Beautiful Things by Laura Hitchcock

This weeks beautiful things are from Laura Hitchcock (or Laura little stuff as I always think of her!) Laura has been blogging beautifully about home,, family and shopping!  for a very long time. In her own words..

 

Laura Hitchcock

I started LittleStuff wa-a-a-y back in 2004

• A 70′s child, I’ve been married for a Very Long Time, and appear to have made four children, and collected one large and useless dog along the way.
• I work, I have four children, I run a business… ergo, I do not do dusting. Or ironing.
• I like huge mugs of tea. And Coffee. And Cake. And a steaming cone of crispy fresh fluffy chips, smothered in salt and vinegar. #healthyeater
• When I grow up I am going to be quietly graceful, organised and wear lipstick every day. In the meantime I *may* have a slight butterfly-brain issue.

Oh Laura that’s why I like you… I’m going to grow up to be those things too. Here Laura Hitchcock shares her beautiful things:

 

The most beautiful day I ever had ……

It’s tempting to choose something obvious like my wedding day (fabulous at the time, looking back now it was nothing special. Beyond the whole “we’re-MARRIED!” thing, obviously), or the birth of a child.
But actually, beautiful days for me are rarely the big ones full of Events. They’re the little ones. The quiet, deeply content ones. The ones in which we’re all together, having fun, loving life, just being us.The days the sun is shining and the breeze is blowing and we’ve walked for miles across open moorland with just the skylarks for company.
Or the days the rain is hammering down and we’re all curled up by the fire watching a film together.
Or the days we’ve spent in a wild river – racing sticks, building dams, picnicking on egg sandwiches, hunting ‘shrimps’, swimming and sitting and listening.
Beautiful days are simply the quiet ones filled with Happy – thankfully I’ve had a lot of them.

 

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen…
Jeepers. This is way harder than I thought.
Again – do I seriously have to choose one thing?
The night sky in Kenya was jaw-dropping.
Watching the sunrise from our favourite place in the world made me a little tearful.
But I think I’m going to have to plump for the obvious here.  It’s going to be my children’s faces.
But it’s a million tiny fragments of a glance – the times when they’re laughing with me, times when they can’t speak for snorting at some private joke they share that’s lost on me, when their eyes shine as they grasp something which had eluded them, as they gaze at something magical…
Right back to the moment when I looked at them as newborns, felt that connection, did that silent “oh! Hello!” as we locked gazes in recognition.

 

The most beautiful thing I have ever owned …

*sigh* wishing I’d not volunteered for this now… I own so many beautiful things – not valuable, but deeply precious to me.
My engagement ring – obviously.
My Russian wedding ring – which is not my wedding ring, but bought as a pre-cursor to the engagement ring to soften the blow to family and friends as I was only 16. In fact that one’s doubly precious as it had to be cut off when I mashed my finger in the lawnmower last year. My husband stole the pieces from my bedside table and had them remade into a ring again.
My tea cosy isn’t beautiful at all – it’s old, homemade and a very ugly brown. But it was my Granny’s, and every time I make tea in a pot, I think of her and smile. It’s beautiful to me.
I have a first edition of Paul Gallico’s ‘Jennie’, which is signed by the author and was a gift from him to Lilli Palmer. It makes me giddy when I read it – and dizzy that my husband gave me such a beautiful gift.
And then there’s Arthur – my 1950’s Terry Herbert 1227 Anglepoise lamp. I love him, use him every day, and he’s the only item on my desk to always be dust-free. If there was  ahousefire and the children, dog and photos were safe, Arthur would be the first thing saved.

The most beautiful song I have ever heard …

I’m not a sophisticated music listener, I just know when something moves me inside. My taste is not to be trusted however – I once got tearfully emotional at  S Club 7’s Reach For The Stars (I was PREGNANT, alright?).
I’m a huge sucker for hair-rising-spine-tingling vocal harmonies – my son introduced me to the utterly amazing Pentatonix, and this is one of my faves of theirs. A stunningly beautiful cover of Say Something http://youtu.be/0dYlvdLdK9w
A second choice would be O Magnum Mysterium. I’ve never looked up the translation for what they say – I don’t want to know. For me, the cloud of sound is enough. Play it loud – and you might want to close your eyes. http://youtu.be/nn5ken3RJBo
But I’m going to have to out myself for my absolute top choice of all time.
John Denver.
Yes yes yes. Kitsch, over-emotional and hackneyed. But… just listen to his songwriting.
Annies Song, Poems Prayers & Promises, Rocky Mountain High – they’re all good choices. But for me it’s got to be Sunshine On My Shoulders. It was No.1 in the year I was born, but I didn’t discover it until just after the birth of my first child – and sang it to all my babies as they slept. . This is the song I sing on my most Beautiful Days.

 

(oh Laura…. Sunshine on my shoulder is my fave song IN THE WORLD)

 

The most beautiful person I know is…
Well, I’m blessed to have some genuinely lovely, kind, wonderful people in my life. But this one has to be my husband.
Yes, anyone who knows him knows he can be grumpy, shouty, opinionated and stubborn.
He’s also deeply loyal, wildly funny, passionate about life, a hugely strong character and the gentlest, kindest, most beautiful person I know. 24 years and I’ve still not spent enough time with him.

 

The most beautiful thing about me is…
That’s impossible to pick about yourself, isn’t it? The husband isn’t here, but his voice is ringing in my head “Your infernal bloody optimism”. That’s probably my best bit; I do like to live inside the silver lining…

 

Thank you lovely Laura Hitchcock ! This one is for you….