Living off the land

Happy 1st of May, where is this year going? true to style May has welcomed us with a day of torrential rain and clouds :( but hey ho who gives a damn we have a three day weekend coming up! Yeeeeehaa!

We have been busy bee's down the allotment lately, planting our early potatoes, onions, peas and broad beans. We already had leeks garlic and all the fruit trees planted ready to pop with fruit.
We added two new raised beds and a new wood chip pathway between to make weeding and tending a lot easier. Ernie came down with us to help and he was into everything! But he enjoyed himself.

Hopefully this year we can at least try to be self sufficient on the vegetable side of life. I have already used a lot of my flowers that i planted in my mini cutting beds to decorate the house which has saved us money each week shopping :)

The weather just lately has been lovely and i have even managed to squeeze in a couple of lunch breaks sunbathing in Golden Square (London) staring at the blue skies imagining it's summer.

I have some exciting new ideas for my little on line shop for the coming months to try and encourage a few more sales. The wedding is fast approaching and as Tesco like to say every little helps when it comes to money, so in the spirit of things i am offering £5.00 off all purchases over £10.00 (when you enter the coupon code SPRING2014 at checkout) to try and drive a few more peeps through my imaginary on line door.

Please pop by and take a look you never know something might take your fancy :) x
Click on the link below....
SHOP HERE! 

Banana bread and rolling waves.

Well January whizzed by and now we are almost at the end of February! The weather has been terrible here in the UK these past few weeks, torrential rain has meant lots of villages and towns have been flooded, railway lines have been destroyed and we have lost large swathes of the British coastline to the sea. Poor Cornwall and Somerset seemed to have taken the brunt of it all.
Kent didn't fair too badly, we had no flooding at all in our town just storm damage, missing tiles and damaged fences.
Our right hand fence to our back garden seems to be on its last legs but as we are due soon to have a new neighbor we are holding on to replace it as it is technically their fence (so we are waiting patiently).

Winter Olympics has started! How exciting, i just love the ice skaters and their funny faces they pull, check out this link it had me laughing for hours!

Last weekend we ventured out on the one clear day we have had in weeks to the seaside, Dungeness to be exact, for my dads birthday. It was such a beautiful day and so lovely to get out and about and blow away some of those cobwebs.
I just love Dungeness, so inspiring, i braved the gales and took a lonely walk around the huts in Dungeness village to wear of my fish and chips. Some of the huts date back to as far as 1800, and people live in them all year round with the eerie looking power station in the background.

The cake in the pics above was a banana bread, i was home alone just me and Ernie as Ashley was working on a Sunday so i decided to use up the last few mouldy looking bananas and bake a cake at the same time as cooking a roast, Get me! I'm the new Nigella :) (minus the cocaine of course!), it was gorgeous and only took me 50 mins to bake! who needs a cafe when you have hot banana bread and a Dolce Gusto latte to hand and the comfort of your own settee  :)

The Christmas that was....

Well the Christmas period is over and we welcome in the shiny new feeling of the New Year.

I have tidied away the decorations, the tree has been removed to a pot outside in the garden to try and revive itself and perk up a little. (it’s a live tree that should survive until next xmas fingers crossed) and the house is back to normal.

We had such a lovely Christmas, full of laughter love and lots of beautiful presents and far too much food! And the New Year was welcomed in with a bang at a friend’s house. We even managed to sneak in a mini break to Whitstable in between and spent a night in the Hotel Continental where we got engaged 5 long years ago next month!

All is back to normal now and to be honest i let out a large breath of relief. Christmas and the break is lovely but somehow it’s lovely to get back to normal, back to routine and a clear de cluttered home and i always find the New Year a great time to sort out all those loose ends. Things that need changing updating and modifying are top of my list.

Also i have a 30% off sale in my Etsy illustration shop to celebrate the New Year, just enter the code “new year” at checkout to receive the discount (available on all items above £5.00)

Wishing you all a very Happy 2014! May it be full of great things for you all.

x

Fowey fun

It's back to reality for me, Saturday i returned home from an amazing week away in the beautiful Cornish village of Fowey. (famous for its literary links to Rebecca, The Loving Spirit and Frenchman's Creek by Daphne DuMaurier and The Wind In The Willows) I spent the week in a Victorian Terrace house over looking the River with Ash, my mum and dad, sister and bro in law to be and Frank and Ernie. We walked, fished, read, and generally unwound. I ate my fill in Cornish Pasties and drank far too much Doombar (Cornish ale for those of you who don't know) it was amazing!
We also visited Boscastle which has the worlds only Witch museum, if you're in the area i highly recommend it it's amazing! The pictures above are of a mummified hand, the hair of a red headed virgin and the strange shaped things are mandrake roots said to scream when you pull them from the ground. We came away with some incense sticks and two candles said to increase creativity and calmness. I will definitely go back when i am in Cornwall again, such a strange and weird place!
It's back to reality now though with a bump :(
It is nice to return to our little home and i think Ernie likes to be back in his fluffy fleecy bed but i miss the views, the sea air and the beauty of the country side.

Oh well not long now till xmas that should keep me busy :)
xx