Escape to the Country

I have always been and will always be a country girl through and through. The older I get ( I’m now quite old! ), the more I find I cant stand being in busy built up places and both Alex and I have noticed we are favouring more small shops in out of the way places. The country life is one that I have always dreamed of and I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to live in small village surrounded by the countryside.

I love the slower pace of life and having the opportunity to make and create beautiful things for our home. Alex has been off this week so we have taken the opportunity to make some lovely things.

We went to Chatsworth farm shop and bought some glorious produce such as farm made mayonnaise, smoked garlic and clotted cream. When we are visiting these farm shops we are always drawn to the oils and salts that are flavoured with amazing ingredients as it inspires us to make our own. With the smoked garlic bulbs we made smoked garlic oil, smoked garlic salt and smoked garlic butter.

Once the butter had set, I put it in a tub in the freezer so it is ready to be used for garlic breads and on potatoes.

The garlic salt smells wonderful and will be used on sweet potato wedges and in recipes.

We harvested some lovely apples from our tree and I made apple jelly to go in gravy and I also made Victoria plum jelly too, so we have a few jellies to use on our winter roasts, wonderful.

This is the product of an afternoon in the kitchen, with chilli salt, apple jelly and a bottle of cherry syrup. Time well spent I think.

Alex has been busy with her needle again and made some pretty bedroom decorations.

A gorgeous posy cone for holding dried flowers and used as a wall hanging.

Three beautiful heart decorations, two for the tie backs on the window and one for our vintage blanket box handle. They make it look so cosy in there.

Four pretty bags for keeping dusters, cloths and our new bamboo reusable kitchen roll sheets in.

And finally a deco long stitch picture to add to our collection in the stairway. Fabulous.

We are fortunate to have a brilliant charity shop in the next village, so we can get lovely things and give them a good home. This little bounty that includes soaps, jars, tins and cross stitch books, cost us just £12. I love a good bargain almost as much as I love knowing we are helping to stop unwanted things going into the landfill. We are really trying to reduce our carbon footprint and today we added to that by buying bamboo toothbrushes and bathroom scrubbies made from cloth rather than plastic.

On the home improvement front, there have been some big changes.

We have added shelves to our front porch to house all the jars and bottles for our homemade produce.

And I mentioned last time that we were having a new kitchen, well here it is.

A gorgeous new country kitchen complete with cream fridge and pretty curtains and door knobs.

It looks stunning and Alex has really worked hard to make it look just the way I wanted it.

Obviously, we had to have new country style crockery that was just as pretty as the kitchen! It makes me so happy every time I go into the kitchen to know that it is the perfect country decor to match our heavenly country life. Next time, there will be more produce from the allotment and more homemade pretties as we make the most of this glorious fruitful time of year.

TTFNXX

Summer Dreams

Summer has begun, both in weather and because I broke up from school. Woohoo! Coronavirus has made this year quite tough for so many people and I am glad to not have to think about it for a bit and just enjoy being at home. Lots of planning has been taking place as to what I want to make while I am off. My last day at work was lovely, as everyone was in a good mood. I got a beautiful orchid from my tutor group and some booze and a big bunch of flowers from my faculty leaders. I also got lovely cards from students too.

But let’s not think about school for a little while, for the next five weeks, I am a fully fledged vintage housewife.

The allotment harvest has really begun now. We dug up our garlic and onions and laid them out to dry for a couple of weeks.

I have one shelf of garlic bulbs and two of onions and I am so proud of them. They will keep for ages and provide lots of flavour to our meals.

I made mint syrup and plain syrup for drinks and some rose petal jam too.

I really wanted to make my own lemon curd as I had heard that the homemade stuff is so much better than shop bought, and they weren’t wrong.

It is both creamy and zesty at the same time and you can’t help but feel happy when you look at the glorious sunny colour. Lemon curd tarts will be made this week.

Our broad beans and purple beans have grown in abundance after all the rain and sunshine, so we have been enjoying those in a variety of ways and yesterday we harvested carrots and our first cauliflower too, so all of the veg for our roast dinner is homegrown today.

I can’t describe how happy this lovely basket of harvested veg and eggs makes me feel. There is an amazing satisfaction in growing your own food.

The chickens lay for us everyday, so we always have fresh eggs to enjoy and I can’t wait to bake with them in the coming weeks.

