decide to take the challenge I'd love to hear about how it's going and I'll happily cheer you on!

Here's to less! Here's to simplicity!

with warmth and wonder

Jaimie xx

Catching dreams...perfectly imperfectly

I've been exploring and proding around living my life and creating my business with more simplicity and meaning over the last year and in my current pinterest inspiration finding obsession I came across the term I'd heard a few times before in the last few years. Wabi-Sabi.

I recognised is as an idea that encompasses a lot of what I think my heart wants to learn and put in to practise. 

Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese concept of beauty, which historically related to concepts around desolation or loneliness, but has has come to mean an embracing the imperfect or transient, letting go of perfectionism and enjoying the simplicity and integrity of things and moments. Wabi-Sabi acknowledges 3 basic principles: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect'.

It speaks to me of something that exudes natural simplicity, is beautiful in it's flaws, graceful in it's changes and decay and peaceful in it's solitude.

It is one thing that has has helped my resolve in my quest this year to find and create simplicity in my life. in the meantime I'll trust that everything will become clear.

As I was in the midst of this resolution strengthen moment I got to thinking about ways that I have been embracing the imperfect  this year, and I remembered a specific time recently when I created imperfectly, enjoying and allowing the moment to become an important memory, allowing what we created to be and quietly go on our way. 

It was October and my niece had come back to visit from Australia, she was here to spend time with family, to create more memories, more connections, more layers.

She wanted to create a dream-catcher in the woods. Brilliant I thought...not knowing exactly how to make one but, instead of googling it, I was willing to give it a whirl, to use my intuition and my previous learning and making knowledge. No certainty of a positive outcome. 

We set off. 

It was a beautiful evening, and after some pretty exciting pine cone fights we got to playing with the materials and creating the dream-catcher together.

My brother had gathered lengths of hazel and we got busy joining them together into a large rough circle, big enough to easily suspend between the trees.

Once we had what turned into a slightly wonky circle we begun with a MASSIVE ball of jute rope, to loop around and around the hazel hoop.

My niece had made a dream catcher once before in school and had almost forgotten how to make one.

It's funny how things come back to us though, just in time.

I think often times our memories return when you feel yourself in motion again. Those same motions as when you first learnt the lesson, showing us the way. Reminding us that it's ok, we have been here before and made it through and we can do this too. I find this especially true with tactile activities like making, but maybe that's because I'm a visual/kinaesthetic learner.

So, we looped and looped under, over, down, one loop to the next, centring and pulling carefully and gently to create the web.

After much loopy looping with big ball of rope, we cut a shorter piece once we got to the middle, making it easier to handle through the smaller and smaller holes.

Finally we were got to the centre. Tucking and gently knotting it there so we could add something later.

And it looked amazing, almost heart shaped!

It hung like a loving web of dreams, promising to protect us from bad and letting the good dreams through.

We returned the following weekend. It remained there waiting, perfectly imperfect.

During the week we had been for walks the woods and walks on the beach. We had collected small objects which we admired. We each added our charms to the spindles and spokes, talismans building on our own personal meaning and story of our creation and time together. It was satisfying and light and we created something beautiful with our own '6' hands.

Maybe the spiders will make their home there, maybe the wind will blow it, maybe the birds with find a perch, maybe it will catch some snow in the winter and make wonderful patterns with ice. Who knows.

For now, we have left it behind for nature to do what it wants with it.

I'd love to know if you have EVER created something outdoors or something transitory, with simple materials and tools. Tell me all about what you learnt and what meaning did the object or the activity did it hold for you?

I'd love to hear from you or have an extra follower over on my facebook page too.

With warmth and wonder

Jaimie xx

The FIRST International Connect to Nature Day

Our first ever International Connect to Nature Day took place on the 21st September 2014!

We loved it and lived it!

We'd been thinking on doing it for a while, so we decided to align it with the date of the Equinox (Autumn or Spring depending on where you live).

We'd dreamt of spending the weekend in a treehouse or some other equally cool dwelling in the countryside, and as if by magic we found ourselves staying a the cutest bothy ever!

We spent that morning creating sound maps, surrounded by the most beautiful garden and the end of summer sunshine.

Morwhenna tucked in to a nook in the middle of the garden, me by the pond and then high up above the garden near the woods.

Then after a leisurely lunch on the lawn- love that that sounds like we were in a period drama or in a page out of the Famous Five for a second there!- we headed off for an adventure to Wooplaw woods, the first community woodland established in Britain (in 1987) and the promise of seeing and playing in a TREEHOUSE! Yes please!

When we arrived we headed straight for the treehouse. As we climbed the ladder we spotted a fireman’s pole that we knew we'd have to have a go on later, and once inside the house we found a little birds nest tucked in the rafters! Gorgeous! All surrounded by Beech trees that sheltered us and the river on the other side.

After a little explore further along the path I had the intriguing experience of eating an uncooked nettle leaf for the first time. Catching the leaf from the underside just right, and pinching and folding in all sides of the leaf so that all the hypodermic needle-like stingers dispensed their poison without stinging me was a feat of trust. Nope no stings...and then into my mouth it went! Nope no stings there either! Wow!

Once that tingle of excitement was over and we had a play stepping across the stepping stones in the river, with Steph's little boy; Morwhenna, Steph and I decided that we were going to celebrate some more by decorating the nearby jetty with leaves, seedpods and grasses that we could find nearby.

We set to work, edging the jetty with a zig-zag pattern each of a different colour or pattern.

It was so much fun! And once you started looking there was so much variety!

When we were finished decorating the jetty we decided that we needed to become part of the art too. So we lay down and gave ourselves some leafy headdresses and garlands, like the goodesses that we are! ;) It was a giggle and straight faces were not on the agenda! Especially for me!

The light was getting low and we headed home, eager to share our days adventures with the lovely people from around the UK who had signed up to take part on our facebook group. Thank you so much if you were one of them!

It really was a perfect day to celebrate our first International Connect to Nature day and we hope that you can join us next year and make this a truly international experience. Date TBC :)

In the meantime we have our next  Connect to Nature Course in April 2015 and more information will be on it's way over winter 2014/15 about our in-person workshops in the pipeline, which we hope to run in both Bristol and Edinburgh areas. Watch this space!

To hear more about how you can get involved with Connect to Nature courses and workshops, read my reflections and ruminations on living a curious life, and embracing living life connected to nature and how I can help you do the same, please sign up to my newsletter  and you will get regular- but not too regular- emails full of wanders and wonders from me.

With warmth and wonder

Jaimie xx