My weekend.

Good morning all, ok so lets get the weather chat out of the way first, its blimmin muggy here, no sun, just cloud and heat....reeeally want to get out into the garden and plant my new plants but i dont think the girls would thank me for turning up at school stinking of sweat and cow dung(our soil is poor so i have lots to dig in)...im indoors doing housework with Phil and Fern for company.

I ventured out to my usual winchester bootsale on sunday and got a few goodies...

The big red trash can was four pounds, i think i'll use it as my recycling bin in the back porch. The round basket was three pounds, as was the big square one, thats for this kids toys upstairs. Picked up another crochet blanket for a pound, i know i know we dont need any more but i couldnt help myself! I got a few plants, a stunning fuscia coloured dhallia,another lupin, and a Borage plant-which will hopefull look something like this soon:

Also got a couple of metal coffee tins which i'll use in my porch, im ammasing quite a collection on my shelves out there. Also got a fabulously scented candle, brand new for 50p. Plus two thomas the tank plates for Archie and a brand new set of clippers for 50p, i gave murphy a good clip and he's looking much neater now!

And, dont you just love the old green cooking pots? Nana mandy enquied and was told they were five pounds for the set, a bit pricey, so when i went past later i asked again, whaddya know?, down to a pound each! So nana i will be sharing them with you as you loved them so much, can i have the largest one and you have the other two??

My mum recently picked up this beautful addition to the girls special shelf...can you see who i mean?,,,

This beautiful hand knitted teddy, shes so sweet!

This single duvet cover and two pillow cases for Poppy's bed was only 2.50, its so pretty.

I adore this stitched rose picture, its another heavy one so it will have to wait a while to find its place on the wall with the others.

This transfer was purchased for pure nostalgia, i had the same one on my cot as a baby, 20 pence!

I bought myself this cute beach bag for 50p....

Mum also picked this cross stitch up for me, three little mice at the beach-cute!

This country living book set me back a pound, its ten years old but the images in it are timeless, i nearly didnt get it, i dismissed it for being too old fashioned but its not. I'll share a few of my favourite images when i can.

More nostalgia, this time in the form of a Denby coffee pot, my parents had this set when i was little, for 50p, i couldnt leave it there.

Picked up two pyrex june rose caserole dises and three plates, my collection is slowly building!

This is a very old custard jug, another great find by my mum!

I bought this tin from an elderly couple who were selling off their parents possessions, they had so many old things on their stall i could have bought lots, i got an old plastic womble toothbrush holder, and a co-op darning mushroom as well as the tin, the girl on it looks a bit evil in this photo but its nicer in real life i promise!

One of my star buys has to be another stanley, hes about 20cm's tall, i paid three pounds which is more than id usually hand over but i fell in love!

Mandy bought me this brooch for 20p, its definitely hand made, ive tried googling the name and number on the card and it seems to be someone in ireland.

This great utensilis pot was 50p...

Coffee pot, one pound, little dish a boot sale gift from mum...

I have plans for this next basket, it was four pounds as its huge, and quite robust. I want to spray it green and line it with olicloth a la cath kidston....wish me luck.

This little doggy was given to poppy at the bootsale for nothing, she loves him.

Sunday afternoon wasnt very productive, Mr P and i spent a while at the in laws farm, they're getting the pool ready, it hasnt been used for a few years so needs a bit of sprucing up, i dangled my legs in and drank shandy, heaven! You should be able to spot something in the background of the photo below...

I took my new basket along as Mr P senior has been nagging me to help myself to the veggie garden now that it has lots to offer ...

I collected Broad beans, Peas carrots and the most amazingly scented sweet peas. I must photograph the veg patch for thse of you who like that sort of thing its looking fantastic!

Now, which vase to put them in??....

So, i did have quite a nice weekend, peaceful.M P took me to the cinema to see the new Transformers movie on sunday night, it was brilliant, a must see.

Moving on, i almost forgot to tell you, im now perfecting my tractor(digger/fork lift) driving weekly, this is me rolling, a couple of weeks ago in Mr P's John Deere 6620. This field is being turned into an orchard so it needed to be pretty perfect! He didnt tell me this until afterwards, a good thing really as i would have been more nervous, we dont want to loose customers!

I drove it quite a long way, from the yard, through the town of Romsey, to a village called Michelmarsh.