Happy chickens enjoying a treat to say thank you for all the eggs.

The allotment is beautiful and sitting out there on a warm hazy evening is a true delight. It is so peaceful and it really helps to de-stress after a busy day at work.

Since this photo was taken, we have added two new beds, that have new onions planted in them and a variety of cabbages and chard.

We now have six beds, wow, we never dreamed we could grow as much as this!

Some evenings we do sit and enjoy our home crafts, though and Alex has been busy making cross stitches for our stairway.

We are currently discussing having a new kitchen put in that will give us more cupboard space and my absolute dream of a vintage style fridge. It will be styled like a vintage country kitchen and will hopefully be ready in a few weeks time, so stay tuned for that. Could life get any better? I’m not sure it can but you never know, there is so much joy to grab hold of and treasure. Bliss!

TTFNXX

Growing Nicely

It has been so busy round here lately. I thought that living in the country would provide a slower pace to life, but the trouble with deciding to grow your own veg and produce amazing food from it and look after a house and garden, coupled with a full time job, actually means that you have to cram masses into your day. It is all worth it though. We did manage to fit in a short trip to Bakewell last week, where we picked up some speciality cheeses.

The allotment is coming on nicely and we have been harvesting most days. We are enjoying lots of sugar snap peas that are great cooked but also delicious eaten raw in salads.

It started off with just a few being ready, and now there are handfuls ready to be picked each day.

Silver skin onions were also beginning to be ready, so we dug up a few of those for salads too. I can’t wait until I have lots ready in one go and then I will pickle them.

Homegrown garlic and spring onions too, blimey we are going to stink if we keep eating garlic and onions!

The strawberries are ripening now but they often get eaten as soon as they are picked by Alex.

We are really excited today, because all of our veg on our roast dinner will be homegrown by us. One of our broccoli plants is ready, as is a cabbage and of course, sugar snap peas.

I am so impressed we managed to grow the broccoli as it looked quite sorry for itself when we first put it in the ground, but we kept feeding and watering and they have all grown successfully but this one was the first one ready.

The outer leaves of the cabbages have the odd slug sized hole in them but overall we have been mostly successful at keeping them off.

Perfectly prepped veg ready for a fabulous roast dinner tonight.

By far the most exciting news is that the chickens began laying this week. I went to put them to bed on Thursday night and found three perfect eggs waiting for me, one from each hen, thank you ladies!

Yes my hands are a bit mucky, but I had just come straight from a chicken coop. The eggs are delicious and so far we have had eight eggs, and I will have more waiting for me tonight no doubt.

Hopefully these eggs can make some spectacular cakes from the recipes in our new be-ro book. Alex ordered this online and it is chock full with gloriously old fashioned and classic bakes. Brilliant!

Alex made cherry cake and marmalade cake yesterday, so we won’t be short of cake this week. I made rose petal jam which sounds weird but tastes amazing and I will include a picture next time. For now it’s time to get stuck into cooking a fabulous roast, because Sundays just wouldn’t be the same without it.

TTFNXX

Time Restraints

Do you ever wish that you had more time in the day to complete the things you would like to get done? We do!

Working full time does mean that our spare time is a bit limited and it sometimes feels like we are having to cram as much into our day as possible. These past few weeks, I have been getting the year 11’s ready for the assessments that have replaced GCSE’s this year and helping them to get as much evidence in their books so they can prove their capabilities and hopefully get the grade they deserve. I’ve been coming home a bit tired and not wanting to be out and about in the allotment as much as I normally would. Alex always coaxes me out though and between us, we are beginning to see our lovely produce growing, now that it has finally begun to warm up.

We have been starting to reap the rewards of our efforts though. Yesterday, we decided to have a barbecue and enjoy the fact that the garden is springing back into life. Along with the usual burgers and chicken, we also ate a gorgeous salad made with our 6 varieties of salad leaves that we have grown.

I added a load of homemade croutons for a different texture.

We often visit a local farm shop and I always drool over the different sauces and infused oils on display but I don’t buy them as I am determined to make my own, so here is my own mint sauce made with our homegrown mint and a garlic and black pepper infused oil. This oil has been left for a couple of weeks to gain flavour and I used a little bit of it mixed with lemon juice to create a gorgeous punchy salad dressing for our salad yesterday.

