Day 17 - Congratulations Helen and Alex

Thursday 17th January

We have a winner to yesterdays giveaway. Helen and Alex correctly stated that the old school friend was Tracey. I will be posting off your goodie bag soon and will post a photo on the blog. Well done guys!

I am writing slightly earlier because home school has just finished and I did want to share. A focus of this term is the European Union. That, I am quite sure, sounds dull. But the rationale is far more interesting. I was chatting with my niece who is considering doing a masters degree once she graduates and she had come across a course in Sweden which was free. Yes, truly free! When you think that masters start around £3500 that is quite a deal. This masters in business administration was free to anyone in the European Union. She is also considering a masters in Edinburgh where she spends six months in a European city. This led to a conversation with several people where we quickly concluded that we did not know the answer to the following question 'what are our rights as European Union citizens?' Shocking, I know. On the news last night there was an item about how us Brits are annoying other European member states with our constant requests to opt out of European Union laws in areas such as employment. At the age of 48 I am not sure I am that bothered about my European Union rights but I do believe that my children should know because there are obviously doors to be opened.

So today we began our delve into the European Union and I suggest this topic may take some time. The reason I mention all this is to illustrate our approach to home school. At the beginning of each term we sit down with the boys and discuss what we have covered recently and what they are still interested in. I have half an eye on the English national curriculum but it really is only half an eye. The good thing about the national curriculm is that it gives us a structure to take account of and a range of relevant topics per subject. However, we do not follow it as intended. We simply use it as a guide to ensure that our children will be roughly at the same place when they leave school as other children. The most importance influence on what we study comes from these family discussions. As a result of these discussions we agree on a range of topics to study together and then one or two to study alone. I think it is important for children to be able to follow their specific interests at their own pace and our system allows for that as well as more conventional group study. Last term George began a topic on birds of prey and Max studied some aspects of China.

Harry is 17 and now doing his vocational qualifications with distance learning colleges and Molly (20) is at university. With all our children we have emphasised the importance of questioning. Questions often start a topic and we aim to have answered them all by the end. We are now at a unique stage in the education of our children. With only George (15) and Max (12) left in full time home school we rarely differentiate the work they do. On the whole they work at the same level and that speaks volumes to me about one of the joys of home school. In a more traditional school setting children are limited a bit by the middle achiever and although there is provison for less or more able children it is patchy and not always successful. Home school allows children to work at their own pace so, over the years, Max has caught up with his older brother well enough to do the same work.

This period will come to an end quite soon as George is ready to sit his GCSE equivalent in maths and Max is not quite ready. They sit qualifications when they are ready and we are not confined by timetabling issues. Molly took six GCSEs, three one year and three the next. This system worked really well for her as it allowed her to concentrate on few subjects and get better results. Her grades in the end were A*, A, A, B, B, and C. She then had more than she needed to move onto A levels. All of her qualifications were achieved through distance learning providers supported by two slightly stressed parents. We only ever intended taking the children as far as GCSE but the sixth form college she had a place at in Derbyshire suddenly lost all its funding and no other local provider offered Environmental Science which she felt was critical for a career in conservation. So, Molly was back at home for A levels and it was a very testing couple of years. She needed 240 UCAS points to get into her first choice university but actually achieved 320 so the girl done good!

Harry and possibly George and Max are not interested in university so are taking their Maths and English before jumping straight into vocational qualifications. You name it, you can probably study it through distance learning. Harry's level 3 diploma in health and fitness is the equivalent to an A level but if you asked him to study say Geography A level he would probably run a mile. George is probably going to move into animal care course follwoing a similar path to Molly but he wants to study his courses by distance learning and, you've guessed it, the courses are already out there. George can go all the way to a masters degree in this field and all studied from home.

Over the years I have become quite well read on the different distance learning providers so if any of you are considering this type of study for yourself or your children just drop me a comment and I will get back to you. As you might expect the quality of the provision is not all the same. In my previous life working at a university my job was to assess quality so that has come in very handy.

So today has been life affirming as the boys were truly engaged with their studies and I was delighted that they could identify nearly all the countries in Europe and name their capital cities. I am not sure I could do that when I left school. I am asking a number of local young people to do some guest blogging as they have had more traditional schooling on the island. As I said in an earlier blog I am not anti-school and can clearly see the benefits. No system is perfect and we just felt that our family could do it our way and that is what we have done. I am not sure what Pete and I will do with all our time when home school is finally finished but I can guarantee we will miss it. At least I will know my rights as a European Union citizen!

We are expecting snow tomorrow so I have a nice range of sledges at the ready. Our lands slopes quite nicely for sledging. I am not convinced a 48 year old woman should be sledging but, by now, you will know I can be a bit of a rule breaker.

