sunshine and the new landlady (winner)

We have had the most glorious sun filled days lately which has meant many hours planting seeds and new fruit bushes at the allotment and pottering around the garden hoping to get a few more flowers growing and plenty of tidying.

The only trouble with this allotment business is that it is so addictive. I could spend all day weeding and planting and pottering around in the soil. It's so peaceful there and what we're doing will give us plenty of delicious meals over the coming months - it's so consuming. 

Nobody tells you this when you sign up, you will want to grow everything and abandon the supermarkets completely. These days I'm critical of all the fresh foods I buy now - it's all so tasteless in comparison. 

And it's contagious too, we got the bug from friends and we've passed it on, two families we know have patiently added their names to waiting lists.

All this sunshine is wonderful, but I'm seeing plenty of plants flowering far earlier that usual - the strawberries are flowering already - too soon surely? 

The plum tree that had nine flowers last year and gave us six delicious fruits is clearly happy in it's new home - it's bursting with blossom, I'm tingling with excitement at the thought of how many juicy fruits we'll get this year.


Now onto the winner of the giveaway, a day early I know, but it's the school holidays (hooray) and something has come up, thank you all for entering the fun. Missy Big did the honours....

and the winner is...

H at Roses Over The Door congratulations H, Mr and Mrs will be packed in a flash and coming to move in. I hope you have their room ready.

room wanted... giveaway

read in a 1940's english accent

the giveaway - the rules

to enter - leave a comment and tell me your favourite old film

(just being nosey)

for a second entry - add the button to your sidebar or mention the giveaway with a picture in a post on your blog, leave a second comment and tell me you've done this.

Mr and Mrs have up to date passports and don't get travel sick.

I give them a mostly good reference, she talks, and talks, and talks, and he has an eye for the ladies.

I'll draw a winner on 12th April 2pm, UK time.

If you can't wait until then, you can buy their neighbours here.

x

* giveaway now closed - a day early, sorry, something has come up!
- thanks for entering *

a new book... and 2 winners

I got this lovely book, The Handmade Home by Sania Pell for Christmas, it has many inspiring and not too frilly and girly projects to make your home a handmade one. I have just taken a load of photo's of the inside pages but have decided not to publish them, that's just stealing right? Copyright laws are there for a reason. So pop over here for a little peek inside.  Or look for it in you local bookshop - even better to see it in the flesh. If I ever get around to making anything from it I will of course show you that.

And the winners, of course, 2 lovely ladies wanted a copy of Alan Bennetts's - A Life Like Other People's and when I have them in my grubby hands I will be sending them to Me and Ma and French Knots.

It's half term here and I intend to spend the next week soaking up some good times, so I'll see you in a week. Unless of course they drive me insane and I need to escape.
 

sowing time

The sun hat got his hat on, hip-hip-hip hooray, so we went out to play.
My it feels good to get outside again. I have missed the fresh air so much this winter. We sowed out first seeds today, Little Missy loves to garden and she got to try out their new tools. She very carefully helped fill up the plant pots and toilet rolls with compost and patiently made a hole for each seed and tucked it up to sleep.

As you can see 4 toilet rolls fit perfectly into the bottom part of a 4 pint milk bottle. We started off most of our crops this way last year as they are so easy to move on - no untangling roots from seed trays. And of course we seem to have hundreds of them so they are put to good re-use. 
And once cut up the top half of the milk bottle makes perfect labels, I use a sharpie to write on them, the pen scrubs off / fades away by the time you can recognise your plant so you can re-use them again and again. 
Can't stop a little one removing them though - any tips?

Don't forget to sign up for the book giveaway if you want a free book in time for World Book Night. I will be getting lots of copies to pass onto people so don't miss out!
 

do you love books? - a giveaway

I do.  Any kind... 

...novels to lose myself in and go on someone else's journey. 

  
...books to learn from and go on my own adventures.

...coffee table books, to drool over beautiful images and be inspired.

  
...children's books, so we can learn to read together and laugh and share fears and experiences and fall in love with the characters.

  
...so we can share the love of a good book and discover new worlds.

I've always loved books, the feel of the paper, the smell of an old book, wondering who else read this very copy. A stack of books waiting to be read, books to refer to, share and enjoy.


But since having children I haven't really read for myself, up until recently I was too tired - I would go to bed with a book and be asleep by the second chapter. I'm a little less exhausted these days and I'm trying to make the time to read more. 
I'm currently reading Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper. This is emotionally quite a hard book to read, some days I just can't face the sadness, but I am enjoying it.


When I heard about World Book Night which is on 5th March, and how they wanted 20,000 people to volunteer to give books to others, I signed up. I love the idea of thousands of people all curled up with a novel at the same time. By themselves but somehow sharing the experience.
This is the book I chose, Alan Bennett's A Life Like Other People's.  I would like to share some of these with you. I will be giving away 3 copies on this blog. This is just open to UK resident's - sorry, I don't get the books until the week before WBN so I want to make sure they get to you on time.

If you'd like a copy leave a comment and tell me 3 things you love to do and what you're reading at the moment. 
If you win, you have to promise to read a bit of the book on 5th March, World Book Night.
I will drawn names out of a teapot next Monday afternoon, the 21st February. Good luck!




If you are overseas and sadly can't enter the giveaway I'd still love to know what you're reading. I'll be doing another giveaway soonish that you can join in.

gorgeous hat - photo hell

A while back I won my first giveaway - Kelly was very generous to offer to knit the lucky winner (me) a hat, I got to choose the pattern, she got to choose the yarn. Fair deal I say.

Look what I got...  

  
Isn't it just gorgeous?

I love the colour, it's delightfully soft, it's perfectly slouchy.

Way better than I could have imagined. And to my un-knitting eye looks very complicated (sorry Kelly).

It arrived this afternoon and I wore it on the school run, my girls were very jealous - not often Mum gets something special. It feels good.

I think it's fair to say that I LOVE it. I've been smiling to myself all afternoon.

Almost all afternoon. It did of course mean that I had to photograph it, and I thought it only fair that it should be worn. But that meant a picture of me. 
I hate having my picture taken, just like I hate hearing my voice recorded, it makes me cringe. 

Over at Lola Nova she recently set a challenge.  To take self portraits and put them out there for all to see and encouraged us to take part. This made me physically squirm. I instantly dismissed myself from this as it just seemed like torture to me. But it keeps creeping back into my mind. 

Maybe I could conquer my hate of the camera on me.  
Maybe I could learn to look at myself and not pick out all my flaws. 
Maybe I could do this.

So this is my only contribution. I took 92 pictures, I hate most of them. But I did learn that there's a remote control for the camera - and that was fun!


So a big thank you to Kelly, it's perfect, I will be wearing this all winter.