It was lovely and warm yesterday and we enjoyed some iced tea, homemade lemonade and homemade fruit punch with our barbecue.

We have been reorganising the kitchen to accommodate the ingredients needed to make the vast majority of our food from scratch and it had to look attractive as well as being practical, so we invested in a mass of airtight jars to keep all the produce fresh and easily in reach.

It looks beautifully vintage and it means I am no longer searching through packets to find the things I use everyday, like flour, sugar, baking powder, porridge oats, mixed seeds and dried fruit.

I use lots of herbs and spices and butter, salt and honey in my recipes too, so these needed traditional homes as well.

My son is continuing to forage and is really enjoying it. He bought home a load of wild garlic, so I made wild garlic pesto which has a lovely delicate flavour. He also found some ST’ George’s mushrooms that he had on toast for breakfast and I fried some in butter to go with some steak we bought from the farm shop. They had a delicious intense flavour and beat shop bought mushrooms any day. We are very careful when foraging for food, especially mushrooms and we always use our trusty foraging books to make sure we pick things that are safe to eat.

Our fruit trees are doing well, with apples beginning to grow and we have pears too, I have even spotted a handful of Victoria plums growing on our young tree, so I am very excited to see if they continue to grow and ripen. The garden is beginning to grow again and I plan to enjoy sitting outside as much as possible while it is warm during this half term.

A good rest is needed so that when I go back next week, I can be less tired and enjoy being out in the garden and the allotment a bit more, especially as lots of work will be needed to keep everything growing nicely. Enjoy the weather.

TTFNXX

Allotment Fun

Last year during lockdown, we started to grow our own fruit and veg. The results were fantastic but there were times when it felt like we had a starring role in Day of the Triffids because we were surrounded by plants on our patio. I really wanted to grow more this year but I didn’t want any more of the garden to be taken up with vegetables, as it is so nice to be able to sit out and enjoy the flowers. With this in mind, we decided to take up an allotment. We are extremely lucky in that there is a row of allotments directly at the back of our house, so, this month, we rented one only 30 seconds walk away from our back door.

This is our allotment taken on the first day we got it. The view is lovely but it hadn’t been used for several years and so was very overgrown, but we were confident we could do something with it.

Part of the allure of an allotment was so that we could keep chickens on it and have our own supply of fresh eggs as well as lots of room for homegrown produce, so we took a deep breath and started work on clearing it. I chopped down the tall woody weeds while Alex set to work with a huge petrol mower that we picked up second hand. By the end of the first day, we could see a big difference.

We dug out the first bed and set up our new chicken coop. We plan to build a bigger run onto the side of the chicken house to give the chickens some more room. I only plan on having three chickens but I want them to have a good sized space to roam about in. Three chickens will be provide plenty of eggs for us to use.

Our first bed is lined with some roof tiles that we picked up for free because Alex has joined a free cycle group so that we can use things that others don’t want, to stop things from just being thrown away. We had a couple of piles of earth that needed to be sorted through in order to get as much of the soil off as we could and then the rest could be put into the compost. Alex bought home some pallets from her work that were being thrown away and made a huge compost bin out of them.

Next, we dug another bed and put our fruit bushes at one end and separated the rest off to use for our runner beans and sweetcorn plants and anything else that gets tall.

We bought a poly tunnel to go over another bed so that we can grow our seedlings in there and other plants that need a bit more protection, like strawberries.

We also brought our cold frame over from the garden, so that we could free up some more space on our patio for barbecues and alfresco dining, which is something we love to do.

Although there is still a lot of work to do, it is coming along nicely and we have now planted broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, Brussels, leeks, onions, garlic, runner beans, sweetcorn, chillies and sweet peppers, sugar snap peas, carrots and parsnips. Brilliant! In two black tubs we have planted potatoes too. The next job will be to get the chickens settled in and happy. We love being out there as it is so peaceful and it gets lovely and warm in the sunshine, not to mention the views of the fields and the little village we live in in the distance with the tiny primary school that is still going despite having only around 100 pupils. It is lovely and we are very aware that we are unbelievably lucky to have this space to enjoy.

In other news, my eldest and me made use of all the dandelions in the field around us and we made dandelion coffee with the roots.

Once brewed, this tasted surprisingly like ordinary coffee but without the caffeine. Then we made curried dandelion fritters out of the flowers.

