A gorgeous vintage wedding and a little moan about the weather

I am a true English gal so I am going to start with a mini weather report.  It was appalling last week - not just rainy but extraordinarily windy too.  My carefully nurtured little seedlings have, for the most part, spent their first vulnerable weeks in the earth being battered by heavy rain and strong wind.  Every morning I've nipped outside in my jim-jams, anxiously checking for damage and tipping excess water out of the flooded vintage enamel trugs.

I am not enjoying this weather at all.  I am fed up with damp clothes drying all over the house, I am annoyed that I have to switch the lamps on before lunchtime and I generally just feel cross that flip flops, ice cream and heat rashes do not feature in my foreseeable future.  (Well, actually, that's a fib.  We've got a couple of holidays coming up, but you know what I mean.  I want sunshine at home! *wails*  In fact, I demand sunshine!  *stamps feet*)

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There is nothing quite like a forthcoming wedding to really ramp up the weather-related wobblies.  One of Andrew's oldest friends was getting married on Saturday and the wedding was one of the loveliest I've been to. (And there was no rain!)  I hardly took any photos because a) I was too caught up in the emotion of the day, b) the only camera I had with me was my iPhone and c) it was so windy that I had to hold down my dress to save flashing my [enormous tummy tucker] pants at passers by.  So I'm afraid that you will have to just take my word for it that the wedding was beautiful.  

Imagine a very slender and strikingly attractive bride in a creamy silk vintage sheath dress, her hand-span waist accentuated by a plain silk belt and diamante buckle.  She wore a little fur cape over her shoulders and just an embellished silk hairband to set off her thick blonde hair which was pulled into a low side ponytail.  She carried a posy of flowers that looked as though they had just been plucked from an old English garden and the shoebox-sized church was filled with peonies, roses and candles.  She and her husband (tall and handsome in a grey suit with bright pink socks) grinned from ear to ear all day.  It was such a treat to be part of their special day.

The reception was held in a black barn deep in the Suffolk countryside and a vintage double decker bus was hired to drive everyone there from the church. (They travelled separately in a chauffeur-driven pastel green classic VW camper van - so cool!).  Inside, the barn was gorgeous.  There were fairy lights and tea lights everywhere you looked, the table decorations were an electic mix of vases and old bottles filled with pale pink blowsy blooms.  If only the silver window vase on one of the tables had fitted in my clutch bag! :-)   We drank plenty of fizz, ate the biggest strawberries I've ever seen and washed down huge chunks of chocolate wedding cake with tea drunk from vintage china.  

The bride and groom have been together for ever having met in Australia when they were both on their travels.  When the groom, as part of his speech, thanked his parents for lending him the money to go to Australia, all those years ago, I felt a lump in my throat.  Aw!   

But every wedding needs a few minor incidents to make it memorable.  I will never forget the best man's speech which was shocking and hilarious in equal measure.  The entire wedding was translated into sign-language by a lovely jolly-looking grey-haired old chap and I still chuckle to myself now when I imagine how he interpreted some of the more 'blue' stories!

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So the jubilee bunting has been packed away and it's back to a full 5-day week at work for me this week.  Our spa membership is proving worthwhile so far - we've been a few times already.  In the evenings there are very few people and we often get the swimming pool entirely to ourselves.  RESULT!  The jacuzzi outside is uh-mazing and one of the other members told me last week that it's even lovelier out there when there's snow on the ground so I'm quite looking forward to that this winter.  I'm having my gym induction on Wednesday lunchtime and so don't expect to be fully mobile until the weekend afterwards.  I am ridiculously feeble in the gym.

Have a great week! 

Nicki 

x

Lashings of summer cheer!

If my blog was a stage I'd be tap dancing my way onto it right now, repeatedly tipping my sequinned top hat and grinning my head off.  That's how I feel - it has been such a lovely weekend.  We've done very little but I've rediscovered ice pops, planted all of my little homegrown seedlings and had a lovely afternoon tea at a lovely local garden centre with my lovely friend.  Lovely.

Our garden is the size of a postage stamp and although I've dug a little bed for my cut flowers, it just isn't big enough for all the seeds I've grown.  So I've been planting into the vintage crates I bought last year.  They look really nice in the garden with the rusty old galvanised steel buckets and wicker planters I've collected, I'm super-chuffed with them.  

