Chicken Ritz and Fencing Fun!

About a month ago we started making a new coop and run for the girls so that they would have more space to run around and we wouldn't have to let them out in the garden (so that we can actually grow some flowers!)

The weather and lack of daylight have been conspiring against us so it's taken a lot longer than we had hoped but, at last, we have finished!

The girls were ever so "helpful":



...but they seemed delighted when the they explored their new run and coop for the first time:




We finished late this afternoon and here is the finished product:



As you can see, they have a lovely new sage green coop, a big run with deep bark chippings for them to dig in and a big branch for them to jump and perch on. They were reluctant to go to bed this evening, I think because they were so excited and were jumping and flapping all over the place once we put the branch in there. It's lovely to see them with so much space and, once we finish painting the run (it was too wet today) it will also look nice in the garden and we can reclaim some of our lawn!

The reason that we have been able to find the space for their new super-size run is because we have decided to give up one of the raised beds because we have plenty of space at the allotment, which brings me to my next update...

On Saturday the core group of allotmenteers got together to take the final important step in finalising the Slade Area Community Allotment...we put up a fence! It was a real team effort, which made it all the more satisfying when we finished:




We finally have a permanent home for our sign and, I think you'll agree, it finally looks like an allotment!



We haven't managed to get anything in the ground yet but we're getting there and are hoping to sew some broad beans and garlic next weekend.

One of the trees at the allotment is showing some beautiful autumnal colour. I couldn't believe that one tree could be so many colours at once so I had to share:



Finally, I walked in the back door to find that we'd had a break-in! I couldn't believe it, I'd only turned my back for five minutes. They did leave some evidence, but I just can't think who it could have been...



(a word of warning to any aspiring "backyard" chicken keeper...never leave the back door open!

Groeten van Brugge!

("Greetings from Bruges!" in Dutch)

One of the reasons that I have been quiet for a few months is that we spent last weekend in the beautiful city of Bruges - a special trip to celebrate our fifth anniversary.

We got the Eurostar from St Pancras at 6.30am (thankfully we have friends who live near there so we stayed at their house - otherwise we would have had to get the first train form Tonbridge...at 4.30am!) and were in Bruges my midday.

Our hotel was on a canal in the centre of Bruges:



We didn't do all of the touristy things, preferring to avoid the crowds, but we did go on a boat tour and spent a lot of time wandering around the old city streets and sitting in old bars drinking trappist beer - which is delicious! Here are some of the highlights in pictures:











It really is a beautiful city and 2 nights wasn't really long enough - hopefully we'll be able to go again soon.

Woodland Wonderment

We spent a wonderful day today at the Woodland Workshop day at Bore Place, a local organic dairy farm. We've been to two of their open days before and they always deliver wonderful things.

I chose to do a morning workshop making besom brooms. These photos show the broom making in progress:





and here is the finished product:



I'm delighted with it because I've wanted an outdoor broom for ages and this will do just the trick. Now that I know how to make them I can also mend this broom if it loses bristles, which will be ever so useful.

Matt spent the morning building a woodland shelter and proudly told me that his team won the best shelter award (I don't have photos because I had the camera).

We then had an absolutely delicious lunch in the paddock. Wild boar sausages, jacket potatoes and tomato soup cooked over a camp fire. All local and organic, deeeeelicious!

We also took some time during lunch to watch the heavy horses at work, shifting logs in the wood. The horses were magnificent:




We also had a look around the craft displays which were there and both had a go on the lathe. Here's Matt in action:



We bought a lovely wooden dibber (which you can see in the broom photo above) from this chap, which will be perfect for the 100 free allium bulbs that arrived today!

We joined forces in the afternoon for some willow weaving and were delighted to see that one of our allotment group was also doing it. We made bugs, which was great fun. Here we are mid-bug:




(no comments about how much more photogenic Matt is than me please!)

...and here is the finished article (this is my one, which we both agree is the best!):



We haven't decided what to do with them yet but they'll be displayed pride of place somewhere!

At home today I also harvested some of our garden produce. We had yet more raspberries (although I think they're coming to an end) and a lovely little handful of red chillis:



There are quite a few green ones that I'll leave a bit longer to ripen so hopefully, once dried, these should last us a few months like last year.

My final job of the day was to make the long awaited needle purse. I re-read my last blog and realised that I hadn't made it, which is very lazy of me, so I've just finished. I'm so pleased with it, and it only cost £1.45 to make (£5 Cath Kidston? No thank you!):




I now have to wake up a snoozing Matthew because we have to head into London for our third 30th birthday celebration of the month. Tis the season to be 30 it seems!