I cooked these in batches and they made a great snack and tasted lovely. We also picked wild garlic and nettles to use for pasta dishes and soups. There is so many things that can be eaten that we don’t seem to bother with any more and it is such a shame.

Alex and I managed to find time to enjoy a quick trip to a charity shop, which we have missed greatly since lockdown. We got some new-to-us clothes and a very pretty treasure for our upstairs bathroom.

I’m not sure how much more our lives could resemble that of a couple of old ladies in the background of a Miss Marple, especially as I write this whilst Alex is completing a tapestry and we are enjoying a midsomer murders episode and the smell of a roast dinner is wafting its way from our kitchen, but I don’t care because we are very happy!

More news will come of the allotment, I’m sure.

TTFNXX

Going Green(ish)

You may have noticed that recently I have become a bit more aware about my own carbon footprint. This has been a natural progression that has occurred simply by looking for ways to reduce our food waste and live a bit more simply. From this, I began to notice how much plastic we got through, from bottles of shampoo to food bags and even anti bacterial wipes. So gradually, we started to look for alternatives. We began to make our own cleaning sprays that meant we could reuse the spray bottle and we swapped wipes for cotton cloths for the house. We also swapped face cleansing wipes for conditioning soap and muslin cloths. Little swaps here and there meant we were able to get used to the changes easier.

It also made it more easy to then look at other ways to cut down on waste. I stopped using shampoo that came in a bottle in October of last year, I swapped to using a totally natural shampoo bar and my hair has never looked or felt better. I never need to use a conditioner because the shampoo bar is made with coconut oil, so it leaves my hair lovely and soft. Alex recently bought me a gift set from my favourite company.

I tried their sample set and loved the products, so she bought me full size versions of their shampoo bar, body scrub bar, solid moisturising bar and lip balm. All of the packaging is either compostable or recyclable and they last for ages and smell heavenly. After stopping using the shampoo, it made sense to stop using shower gel too, so I now use soap bars in a sisal bag to wash with. They produce a great lather and the bag exfoliates my skin. I was over the moon to find out that moisturiser comes in a solid bar too so I could stop using the kind that came in a bottle or tub.

This bar comes in a tin so once it is used up, I just buy a new one to go in the tin, lovely.

I like to use perfume that has old fashioned scents such as lily of the valley or rose. Woods of Windsor is an old brand that uses glass bottles and makes beautifully old fashioned scents that last all day.

These three are my favourites, lily of the valley, white jasmine and true rose. I never get tired of how they smell and they come in pretty boxes and are just a treat.

Food waste is something we try to avoid as much as we can, so we looked into finding reusable bags for the freezer so I can make soup in batches and freeze individual portions that can be defrosted when wanted.

We found some great reusable freezer bags in Lakeland, so now, when me and my eldest go foraging, I can make a huge load of nettle soup that he can just go to the freezer whenever he wants any for lunch. They will come into their own as well when I make pesto, tomato based sauces and other delights from our home grown produce.

I always take a packed lunch to work with me and I began to notice how many plastic food bags I used to keep my lunch fresh, I hated this, so Alex found me a fabulous reusable food wrap.

This one has foil backing and it can be used to wrap up all manner of lunch time food, from crackers to bread or tortilla wraps, I even used it to wrap up some homemade crust less quiches that I had baked. Alongside my drinks bottle that has been made from recycled plastic, then I feel that I am doing what I can to cut down on my plastic use.

Food wise, we are making a real effort to eat healthily and simply, by making as much as we can from scratch so we know what has gone into it. I made a gorgeous breakfast recently of mushrooms on sourdough toast.

It was so delicious and wonderfully simple. We love our food, so this weekend we ordered a fabulous afternoon tea to be delivered as a treat.

I baked a Camembert alongside garlic so it was soft and we had that spread on warm cheese bread, then we had goodies like scones with cream and the most incredible homemade strawberry jam that had whole strawberries in it, butter shortbread biscuits, brownies and flapjacks all served alongside Cornish tea and sweet white fizz. The afternoon tea came in a cardboard hamper so again, there was no plastic waste. Perfect.

Alex has been working all through Covid and I have still been going into school every day to teach the more vulnerable kids, so we deserved a bit of a treat.