I just wanted to end with a link to a fabulous blog called the good life in practice. It is written by a lovely lady who has recorded her experiences of living a simplier, more sustainable life, firstly in a garden in the UK and now in Switzerland. I have been fortunate enough to guest blog for her and my article is up currently but do take some time to explore the rest of her blog. The link to her blog is now in my side bar so we can all keep up with her new project in Switzerland.
Picture today is from a burn that runs through the island and can be admired en route to Lochranza in the north of the island. A great place for a picnic and a lovely walk as well. Now could you all please cross your fingers for some snow so I can go sledging. Many thanks xx

Day 16 - Giveaway Day

Wednesday 16th January

There were a few flurries of the white stuff and I got very excited and then it stopped. Next time it tries to snow I am going to pretend I haven't noticed and maybe it will snow for longer. The problem with living on an island off the west coast of Scotland is that we usually get rain before it turns to snow as it hits the mainland. For a girl who loves snow this is a problem. Looking at the forecast we might be lucky on Friday. I will, of course, keep you updated.

Today I am having a little celebration as my page views soared over the 700 mark and I thought it would be good form to say thank you. In that spirit I am going to share some of my favourite things to do with herbs in the hope that you might try them. I am also giving something away but more of that later.

Feedback so far to my blog has strongly indicated that more and more of you want to 'grow your own' and I am thrilled about that. In an age when we might be eating horses and not even know growing your own has a real place in our lives. I always advise people to start simple, that way they are most likely to have success. Green salad leaves, tomatoes and courgettes are easy and very rewarding. Even if you are really short of space you can probably fit in a herb window box somewhere. Grow some chives in your box as you an grow these all year round. Cut them back hard 4 times a year and they will reward you with strong growth and flavour. Let me share with you a newly discovered recipe that can use your chives and is just a delight.

Chive and lemon pesto
Ingredients
40g pine nuts
generous bunch of your very own chives finely chopped
60g parmesan cheese, finely grated
grated zest of a lemon
4-6 tablespoons of olive oil plus some extra
salt and pepper to season

Cook the pine nuts in a frying pan until they are golden and them remove. Place in a pestle and mortar and grind down. Combine with the remainder of the ingredients and taste. Spoon the cold pesto into an airtight jar and cover with extra olive oil. Place in fridge where it will stay fresh fo 2-3 days. Really simple and a great start in the grow your own campaign.

Back to your herb box. Add in th following depending on space. Bay (perfect for stews) Lemon grass (perfect for stir frys), Mint (perfect for tea and new potatoes), Rosemmary (perfect for lamb), Sage (perfect for pork) and Thyme (perfect for everything). I have another use for all these herbs that you might want to try. It does require an open fire though. In the autumn you will want to trim your herb box to ensure good growth the following years. Take a bundle of mixed cuttings and tie with natural string and hang upside down out of direct sunlight. Once dry you have the best fragrant firelighters you could wish for. The smell off this little bundle is one of lives greatest pleasures. For those of you that can fit in more than a simple herb box you can add lavender and bergamot to your bundle. They need a bit more space to grow. One final tip for the herb box. Mint can take over very quickly so plant your mint in its pot and that will slow it down a bit.

I rarely buy presents and not because I am tight! I prefer to make gifts as I think this is far more personal. For those of you who take on a whole herb bed you will have a lot more cuttings come autumn. Make lots of bundles and place several in a decorate gift basket and give as a housewarming present - just check they have an open fire first. If they don't make up a jar of chive and lemon pesto and decorate the jar with ribbon and give that instead.

I do hope you might give one or other of these ideas a go.

I confess I have not ventured outside today because it is bitter cold and I was sulking at the lack of snow. The morning was filled with school which is finding its own pace again after the break for the holidays. Max and George did a fun exercise with their dad when they had to scale up an outline of a character from the Simpsons. The joy of home school is that we can select activities that we know will excite the children. I remember doing the same exercise with a rhombus at school - how completely boring! Harry and I were into the different types of training which involved us measuring our resting pulse rate. As a general rule the slower your resting pulse rate the fitter you are. Mine was an OK 73 but Harry's was an impressive 65. I will be blogging about our island spa facilities in due course but me thinks I need to visit it more often!

At the end of the morning session Max and George went off with my mother and her partner, Hamish, to play badminton. They place once every couple of weeks and my mum is amazing at almost 75 and one heart attack behind her. The boys also take on the local youth at badminton club on a Thursday evening at the village hall. Good for them! One of the criticisms of home school is the perceived lack of socialisation. My children clearly forgot to read that text book because they have no problems mixing with others. In fact, of all the home schooled children I know none of them have any social dificulties. Interesting....