Slacking blogger

I was told off by some of my blog followers today for not posting for a while so I'll try to catch-up with everything in this one. My studying means that the last couple of weeks haven't been particularly note-worthy, unless you want to hear about motivation theory, which I doubt, but I'll try my best to give you some interesting things...

The week before last I was part of a contingent from work who took a trip to over Trafalgar Square to welcome Eddie Izzard back from his mammoth 43 marathons in a row that he ran in aid of Sport Relief. Absolutely phenomenal I think you'll agree. It was absolutely bucketing it down but plenty of people still came out to cheer him on. I managed to sneak relatively close to him but the best photo I got was this one of his rather sweaty ear:



If you haven't done it yet (I'm sure just because you forgot!) you can still sponsor him here: http://www.comicrelief.com/donate/eddie

Closer to home we had some visitors the weekend before last in the shape of my mum, her partner Nick and my sister Katy. Katy hadn't seen the house for a while or met the girls so it was great to show her around and remember how much has changed in the past year (it's so easy to forget!). On the day of their visit the Tonbridge Medieval Fair was on in the castle, which was actually really good, if a little bit small. I forgot to take my camera but luckily mummy did so you can read about it on her blog, here.

On the house-front, we have finally managed to find a number for our front door that we like. We've only managed to find rip-off Parisian numbers until now but this is just what we wanted:



...now we just need to find a door for it to go on! We are thinking of getting a four-panelled wooden door which we'll probably paint a matt box-tree green with some nice door furniture. Knowing us it'll take us ages to find one we like but I'll keep you posted.

The garden is looking a bit straggly now but we are still enjoying some autumn flowers. The hollyhocks and anemone are absolutely beautiful and make lovely cut flowers (I just love these, I keep pausing as I wander past to look at them):



We are also still getting plenty of Rudbekia to brighten the living room but I think they might be coming to an end soon:



This weekend we took a trip over to Basingstoke to visit my mum and Nick. Mummy and I went to the fabric shop today to get the final bits for my handbag pattern so hopefully I'll have that to show you soon. I also got some felt, ready for Christmas decoration making (I know, I know, but I don't have a local fabric shop!) and to make a little needle purse which I hope to make this week. I sadly didn't have time to make either of these this evening but I tackled something much quicker - I saw a lovely flowery box file in Cath Kidston a few weeks ago for the extortionate price of £15 and I was inspired so I covered a plain box file with soem Cath Kidston wallpaper samples:



I'm going to use it to store my house-related magazine cuttings (I have a lot!).

Finally, the allotment. We popped down this evening to have a look and pulled up a few brambles. It's looking really good and we're meeting this week to talk about spending the money that we won in our bid so we should hopefully have a fence soon. At least we have a sign now:



I think that's everything for now. I promise I'll try to keep it up to date more often! Next weekend we are off to the Autumn woodland workshop day at Bore Place, a local organic farm, where I'm signed up for willow weaving and learning to make a besom broom...very exciting so hopefully I'll have more to say then.

Two Go Mad at Detling!

I have been slightly lack with my blog updates for the last couple of weeks - I don't know quite what we've been doing but it seems to have gone jolly fast!

The garden is looking good - we continue to get lots of potatoes and now have a good crop of chillis coming on. These three little fellas I picked for dinner earlier in the week (I know they're not supposed to be wonky but I'm not a very consistent waterer!)



We also have the girls a little more under control, with their smart new movable run. This means that they aren't digging up the flower beds as much but they are giving this patch of lawn a good go, but they seem to really like it and it means that we don't have to keep an eye on them all of the time:



The biggest update, however, comes from indoors, where we have been spending some of our hard earned cash on some lovely bargains. Firstly, last weekend, we had a trip to Northcote Road in Clapham which has loads of lovely little shops and antique markets. Being Clapham they are a little over-priced so we resisted and only got one thing, this lovely tablecloth from Susie Watson Designs:



Our other purchase of the week were a couple of lovely serving plates from our local antique/junk shop:



This weekend we stayed in Kent and paid another trip to the Antique Fair at the Kent County Showground in Detling. The last couple of times we haven't really found much but really made up for it this time!

