Let Sleeping Pigs Lie

To celebrate the bank holiday - possibly the first one without rain in the history of man kind - we had a day out in Wentworth Garden Centre today. I know a garden centre doesn't sound like much of a day out... but it is when they have a farm.... where you can touch the animals! I think it's for kids, but they let me in anyway.

We saw little chicks just hatched last months and still a bit bald!

Gorgeous peacocks

Pygmy goats - climbing on everything and one so pregnant she could hardly move - she was like a Weeble!

I spent about 20 minutes scratching this little fella behind the ears

Almost got convinced by this little sheep to take him home.

I love this mad chicken in his feathery flares!

And these ones with the crazy blonde wigs.

But the highlight of my day, was these big, fat, buck teethed, pot belly pigs. They were supposed to be breeding but apparently that was too much like hard work. They were just sprawled out in the muck, snoring their heads off.

Let sleeping pigs lie I say!


don't forget, my giveaway is still on until the tenth of June... just a couple of posts down!

How do men survive alone?

Seriously, I just don't know how it's possible!

I asked Paul to put the washing out this morning while I was out doing the shopping and buying a new wardrobe (I'll get to that in a minute). It's getting a bit gusty and VERY grey outside so I thought I'd better go and get it all in. The washing was not where I expected it to be; Next doors conifer was wearing my lovely new EXPENSIVE duvet cover, the other duvet was only hung by one peg so the other end of it was doing a fine job of sweeping the sooty dust from the outhouse off the garden floor and the fitted sheet had completely escaped the confines of our garden! All that was left hanging were the pillow cases! I'm seriously thinking I need to give that man a lesson in the correct use of a peg!

On to the wardrobe: you may remember a few months back, my tearful admission of my shoe addiction.

Well, it appears that my shoe fetish was only hiding my deeper, more troublesome problem. Clothes. I have a LOT of clothes.

While Paul has two drawers, I have the other four, I have clothes in a walk in wardobe the length of one side of the house, two hanging rails in the spare bedroom, two drawers under the bed and two chests of drawers in my studio. Before today, the sheer weight of my clothes has broken five wardrobes. One literally fell apart at the seams, the others, the metal rails just snapped clean in two! This morning, I opened the walk in to find all of my clothes in a heap on the floor: yes, another metal rail had snapped under their weight!

Desperate times called for desperate measures. I've tried on numerous occasions to cull my clothing collection but the problem is, I wear every single item. All be it, only once a year because I seem to have enough clothes to wear each of them only once a year... but I do still wear them! I love them all equally, how could I possibly tell one dress that I love it less than it's sister, that it is just not quite pretty enough, or new enough, or sparkly enough... I just couldn't do it to them. They have been loyal to me, they have worn well, washed well and looked good! There must be some other option. But alas, I realise that some of them must go. I have managed to clear two bags full (carrier bags mind, not bin bags, I think I'd be sat rocking in a corner if that was the case!) which I will force myself to take to the charity shop next weekend. I can only hope that some other person will love them as I've loved them.

So, this mornings outing took me to buy a new wardobe. I've gone for a really sturdy untreated pine one this time. Four doors, six drawers. I plan to paint it white, stencil some red/pink roses on the doors and replace the handles for some crystal knobs.

I also bought eight plastic zippy under bed storage bags to store all of my winter clothes and coats so that they are not weighing down the rail in my lovely new wardrobe! I will be able to put a couple of bags on top of the new wardrobe, some under the bed, some under the settee and some on shelves that Paul is going to make me in the walk in. Hopefully, this will solve all my storage needs.... until my next shopping spree that is. Then we'll be back to square one.

Hope you're all having a lovely bank holiday weekend and that your washing is where you left it!

Was that Summer I just saw flying past in a blur?

We had gorgeous weather this weekend, it was 28.c in our garden on Sunday. I love sunny weather, I think I must have been a lizard in another life - I just love the heat! 

I don't sun bathe (my skin is so white, the sun bounces off me and burns everyone else!) but I do love being warm, I love how everything glows in the golden light, I love how just a little bit of sunshine makes everything else seem alright. I was really starting to feel worn out by the long, unusually cold winter we've had so this little glimpse of the summer has made me feel loads better. 

On Sunday, I spent time on a blanket, reading my Lonely Planet magazine in the park in the next village while my P and his friends played basket ball in the court next to me. I finally got to photosynthesise! And it's a good job, because now the sun is nowhere to be seen! It's dark, it's raining and it is 12.c! Yes, twelve. We've gone right back to winter! Was that it? Is that all we get this year? You think I'm being mellow dramatic, but for the last three years (since the big Sheffield flood of 2007 - I'll tell you all about that on the anniversary of it) we've only had about two weeks of summer and the rest has been rain!

