raindrops on roses

raindrops on roses - one of my favourite things.

other strong contenders for yesterdays favourite; coffee with friends, hunting for goblins, fountains, the sheer joy in a child's eyes at the sight of a Huge chocolate milkshake, a choice of 3 gluten free cakes (I might just have alarmed friend with squeals of delight.....), a quilt to snuggle in on a chilly evening, relief that the tiny local sports shop did indeed sell individual football studs and we didn't need to drive miles searching, homegrown courgettes in a risotto (apart from when I peeled my finger instead of the courgette, but apart from that....), giggling at texts about campers trying to put up satellite dishes, kendal mint cake.

what's your favourite thing right now?

let the summer begin

First week of the summer hols;
the first visitors of the summer have been and gone. a trip to the beach and our local fave National Trust estate to tire them out.
the school uniforms have gone in the wash. apart from E's trousers which have gone in the bin; too short and too many holes.....
the school timetables have come down. hurray.
the annual summer calender (made from a huge piece of wallpaper taped to the side of the fridge) has gone up.
E has happily written in the 4 days of football camp he has this week
Miss K wrote in a trip to the library and a visit to a friend for this afternoon.
tomorrow morning we have coffee with a blog friend. last time we met there was much discussion about whether she would be an axe murderer or not, hence the labelling......

she has also drawn lots of sweets on Thursday's square. I assume this is wishful thinking.

hope the first week of summer is lovely for you. xxx

a balance

I turned on the computer late last night to write a post that balanced out the garden one from the previous Friday. I'd taken photographs of nettles and bindweed rampaging amongst the flower beds and the beans, and of piles of rubbish next to the shed, and of the grass that is growing through into next doors garden and probably driving them mad.
but I didn't quite get the photos uploaded, or the post written.

you see every time I turn on the computer I find more and more "social networks" to distract me.

first of course is google reader, where I catch up with all your news, then this week I joined twitter - and I can honestly say hand on heart, "I don't understand it...."

and then there is pinterest. miles and miles of inspiring things to look at, to like and repin and comment on, and giggle at the comments of others, coffee lady and Lynn have a hilarious thing going on about bicycles and muffins....
I do have a problem with pinterest though, much as I love it, oh and boy do I love it, but I get this sense of overwhelming when I spend too much time on it. so much to create, so many beautiful things I'd love to have, so many kitchens to get green with envy over, endless gorgeous hairstyles I know my hair won't create, places to go, endless things to make and eat and .........

lastly there's facebook. it's a funny thing facebook, I have friends who I see every week, friends who live across the road, relatives I've not seen for years as they live in foreign lands, friends from years gone by, blog friends, and friends of friends. whenever I log on I catch up with little snippets of news from far and wide - news of my sisters engagement (bet not everyone finds out this way....) and of new blog posts to check out, and photos of parties and holidays and all manner of things. every once in a while I'm even on at the same time as a friend and then you can "chat" as I did this week with Lynn, almost a real time conversation, the occasional "hurry up" thought, as facebook informs you that ..... is typing. so much to say. so much news to catch up on.

last night it was different though. I read one update that stopped me in my tracks. someone wrote that her husband had died suddenly only a short time after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. he was just starting his chemotherapy treatment. and was only 2 years older than me. I suddenly didn't know what to think, we didn't know him well, he was the brother in law of one of my oldest friends, but we'd seen him last summer and no one could fail to like him. I felt an urge to shut off from everything, enough, no more information, I don't want to read posts like this, I'd rather not know, and I decided to just walk away from it all, no more, I shall become a hermit, a technophobe, delete all my accounts.

but you can't hide, the information is still out there, and it doesn't go away just because you ignore it. so I realised that this is the balance, the negative that comes with the positive, the north and the south, I can't just have the pretty pictures and show off my garden, and admire cupcakes, and dream about quilts and wooden worktops. there is a real world out there too, and I can't pretend it doesn't exist. life isn't perfect, and I can't hide from that, and the support and inspiration and friendship that I get from being here is the balance I need, but it requires a certain amount of honesty, I should have photographed my nettles last week, instead of pretending that everything was perfect, and but I'm not going to show you them now - this post is long enough already.

this week

this week I have mostly been - picking raspberrys, a precious few....



and strawberries - the birds ate the rest.........



loving my new long flower bed, and it's teeny tiny lavender plants

pulling up Lots of weeds from the raised veggie beds,

nurturing small seedlings in what the children have christened the "grand cascade"

delighting in the bunting that Miss K hung on the chicken run

and admiring this alium.

it took a lot of work to get the garden fit for a photo shoot, so I'm going to wish you all a very happy weekend and go and pour myself a glass of wine. we have the first quiet weekend in what seems like forever, so we're are going to enjoy it, the answer machine is getting turned on, the mobiles are getting turned off, and I have serious plans to drink tea and read a magazine!

hope you all have a lovely weekend whatever you do, I hope there is some relaxing in there somewhere. xxx

June hunting

childhood memories - old books, cutlery - I love these tiny spoons
tree branches - baby crab apples, night - I've used this before but I love it.



beginning with z - zebra, wheel trim - lego
view from the door, cheese - a whole shop of it!



town name on the town crier, farm animal - harriet
elephant - in the fair trade shop, architectural detail - on a random wall.

