Eight cards making me smile

I’m continuing my quarterly The Card Boys subscription and I’ve even managed to update my address so that the cards come directly to me. We have a post redirection set, and that’s now working as it should - there was a bit of a hiccup getting it set up, so it’s likely that we lost some of our post for three weeks after our move.

And when I say a bit of a hiccup I mean our local delivery office didn’t put the redirection in place, so that wasn’t great! It’s all working now though, and we’ve an additional three weeks tacked onto the end of our paid time period, but we’ll never know exactly what we missed - we know we probably missed some bills, and a car tax reminder - but as we knew to expect these we were able to make arrangements.

What we don’t know, is as always, what we don’t know. And it’s likely we never will. Our former neighbour did pop in to see if there was any abandoned post in our old house and forwarded a letter or two manually, which was good of him, but I’m guessing there can’t have been anything hugely important, or else we’d know by now.

We’ve actually been pretty good at changing our addresses in the many, many places that you discover you need to when you move. I’d written a list (no surprise there!) ahead of our move, and it’s been quite satisfying ticking things off it. Though it wasn’t helped in that some organisations didn’t have the up to date postcode file, so didn’t have our address listed. Even the Royal Mail redirection to start with - that was a bit of a face-plant moment I can tell you!

I’m sharing these summer cards on a drizzly end of August day, a day which feels far from summer - but hopefully it isn’t the end of summer yet, and September will come good with its warm sunny days.

As usual there’s eight cards in the box, and the cards celebrate talented artists. The first for this month definitely has a ‘back to school’ feel doesn’t it? Though it’d also be good for friends who like a spot of mindful colouring.

ARTIST: ARIANA MARTIN

The second impressionist-like image is growing on me. The more I look at the floral border and tree branches, the clearer it becomes and the more I see - it’s definitely one to lose yourself in, and would carry a thoughtful message well.

ARTIST: LAURA BROWN

The cheery elephants on this next card can’t fail to make me smile. I can feel the warmth radiating from the image, and the coolness of the water as it’s splashed around - how a picture can conjure up those feelings always amazes me.

ARTIST: LAURA BARNES

ARTIST: ARIANA MARTIN

The next two are both colourful - a flower covered ditsy image and a cheery musical note wishing a happy birthday. I know I’ll use these, but in the meantime they’ll join my card stash waiting their turn.

ARTIST: GRACE CHILTON

ARTIST: ALICE HUMPHREYS

I like both of the flower in vases designs - and it’s quite a mainstay of these boxes, which is good for me. I find the cards can be used for many occasions, and are really quite flexible - as well as beautiful. It’s hard to let them go at times.

ARTIST: CLARA BOOTH

This month this birthday cake card is my favourite. I’m imagining it’s pink blancmange, wibble-wobbling on the plate! Again it’s another one that’s evoking feelings and making me smile. I’m not even sure blancmange is still a thing, it’s probably now called posset or mousse or something, who knows?

ARTIST: ARIANA MARTIN

So another box of great cards. I saw on The Card Boys Instagram page that they’re hosting a giveaway for a box of cards, which is open until 4 September, so if you want to be in with a chance pop over there and enter - good luck!

Post Comment Love 25 - 28 August

Hello there, and welcome back to this week’s #PoCoLo - a friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week, please remember this, posts which are older will be removed from the linky. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked and share some of that love. If you were here last week it was great to have you along, if you’re new here this week we’re pleased you’ve joined us.

When I said the other week a new routine was emerging, I may have been optimistic! As you’ll see from my post this week I’ve been mulling, and when that happens most routine things go out the window as I become preoccupied with what’s on my mind. I don’t know why I didn’t think to write a blog post earlier, as that’s really helped me - I guess that’s why we all write, and have our own space on the internet. Over the past year, while being on the moving house carousel, I think I’ve forgotten that.

Anyway, enjoy this week’s photo taken by MOH while we enjoyed a free flying display which took place over our garden this week. The weather was glorious too, as you can see from the blue sky. For about four hours on and off we were treated to various aircraft flying above the garden, as were the surrounding villages, by the local RAF base. It was very loud, very close and very impressive and finished with a stunning thirty minute display by the Red Arrows.

MOH was just as impressed that I knew where our binoculars were! I’m impressed he found them without needing detailed directions - the logical unpacking system is working!

Have a lovely week. Oh, and it’s a bank holiday here in the UK this weekend so the linky will stay open until 11pm on Monday to allow more time for you to link up.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Mulling over a blog name change

Well typing that title was a bit of a surprise to me, but that’s what I’m mulling over at the moment. And I don’t know about you but when there’s something to mull both my unconscious and conscious mind take part and not always in the balance I’d like. The consequence is that things start, but don’t always finish, some things end before they’ve started and generally I don’t get anywhere near as much done as I’d like to.

Back when I first shared on here that we were looking to move, one of the first questions people naturally asked was “will you change your blog name?”

Back then my answer was a definitive no, and while the whole business of moving house was taking place that was firmly my intention. Since we’ve moved people have asked again if I’ll change the name here, and I’m much less sure of my answer.

I’d thought that our house - 139a - was very much part of us and our lives together - it was our first house together, we celebrated our engagement there one snowy February day, and even held our wedding reception in the garden. It has hosted many friends and family gatherings, most recently for our combined 110th celebration (two fiftieth birthdays and ten years of marriage!) and it obviously has lots of memories, as houses do. And while we were ready to move, and had emotionally detached from the house I’ve been surprised by how little I think of our old house (even if at times I do still refer to it as back home!) and MOH feels the same too.

We’ve been in Nottinghamshire not quite two months, and we already feel very settled. We’re so glad we carried on with the faff to buy this house - that’s a story for another day - as it immediately felt right, and even more so the day we moved in. Buying it took a while to make it happen as we first viewed it in August 2022, with the most recent and final viewing in May 2023 - the short version is we lost it twice, but got there in the end.

But anyway I digress.

Because our new house feels so much like home, and has done from when we moved in, renaming my blog and moving away from 139a feels like a logical step. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d type, but I am and it feels right. Last February I celebrated ten years in this space, and things change, and that’s ok.

The tricky bit is to what, and that’s what I’ve been mulling.

Even writing this post has made me realise that a name change will happen - even though it brings a fair amount of work, and needs to be looked into in more detail, but it’ll happen because it feels the right thing to do. I’m pretty sure there’ll still be ‘life’ in there somewhere as my blog has always been about more than the house and garden, but what exactly, who knows?

I’ve a couple of ideas which I’ve started to check out on social media and google searches, and one looks more promising than the other. But it’s a tricky one, as I don’t want to leave it to long that inertia sets in, or even worse that in the interim someone nabs the name, or something similar (I think that’s probably unlikely, but…)

The other thing writing this post has done is to help me think things through and free up some space for new stuff to take - and hopefully that will be on the creative side, and help with what this space will become. It’s something I want to get right the first time, I don’t want to be changing it every week or so, but I’m happy that I have the startings of a plan. I do like a plan!

In the meantime though I’ll be carrying on in my current guise, but just know that a change is on the cards, but it’ll still be me with the variety of posts you’re used to.

Until then, enjoy a picture of the Red Arrows flying over our house, as they did on Wednesday afternoon!

Random? Yes, but a pleasant discovery! There’s an an RAF base a bit further down the road and the Red Arrows were just part of an event taking place that us, and other people close by could benefit from. Who knew we’d have such entertainment annually right above our heads!