What is the Love in Your Life?

Valentine’s Day always makes me think about the love in my life
So, here it is, everything that means Love to me… 

What brings you LOVE in your life?

Vince, Bekah, Dan, and Caitlin © Lisa Shambrook

My instant response to what brings me the most joy and love in my life is easy – my Family. My husband and children have brought me every emotion under the moon, but love overrides it all. My marriage and partnership with my husband is the most important relationship to me as my children came from this union. I’ve written about our love before and it’s blatantly obvious how much my children mean to me. Each one of them is a unique human being and I love how different each relationship is, how much fun and laughter and joy they bring to my life.
This is Love.

Rusty, Roxy, Raven, and Misty © Lisa Shambrook

Soft fur, purrs (the cats, they can’t help it!), devotion, dependence, twinkling eyes, curling up on your lap (yes, even a sixty pound German Shepherd tries this!), adoration, kneading kitty paws, wagging tail (generally the dog!), wet noses, pricked up ears, padding paws. Rusty, Roxy, Misty and Raven.
This is Love.

Nature, scriptures, freeagency, and crystals © Lisa Shambrook

I don’t often write about my religious views and my Faith. My faith is vast, ever evolving, and it embraces humanity with a Christ-like vision, but my Christianity intertwines with aspects of nature and Paganism and the peace of Buddhism. I think Spirituality is a vast subject and faith is very personal. My beliefs make sense to me, and no one can challenge what my heart reveals to me.
This is Love.

Art, worldbuilding, sketches and notes, and dragons © Lisa Shambrook

I need a Creative outlet, without it I’d go quietly mad. I draw, plan, sketch, paint, sculpt, write, design, craft, photograph, and create. I create worlds with words, characters, plots, emotion, and dragons. I share my emotions in every piece I write or make.
This is Love.

Acorn Cups, Trollbeads, Leather jacket, and Dr Martens Boots © Lisa Shambrook

Most of the things that bring me love are free, family, faith, nature, pets, imagination, but sometimes we have material items that mean something to us. If I wear something ‘til it’s worn out, then it’s been needed and loved. My leather jackets end up worn and torn, as do my beloved boots. I adore gems, I love pretty things, so my bracelet adorned with silver tokens and Murano glass beads means a great deal to me. Each trinket and bead means something, a moment, a place, people, something precious. And as I’m a squirrel, bushy-tailed and anxiously curious I have a thing for acorn cups and hazelnut shells.
This is Love.

What is the Love in your life?

10 Material Possessions I am Grateful For…

My first post for the Gratitude Project… see here for original post. I decided to think about the things I own…

You know when you’re a child writing your Christmas list? The list goes on and on…(my kids scour the ‘Argos’ catalogue and as far as I can see then copy it out word for word!). As you get older the list generally gets shorter (and more expensive, but we won’t go there…). When I was a child I wanted books, drawing pads and pens…still do actually, but my adult list began to include laptop, Kindle, phone etc, these latter items are better included in a later post about modern-day inventions that I’m grateful for…so I thought I’d think about other (less expensive) things in my life that mean something to me.

1. The best birthday gift I ever received was a much longed for item…a leather jacket. I could never afford a leather jacket, until I discovered ebay! My beloved Joe Browns leather jacket was a present that I adored from the moment I slipped it on and felt like it was part of me! A £125 jacket for £50, I wore it to death, the one pictured is an identical replacement for a few pounds more, but ebay again. I wear it every day throughout the year and miss it in the Summer when it’s too hot for a jacket! It’s the gift that has given me the best value ever!

2. I also like a good pair of leather boots, and have found amazing bargains for under £10 in charity shops, once I find a pair I love, like the jacket, I live in them…

3. Next is my most expensive possession…my European style Bracelet. I bought a cheap Pandora imitation bracelet and then got addicted to collecting the beads, silver and murano glass. I was happy with the cheap beads and bracelet until I bought a couple SRA beads and fell in love… I eventually bought my own Trollbeads bracelet and filled it with a mixture of beads that each represented something in my life. You can read the post about my bracelet and each bead here.

4. Most of my jewellery is inexpensive, my fascination with dragons is evident in my broach and dragon’s tail necklace…lots of wear and love. My cat earrings always make me happy, cats clinging to my ears! It’s also clear that I favour silver and am keen on filigree. My second favourite present this Christmas (second to my Kindle) was a cheap filigree heart necklace and earrings, I’m easy to please!

