I didn’t choose the cosy life, the cosy life chose me.
The other night something happened, and I didn’t see it happening until it was over. It started as a pretty normal Saturday, nothing special and then BOOM!! I went full Hipster-Pinterest…. Or ‘Hipterest’ as I have named it.
I’m guessing it started a few months back when I decided that the sulphates in my shampoo were making my hair crap. This alone is nose dive into crazy. It starts with sulphates, then other chemicals, then the packaging that these chemicals come in. Before you know it, you’re McGyvering funnels out of milk bottles to decant home-made conditioner into old sandwich pickle jars. As a side note – do not do this. Lavender and pickle conditioner is not a pleasant experience unless you enjoy retching your way through your morning shower (yes, I did clean the jar first and yes I am stubborn enough to have used it all before making another batch).
So this is the direction things have been going in for a little while; reducing waste, reducing spending, making, upcycling, buying second hand… It is a huge mission in our disposable world, but little steps and all that.
Anyway, we decided that we would run some errands and then hunker down for the rest of the day because apparently we’re not meant to hibernate.
Whatever.
So this is how our Saturday evening went:
I hung up our boho throw (bought from the Women’s Refuge at a carboot sale) on our new dividing wall and pinned our old fairy lights to it in the shape of a heart. Then I went downstairs and made some gluten-free, vegan cookies and a pot of peppermint tea. We then went back upstairs to our (lush) Hygge snug with our gluten-free, vegan cookies and peppermint tea, lit our lavender oil burner and spent the rest of the evening playing Scrabble by candle and fairy light.
I’ll just give you a minute to let that sink in…
Now, I would love to exclaim ‘I don’t know what became of my life!’ (because I don’t, I lost track somewhere in between breeding and reaching my 30’s) but in all honesty – it was a bloody lovely evening. The house was quiet and warm, there were no screens stealing away attention. And I won at Scrabble.
I have literally zero regrets for not going out, drinking too much and waking up to the brutal reality that my children don’t give a rat’s backside that I’m full of headache and self-pity.
I’m more than happy to accept that this is the closest I’m going to get to hibernation. I’ll just have to accept that part of this version is going to involve delivering the occasional bottle of milk to my toddler’s box fort and listening to my 6-year-old sporadically scream ‘VAGINA!’ because since learning this word, she seems to have developed Tourette’s (there’s also a little dance that accompanies this).
It’s been a monster of a year, and I know I’m not the only one to feel it. I hope your Christmas is filled with this level of cosiness, comfort food and demented outbursts too.
R x