I have had a challenging couple of hours in th studio with a kitten who likes nothing better than jumping on my work. In the picture of the test cards some of the distressing techniques were unintentional but now she has shown a talent for it I must get her to try it on silk. She is sleeping now so peace is restored.

Finally to the give away. I have a goodie bag of products from our winter collection to give away. All you have to do is tell me the name of the old school friend I mentioned in yesterday's blog. Just type it into the comments box below and the first person to do so will get the goodie bag 'with love from Arran'. I will contact you for your postal address. Good luck!

This blog appears to have a life all of its own and for that I am grateful. Over the next weeks and months I am going to introduce you to some island residents and I hope that you will get to know them well. Think radio 4 'The Archers' and swap in 'The islanders' and you are on the right track. Perhaps less of the wild affairs though! As we speak I have all sorts of people doing guest blogs and these inputs will give some colour and texture to this daily offering.

When I gave up my high flying career to become poor but satisfied the first thing I noticed was if I wanted a cup of coffee I could just go and put the kettle on. I have always truly appreciated that fact. Time for a coffee. xx
Pic is of the standing stones on the island. One of my favourite walks. Come with me sometime?

Day 15 - Tracey is an absolute star.....

Tuesday 15th January

Another glorious day on the Isle of Arran. Yesterday I drove to the next village sadly without my camera. The mountains were all covered in snow and I thought of you guys, realising that you would be cross at the missed photo opportunity. Will do better next time.

Overall, it has been a busy start to 2013 and this is before I sow my first seed. That was put right this morning when I sowed my sweet pea seeds. Working in the tunnel was a little artic but needs must. I have sown Spencer Large mixed seeds to start with because they give the very best cut flower. Their stems are more robust than the average sweet pea stem and their fragrance is to die for. They are in the house just to get them started and to protect them from mice invasion. If you want to grow sweet peas I would recommend ordering seeds from Sarah Raven. Her varieties are always a joy to grow.

I couldn't sleep in the night so I spent some time on my slug busting strategies. I designed a simple hessian pouch that I am going to sew with natural string and line with bits of old compost bag. The point of this is? Quite simple really. I am going to grow my salad greens, tumbling tomatoes and strawberries in them and hang them from the tunnel frame. I smile at the thought of the slugs looking up and trying to jump to reach them! Tomatoe seeds are my next to sow but we really will need some sunshine this season. Last year was dreadful on the tomato front and I rather felt I let the side down because a freshly harvest tomato is a million miles away in taste from those things you get in the supermarket. If they fail to red up at the end of the season I make green tomato chutney to store for boxing day instead. Come the autumn this blog will be full of recipes for storing produce because it is one of my favourite times of the year.

So Hazelbank is underway and the boys have begun making space for the new willow crop. Old raspberry canes are coming out and willow will be going in. You can just see the green shoots of spring growth in the beds as the bulbs start their annual surge. The picture is of indoor bulbs which we grow and sell in a local shop. These ones have come a bit early and were given a severe talking to before I chilled and just enjoyed them myself. You can't win everything when you are a grower. If I am honest my entire lavender crop needs replemishing this year as it was all a bit woody by the end of last season. We grow about six different varieties and dry the harvested crop for use in our crafts. I have never successfully grown lavender from seed so I buy them in as tiny plugs and bring them on. Of course, we buy wholesale which probably doesn't help the average reader. Your local garden centre will have small plants from about March onwards. Never buy expensive large herbs as the smaller ones grow so quickly.

I just wanted to mention the importance of networking. One of my challenges for this year was to network more as I have been very poor at that. Living on an island means that a lot of our customers, friends and family live elsewhere. I have finally set up a facebook page to help promote our crafts. We are in design phase at the moment but will link my etsy shop to that as well once we are ready to go. I know that I will have this all to do again as Whimsical Wreaths comes on stream but maybe I will find it more straightforward by then. In the process of writing this blog and networking with other relevant blog writers I have been asked to guest blog on a couple of sites which I am thrilled about. I will post links here when my blogs are published. I appear to have a growing number of American readers and one of my guest spots is for an American site. I spent several very happy years in the US working as a choreographer and I do love the Americans. I have also asked a number of people to guest blog for this site and they all have stories to tell. During the course of the year I want to strike a good balance between featuring the work of the small craftworkers with the multi-million companies that are based on the island. Arran punches way above its weight with successful business stories and I want to tell their story as well. I always maintain that this is where your dreams can start to become a reality. I think living on a small island puts you slightly outside of convention and that is an exciting place to be. It can cultivate ideas that can become reality on a small scale to begin with; rather like dipping your toe in the water while deciding whether to jump.

