Photo Friday - Lost

Lost bunny, found keeping a look out near Brockenhurs...

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Technical update

Just a quick one: This blog is now 10% wider and new pictures 16% more shiny. Enj...

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Fruit of the Garden - August's Harvest

August has almost escaped us so it seems time to give you the summary for the month. We have had our first tomatoes and sampled our salad potatoes. I also lifted all our onions and garlic as some of them had completely died back. Red Onions White Onions Garlic Shallots More Shallots We didn't plant any carrots but this still turned up whilst weeding! Salad Potatoes (Pink...

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August in the Chicken Coop

To celebrate the arrival of the hens on The Urban Cottage - and because we've now been chicken keepers for one whole year - we're declaring this to be Chicken and Egg week. Today we're also starting off a new series of chicken related posts called "This month in the chicken coop". This month our hens have been: Standing on top of coop proclaiming it's morning. At 5am. Not impressed. Well, Joe's...

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Photo Friday - A Round Dozen

To celebrate the arrival of the hens on The Urban Cottage - and because we've now been chicken keepers for one whole year - we're declaring this to be Chicken and Egg week. 12 of the girls' finest....

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Soft-Boiled Bantam Eggs

To celebrate the arrival of the hens on The Urban Cottage - and because we've now been chicken keepers for one whole year - we're declaring this to be Chicken and Egg week. Having two full sized hens and two bantams means our eggs come in a variety of sizes, and that means making a few adjustments to our recipes. One full sized egg is not quite equivalent to two bantam eggs - its more like two large...

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Who's Who - One Year On

To celebrate the arrival of the hens on The Urban Cottage - and because we've now been chicken keepers for one whole year - we're declaring this to be Chicken and Egg week. Starting the week off - a guide to the girls themselves. For all our new followers (you're very welcome), and as a reminder for some of our regulars, we thought it was about time we did a who's who in the chicken run. To add a...

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Four new members

Today our chickens are going to be joining us here at The Urban Cottage more permanently. It's been a tough decision as this means the end of Bottom of the Pecking Order but hopefully it will give us the impetus to keep you up to date with their antics a lot more - I've become very bad at updating the other blog. On a positive note we've now been chicken keepers for one whole year, so to celebrate...

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Patchwork Quilt: 3. A Guide to Paper Piecing + Free Pattern!

Following on in our patchworking series, we thought we'd talk you through the paper piecing process with our latest quilt as an example. Even better - we'll show you how to make one of the blocks we designed - and give you the block pattern for free! What is paper piecing? As far as I'm aware there are two styles of paper piecing - English and American. English paper piecing involves tacking the...

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Photo Friday - Gromit

We've been watching in delight this summer as all our Bristol friends have been facebooking photos of their Gromit adventures. So when we were in Bristol this weekend we just had to take a brief moment to find the nearest one. It also happened to be the one decorated by Simon of Simon's Cat fame for bonus points (big Simon's Cat fans in this hous...

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A Garden Update

Linking up with Garden Bloggers' Blooms Day for the first time, though I'm afraid this post is rather lacking in flowers!  A steady trickle of things have been going on in the garden. None of them seem big enough to write about in their own right but I thought it was high time to bring everyone up to speed on what has been happening. The biggest changes have been happening on opposite sides...

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