We managed to pick up a good range of crockery. A lady convinced us to buy some spotty plates that I had been admiring for some time and (I think accidentally) threw in two TG Green Domnino sugar bowls. The bowls themselves should have been £12 each so this was brilliant for £20 for the whole lot! Also in this picture you can see some lovely jelly moulds, a little tin which I am going to use for paperclips, some cornishware plates (which we also got for a bargain £7 for the lot!) and a cornishware butter dish - the dish itself we've had for some time but we managed to find a very elusive lid for it, which we were delighted about:



With all of this new crockery we needed somewhere to store it so what luck that we came upon a lovely plate rack. We see them all the time for over £100, which seems far too expensive, so were chuffed with this one for £60:



We have also been looking for quite a while for an old telephone but they are ridiculously overpriced so were delighted with an absolute bargain for £30 which is in full working order, shown here below the plate rack:



We have also been looking for a bakelite radio for a while, which we want to use to hide an ipod dock so that we can be 21st century without ruining the look of the house! We were delighted to find this one:



Until, that is, that we walked around the corner and saw an even nicer one for the same price! So, we had to getg that one too and we'll just ebay the first. Still a bargain at £30 because we think this one might actually work once we replace a valve. It looks perfect in the living room:



Our other finds, were a very nice and very cheap wooden egg rack:



a stair-basket, for no other reason that it was cute and only £4:



Right, must dash. We popped down to visit the allotment site this evening and bumped into our neighbour who insisted on giving us a marrow and some cooking apples (which was very nice of her) so I am making some chutney. We took her some eggs in exchange - the allotment is creating such a lovely community, we can't wait to get going on our plot number 5:

A little inspiration

I am feeling a little worse for wear today after spending yesterday out in Soho with my friend, Sarah, who I am a bridesmaid for in May next year along with her two other bridesmaids - we were shopping for the fabric for the dresses, which Sarah is making herself. They are all natural greens - mine is a beautiful light-ish colour with hints of gold. I'm very excited about seeing the final version. Going around all of the fabric shops inspired me too and so this morning, whilst nursing my hangover I ordered this pattern, which I have had my eye on for a while:



I have never made anything from a pattern before so I am both excited and nervous about how it's turn out so watch this space! My mum also sent me a photo of the pencil case I made for her, which she is acutually using as a travel tapestry bag so that she can take her sewing to the allotment with her but, looking at it now, I'm rather pleased with myself and looking forward to making mine once my zips arrive:



My mum also sent me a photo of this lovely serving plate/charger - we've been looking for one for a while but haven't quite found one that we like but this one is lovely and apparently belonged to my Great, great grandmother (or possibly even her mother) and is definately from before 1904 by the back-stamp. She's offered it to us and I am delighted:



On another plate-related topic - a few weeks ago we popped in to see my mum and she had some plates which she had got from an auction and was going to chop up to make mosaic - I thought they were too lovely for such an end so I pilfered them and they are now proudly living with our crockery so I wanted to share them:



Finally to the garden - the back garden is mainly green at the moment, most of the flowers having finished (apart from some more sweet pease but the front garden, being shadier and therefore later, is really coming into it's own. Our hollyhocks are finally out and they are the most beautiful colour - I have taken some photos so that I can try to colour match this for somewhere in the house because the dusty cream and deep pink of the flowers really is wonderful:



The Japanese Anemone is also flowering, which is one of my favourites, and so lovely to have in the garden:

Jammy Dodger

Last weekend we spent some time clearing the allotment site and what progress we've all made!

This picture gives you some indication of what the site was like before we started the clearance:



and here it is this weekend:



There is only really one big bramble patch left to go and we have now marked out one plot, which is great to see on the ground. Hopefully we should have plots divided within a couple of weeks and we can claim a bit for our own, which will be lovely!

The other bonus of having cleared all of the brambles (to compensate for the cuts all over my arms!) is lots of blackberries! I used just a fraction of the ones that we're collected and made this much jam:



I has also this evening been cooking up some of the fruit from our garden and made Summer Fruit jam, which strawberries, raspberries and blackcurrants, all from our garden:



Unfortunately, I was also cooking dinner at the time so I got a little distracted and it cooked a little too long (like mother like daughter!) so it's more like tough jelly sweet in a jar than jam! Hopefully I'll be able to use some of it in my porridge once winter arrives...I might have to use a sledgehammer!

My final piece of handiwork this week was a couple of lavender pillows made from dried lavender from the garden - one to go in the trunk where we keep our spare bedding and one slightly wonky heart to hand on my side of the bed to help me sleep. Just lovely.