I've been looking at some of my favourite beach photos to remind my self that the sun does still exist... somewhere in the world!

This was taken in Honolulu (Hawaii) on my honeymoon. It was our first morning there and we went for a long walk along Waikiki beach to try and air off our jet lag! The first thing that struck me in Honolulu was the smell. It was like rain on a hot evening, flowers crushed under foot, vanilla... I couldn't help but breathe a little deeper and a bit slower just so I could savour that beautiful scent. If I close my eyes and breathe in deep enough, I can almost smell it now.

This picture was also taken in Hawaii, this time on the Island of Kauai (aka the garden island). Can you imagine anything more tranquil? I just love this little family snuggled in the shade of their colourful sun umbrella like they are the only people in the world.

This is the main island of Hawaii. I don't think anything says "Aloha" like this picture. This is exactly what I expected Hawaii to look like and I wasn't disappointed.

This picture was taken in Kerala, India. I wasn't there, it was way before me and my P met but it is one of my all time favourite photos. 

This is Sardinia but could be anywhere in the world. Close your eyes. Can you hear the waves, lapping against the shore?

This is also Sardinia, near Oristano and was taken on my birthday last year. The sea looked so inviting but we didn't have our cossies. We walked up and down the beach side shops hoping to be able to buy some but no where sold them! We were very tempted to go skinny dipping!

Another Sardinia shot. This giant arch was created by the fast current wearing away the rock over the years. Kids were flying round and around on big rubber rings on the whirl pool. That little white thing you can see falling off the rock is my P.... if only you could hear what he was screaming!

Robin Hoods Bay near Whitby, England. Not really a beach and not very sunny but this picture reminds me of a lovely little trip (for my birthday again) with my P and his parents. We had such a lovely time visiting all the little beaches near by.

This is the end of my brothers garden in Portsmouth, England. That's his jetty sticking out in the left hand corner. It's not his boat though. He wishes it was! He has a lovely little family of swans who come visiting every morning.

Roll on next holiday! I can't wait for some more of the good stuff!

Don't forget about my little giveaway - I've only had 5 entries so far which is a bit disappointing! I was hoping some new friends might come out of the woodwork but it's all quiet on the Western Front so far! Please have a look and share your gardening ideas with me!

Hope you are all enjoying the sun... somewhere in the world!

Garden-spirtation (and there's a prize in it for you!)

(Garden-Inspiration in case you were wondering.)

I've lived in this house for four years now and have been meaning to sort my garden out for three and a half of those years. We're quite limited as to what we can do with it really. Most of it is in shade for the whole day, there is only about six foot at the bottom that gets sunshine till about lunchtime due to the shadow cast by four floors of house plus a dorma extension on the roof. Because it's always shaded, it's very damp and we get a lot of weeds and moss growing. The house is over one hundred years old so back in the days of coal burning fires, the poor garden was used as a dumping ground for all of the charred coal for probably seventy years. If we are going to have a decent garden out there, we need to get a little digger in and dig that crap out and replace it with good soil.

This is what we've got at the moment (before shots with out house and after):

We also need to get rid of that giant bush you can see on the right - the bumble bees love it when it's in flower and the birds love it when it's covered in berries in the winter but it's just too big. It fills about half of the garden and the roots go so deep that you can't grow anything else in the bed with it.

These are a few pictures of gardens that make me smile. Gardens I'd love to have at the back of my house.

I love this idea of having little shelved built into the wall. This garden feels quite jungly to me which I like. I think I'd feel protected and hidden away by the big palms. I don't think they'd like my dark garden though.

I like the little stepping stones in this garden. I like the idea of a fairy tale garden. The coloured pencils are fab as well. I can definitely see something like that in my garden! We are thinking of decking the top half of the garden in covering it with lots of pots so this little area would be great in the bit at the bottom that gets the sun.

This is the same garden as above from another angle. I think the teepee is really cool but don't think I'd have one in my own garden. The little wooden toadstools are cute as well. I adore the little mosaic butterflies on the wall, I'm going to have a go at one of those.

This garden is great, there is no space at all but the owner has been really creative in making the most out of the space. LOVE the toilet planter! I saved the old toilet from our out house so that I could make one of these. This photo was taken in Whitby and I love how they have brought in aspects of the sea and fishing by using the rope up the stairs and can you see in the top right, there is a crab cage used as a hanging basket? Love, love, love it!

These are the kind of flowers I'd like to see in my garden. I like the idea of having lots of wild, meadow type flowers like fox gloves, poppies, thistles, lavender, blue bells... 

