A Bedroom Makeover 2. Let there be light

What would a bedroom makeover be without a bed! For years our guests (and before them, us) have been sleeping on just a mattress, with the top of an old desk acting as a headboard. This has done the job admirably, and no-one has yet complained of a dodgy nights sleep, but time has come to spruce things up a bit. We picked up a simple TARVA bed base to fit the current mattress (though I'm sure in...

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April in the Chicken Coop

This month in the chicken coop... ... it's birthday time. Our girls were born at the end of April 2012 and came to us in August of that year. We helped them celebrate with an extra handful of corn or two. Early days with the hens - Pepper in particular looks decidedly young. ... Lemon decides spring is here and has had her first broody bout of the season. Funnily enough we've never had problems...

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Photo Friday - Hot Cross Buns

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A Bedroom Makeover 1. Decision Making

On Sunday we spontaneously decided to rearrange what furniture we have in our guest bedroom. Its a simple room and this didn't take long, but it did start off the conversation. You know the one. Its starts with "maybe one day we should find a better place for these printers", follows up with "perhaps we should replace this desk with a more suitable table" and ends up with deciding to do a complete...

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Balls!

As part of our ongoing desire to change our garden for the better we've long been planning to get rid of a large evergreen "ball" from the front garden. It blocks quite a lot of light to our living room and, if we're honest, it's just plain ugly! We're not sure on its original purpose but it's only redeeming feature is that it offers a little privacy. For this reason we've been waiting to take it...

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Photo Friday - Pear Blossom

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The Great Swift Bake Off: 3. Breadsticks

This month the bake off coincided with the Easter holidays. With several colleagues away and others busy at the weekend it was a much reduced field that tackled bread sticks. I did manage a victory but the smaller number of entries diminishes the feeling somewhat! My entry for this round was tomato and herb bread sticks (the tomato not only adds flavour but also a delightful orange hint to the sticks)....

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A Tangle of Ivy

When we moved in we loved the way that our new garden contained all sorts of mature plants. It meant we could start enjoying the seasons of the garden while debating what changes we wanted to make. In this picture taken just under a year ago you can see that we have a long border running the length of the garden along the fence line, full of shrubs. What you can't see is that the whole border...

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Photo Friday - sprouting

The seed plugs are sprouting - we have lettuce :) iPhone with macro lens - sorry for the masses of blur! For scale the width of the plug is 1cm....

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And then there were three...

It was a sad day yesterday. I got home from work and found three chickens waiting for me on the back doorstep, not in itself unusual. However when I went outside, started handing out corn and Fizzy was still conspicuous by her absence I began to worry. I found Fizzy in the coop where she'd quietly left us at some point in the day. While we'd always said that we felt Fizzy would probably go like...

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Life's a Game: 4. Cribbage

This year we're sharing with you our game of the month. These are all favourites from our collection, or ones we play with our friends. April's game is Cribbage. Looking for  cards that add up to fifteen... This is one of those games that, for me, goes right back into my childhood. I have distant memories of being taught to play by my Dad, but feel like I've always known it. We played card...

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Photo Friday - Blue Skies

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A love of double pointed needles....

About 18 months after I learnt to knit I decided to try socks. I had been given a ball of sock wool and that seemed as good a reason as any. What I found was that dpns can be really fiddly, and when knitting with 4ply each inch of knitting seems to take forever. I spent most of 2012 avoiding this pair of socks that, quite frankly had me beaten. Every now and again I'd pull them out, add a couple more...

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