Snow Day!!

We woke up this morning to this...

I know for some of you it's a regular occurrence but it is still a rare thing in Ireland.

The local primary school appeared to be closed and all the children were out in their hats and scarves making snowmen.

Mr. Auburn commutes to the capital for work but decided to work from home today, a welcome break from the usual long and early morning journey.

The combination of said snowfall, Mr. Auburn being at home and a nasty fall yesterday convinced me to take a day off from work.

Before I left the house yesterday, I went outside to feed the birds. On my way back through the kitchen, I had a spectacular fall on the tiles when my wet boots went from under me! I managed to injure the entire right side of my body!!

So today I decided to give my body a rest.

We had a late breakfast. 

Then wen't for a stroll across to the park with my new camera.

Had a little Bailey's coffee to warm up afterwards. 

Watched The Grand Budapest Hotel.

All in all, a lovely relaxing snow day!

Horse Chestnut Series - Round Up & Chestnut Decorations

The beautiful Horse Chestnut Tree started out 2014 stark and bare.

By March the buds had appeared.

By the last day of April it had burst into leaf.

In May it was flushed with flower.

By July the pollinated flowers had turned to fruit.

In September the leaves began to change colour and fall.

By October the ripened fruit had fallen.

On a frosty December morning the Horse Chestnut stands bare once again.

Our Horse Chestnut Tree has given it's all; 

buds, leaves, flowers and fruit and so the cycle begins again.

This Christmas I wanted to use the lovely shiny conkers to make some tree decorations. 

The colour scheme in the bedroom includes hues of orange and browns from the Connemara wallpaper. 

For the first time this year I put a small tree in our bedroom.

 I wanted to keep it inexpensive so purchased a small fake tree for €12 and tried not to buy any decorations apart front the LED lights.

I made these by drilling holes through pieces of cinnamon, threaded them onto a ribbon, tying a loop at the top and finishing with a lovely shiny conker.

I dried orange slices slowly in the airing cupboard and made bows from ribbon left over from some curtain tie-backs. I bought the bird and the orange glitter ribbon to make bows and everything else was repurposed including an old bracelet!

I'm really happy with how it turned out and it's nice to have a bit of our Horse Chestnut Tree on our Christmas Tree!

Wishing you all a very happy and healthy New Year!

O Christmas Tree!!

Well it has been several months since my last post, apologies again for my unannounced absence. Once again life and mainly work got in the way and now it seems to be Christmas! Despite my very best efforts including two days off work for the pre Christmas decorating clean and starting the actual decorating in late November, I'm still not done! 

This November I became full of decorating inspiration. You know how it is, virtual Christmas house tours all over the net, festive blogs, pinterest, glossy Christmas magazines, magical shop windows! So, I decided to shake it up a bit this year, change things around, make some new additions. So many ideas, so much to do, so little time. I was feeling a little Christmas anxiety in the last week and then I decided to give myself a break. I don't have to get all the decorating done in one night, it can be a process. I will get everyone's gifts, I always do. I might even share my own Christmas House tour! Some of it looks really good, at least it would if all the boxes were back in the attic.

 As with every Christmas it starts with the tree in the sitting room. We have done real cut trees in here, real potted trees and now we're back to the artificial tree again as I like to get it up last weekend in November. I have to say I miss the pine smell but I've got my fix elsewhere in the house. I love this tree every year. It's a great shape, it always looks full and symmetrical and we don't skimp on the decorations! I've often meant to count them but its alot! As this tree is in the window, we have to decorate all the way around, no cheating! We have our old favourites and usually add more each year. We just use golds and creams on this tree as it matches the decor best. Some came from lands far away, some made by our own fair hands here at home.

  

 The rest of the room gets its share too.

The Fireplace...

The Crib...

A Christmas Stocking...

And this?!..

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!

Horse Chestnut Series - September!!

Well Autumn is definitely creeping in after our Indian Summer here in Ireland. The September  Horse Chestnut tree has a few less leaves and ...absolutely NO fruit left!

 

 

I was going to tell you in this post that children nowadays didn't use Horse Chestnuts to play a game known as 'Conkers' but evidently it isn't true!

 

 

Every child in a 10 mile radius has carefully scoured every inch of grass beneath our Horse Chestnut in the past month and resorted to throwing a football to dislodge those that hadn't yet fallen! They even begged Mr. Auburn for his 6 ft 4 assistance.

 

 

Mr. Auburn did manage to salvage one for me, it may have been the puniest one on the tree but nonetheless "oddly oddly onker, my first conker", that's what you're supposed to say for luck when you find your first conker of the year. Good job I have a seasoned stash from last year!

 

 

Roald Dahl said '...a great conker is one that has been stored in a dry place for at least a year. This matures it and makes it rock hard and therefore formidable.'

 

To play, you make a hole in your conker and thread through a string with a knot at the bottom. We used shoe laces at school, usually the ones from the shoes we were wearing! Taking turns, one opponent dangles their conker by the string while the other player holding the string in one hand and the conker in the other strikes the dangling conker.

The aim - basically to destroy your opponents conker...

Not as easy as it sounds!

Horse Chestnut Series - August!!

The August Horse Chestnut looks relatively unchanged from last month. Maybe a few less leaves from all the wind and rain we have had here in Ireland.

Soon all the leaves will be gone but for now I am still enjoying its rich greenness; the first sight I see when I draw the curtains each morning.

"Our chestnut tree is in full bloom.

It is covered with leaves and is even more beautiful than last year."

Anne Frank, 1944

The Horse Chestnut is popularly known as the Anne Frank Tree. From the window of the Annexe when Ann and her family were hiding from the Nazis, Ann could see a large horse chestnut tree. For her it symbolised hope...

"Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favourite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy."

Anne's tree outlived its namesake by over fifty years.

Over that period the tree developed an aggressive fungus and was weakened. In 2007, the local authorities decided that the tree needed to be cut down for safety as 42% of its wood was rotten. However, a group of supporters came together with a plan to build a support construction around the tree and take over its maintenance. Despite their best efforts, the tree was blown down in a storm in August 2010, breaking off a meter above the ground. It was thought to be 150-170 years old.

The Anne Frank Tree in 2006

Fortunately, a few years prior to the falling of the tree, the stewards from The Anne Frank House began propagating saplings from the tree. The saplings were donated to various locations across the US including The 9/11 Memorial Park in New York and so Anne's beloved Horse Chestnut tree lives on.

The saplings are "powerful reminders of the horrors borne by hate and bigotry" and "living monuments to Anne's pursuit of peace and tolerance".



Sapling from the Anne Frank Tree



Horse Chestnut Series - July!!

"Summer has seen the flowers withered and died

But hides the new seed growing deep inside

Spikey green fruit swell with the sun and the rain

The circle of life coming round yet again"

 

 

It is now the end of July and officially the end of summer.

The Horse Chestnut now bears strange looking thorny green fruit; a result of the pollination that took place in March.

 

 These thick, fleshy casings have sharp little spikes on the outside to protect the precious seed within which will be released in the weeks to come.