Here's the garden before we'd done anything with it this weekend.  See - tiny.  We do have another garden behind the hedge (behind the dog) but that's more of a yard and needs some serious prettifying (next weekend's job).  Thank goodness you can't see it from our lawn, it's a bit depressing!  That little bare patch with the peony on the left is now chocker with my plants.  Eek!  I just threw them all in, kind of in a random order (!) and am hoping for the best. It's my first year of growing cut flowers - this is all experimental.  When (and if!) I manage to pick my own bunch of flowers you will hear me whooping across the length and breadth of the country.  I am not holding my breath, though.  At best, I will product a decent bunch of sweet peas.  

It was lovely in the garden, we brought out the radio and did a bit of dancing as we worked (Andrew was painstakingly digging out the weeds from in between the patio slabs - a horrid job).

Today I made coffee cupcakes, which had all disappeared within an hour, and we lounged outdoors.  Then I put on a floaty summer frock and took my friend out for afternoon tea to celebrate her last day of singledom - she's getting married tomorrow.  (Good luck Mel and John!  Big kiss!)  We had a really nice time - there is a garden centre near us called Beckworth Emporium which also has a big farm shop and cafe/restaurant.  I love it there.  We sat in the garden and ordered afternoon tea:

Not the most elegant presentation but it was bloody delicious.  We took boxes of the cake home with us.

We sat in the shade and had a good gossip for a couple of hours.  Mel was all glammed up with her hair, fingers and toes all buffed up. :-)  We came home with bellies full of cake and brown paper bags full of fab things - fresh strawberries and cherries, pink geraniums, old-fashioned ginger beer and fabric patchwork Union Jack bunting.  Happy girlies.

Tonight, Andrew and I laid a blanket on the lawn and had a picnic of cheese and coleslaw open sandwiches with apricot flapjack and big mugs of tea.  We followed it up with a late evening walk with the dog through the fields.  Absolute bliss.

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Now, we are music lovers in this house - the radio or ipod is always playing, more so than the TV (I hardly watch any TV at all).  One of my favourite ever albums is perfect to listen to in this weather and I thought I'd share my fave summery track from the album.  This is Hafdis Huld and 'Daisy'.  Hope you like it. 

It's from the album Synchronised Swimmers - I can really recommend it.  I can listen to this album on repeat and never get bored of it.

Have a good week lovelies!

Nicki 

x

PS - Remember in my last post I talked about dealing with the wanties?  They hit hard and I was powerless to them, but I know now that you girls 'totes' get it!  Cuckoo's fault this time:

Starry Polish ware with strawberries and cream macaroons

Plantable Paper Bunting

I love stationery; unsurprisingly, perhaps, given that I'm a PA and I love to write.  I have favourite stationery shops in nearly every city I visit - my favourite is a little place in Paris called Melodies Graphiques.  We make a special trip there every time we go so that I can stock up on gorgeous thick creamy paper, vintage-style notebooks and my favourite brown pen ink.

So when Gabrielle of The Green Gables online stationery and gift shop contacted me to let me know that I'd won her giveaway recently I was beyond thrilled:

I have never seen bunting like this before and I love it.  The flags are made from lovely, thick, textured handmade paper and hang from a long piece of thick rough jute string.  I think it's a modern, rustic alternative to the usual bunting and it looks really good in my newly prettified potting shed.  The most unusual thing about the flags are that they are embedded with wildflower seeds so if you get fed up of looking at the bunting (unlikely!) you can plant the paper and watch the flowers grow - genius!

It would make an ideal gift; I am absolutely thrilled with mine and will enjoy moving it into the garden when the weather warms up.

In recognition of National Stationery Day today, Gabrielle is offering a 30% discount on all stationery and free postage over at her  online shop - take a look at The Green Gables, I think you will like it.  Thanks Gabrielle for my such a lovely prize :-)

Nicki 

x

The Novice Gardener

This year I am determined to make something of the garden.  We have an odd garden; the house is two cottages merged into one house but nothing was ever done with the gardens.  As a result, we have two very small, kind of separate, gardens - one yard and one lawn.  I'm focusing on sorting out the grassy bit first.  The yard is U-G-L-Y and needs a little more time (and money) spending on it.