I know i look grumpy(and round faced but we wont mention that)but really im just concentrating reeally hard. Driving a tractor like this isnt hard work, but its totally different to anything you could possibly have ever driven, like driving a huge plate of jelly, you have to fight all urges to control it as you would a car. Saying that- i quite like it-you feel kinda powerful driving this massive machine alongside cars..............

My friends are dragging me out this evening to a ladies night at our local pub for a meal to raise money for pre-school, im looking forward to it.

Oh, before i go, thank you all so so much for your well wishes since my previous post, they mean more than i can say... xxxxxx

I want doesnt get!

Oh goodness me its been a right old rollercoaster week for me, nearly didnt write this post as im feeling a bit sorry for myself but im slowly trying to emerge more peacefully from my horrible situations.

I managed to have a little bump in my car last sunday which didnt seem too serious at first, but ive now been contacted by the garage which the insurance company had arranged to look at the car and they have to get the assessor out from the insurance company as the work it needs doing may not make it 'environmentally viable'-in other words, its a write off.
Ive checked my policy and it states it will be worth its 'market value' in this situation,

so, im not looking forward to the bat and ball game of the insurance company telling me what they think its woth and what they're prepared to offer, and what amount im happy to accept.

Mr P is used to all this, farm machinery claims go in all the time and he just says dont worry, but we all know how short funds are at the moment and this is a headache i could do without.

Sorry to moan, this just added to the things getting me down, so frustrating.

Ive also been missing one of my best friends, James, who was sadly taken from us in a car crash earlier this year. He was Poppy's god father, best man at my wedding, and passed away on her birthday. I know they say time heals but five months on im still struggling. With all the memorial arrangements going on i cant seem to stop thinking about him.

I know havnt posted about this before but whats the point of keeping it bottled up?

We've all lost loved ones who we miss, you try to remember the good times so its not so hard, and, as lucky as im am to have a lovely life and family which i appreciate immensely, in the end, you just miss them. I suffer from anxiety attacks occasionally which have affected me alot recently so i need to get that sorted as they make me feel even more dreadful. I need to get this dark cloud lifted......

This year hasnt started off well for us, and im hoping this past month is just a blip so please bear with me x

On a happier note, some news im now able to share is that we've bought the farm we live on...

Not by ourselves, its part of the family business now, but means we have a home for life, which is such a relief as this has been hanging over us for a year since we found out that our landlord wanted to sell the farm. Mr p's brother and family will be moving in next door shortly so it'll be a family farm through and through. Half of the farm will be rented by Bruce, a local pig farmer and Mr P has promised we can keep a couple from one of Bruces pogs(groups of piglets). I might even be able to be more involved with the farm...we shall see.

Now the shabby chic shack(as we call it)can be fully renovated, (although this wont happen for a good few years), which is very exciting.
Mr P has already started renovating the old rayburn we rescued and has a plan for which walls he wants to knock through in the kitchen diner. He also bought a wooden framed conservatory from an old farmer for £50 this week and i cant wait for the summer to be over so he can build it for me.

Im glad for my girls too as it now means they can stay in their lovely village school with all their friends...

The the ideas for the house are just whizzing round my head, when i feel up to it i might do some more ideas scrapbooking, theres so much i want to do there, so many things i 'want' but as Ruby would say, 'i want doesnt get', so i should probably say, i would like.

Starting with a greenhouse and potting shed, id like to have a garden full of flowers for cutting at this time next year. I would like to get my kitchen completely finished and not keep staring at the tatty tiles which must be replaced...But i wont get bogged down with all these 'i wants', im only 26 so i should probably let my home elvolve as i do. For now im just going to appreciate it. Additionally, now the business has over a thousand acres of farmland(scary)and a very large mortgage(even scarier). It will mean a few years of very very hard work. I shall have to learn to get used to things being 'done' at a slower pace than i would like-after all, good things come to those who wait dont they?
I hope you dont mind me sharing my ups and downs today...enjoy your weekends x

Hi girls, i know its been aaages since i was meant to have posted my second holiday post....see, you'd forgotten hadnt you?! Well the main reason my posts are so infrequent at the moment is that my internet 'dongle' is near to useless, my patience is wearing very thin with it these days, i cant WAIT to get broadband, but for now i'll have to put up with what ive got, it just means my posts will be very light on photos.....i managed to add a couple of images from holiday to show you what id purchased but no seaside(y)shots im afraid.