We have had a good school day today. The two youngest were deep into enlargement in maths with Pete (!) and Harry and I were into the principles of exercise in effective training programmes. In the middle of it all in comes a call from our beautiful Molly. She has just secured a 72% for a lab book which she was thrilled about. She also got a 59% for her Statistics exam which she was even more thrilled with. Many of the year have failed this exam and need to resit so her mark was very welcome. Well done to my lovely Molly.

The rest of the day is over to design work for my silk project so best get on with it. I do worry about how my mind works sometimes. We may have started with trees as an inspiration but my designs have already taken me way beyond that. Time to test a few out on paper first before I commit to silk. I always feel like I am back in school when the crayons come out but the wax works as a great resist to the watercolour paints. Speaking of school I did just want to say Hi to some of my school friends who I know read my blog on a regular basis. A very special hello to Tracey who is a complete and utter star in my book. My dad is my guiding star so you are in very good company Tracey. Into the studio....xx
Picture is of a path in the grounds of the Castle owned by the National Trust. It is one of my favourite spots on the island and I go there to contemplate.

Day 14 -I expect to freeze

Monday 14th January
Yesterday we talked herbs can we talk flowers today? I have been busy sorting through my sweet pea seeds ready to plant. I always plan to plant them in the autumn and I never manage it. Sweet peas are my favourite flower and I pride myself on having a fresh bunch in the house throughout the summer. I grow lots of cut flowers and I intend to really go for it this year. My creative home is floristry. Back in the day when I was working silly hours I used to walk past a florist in Winchester and wish I had that shop. Since giving up that job I have trained as a florist and even had a shop! Now I have limited myself to providing flowers for a local shop but this year I am going to start offering workshops again. I used to offer workshops to all sorts of people but my favourite were the brides and families who wanted to tackle some of the wedding flowers themselves. I used to teach them simple bouquets, table centres and buttonholes. Every weekend I was busy either producing flowers for a wedding or taking courses. My favourite couple were Ian and Helen. At their first consultation I think Ian wondered what he was doing there. But Ian was a grower and grew a lot of their own vegetables. I suggested he might like to grow some flowers for the wedding and he jumped at the chance. That was it, he was hooked. Ian did , indeed, grow flowers for their wedding but he also attended the workshops and learned how to make his own buttonhole.

He was a complete star and they went on to have a wonderfully personal wedding and I was very proud. When I am adrift from working with flowers I feel like something is missing. One of the challenges of working with flowers on the island is supply of cut flowers. When I was working in the wedding context I lived in Derbyshire and we used to go to the flower market in Sheffield at silly o'clock. Now everything has to come in by ferry and that adds to the cost. So the more I can grow the better. So when the boys are planting willow I will be planting flowers and we shall see what 2013 can offer up. When I worked in weddings I tried very hard to make the flower story as personal as possible. One of my favourite weddings was Emily's. It was a massive rose wedding and a little out of my comfort zone. I tended to work with sustainable blooms but I managed to find a UK grower to supply her wedding. I trained Harry and Molly in the basics and Harry and I started conditionning the roses at 9am and finished at 2pm! Then Molly took over helping me to create the centre pieces. My long suffering Mum helped as well as a lovely local girl who was very creative. Later that day it all got moved to the venue minus bridal party flowers which we then worked through the night to create. Despite the incredibly long hours I loved every minute of it. So this year I am going backwards to go forwards and putting flowers back at the centre of my creativity.

One of my favourite pictures shows a bouquet that I did for a lovely lady who was getting married for the second time. They went to the Isle of Harris for their honeymoon and took this picture.

Today has been a bit of a slog in home school so for all of you I think it is a walk in the park, think again. There are days when my youngest, Max, is not in the right frame of mind and every activity is a bit of a battle. His English work today didn't float his boat but we got there in the end. George and Harry did better with their work so all ended well. We have not had the snow that the rest of the country has had. In fact, it was a glorious sunny afternoon when we took the dogs down the beach. The signets were in the sea and came to say hello. No, I can't trust my naughty dog so she was put on a lead while the collies attempted to herd the swans up the beach.

Over the next few weeks I am going to try and feature some creative work from others. I have had over 700 page views so I am hoping to use that in a constructive way. I hope that I might persuade some of my creative friends to do a guest blog for me. I am passionate about handmade products and delighted to be able to share some of the best I know. If you would like me to feature your work please get let me know and leave contact details in the comments section below and I will get in touch. I will, of course, be sharing some creative work from the island.

I will keep you all up to date with my efforts in floristry. I am going to start by running a workshop in time for mother's day and then take it from there. I will be out in my polytunnel tomorrow sowing the first seeds. I expect to freeze. xx