Takeover bid

It's official, the office has been taken over by animals,

...  and then by a gambling son!

And when the animals are not cluttering up MY blogging space they're stretched out on MY

reading sofa.

What's a girl to do? 

Well usually putting on my shoes and coat, and heading out the door shouting 'WALKIES' does it a treat. By the time we all get back, (and yes, on occasion the cat does accompany us) if I make a mad dash I can resume my rightful place on the office chair and update my blog..........see I just did!! Haha.

Have a good day.

Sue xx

Sometimes you can see the wood for the trees........

Over the weekend we managed to clear the little 'woodland' opposite the back of the house, of all its nasty prickly brambles that had grown wild and turned into a tangle of prickliness designed to snag at your clothes and skin, and imprison the dog whenever she ventured in.

After much snipping, chopping, pulling and raking we turned this -

... into this.

And SO much better it is too, the birds can see their feeders, we can see the birds and best of all the soil can see the sunlight so we are going to scatter poppy seeds and plant some little woodland plants and turn what was a mini jungle into a haven of prettiness and food for the wild birds.

Some jobs are just SO worth doing, and make your heart sing when they are done.

Sue xx

Glorious Sunny Sunday

The sun shone down on us all day this Sunday, spurring us on the get SO much done

My new farmhouse table with its four chairs and bench looks lovely in the kitchen (just ignore the mess under the stairs and the unpainted and untiled walls). We've eaten virtually every meal around it since it arrived on Friday afternoon.

So civilised!!

 Haha.

The three veggie beds just waiting for their wooden sides. We finally finished the third vegetable bed, no easy task, Jason must have had 4 wheelbarrows full of stones by the time he had finished.

The beds are all just about three metres long by just over two metres wide and although we have got most of the big stones out the soil is really heavy and full of clay. Up to now we have added some manure and compost but we are hoping that once we have got a couple of crops of potatoes out of each bed the soil should have eased a bit and be slightly easier to work.

 Lovely Hubby painted the door furniture (knockers, locks etc) with black Hammerite. That's what he's doing in this picture below, the only way to do the knocker was to hang it on a tree!

 
Putting the finishing touches to the door knocker.

 Another six fruit trees were liberated from their orange plastic buckets and put into the space in front of Tumbledown Wall. Two Golden Delicious Apple, two Conference Pear and two Cherry trees. I doubt we'll get any fruit this year (or even next) but they will start to grow and look very pretty.

 

My main job this weekend was staining all the wood for the raised sides for the veggie beds and for the fence around the tyres, we have to fence everything we can to protect things from the deer. 

We have Roe deer and Muntjac both roaming wild in the area, and we've been warned by people in the village that they eat EVERYTHING!

And then by the end of the day it all came together, the fence went up, all the raw edges were touched up with wood stain and it now looks like this.

So all in all another good weekends work, progress is being made all round. We ended Sunday with a small bonfire (as is now traditional) and a couple of glasses of Cinzano in front of Monty Halls Great Escape, a brilliant tv programme.

Sue xx

It's curtains for me.........

Yes ... I did it, I made my first ever pair of curtains.

I searched and searched for a pair of curtains for our spare room and I just couldn't find anything I really loved. So I had a rummage through my fabric stash and found a piece of green and cream checked material that would match the duvet cover and that was just about big enough to cover the window (why didn't I look there first?).

So I bit the bullet and had a go at making my own. And guess what they don't look half bad.

So now the spare room is finished, or maybe we should call it the Guest Room, according to the man that does 'Selling Houses' and Ann Maurice of 'House Doctor' fame you should have a purpose for every room and never just a spare room.

Anyway whatever it is, it is finished and looks lovely, so that's six down and five to go.

Woo hoo, over half way through the house at last!!

We've had another busy weekend, the weather was bitterly cold on Friday and Saturday but today was gorgeous, I'll post some pictures of todays activities tomorrow, now it's time for roast chicken in front of the fire and an hours television before retiring to bed.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend.

Sue xx

Shoe Corner

I always wondered when I lived in my nice neat town house why farmhouse entrances had messy coat/shoe corners.........now I know!

 There's always a reason to need a different pair of shoes, dog walking, muck shovelling, going somewhere posh (i.e. to civilisation) or just dashing across the stoney yard to rescue your washing from the branches of a tree.

