A Slow Living start to 2025 | woodland cottage life

January is already coming to a close and I'm wondering how you're feeling about this year. As the new year rolled in I realised that this year I want to live even more intentionally and my hopes for 2025 are really the same as they have been the last few years. To continue pursuing slow living practices in my day-to-day life, staying connected to nature, living creatively and adventurously and to have grace and compassion for myself and those around me. Happy new year! It is officially 2025 and I am still very much in winter hibernation mode. I know it's January and this is usually the time when people love to set their goals and intentions and that's great but I'm definitely taking a slow and gentle start to the year. It's kind of funny how as soon as January rolls around we feel this pressure to just go at full speed again and dive into new habits and be super productive and be really switched on when in reality we're still in the middle of winter. It's cold, well it's cold where I live anyway, it's dark and naturally I feel like nature is telling us to be cozy, to still be gentle, to still take it slow even though we all have to go back to our responsibilities, go back to work. I feel like a gentle and kind approach with yourself is potentially a better way to do it in January. It is a snowy and gorgeous outside today and I am in my comfiest clothes that I've spent pretty much all of Christmas wearing. This knitted set is from Indigo Luna who just make the comfiest clothes that hold women's bodies so well. It's kind of like wearing pajamas but a more elevated version like I have been going out in this. I've basically been living in this knitted set over all of Christmas and I plan to keep that going for a while. If you've watched a few of my videos you'll know I am a big fan of Indigo Luna and they have kindly given me a 10% off code which I will link in the description if you want to get yourself some gorgeous soft and sustainable clothes. If you're new you may not know that I run my own pottery business where I make and sell handcrafted mugs in seasonal batches. I've spent some time reflecting on everything that I made in 2024 and I'm feeling really proud of the way that my work has evolved. Everything just felt more and more true to who I am and what I love. Everything I make is deeply inspired by nature and my pottery has quite an earthy feel to it, partly because I incorporate wild clay that I So yeah, 2024 was a year that I'm proud of in terms of everything that I created and shared. One of my favourite things that I did last year was taking part in a wood firing. Like most other potters I usually use an electric kiln like this to fire my work but I wanted to try putting my work in a traditional kiln that uses wood as fuel to I already consider what I do to be a slow craft but using a wood fire kiln slows the process down even more. So I wanted to make a coffee pour over set and this is what it looked like before it was fired. Then it went into the wood fired kiln. At first I was a little scared to stoke the flames but then I started to get the hang of it. We were stoking the kiln until the moon came up and it was really nice to get to hang out with other potters. This is how the coffee pour over set turned out. This little wood fire beauty has made my coffee mornings even more special. Here are some more of my favourite pieces that came out of this firing. I left most things unglazed on the outside and I love the way that the flames and the ashes worked their magic. It's the same clay body that I always use for my pottery and yet it looks so different in this context. It's even more warm and earthy and I love it. So I'm hoping to do more of this in 2025. You might remember me getting excited about growing flowers and veg in previous vlogs from last year. I was really inspired by my parents who are amazing growers. I mean look at this beautiful veg that they grew. They did say that 2024 had been a bad year for growing in terms of We planted things in random spots and hoped for the best. There were some small winds and even if it wasn't the most impressive harvest, nothing beats the magic of eating something that you've grown yourself. The flowers in the garden went a lot better than the veg did and it was so lovely seeing the bees enjoying them too. All in all we still had a lot of fun trying and we're definitely not giving up. We did get the chance to go and stay somewhere that really inspired us in terms of slow living. The dugout is located on the Waghorn Smallholding in Herefordshire and it is a pretty magical spot. We had such a lovely time staying at the dugout. The level of handcrafted attention to detail that has gone into creating this beautiful roundhouse is just mind-blowing. Ed and Rowena have created such a whimsical and cosy space that is so deeply connected to nature. We soaked up every moment of being around the smallholding, feeding lambs, milking goats, picking veg and learning about smallholding life. They've kindly given me a 10% discount code to share with you all so when you're making a enquiry make sure you include code kindred10 for 10% off your stay. So as we approach February what does it actually mean to take a slow start to 2025? I think a lot of it has to do with mindset and the expectations that you place on yourself. We may already be entering the second month of this new year but here we're still very much in the middle of winter and I think we need to take a note from nature which is currently stripped back and hibernating. Nature is resting before emerging with new energy in spring so maybe we should also give ourselves permission to not be moving at full speed, to hibernate when we can, to spend evenings by the fire creating things with our hands, to delight in cozy food and still making time to get out in nature even if it's freezing because it is so healing.