If you are thinking that Alex is always getting me nice presents but I don’t seem to get her anything, then just know that I recently bought her a massive screwdriver set but that isn’t pretty or vintage so it isn’t getting space on here!

TTFNXX

Ready, Set, Isolate!

Yes, it finally happened, the thing we knew was inevitable given the nature of our jobs, one of us got Coronavirus. As it happens, it was Alex who got it. We both went to work as normal two weeks ago on a Monday morning and half an hour after arriving, I was on my way back home again as Alex received a positive result as part of her work routine test program. So, it was hello to ten days of not being able to leave the house, which initially sounded very nice, but in reality turned out to be quite stressful. Working from home is not as easy as you imagine. I was able to speak to several of my students and some of the more vulnerable kids, and Alex was able to take phone calls and do her rotas for the week, but neither of us found it easy. Alex then felt a bit poorly and lost her sense of taste, so she was feeling a bit miserable.

We tried to keep ourselves as occupied as we could. I made cheese scones and brownies, which I informed Alex were delicious as she couldn’t taste them.

After all, producing food is always the best thing to do in any situation.

At the beginning of the year, we decided to try and get a bit fitter, and while we don’t eat badly, we do eat a lot. So, we have cut back on carbs and made sure that everything we eat is made from scratch, even the treats. We are now even making cauliflower and broccoli rice instead of ordinary rice. Tomorrow, we will be having homemade sweet and sour chicken with vegetable rice. We have been really enjoying the meals because it was vital to me that we didn’t cut back on taste.

This was one of our yummy evening meals a few weeks ago, which was chipotle chicken with homemade coleslaw, salad, flatbreads and vegetable rice. We really enjoyed it.

I am also trying to cut back on packaging where we can too, so to cheer us up and get a bit of retail therapy while staying indoors, we ordered some solid moisturising bars and shampoo bars that are made with completely natural ingredients.

These two bars are solid moisturisers, one for the feet and one for the body. They come in compostable packaging and smell totally edible and they do not contain palm oil either because the production of palm oil is ruining parts of the earth.

We bought a box of shampoo bars, which I love, as I really think my hair has benefited from only having natural ingredients put on it. They also last for ages and I probably won’t need anymore shampoo for a year now. You don’t need a conditioner with these bars either, so it’s less time in the shower trying to sort my stupidly thick hair.

We have been busy making things as usual, with me crocheting some vintage style hand warmers which will be needed this week.

I quite often get cold hands, and these are fingerless, so I can still do things while keeping my hands warm. Wool is always the best way to keep nice and toasty.

Alex made a beautiful posy cone to go on the bedroom wall. I love having flowers in the house, but Alex is allergic to them so I can’t have them in the rooms where we spend a lot of time. In the bedroom and the living room, I only have artificial ones and I save the real ones for the dining room.

When it means I can have something this pretty to keep them in, I really don’t mind.

This Friday, we were released from the indoors and allowed to return to work, which was such a relief, even if it was only for one day before the weekend. We used our new found freedom to go to a farm shop yesterday. I like to buy seasonal produce and other items that aren’t normally found in your average supermarket.

We bought some locally made red currant and port jelly to go in our gravy, some free range duck eggs and I also got my eldest son some olives. I hate olives, they make me gag but my son loves them and he put them on his homemade pizza that we had for dinner last night.

We also had to try this cherry wine, well of course we did.

We bought some gorgeous frozen fruit to use for dessert with our homemade yoghurt. It looks so beautiful with all the mango and melon pieces and we just filled a bag with however much we wanted and then we can reuse the bag when we go back.

I couldn’t resist a colourful medley of carrots to go with our roast today. These are all prepped ready for the oven now with olive oil and my homemade rosemary salt. I’m not sure that you can beat a roast dinner on a freezing cold windy winter day.

TTFNXX

Snow, Shoes and Sweet Things

It’s been a wee while since my last post and that is because literally NOTHING has happened! We are in the middle of another lockdown so we are the same as everyone else, in that we can go nowhere. Oh well. So how do we find joy and happiness in amongst all the doom and gloom, well by searching for it and not focusing on all the bad, for a start. Yes it has been extremely cold, but we got a few days where we had a very pretty blanket of snow covering our tiny corner of the world.