I'd also like to try and attract butterflies and bumble bees into my garden. My P bought me a butterfly house for my birthday a couple of years ago and it's been sat in the outhouse ever since!

So dear friends, I call on your gardening knowledge to help me! What kind of plants could I use to achieve something like in the pictures above? Do you have a gorgeous garden that you'd like to share? Send me some pics and I'll put them on here. If you have a clever gardening friend or know any green fingered fellow bloggers, send them over to my blog so they can help out too! I'd love to make some new bloggy friends! Send me your ideas. 

I'm thinking there will be a prize for the best idea! I can't really give away a plant, but how about a couple of my lavender filled hanging hearts and a pack of my lavender shoe scents?

I've got someone coming to give us a quote to re-build the wall on Monday so once that is done, we can get started. I'll post work in progress photos as we go along.

P.S For all of you who have been watching from a far and sat shyly in the shadows, please let me know that you're there and leave me a comment so that I can love you right back! To be in with a chance of winning, please add yourself as a follower and mention it in your comment. For a second chance, send a friend or two my way and mention that in your comment!

Thank you for reading and I love you all dearly!

xxx

P.P.S On Friday 11th of June, I will be going to a Landscape Architecture Exhibition at my P's work so what better date to end this giveaway?

#3 Try one new recipe a month

Egged on by my 101 in 1001 challenge and my competitive streak (I am trying to win the competition over at Sherri's little house) I have been sweating it up in the "test kitchen" all weekend trying new recipes out. And I don't mean recipes out of books, I mean recipes out of my head! Yep, just chop it and chuck it in the pan!

I have made enough meals to feed us for a month which are now all stacked up in their little tupperware dishes in my freezer, ready to be defrosted every night when I crawl in from work too tired to know my ass from my tomato.

I made:

Proper chicken stock (about 4 litres of the stuff for use in said recipes)

6 portions of chilli with my secret ingredient (ate one portion last night with nachos baked with fresh red chilli and cheese)

Beef casserole with red onions and wholegrain mustard (still in the Slo-cooker but it smells great already)

Some roast veg to serve up with butter and garlic tossed pasta... or in Yorkshire puddings.... or on toast with a drizzle of olive oil

Greek pork shoulder (Deeeeeelicious - ate them tonight and the one I'm entering into Sherris competition!)

A batch of my yummy cupcakes

Because it turned out so well (seriously - I took it out of the Slo-cooker at 11.30 last night, tasted it to make sure it was OK and nearly ate the whole lot there and then!) I am going to share my recipe with you and if you don't already have a Slo-cooker (Crocpot? in the US) then I absolutely recommend that you run out and buy one right now. I love mine! They are so quick and easy to use and I've never had a bad meal come out of it! Anyway, this is not an advert for a Slo-cooker, this is supposed to be a recipe!

This will serve 6 people or is great for freezing too.

6 big pork shoulder chops (a cheaper cut than normal pork cops but really tasty and no fat or bone)

1 big white onion

A couple of big cloves of garlic

1/4 pint of homemade chicken stock (works best but bought would be fine as well)

A handful of green olives

2 bay leaves

4 sprigs of fresh thyme

Fry the garlic and onions in a drop of olive oil until slightly golden. Add the bay leaves, thyme and olives. Give it a quick stir and then chuck in your pork chops. Let them get slightly bronzed on each side before adding the stock. Bring to the boil and transfer to your Slo-cooker. Cook on low for about 8 hours.

If you haven't got a Slo-cooker, you could also use a pressure cooker... or if you haven't got one of them you could just cover the pan and cook that way (not for 8 hours though!!!) but the meat won't be as tender and the flavours won't mingle as well.

Once cooked, I served it with garlic sweet potato mash and a selection of vegetables.

To make the mash:

1 sweet potato (this will make enough mash for 2 people)

1-2 cloves of garlic

A dollop of butter

Salt & Pepper to taste

Boil the sweet potato until soft. Pour off the water. Fry the garlic in the butter in a saucepan, add the sweet potato and give the whole lot a good mashing. Salt and pepper to taste and your done!

Et voila! Bon appétit!

And for desert? One of these bad boys of course!

Handmade bunting... my favourite thing to do

One of my favourite thing to do (and I have no idea why!) is to hand sew bunting! Metres and metres of the stuff! I love the Country Fete look when it is strewn all over the place. There is something really therapeutic about sitting in front of the telly with lots of squares or triangles and making them into lovely decorations to hang around the house or to decorate a wedding, christening or birthday party.

When I got married, we had a proper traditional English wedding in this church....

With this view....

