celebrate home | celebrate slow

 
 

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We visited our slow living friends @slowfarmingcompany this weekend for a celebration of all things taking it easy. Taking it easy was further enforced by the appalling weather, but we did make it out to @ntstourhead yesterday during a break in the weather and enjoyed all the amazing autumn shades beginning to (finally!) appear. 🍂 Today has been about picking sloes in the rain (slow sloes?) for sloe gin, amazing slow roast beef from the farm (visit them @slowfarmingcompany to order a hand delivered beef box of your own if you’re in south Somerset) and hanging out with the half a dozen children we have accumulated between us. Going into a new week feeling the thrill of the true arrival of autumn, and more than a little full.
Have you heard the rumour that autumn is finally here? Yesterday I made apple and cinnamon slices, which were intended to be a flapjack sort of affair, but ended up very much as the sort of thing you can only eat with a spoon, sticky toffee apple dribbling out and crumble topping collapsing. It wasn’t a total punishment though, and we bravely struggled on through. I might refine it a tiny bit before I share a recipe though! 🍁 Celebrating the seasons has become increasingly important to me over the years, and I love the rhythm and quietude that noticing the changes around me brings; eating food that’s in season and bringing seasonal flowers and foliage into our home. My work as a stylist and colour analyst over the past decade has intensified this appreciation for the different colours and moods of each the seasons. 🍁 It was only when I hit upon the realisation that creating products seasonally, with a focus on the new season arriving and the colours and moods it inspires, that I was able to finally design and make the product range that feels like the right thing for me to create.
Is there anything else to say? I think not. Happy Friday, gang.
Do you think of yourself as a creative person? Creating used to be such an everyday part of my life that I didn’t really think about it, but I certainly never thought of *myself* as creative. For some reason drawing ability became the determiner I used to define someone’s creativity at a young age, and since I was terrible at that one specific skill (still am) I simply labelled myself ‘uncreative’ and stopped considering it as something ‘people like me’ did. 🍁 I came across a post from @simpleandseason the other day, entitled “A letter to those who think ‘that’s not for people like me’” (you can find it on her website, simpleandseason.com). Mind. Blown. It so neatly encapsulated everything I have ever thought about having a creative business. That mindset started changing a month ago when my youngest started school and I finally had the time and space to turn ideas over and over until they gathered into a plan, but reading Kayte’s post really put the final nail in the coffin for thinking ‘that’s not for people like me.’ 🍁 I have also, finally, accepted how much less whole I have felt without the time or energy for ‘playing’ (how I would always term my creative time) in recent years. Suddenly the idea of *not* making stuff and putting it out there seems like the crazy one. I’m thrilled with what’s coming together as I create and refine ideas and samples before getting stuck into creating some actual stock, all of it stemming from my abiding love of celebrating home, quietude and the changing seasons.