A Tour of Our Garden

It’s been a while since I shared what’s happening in our garden. It’s now virtually finished landscape wise hooray!!! We are in the stage of watching everything mature with excitement and finishing off little things like painting our gate (next on the list!)

Here is our veggie patch, I am super excited about this. Raspberries on the left, onions, runner beans and lettuces on the right. I am stunned how well the runner beans have grown so far and the flowers are gorgeous…

So vibrant!

Here are the sweet peas that I grew in the greenhouse over winter. I’ve been cutting them a lot and displaying them on my kitchen windowsill in vases. So pretty.

There is Ellie, we have some patches on the grass to seed from her weeing but it’s not too bad. We will sort that in the Autumn.

This is the flower bed next to the veggie patch, our Brae burn apple tree is just to the right. This bed has come along really quickly, for so long it was just a mess now it is thriving with plants I grew from seed, some Evening Primroses gifted to me and the Pink Lavender also gifted. Oh and there are some daisy type plants I picked up at the local garden centre.

This is the right side of the back garden, still needing to mature and could do with some pretty bedding plants for more colour. Hoping to grow some winter ones.

Our patio. Window boxes doing really well. They have Aquilegia's, Bacopa and self seeded Violas' which look so pretty, couldn’t have planned that!

More Sweet peas in the planter and the pots have home grown Dahlia’s, lettuce and a rose, one either side of the back door.

One of the roses in the middle flower bed.

And there’s Ellie enjoying herself lol.

Hope you enjoyed the tour!? I’m busy with my open studio this week till Saturday and am working on a painting for an exhibition. Next week I will show you the photos from the open studio so stay tuned.

Happy 4th July for my lovely USA readers.

Blessings

xxx

Carried away with growing my own…

You know I’m a fan of growing things from seed, well I’ve mostly only attempted flowers. We did get lettuce plants last year and they were a success and we’ve done tomatoes once before. But the thought of growing my own veg kinda scared me. I thought it looked too complicated and I was worried that I wouldn’t know what to do.

Well, after reading a few books and getting some tips from friends I have taken the plunge and got a bit carried away…

Here are my runner beans and lettuce, on the kitchen window sill because as you’ll see later my green house is jam packed

Onions on the left and lambs lettuce just coming up on the right.

Also in the kitchen, Asters and Dahlia’s.

This is my veggie/fruit patch. Raspberries are in on the left and the runner beans are going on the right. In the big pot are carrots and I have another load of lettuce in another big pot near the back door. That big patch of mud at the back will soon have a Braeburn apple tree in, just waiting for it to be delivered.

(Oh btw that is the new fence Hubby’s been working hard to put up in between rain showers this month)

Now out to the greenhouse….

Cosmos, some for us, some for Mum and Dad.

Spinach and more lettuce. I also have some Marigolds growing in there too.

Great huh! I am so excited to be able to plant out all the flowers and eat the fruit/veg. I’d be out there all the time if I had a bigger greenhouse So much fun.

If you were considering growing your own I would highly recommend it, it’s so rewarding and like I already said, fun. I love seeing the shoots come up and tending to them.

Anyway, that is my little tour for you today. Oh and someone just had to be in on the photos…

xxx

Merry Christmas!

Our annual Christmas photo for you all lol. Always a challenge, Ellie only likes posing on her own (see above )

Have a wonderful Christmas and we will see you in the New Year with more exciting art to share and enjoy.

Many Blessings to you and your family

xxx

11 Years and Ellie Dog

On Friday Hubby and I will have been married for 11 years! Wow, it actually feels longer but in a good way.

We decided to commission my friend Chris to draw our beloved Ellie dog as our gift to each other. I’ve been a fan of Chris’ work for a while now and his work has really inspired me. I blogged about the commission here and now I can happily reveal the final drawing.

We are thrilled with it and now have it displayed in our living room where we can see it every day

 

Chris is available for commissions, you can more details and examples of his work here.

xxx

My Secret Project…

I’ve been busy with something secret…’Oh what what, do tell us’ you say.

Well, it’s something you’re going to love and it’s something fun and totally new from what I’ve been doing so far. I love a challenge and this is certainly that in that I am learning a new way to create.

I am so excited and would love to reveal all right now but alas I’m not quite ready. Soon though I promise!!

In the meantime, we are having our dear Ellie drawn by my most talented friend Chris. It’s going to be our Wedding Anniversary present to each other in October. So excited to see how he captures Ellie. I am always amazed at Chris’ drawing skills.

I’ll leave you with the pose we chose of Ellie for Chris to draw from

So adorable huh!!

Blessings

xxx

Feeding Pony

xxx

Ellie Antics

I thought it would be fun to share the adventures we all get up to with Ellie our Dalmatian.

This week I wanted to share with you our walk to the rugby pitch. There is a paddock near by that we walk past to get to the pitch. Ellie is actually quite scared of horses but thinks the grass is quite tasty lol.

Hello Mummy horse, she is always by her baby’s side, so sweet!

There they are together, aww!

Ellie loves to run around the rugby pitch, she’s pretty fast. Sometimes she tries to go faster than her legs can carry her and does a skid or two lol

As we are nearing time to leave look at the sky!

Breath taking!

xxx

A Family Fun Baking & Making Weekend

We had a great weekend, Saturday was spent enjoying a relaxing free day, no plans, nothing to rush to, lovely! We walked Ellie to the local yarn shop in the morning and I picked up some gorgeous yarns to work on our ripple blanket for our bedroom and then we headed to the park and Ellie and Hubby had great fun running around for a while.

Then we headed back for some lunch and I helped Hubby make some lovely fresh baguettes which we shared with Mum and Dad. Homemade bread makes a great gift! :D

I got working on the ripple blanket for a while and then started thinking about the beautiful fabric I recently got to make a little curtain for our kitchen cubby. We actually call it Ellie’s cubby, because ever since we’ve had her she’s loved to hide in there.

So that’s what I did, I got all my stuff out and had a go. It was way harder than I thought it would be. All the measuring, marking and cutting went really well and that’s surprising because that is the part I like the least! When it came to sewing the hems, I had real trouble. The fabric kept slipping and so my stitch lines were a little wavy lol Still, I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out considering I haven’t sown for ages. What do you think?

Sunday was spent at Church in the Morning and then I dashed off to grab a lift with Mum and Dad down to Dagenham to visit our family for Mother’s Day. Lot’s of gifts, cards and food :D

After a great weekend, I woke up this morning to a beautiful sunny day and decided that some baking and homemaking was in order. I made some more Apple Sauce muffins and have just got this yummy loaf out of the oven. It’s Alicia’s Oat & Honey loaf. It doesn’t look much like hers but I’m hoping it will taste great!

I hope you had a wonderful weekend, let me know what you did…

xxx