So I decided that I wanted to have a real village fete style to my reception. 

I wanted lovely wild flowers like lavender, rosemary, hydrangea, freesia, sweet peas, roses. Not in proper arrangements, just simply put in old glass jars and vases and scattered with no pattern all around the room. I did the same with candles in lots of different coloured glass containers. My local charity shop loved me - I absolutely cleaned them out of their glass ware!

I wanted butterflies - on everything! I hand punched butterfly confetti using an old book of love poems, I had little feather butterflies in my bouquet (which I designed myself), butterflies on the invitations (which Paul and I designed, printed and hand tied with pink ribbon ourselves!) in the church, in the flowers, on the buttoneires. I designed my own cake, complete with butterflies! I even got up early on the morning of the wedding to make little butterfly hair grips for my hair!

And to complete the look, I wanted handmade bunting to go around all of the tables. I spent months. Seriously. Months. Hand sewing 100 metres of bunting! But, it was so worth it! The end look was amazing. I was so pleased when I saw the finished hall with all of my hundreds of hours of designing,  sewing, printing, punching, arranging.... the whole thing was beautiful. Because everything was handmade, our wedding hardly cost us anything but we got so many comments about how nice all the decorations were and a lot of people said it was the nicest wedding they'd been to!

More recently, I designed some personalised bunting for my gorgeous little Nephew Charlie for his christening which was on Valentines Day. I decided to go with a heart theme and appliqued a heart to the square on either end and then I did little hanging fabric hearts to hang on the ends. I appliqued his name and zig-zagged all around the edges in lovely red thread. I also bought some little red heart buttons for some extra detail but in the end I thought it looked better without. I got loads of comments on this one at the christening.

I've been thinking about my Etsy store a lot lately, I haven't put anything in it for a long time, I kind of gave up! But I'm thinking (as per the list) that I'll give it a second chance - this time selling stuff I really enjoy making - like my bunting and confetti. I think I will also add a shop page to my blog so people can buy straight from me if they want to. I really love doing the personalised bunting. My friend is getting married this summer (her new name is going to be Lavender - isn't that gorgeous?) so I think I'm going to do one for her in all different shades of lavender and hang some little hand tied lavender bouquets on either end.

So, to get myself back into practice, I was thinking I might do a little giveaway on here! Watch this space for details!

Wanna see something cute?

This is me on my first holiday at 9 months old. My parents drove me right across Europe in their old Ford to visit my Aunt and Uncle in Munich (Germany). This is me with my cousin Florian at the Springfest (Oktoberfest's little sister) - the heart around my neck is made out of gingerbread and I still had it hung on my wall at my parents house until a couple of years ago! I spent the whole night dancing on that table - which my Auntie took delight in telling all of our table neighbours at Oktoberfest last year! 

After our stay in Munich, we drove on to Austria where it was still thick snow in the mountains! I was well loved because of my rosy English chubby-chops - everywhere we went, people would want to pick me up and cuddle me! 

I still go back whenever I can to Munich. It always feels like going home!

This is me last year at Oktoberfest, with my Auntie Helga - notice what I've got around my neck again?

...and with the biggest bretzel I've ever seen and a glass of beer the size of my head!

No dancing on tables this time though!

No. 1 - Do at least one sketch book painting a week...

Remember the challenge?

Well, number one on my list was to do at least one sketch book painting a week. I haven't done any paintings, I thought I would start with doing a few drawing exercises first. 

It's been so long since I drew something... I know I draw when I paint but when I do that it's just a really simple line drawing because I know I'm going to fill it with paint. I've decided to have a separate sketch book just for sketching. I'm going to teach myself how to draw again. To really look at things. To shut down my brain and stop listening when it is telling me that I'm seeing one thing when actually, if I looked with my creative brain, and turned off my logical brain, I would see something totally different.

I'm not going to draw in pencil. I'm going to be bold and daring and draw in pen. Nice black inky pen. No rubbing out, no tearing up. No matter how bad it comes out, I'm going to keep it and look back on it to see how (if?!) I've improved in the weeks to come. I'm also going to make a note of how I feel when I do a sketch. If I feel excited, nervous, silly, embarrassed... whatever. I want to be able to see how my outlook changes, how my confidence grows.

I've been feeling a bit creatively suffocated lately. I feel like all I do is get up, go to work, come home, cook dinner, have a shower, watch telly and go to bed and then start the whole cycle again the next day (except at the weekends when my P makes me put away all my shoes and pick my weeks clothes up off the floor - I tell him I'm messy because I'm creative). That isn't the life I want. I don't want to be suppressed by life (not by my P, he is really supportive of my artsy tendencies... in fact I think he feels he urge too sometimes). I was born creative, I don't want to kill that off while I've still got so much life to live.