One of my favourite places in the world is Lyme Regis, we had a wonderful day on this occasion, squeezed ourselved onto the tiny bit of sandy beach they have there. Sunbathed, read the paper then went for an ice cream and mooched aound the antique place on the seafront. I was a bit disappointed because i didnt get anything there-it was all a bit 'oldy worldy' and not really our sort of oldy worldy. It was all a bit musty and nothing caught my eye, though Poppy bought a lovely ammonite fossil which she's already taken into show and tell for her class.
I love the shop Fuego, its crammed with allsorts of goodies, ranging from cheap(i like), to expensive(i dont like), for example the small jan constantine hanging hearts-a mere snip at thirty pounds each alongside bracelets for a pound! I could've bought soooo much, but i was restrained and got a baby pink and baby blue cup as pictured below, they're by the company Rice(which im already a huge fan of, You may remember i managed to get a set of six of the smaller cups like these in the charity shop for a pound)....I havnt used the new ones yet, i dont know what im saving them for-just seem too pretty to use! I also got a set of six ice cream spoons and six teaspoons, again theyre as yet unused! But they look pretty!

I had lots of other photos to show you of places like bridport market and if i ever get a good signal out here(county living isnt all its cracked up to be sometimes!) i'll put a little mosaic together or something. i know most of you have visted these places before anyway so i'd just be telling you what you already know!

Bye for now x

It must be love...

Hey girls, just a quick 'hello' as im off to feed the cows with Mr P in a minute. Im so excited at the new treasure he brought me home this week, a HUGE belfast sink! Ive taught him well, oh yes, he found it thrown on a rubble heap in a farmyard and immediately thought of me, he rang to say, 'those old sinks, are they worth much?' my reaction-Hell yeah-to me anyway!

He even carried it half a mile(at least so im told)accross a field, almost gave himself a hernia carrying it-its very very heavy....now my dilemma is what to plant in it?!

It must be love x

Summer holidays part 1...

Helllloooo! Im back girls,hopping and skipping-oh no-make that hobbling into your lives, my back has well and truely 'gone'!...still in holiday mode, not really wanting to return to real life. One week ago we packed up my passat(which was harder than it sounds, why didnt i just take the truck-oh yes no air con!), two little girls, one mummy, one nanna. Sadly no Mr P as this beautiful weather we've been having down south has a huge drawback for us, its perfect for farming, lots of grass to be cut and bailed. So while he busied himself drilling and forraging, with the promise he would at least visit for my birthday, we set off.

I must say that although his presence was duely noted our little Dorset jaunt was perfect in every way.

The most sparkiling azure blue seas greated us as the view from our(brand new!)caravan, we enjoyed perfect sunshiny weather EVERYDAY and ate LOTS of yummy ice cream, well, we had to sample the local delights, didnt we?!( I now have a huge hankering for a Lovingtons Rum and Raisin double cone!)

I hope you enjoy hopping aboard for a little ride along the dorset coast with us....

How lucky we are to travel for 90 mins(ok so it was more like 120 this time ALOT of people were heading to the coast for a weekend away)to arrive at these scenes of UTTER beauty. The jurassic coast has now been awarded world heritage status, putting it up there with the likes of the grand canyon and the great barrier reef!

You know how you tell yourself to take a mental snapshot of those amazing moments in your life, i tried to do that so many times while were away, to keep appreciating it, but i must admit i was glad i had my camera to help me along the way, the week just whizzed by.....

I know that as a child visited many places in dorset and the west country but somehow i didnt manage to retain hardly any memories of images-only feelings, maybe i was just too young? I know my parents have albums full of photographs of my brother and i growing up so may have to have a flick through.

Anywho, i hope my photos(and perhaps my blog) serve to aid my children when theyre little older and the memories fade.

The place we stayed in was called Eype, in Dorset, near to Bridport and West bay.

Just at the end of our caravan park(which i must add was deserted for the entire week) down a very steep hill and a few steeper dirt tracks was the amazing beach in the photo above, i cant tell you how beautiful a day it was when that photo was taken, we donned our swimwear and chilled out, i was very very silly and applied almost no sun tan lotion, and baked. Ive paid for it every day since-ouch.