As this is about all we see of the outside apart from our route to work, then it is very important to make sure we enjoy it, so we sat and watched the snow fall for a while. It always looks really pretty and if I didn’t have to try and drive in it, then I would like a lot more of it.

We had some yummy food over the Christmas period and I had a go at making some cocktails to enjoy in the evening.

The one on the left is cherry, lime and gin and the other one is pomegranate, ginger and Prosecco. They were very nice but as we don’t drink much in our house, they lasted a good few days.

We had a fabulous selection of cheese, with Brie, Stilton, smoked, onion and cranberry to name a few. I love cheese and crackers and we bought a good selection of those too, including beetroot crackers! I made sausage rolls as well, because everyone loves sausage rolls. These were sausage, cranberry and apple rolls and Alex in particular, loved these.

Speaking of Alex, she has been baking and made us a delicious banana and nutmeg loaf for us to take to work for breakfast. As we are both still working because the care industry never stops and school is still open to critical worker’s kids and vulnerable students, then it is important to start the day with something that will set us up for a while.

The banana loaf is low sugar too, so it’s far better for us than cereals. She also made a chocolate loaf cake for after our Sunday roast because everyone needs a treat on a Sunday.

Not being able to go out and browse for tat, could well be a source of irritation for me, but moaning about it is pointless and solves nothing, so we found a way around for us to still shop for vintage crap during the lockdown. eBay of course. No we don’t have the joy of bringing home our purchases straight away, but we can still browse and pick up bargains, it just means we have to wait for the postman to bring them.

I was in need of some new shoes, and I had rather set my heart on a pair of brown boots, in a vintage style of course, and I found a beautiful pair that I couldn’t resist. I was happy with just getting these, until Alex found a gorgeous pair of Clarke’s brogues that were literally made for me. They are in oxblood leather and are like brand new and it would have been a crime for me to leave them sat on eBay waiting for a good home. So I got them both and just a week or so later, I had two new pairs of shoes to enjoy putting with my outfits. Awesome.

As it is always good to end on a sweet note, I will share a picture of some brownies that Alex ordered to be delivered to us as a new year treat. These were the best brownies I have ever had and they came all the way from a bakery near Blackpool. We had 6 plain and 6 chocolate orange, and no matter how I tried to line up my camera, there was no disguising the fact that one had been eaten by us already. They were so delicious, I’m not a bit sorry we couldn’t wait to try them.

I am quite sure we will find a way to fill the next few weeks of lockdown with more baking and cooking and hopefully some crafting and maybe even a little more browsing for bargains on eBay.

TTFNXX

Keeping Busy

Busy is certainly what we have been here in nowhere land of late, a certain virus caused a bit of chaos at school and we had an interesting few weeks of staff shortage that meant we had P.E teachers covering art lessons and engineering teachers covering science lessons. I am covering a new tutor group next week as we still have staff off who are isolating. The kids have been great though, and just got on with whatever work was thrown at them. I also had to conduct an English lesson over Teams because pupils were off isolating too, but it was all good fun. Two weeks left until Christmas now, so we shall see what those days have to offer.

At home, we have been enjoying the simple things in life, as usual. Alex has been baking like a mad thing so we have had lots of treats to enjoy.

Meringue’s were made from left over egg whites so that we could enjoy a beautiful raspberry version of Eton Mess.

The raspberries look amazing against the whiteness of the cream and meringue.

As we have rather a lot of jam, Alex made some jam tarts, which may look informal but tasted like heaven. I especially loved the ones with plum jam and fig preserve.

Lovely soft squidgy and gooey brownies, just the way I like them. Alex made these for after our roast on Sunday.

A beautiful chocolate trifle that was lovely and light and airy and didn’t take us long to polish off, either.

She also devised her own recipe for fruit and tea buns. These were great for breakfast, so great, in fact that we had almost eaten them all before we took a photo.

On the home front, we bought a decoupage kit a few weeks ago from a charity shop, so we decorated a rather boring lampshade together.

It looks lovely in our dining room and really goes well with the rich colours and dark wood that are the main themes of the room.

Alex also completed another cute cross stitch to go on the hall walls, it is like having her own personal gallery and one that is very much appreciated by me.