With the sun shining brightly on Saturday we hit the garden hard.  Andrew's mum came over to help;  she also brought yummy scones and clotted cream for our mid-afternoon treat :-) 

There I was; forking up earth, snipping away dead stems, yanking out old [blind] daffodils and other dead 'matter', having a whale of a time.  Really enjoyed it (and the endless enamel mugs of tea)!  

I am determined to have a cutting patch this year so that I can have jugs full of my own flowers all through the summer.  Andrew's mum dug an extra [small] flower bed for us in the sunniest spot of the garden and I'm seriously considering finding some enormous pots or barrels to plant more flowers in the yard area.

So, before we went on holiday I sowed a few seeds.  (Ha! Get me!)  I am trying to grow my own scabiosa, cup and saucer flowers, cosmos, helianthus, salvia and cleome spinosa (confession:  I don't know actually know what the last one is).  I bought a tin of seeds from the Sarah Raven website which seemed a good place to start for someone like me who doesn't have a clue when it comes to gardening.  I think for just £30 I can give it a whirl and just learn from my mistakes.

I also bought a tin of salad seeds.  The amount of wilted salad I throw away from those supermarket bags drives me crazy and I'd like to be able to nip into the garden for fresh salad leaves this year.  I threw them in a few pots of compost and here they are:

Doing well so far.  Only trouble is, I am not sure what to do with them next.  Panicking a bit.  I have rocket, a couple of varieties of lettuce, mustard and mizuna.  Need to read the next stage on my instructions! 

I have pricked out some of the cosmos seeds already; they are growing like billy-o.  I think there will be a little more pricking out to be done this weekend too.  I bought a little tiny greenhouse to transfer my seeds to and now I am obsessing over finding some nice wooden plant labels!

At the garden centre I picked up some sweet pea plants; I was excited to use the teepee that I made.

It just about fits in this old Christmas tree pot.  Am so proud of myself.  If the sweet peas grow enough to wrap around the willow I'll be even more chuffed!  

I love this old wall behind the sweet peas.  A little further along it has this ornamental plaque thing attached to it.  Anyone know what it is?  I love it, but it does puzzle me. 

Enjoy the sunshine my lovely bloggy friends.  Thanks for all of your comments, I love reading them.  Just wish I had enough time to respond to everyone.  I get there in the end! 

Nicki

x

PS Not going to talk about my horrid dentist appointment on Thursday.  Thank heaven I am being sedated for the treatment. I am panicking about it so much.   Keep having comedy day dreams that I'll try to run away from the dentist before he can do anything and he'll have to get me with one of those darts that they use for angry gorillas on the telly.  :-)

Spring in my step

We're back from Norfolk a little bit sunburned - wasn't the weather gorgeous!  Saturday started with an early downpour but by the time we'd eaten a leisurely breakfast the clouds had cleared and it was just beautiful.

Our weekends in Norfolk seem to be dominated by traditions and rituals from start to finish, I love it. We always arrive early evening on a Friday and the first thing we do is dump our bags and walk over to the fish and chip shop to pick up our supper.  This weekend we did plenty of walking, ate lots of ice cream and enjoyed a bottle or two of wine.  I also managed to fit in some crochet and a bit of reading. 

We left the house in a bit of a rush on Friday evening and I forgot my camera - was so annoyed with myself.   I always forget my camera when we go on little holidays.  So I'm sorry for the lack of seaside pics - I'll take a few next time.

We got home and had a cup of tea in the garden and I noticed there is a little more colour than there was on Friday.  

The clematis along the side of the house is starting to flower up:

I love it; it looks so wild and pretty to me.

You don't notice it this clearly 'in real life' but in the photo above you can see that the area near the window used to be a door.  There are a few doorways in our house that have been bricked over - it was two very small cottages once that have been knocked into one.  I think it's kind of quirky.

We've got another clematis which grows over this pergola into the back garden but that seems to flower much later - late August/early September.  Here's a photo of it right now; not at all pretty but starting to green up.  It looks beautiful in full bloom; the flowers are white.

And this little tree.  Is it a lilac? I have no idea but it wasn't in flower on Friday:

Starting to get very excited about the summer now!

What did you get up to at the weekend?  Is your garden plumping up nicely?  If you can tell me what type of tree it is above, I'd love to hear from you.

Nicki xx