 And it's the same for coats, do you just need to be warm for five minutes or warm for 5 hours, dry from the lashing rain or protected from force 10 winds blowing the bushes across the front of the house.

 As you can see my nice neat corner (that used to hold one jacket each and 3 pairs of shoes) has developed into what it needs to be. And this is only one of them............... the other 'grab one quick coats' are hung by the other back door in the utility room!!

 (And no......I have no idea why the little bin from the utility room is there on the bench in the kitchen!!)

 Farm life.....................developing nicely!!

 Have a brilliant weekend.

 Sue xx

Stock sorting

Getting prepared. Well that's it.....the sunshine's gone. 

Surprising how quickly you get used to and look forward to waking up to glorious sunshine, and how it inspires you to plant and dig and venture into the great outdoors on doggy walks and wanders. Well yesterday was dismal, there's really no other word for it. Tiny glimpses of blue sky swiftly hidden by big bad grey clouds that let the rain fall suddenly and heavily. 

It was a day for holing up and wielding a paintbrush.

Starting to look a bit better.

 I decided to move the stored stock from my shop and do some of the finishing little jobs to the spare bedroom. There's hope of some of the family coming to visit soon and it would be nice to have completely finished rooms upstairs at least. 

 We've done brilliantly well with the decorating actually, we've lived here for just under three months and have managed to do all four bedrooms (apart from the fireplace in Jason's room and the window frame and door in the spare room), the en-suite bathroom and the biggest job of all was the living room (it's huge and needed some damp treatment, so that slowed us down considerably).  So, thinking about it I shouldn't complain, we are cracking on at a good speed. 

Yesterday I moved the stock, some into the workroom and some just stacked for now, so I could reach the window frame. It looks lovely now, although it was a cold job, trust me to decide to paint on the side of the house where the wind was whistling and having to keep the window open!!

 

Ooh ... my shop window ... happy memories. 

 Moving the stock brought back such lovely happy thoughts of my little shop and how I miss it. Still I have now got myself two Farmers Markets to attend on a regular basis, so I can play at setting out my stall instead of dressing my window ...  which one of my favourite jobs in the shop.

A variation, it was so tiny I changed it every week.

Today doesn't look much better outside, so I am going to get stuck in and finish the spare room. Then it will be time for the best bit ... playing at adding all the finishing touches and titivating and twiddling until I am happy with the look. I will turn a blind eye to the stack of boxes in the corner and stand back and enjoy the fruits of my labours. Having the stock helps, I can pick and choose just what I need to finish the room, after all I only bought what I wanted myself in the first place!!

Have a good day. (If you want to see a few more pics of the shop, click onto the link at the top of this page for Lavender's Blue)

Sue xx

Signs of life.......

Mixed salad leaves.

 

Signs of new life are popping up all over the place now. Bulbs are appearing in places that we least expect to see them, the little chirrups of baby birds can be heard from all the trees and parent birds are in a feeding frenzy. Two birds are attempting to build a nest in our working chimney and I have to light a mini fire each morning to discourage them.

Our farmhouse kitchen is not the idyllic tidy place it could be at the moment, we will have to do something about this as my much longed for kitchen table has now been made and is being delivered on Friday along with four chairs and a bench ...ooh ... the anticipation!!

Half the kitchen window sill.

 

My seeds are starting to germinate on the kitchen windowsill at an alarming speed. We have planted most of the veggie seeds into halved toilet roll inners so that we don't disturb the roots when we plant them outside. The cardboard tubes rot down very quickly leaving the baby plant in its own little ball of compost and nutrients, not quite such a shock to the system for the plant.

Peeping into one tray.

 

We have lots of people saving these rolls for us, some of them think we're very strange, but I'm sure a few will latch onto the idea for themselves when they taste the yummy vegetables at the end!

The other half of the same window sill.

But in the meantime all available windowsill are being pressed into action for germination of seeds and chitting of potatoes. Decorating is on hold as we are preparing raised beds for the potatoes and onions (also sprouting merrily away on the utility room windowsill).

Tomato plants will most likely remain in the house on the upstairs landing windowsill as we will not have a greenhouse until later in the year. Thank goodness for such a light filled house and large deep windowsills!!

Archie posing on the hearth, just begging to be photographed!

Have a good day.

Sue xx