The girls and i walked the length of the beach in search of rock pools and driftwood.Oh, and fossils, Poppy is obsessed with the natural world, forever making 'collections' of the things she finds and studying toads and woodlice etc in our garden. We didnt find any(you're not allowed to chip into the cliffs as they're protected) but she bought an ammonite from the antique shop in Lyme Regis, so that pleased her no end. On our way there(we drove to the beach as my mum is a bt of a bambi and wouldnt have been able to negotiate those steep hills)i had to stop to take in the beautiful little lanes and cottages, the pink plant below grows like a weed all over dorset but its sooo lovely!(sal im sure youre familiar?)

One of the the girls favourite destinations of the whole holiday was West bay, pure and simple. They collected wonderful bits and pieces from the beach(lots of driftwood for mummys garden project), negotiated the shingle hills fantastically and thoroughly enjoyed the sights in the harbour. Poppy made herself at home on this little boat...

I think when we go there next time id like to take the girls boating on the river, it looked so peaceful. How delightful is this little shed? I want it in my garden!



Now i dont know if you're like me, i have quite a thing for old telephone boxes, (and post boxes) so lovely, but rare now. I was in heaven in Dorset-there were so many! Although most read 'this callbox does not accept coins' strange i thought! The one below is in Bridport high street, the day it was taken was my birthday,wednesday, street market day! I didnt buy anything though. Dont those marigolds look zingy against the phonebox?

We aquainted ourselves with the locals while were on holiday, for me, you get that real holiday feeling when you hear the thud thud thud of the seagulls on the caravan roof when youre lying awake in bed in the morning. They eat anything and everything, the girls thought it was great feeding them(i know youre not supposed to but we couldnt resist)

A lovely place which came highly reccomended was Hive beach cafe in Burton Bradstock. I treated myself to a gorgeous jacket potato with prawns, mum had ham and cheese. Some of the fish on the menu sounded wonderful-but too pricy for us. We were more than happy with our jacket spuds, it was a huge portion and tasted lovely. It was quite a windy day so we were glad to be sheltered by the windbreak which extends out from the main cafe, it was full of people(mostly elderly!) but we quckly found a seat and the girls ran up and down the nearby hill while we waited for dinner to be served-chips again for the them, many of these touristy places dont offer a good selection for little ones-do you find that too? Afer lunch we went onto the beach, the sun came out and i snoozed while mum and the kids chatted to the other families there.

I couldnt resist the feel of these tiny polished stones which the beach is made up of, each one was like a little gem, this photo just doesnt capture their beauty completely , so soft yet robust. The little boats on the beach are something special too, they look battered and bruised, and - i would think, a bit wobbly were you to set sail, but just nestled in the shingle they're peaceful, like the'd have a few stories to tell if they could speak. Gazing accross to the horizon its no wonder people thought the earth was flat was it? It was so still, and calm, and the brightest of blues, it was hard to photograph as the sun was shining so brightly, it was a case of point and shoot as i dont have a view finder and it was too sunny to see the screen. One of my favourite things to do with the little ones on the beach is to hop over the waves as they crash into the shore, feeling that icy cold sea water wash up to your ankles...and watching the bubble of the foam is magical when youre only 4 isnt it?-come to think of it, when youre 26 its not bad either. Every beach we visited had something different to offer, different shells, pebbles, sand, people, wildlife, i found it as fascinating at the little un's.

Im glad i had my mum to share it all with, we both comment on the same things, she just 'gets' me, you know? Shes my best friend.

As the sun went down on 'our' little valley each evening we waved goodbye to the days adventures and welcomed the evenings ahead. We had the final of Britains got talent to look forward to,(sad i know), new BBC 2 series Mary queen of charity shops,my birthday, sneaky sofa treats...and mum had promised to teach me to crochet! Well, patience is a virtue im clearly not in posession of! I did try, but got tired of getting it wrong and having to ask mum to get me started over and over again. She wasnt a bad teacher, but i was a poor student! I was frustrated that it didnt take the shape of anything, i didnt 'get' why i had to learn these stitches, why wasnt it turning into something worthwhile was all i kept thinking? Anyway, i tried on a few occasions but mum suggested i try when i wasnt so sleepy(knackered!), next time we have five minutes peace together we'll have another go.

I'll have to show the rest of our little jolly with you towards the end of the week, still to come, Lyme Regis for the day, Bridport town and a lovely wildlife park.....

Lyme Regis amusement arcade...

Sleepy Roo, bored of Bridport for the third time round!...


And some special family time...

See you then xxx