Frames from paradise...

Just a little less often then perhaps I should, I take a look up from what I'm doing to find that paradise abounds me...

The view from 1930's Deco cottage hallway, through to Winter bright afternoon sunroom suddenly overwhelms me {and Delilah, the cat}. I reach for my camera.

A little later I rush outside before dark to snip some winter florals and freshly growing parsley. I wonder as I am at the front of my house near the street light, will anyone think I'm stealing these flowers under the apparent cover of early nightfall? But there is nobody. Because here in paradise the peace is hardly ever disturbed...

I make dinner, we eat it, I clean up.

In a tired heap I sit down to read a little of my book, by now the daylight is long gone and the only place to be is by the glowing, crackling fire. Only a few chapters later I realise I need to get baking before Tara's Third Birthday Party tomorrow... I enjoy the methodical, reliable and also creative aspects of baking. Turning real butter, flour, Caster Sugar, Buttermilk and Free Range Eggs into delectable treats for my family tomorrow.

It is nearing midnight, but I feel bright and deeply involved in my late night paradise.

The night is technically over and apparently it is early morning, the house smells fantastic! Everybody else is asleep and I just feel reborn with that illogical late night energy! Paradise is now the smell of a Birthday cake baking in one oven, and the second batch of cupcakes nearly finished in the other. Sunroom now smells like Jonquils, and looks like a Birthday paradise - I hum "Ninety-Nine Das Luft Balloons" as I go to bed.

Only a few hours later there is life in paradise once again. Pancakes are cooking and the carefully selected gifts are deemed a success by my toughest critic!

The shiny pointy hats, bubble blowers and other little bits of Birthday paraphernalia that I have picked up in the last few weeks have all come together like a cohesive "thought out" planned event!

I make thirty cups of tea, and spend the morning convincing people to have more cake. I smile and joke with everyone and all in all it's a lovely affair!

Later I remember to reflect on that perfect baby I was given three years ago, today.

How little I have slept since she, or in fact any or my babies were born, and yet, they are the life in me. My heart beats parallel.

My thoughts are on theirs, even when I'm sleeping. They are my little songs - sweet melodies we have been entrusted with, to love and to teach how to sing...

I think back at these frames from paradise and think about how they're mine because of a combination of two things - which I believe everybody has been given:

Blessings from the Lord above; and, the choice whether to see and nurture them, or to close one's eyes and live in the dark with such gifts unseen and unspent.

It has taken me many years to open my eyes. To look up from the small frames of thought in my head and see paradise. To count my blessings. And spend them well.

Shell xx