I took most of these today with two helpers who were off school, it's much easier with helpers!

wonder vitamins and oh boy did I need them

good grief I don't feel like my feet have touched the ground recently, preparing for the arts festival, the event itself, a hog roast we were co-hosting - did I forget to mention this, yes we had a street party in our garden co-hosted with our next door neighbours, and invited the whole street, plus a few extras so that in total we had 29 adults and 11 children. I was enormously thankful that the rain of the morning eased off, and that all most of the time most of the people were outside! The last people left left at 11.30pm, the clearing up went on a bit longer than that..... and then I was back at the stall at 9.45 the next day - which was bakingly hot, and I longed to walk on the beach and not be in a rather stuffy room....... oh and now we're getting ready for my mum's 80th party, this morning I have been out and bought gorgeous candle lantern stakes, and found sparklers in the garage leftover from bonfire night, and there's a long to do list....

the arts festival itself went really well, so thank you all so much for your lovely supportive comments, I met some great people, felt really part of a fantastic community event, and managed to resist spending Too much money on some of the incredible talents that were on show. I did get a few treats, and I'll photograph them later.

anyway as I mentioned last week I was sent some vitamins to trial/review from B Record Plus and whilst it is so incredibly difficult to know whether something has had an effect, as you can't tell how you would have been without it, I do think that having had some extra help this week has been incredibly useful, and although everything was extremely tiring I did still feel great for most of the time, whether the effect of the vitamins, or the placebo effect or adrenalin to get me through I can't be sure but I'd like to think they helped, and I'm still feeling full of beans so to speak so the effect seems to last longer than the 10 day dose. There's loads of scientific sounding stuff on the website, and here , which will try to convince you of it's virtues, I have to say I'm not one to be baffled by science, and whilst some of it sounded superficially good, I wasn't convinced by all the technobabble. but then I'm a cynic when it comes to science, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, so perhaps I am just being a humbug. Most likely this in fact as I get very cynical about the scientific stuff about moisturizers and makeup etc too....so in my truly unscientific opinion;

• I think it probably worked, and certainly taking something and doing something proactive about your health is a great way to remind you to be healthy in other ways "shall I eat that large bar of chocolate? mmm maybe not it might counteract the posh vitamins I just took"


• I've had more energy, felt less hungry and slept better.


• has to be taken first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. this was surprisingly hard to me, I don't function till I've drunk a cup of tea, so for 3 days I didn't start the course of 10 treatment as I kept having a cup of tea first thing... then I put the box next to the bed, and I still forgot 3 of the day days and had tea first. perhaps I should have reviewed a memory supplement.....


• you have to twist the cap and shake the powder into the liquid, no matter how much you shake it still mostly sticks to the side of the jar. I always had to add water to the empty bottle and shake it again, so as not to waste any precious magical potion. which wasn't a bad thing as the water counteracted the next point.


• it tastes bad. artificially sweet, I for one would have preferred not to have the sweet taste.


• will I try it again. maybe. would I recommend it. yes I guess so.

thank you B Record Plus for the sample, have to go, I've got birthday bunting to make, one or two empty wine bottles to go to the bottle bank, an extra choir rehearsal tonight, a cottage picture to alter, a heap of stuff that needs to find it's way onto folksy, and one day I soon I really need to finish E's quilt, it is beginning to haunt me.....

hope you are all enjoying the sunshine, and that's not too hot for you, it's just about right here, and I'm loving it. x

Arts Festival

the stall is all set for the Alnmouth Arts Festival,



tonight was the preview evening, and I am now enjoying a much needed cup of tea.



tomorrow I am going to wear much comfier shoes......

my friend sheshe-lala brought her gorgeous bags, and we had loads of fun setting it up. you can't see the gorgeous ladder turned into amazing display unit as we've laden it with bags, but it's under there, and you'll have to take my word for it, it's great. I can tell we're going to have a fun weekend, we've already met some lovely people, and in a magical moment of blog world meets real world I met Primrose Patch who came up to introduce herself, it was lovely to meet you!

Have a lovely weekend everyone, I'm looking forward to Monday, there are hundreds of items in my google reader and I'm planning on spending a whole day with tea and cake and a laptop and catching up with you all. till then......