My quest to live a more sustainable life continues, and while I’m happy to kit myself out in second hand clothes, I do draw the line at under garments, obviously. I wear a lot of skirts and tights during the day and the tights can often be a bit of a problem. They are often not very well made and it is super hard to find ones that fit well and don’t wrinkle because I have very short legs. We found a company that specialise in tights for all shapes and sizes. They are a fair bit more expensive than your average high street varieties, but they are really well made and will last a lot longer. Best of all, they come wrapped and delivered to your door in totally recyclable packaging, so win win.

I got several pairs in several colours and already have plans to order more because the quality is amazing and I will get so much use out of them.

We are now looking forward to more cosy times at home as we celebrate the wonderful achievement of my youngest son securing a fantastic apprenticeship in business management. A real accomplishment in these difficult times. I am one proud mum!

TTFNXX

Pumpkin Spice and All Things Nice

I think it is safe to say that we are now definitely in Autumn. Last year I was not happy about summer ending and I vaguely remember sulking all the way through the colder months. This year has been a very different year though, and not one that will be remembered for many good reasons. To cope with all the doom and gloom that seems to be never ending, I have made a real effort to embrace every aspect of the seasons. I really enjoyed the amount of time I was able to have in the garden, due to a combination of the nice weather and lockdown forcing me to not be able to go to work. So as Autumn has approached, I have been turning my mind to all the cosy things that can be done indoors and focusing on the beautiful colours found everywhere I look.

Pumpkins are everywhere at the moment and are very cheap, so I have added a few to my shopping lists of late. As I have been on half term, I have been able to enjoy making some wonderful things with these gorgeous orange fruits. Obviously, I made pumpkin pies, but I also made a fantastic pumpkin and apricot chutney from a recipe I found in Country Living magazine.

This looked and tasted delicious and it will go beautifully with our speciality cheese on our Christmas Day buffet.

With the rest of the pumpkin, I made it into a purée and then made pumpkin muffins.

These are really yummy and are very autumnal with cinnamon and nutmeg in them too.

Alex made an amazing gingerbread to have after our Sunday roast. It was so beautiful and full of warm spices and was perfect with custard.

A friend of ours gave us some beautiful gifts recently. They knew of our love of vintage and our new found appreciation for chutneys and jams, so they put together a fabulous little haul of goodies.

Three beautiful display worthy jars of preserved loveliness in the form of green tomato chutney, apple chutney and wilderness jam, awesome!

A truly beautiful tea set that was made for our kitchen, with perfectly matching colours.

I genuinely think only I could get excited by a vintage toilet roll holder, but I don’t care. I have wanted one for our downstairs bathroom for a while, so I was thrilled when they gave us this pretty little example. It looks perfect on the back of the bathroom door.

Another friend of ours gave us a stunning Tiffany lamp. I have wanted one for ages because they are beautifully Art Deco and add a touch of Poirot to any room.

It looks like it was made for our dining room and it adds a whole heap of coziness to mealtimes now that the clocks have gone back.

Alex and I decided we couldn’t resist a final trip to Bakewell before we all get bunged into tier three, so we got our masks ready and spent a lovely morning charity shop shopping, the best kind.

We found this adorable salt dough decoration for our kitchen. I love these and this is a particularly fine example.

We found a set of unopened body scrubs and body butters that come in little tins so when they are used up, I will refill the tins with homemade salves. I also managed to find a little business that was selling completely natural homemade shampoo and soap bars, so I treated myself to a geranium and sweet orange shampoo bar. This will help cut down on my plastic use even more. They also sold little sisal bags to put soap in, to then use in the shower to replace a shower gel and body sponge, so I got one of those too, perfect. I am determined to only buy second hand clothes whenever I can too, in order to keep living a more sustainable life.

Two fabulous book finds were also brought back to a loving home, a double edition of the Miss Read books, and an unused Victorian decoupage pack. We will use this to create gorgeous photo frames and decorative boxes, because we don’t yet have enough tat filling our house. It’s all very beautiful tat though!

To finish this post on a fittingly autumnal tone, I have included a picture of Alex’s latest finished cross stitch. This is so pretty and has been added to our staircase walls, which are beginning to get what I like to call a ‘stately home’ look, with pictures covering everywhere. All the pictures on the stairway are cross stitch or tapestry and it looks fantastic.

I’m going to go now because Alex is making gypsy tart and Jamaican ginger cake and the house smells wonderful.

Happy Autumn!

TTFNXX