So, I'm giving myself a new challenge. I'm going to challenge myself to see beauty in every day things, to look differently and see things for what they really are. Make time to draw, paint, take photos, write... whatever the mood dictates.

They say that as long as you have all the right letters to make a word, it doesn't matter what order you put them in, as long as it is in the middle of a sentence; people will still read the right word - their brains are telling them what they expect to see, not what they actually see. I think it's the same with drawing. In my sketchbook tonight, I drew a mug, without looking at one. When I had finished, I went and looked at a mug. I mean really looked at it. When I was drawing, my brain was saying "Well the mug is on a table so it needs a flat bottom..." so that's what I drew. But when I looked at my mug later, it hasn't got a flat bottom at all... not even when it's on a table. Have a look. It's round like the top.

I really should get a scanner at home... I'll have to scan my sketch book at work on Monday to show you what I've been doing. Watch this space.

Sleep tight, mind the bed bugs don't bite

xxx

Kicking and screaming in Thailand

When I was 16, my Mum and Dad dragged me to Thailand. I say dragged, there would be absolutely NO dragging these days! I'd be the first on the plane! But I was 16 and grumpy. Probably hormonal. With a boyfriend who I couldn't bear to be separated from for more than 30 seconds. So, I was dragged, kicking and screaming to Thailand.

I tried my hardest to hate the place. I wanted to make damn sure that my parents realised how they had ruined my life by taking me there. But within a day (after a good 6 hours throwing up from jet-lag) I'd forgotten all about being a grumpy teen and started loving this strange place I was in. Hot like an oven from the moment we stepped off the plane. Tropical flowers so unusual that surely they weren't real. Beautiful people who would do anything to help you. This was a little piece of paradise that I hadn't expected. Every night, we climbed into bed only to find a perfect pink orchid lying on our pillow. Had I some how got off the plane at the wrong stop - isn't this heaven?

I got to do all kinds of things I've never done before. 

I saw a floating market in Bangkok. These men and women, floating up the murky waters on their tiny boats laden with Papaya, Banana's, Mangoes, straw hats... it was just like being at a supermarket only the food comes to you!

It is where I found my love of all things primate. This little fella thought he could have a little chew on my finger... unbeknownst to me!

It's where I fell in love with elephants. We went to a kind of rescue centre where there were loads of them, you could help feed them, watch them having their baths, even get a lift if you wanted!

That's me and my little brother up there!

We went on an elephant trek through the rainforest in Chiang Mai which still remains one of the best experiences of my life! The man leading my elephant through the lush forest let me climb down from the basket on the elephants back to sit on his head (the elephants head that is!) with my legs dangling behind his big, swooshy, floppy ears. I thought he would be smooth and downy but he was really prickly - kind of like a toilet brush! I don't have a photo of us in the rainforest, the album they were in got lost when I was at uni which is heartbreaking because it was before the days of digital cameras so once they're gone, they're gone. I managed to find one set of negatives which I've had put on CD (which is why I'm sharing) but there must have been another roll which now seems to be gone forever.

I did my first dive in Thailand. Off a little island called Raja Noi which is just near Phuket. I remember being terrified. But my brother took hold of my hand and didn't let it go throughout the whole dive! We saw some amazing fish, I have no idea what they were, but the colours were magnificent and they were so graceful. Being down under that cool, still water, looking at such beauty that I had no idea existed, I felt so completely calm and relaxed (strange for me as I hate water. Especially sea water!), if I'd have had enough air, I probably would never have come back up! When we came up for lunch, I was watching Michael swimming in the crystal clear azure water around the boat when I saw a shadow below him. Not a big shadow. Well, it was bigger than him. It was a reef shark. Only a tiddler luckily and certainly not a man eater but I know if it had been me in the water, I would have needed a change of pants quick smart! He just calmly swam to the boat and climbed on board! Again, I don't have any underwater shots as they were in the lost album but I do have one of us about to jump in. My Mum came with us because she couldn't sleep the night before for worrying about her babies going diving by themselves!

Thailand is also where I discovered that I should stay out of the sun!

Me looking rather like a lobster on the hotel beach in Phuket.

Mostly though, Thailand was my first taste of real travel. We have traveled all my life, my parents drove me across Europe when I was only 9 months old! But this is definitely the holiday that got me curious about the rest of the world. It made me wonder, what else I might find, what people, what food, what flora and fauna, what unique wildlife. Every country has something new and amazing to offer, Thailand made me realise that, and it made me hungry for more.

Happy May day!