5. Let’s talk about my watch. I’ve worn one since I was about eight and cannot not wear one (sorry for the double negative)…I wear it on what is considered by most of my family, the wrong wrist…or the right one quite literally! My current one is radio controlled so, I’m never late (or at least can never blame my watch). I’m very OCD about my watch…

6. I’m OCD about my diary too…been keeping one since I was fourteen…yes, every day. A big diary to begin with which has shrunk over the years to a little notebook diary instead, after all I blog and journal the important bits!

7. Pens, yes I still love pens, and my favourites are Uni Pin Fine Line (from Mitsubushi, Hmmm thought they did Motorbikes?) and I only use sizes 0.2, 0.5 and 0.8. Wrote my first trilogy with a 0.5 in Pukka Pads…

8. I treated myself to the furry hat just after my birthday last year…I struggle to spend money, I can talk myself out of anything, but my daughter saw that I loved it and wouldn’t let me put it back… thank you! I love that the tassels are different.

9. I’m not big on perfume, and have pretty much exclusively only ever bought The Body Shop scents. My favourite scent is Jasmine, nothing better than the wafting fragrance of white jasmine flowers… another blogpost on my favourite scents here. I love ‘Neroli Jasmin’ and ‘Love etc’…beautiful.

10. My final favourite possession (the chocolate pictured will have to go under food I’m grateful for…) are my Scrapbook albums. Memories are so potent and important…and collecting them creates magic… I love photography and capturing a moment creates an imprint that will last forever in my memory! I have three albums and I love making scrapbook pages…I love remembering…

So these are my 10 material possessions, the ones I am truly grateful for…

Pandora’s Treasures…

I’ve opened Pandora’s box of treasures!

Gorgeous beads to create individual jewellery, I handpicked all the beads for my Christmas gift this year and I love them!
I hasten to add though that I don’t actually have Pandora beads…they cost a small fortune, or at least far more than I can afford, I have a Pandora style leather bracelet to which I added my own chosen beads.
It all came about a few months ago when I began Christmas shopping. I was searching ebay for charms for Bekah’s charm bracelet and ebay was saturated with beads to fit a Pandora bracelet, so I asked Bekah if she’d heard of them. Then we googled Pandora and discovered a whole new world of jewellery!
We spent hours looking at ebay’s vast choice of silver charms and glass beads, and slowly built up a collection. The Postman wondered what was being delivered with regularity in tiny bubble wrap envelopes!
At first I bought a Pandora style necklace for the beads and a black Pandora style bracelet for my spare beads, but I soon realised, that as the wearer, you want to look at them, they’re so pretty, so I transferred the necklace beads to my bracelet. The necklace is even better now as I can choose whichever beads I want to work with my outfit!
I discovered Yummy Beads on ebay: http://www.yummybeads.com/
and loved the quality of the murano glass beads they supply, less than a quarter of Pandora’s price, but just as good if not better. Then I found Lion’s Paw Jewelry:
http://www.lionspawjewelry.com/
with the most exquisite glass beads, every one handmade and sold on ebay. More expensive, but gorgeous!
Plenty of other sellers offer prices from £1 a bead or charm, and I found some real beauties.
What I love most though, is the opportunity to create a piece of jewellery that is completely unique. My bracelet is full of beads that have a specific meaning to me…
An aqua bead flecked with gold to represent the beach, a narrow silver charm for Christmas (My favourite time of year), a lime green bead with turquoise foil for swimming, a silver book as I love to read and have written my own novels, peridot green bead to represent a gem found in one of my stories and a silver lizard from the same book, a green bead with white flowers to show jasmine my favourite scent, a silver leaf as I love autumn, red/pink flowers like roses for my mother’s love of gardening, silver paws for my dog Roxy, and cats Raven, Misty and Rusty, a red bead that looks as if it contains arum lilies one of my favourite flowers, silver ‘Love’ charm for Vince, my husband, a lilac/silver/pink triple colour glass bead for my three children, silver ‘family’ bead, brown swirl bead to represent chocolate and profiteroles! a silver snowball bead, an indigo murano glass bead flecked with silver glitter with three zircona jewels encased called ‘Orion’ this bead is for my father who gave me my love of the stars and orion was the first constellation he ever showed me, a silver and gold ‘Dream’ bead because I am a dreamer, a deep purple bead is for ‘integrity’ my strongest value and links to my faith, silver ‘Live Love Laugh’ for my beloved leather jacket and a purple flower bead for bluebells another favourite flower…

and thus I have a piece of jewellery that defines it’s wearer…
my Pandora’s treasures…