While I adore January, I find February perfectly hideous. It sort of stretches ahead of me: bitterly cold and strangely bereft of any personality- at once the shortest month of the year and chillingly, boringly, greyly, the longest.
I can hardly bear it, but bear it I must, and so I give into it: I hibernate for four blissful weeks, catch my breath after the trauma of Christmas and the over zealous industry of a New Year, and finally allow myself to enjoy the cosy bliss of the emptiest month of the year…
1. Make the decision to only go where you really must: this is a month for taking stock, for not cluttering our minds with new projects, unnecessary consumerism or idle gossip. So practise saying No. No Thank You, but really you are oh so kind for asking…
2. Wander around the house and gather up all your half finished crafty bits of this and that. Music you find too difficult to listen to when your mind is busy. Books you’ve always meant to read. And each day make a conscious effort to do them, read them, listen to them. Perhaps there is a reason they are half finished. Maybe you will finally find the space and time to admit you don’t enjoy them or maybe, just maybe, the sheer numbness of Fevrier will bring with it a new, enduring passion.
3. Get up very, very early. Just you. Creep downstairs, light candles and drink coffee in the dark, melancholy silence of an early Winter morning.
4. Or wait until everybody has left for school or work, then prepare yourself a really lovely breakfast tray. Carry it upstairs, get undressed and get back into bed. No one else but you has to know…
5. Call in the blues. Gather miserable c.d’s and heartbreaking films together and spend a couple of hours wallowing in sorrow. Sounds miserable. Makes you feel great.
6. Strip back the bed and lay a huge fleecy
7. Or do as my lovely Mark does for me (never say mine is not a pampered existence: I am spoilt rotten!) and give the cold sheets a quick blast with a very hot hairdryer before you slip under the quilt…
8. Choose a pretty tin and make up some Fireside Coffee Mix. Light every
9. Wrap up warm and get into the garden to sweep away the debris of Winter on your doorstep, plant pretty Primulas in terracotta pots, inside and out and bring a little colour into what could be the most lifeless of all months.
10. Buy daffodils every time you buy milk. Really.
11. Knit socks. Take afternoon naps. And polish your furniture in that strange afternoon Winter light designed to reveal every airbourne speck of dust…
12. Buy really good, organic butter and feast on the piece of heaven that is a buttery crumpet. At least twice a week. Or twice a day if the mood takes you.
13. Handwash your favorite snuggly
14. Get into your pyjama’s every day at four o’clock and refuse to leave the house thereafter.
15. Create a kindling basket full of pinecones, cinnamon sticks and herb bundles. Or stuff old toilet roll holders full of twigs, herb’s, moss and waxed firestarters, then wrap in brown paper and tie with string.
16. Bake a lot of deliciously old fashioned cakes and take afternoon
17. Go on a treasure hunt for a vintage
18. Press your collection of vintage hankies. Then put them in a tin lined with eucalyptus scented paper. Add a little pot of Vicks and some vitamin C drops. Just in case…
19. Feel a bit sorry for yourself. Then go put a hyacinth next to your bed so it’s deliciously heady fragrance is the the first thing to greet you every morning.
20. Then snuggle up in all the cosy blankets you own, read lots of trashy novels, drink syrupy, treackly red wine, bake cheese and bacon scones, wear slippers, take lots of afternoon naps and wish as hard as you can for the joy that is March…
Oh how I've missed the puttery treats, thank you, thank you, thank you! Now I'm off to do some!
I LOVE this post!!!! I must remember these cosy ideas!!
Thanks, Alison.
Now I am really yearning for winter!
Great ideas, but I must say that I adore February. Maybe it's just me, but I can feel the quickening of the earth as it starts to shake of winter and wake up to the world. Take a look around and you'll see some of the animals starting creep back out, some birds returning from the south, and even some particularly brave flowers like snowdrops, peeking out of the snow. It's honestly one of my favorite months and feels much more like a new year than january does.
Some lovely ideas Alison!! You always seem to know what I need to hear!! I'm off to putter now…thank you for the inspiration!!!
I have always found February a little grey too, but in the past few years have started to look forward to it- because of all the lovely puttery treats it takes to make it bearable! Isnt that a little perverse? Ahh, I worry not, for I am away to light some more candles!
I love your blog…..keep writing….visit me someday at jerripinkpassion.blogspot.com blogging since May 2007 and married since 1982…..Yikes111