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: