See? Horses! (and Unicorns)

Yet again I find myself sheepishly opening the door on my blog and sneaking in, hoping no-one has seen me!    

Apologies for the long gaps between blogging, I am very busy with a house renovation whilst we still try to finish the cottage.  I have tenants who are eager to move in, and we have boxes of stuff stored there, as well as needing to completely redecorate.  All the upstairs windows have had to be replaced, and last week the surveyor came to measure up and replace the 30 year old wooden single glazed bay window. 

Anyway, back to trips out and lovely purchases, if you follow my facebook page you would have seen my best charity shop purchase ever (IMHO of course!), a pair of gorgeous cottage three seater sofas by specialist cottage furniture company, J C and M P Smith of High Wycombe. I believe they are from the Aspen range.

Both sofas were ours for £45 each.  If Smiths prices are anything like the very similar Ercol, we might have over £4k worth of sofa for our money!

Here's a close up of the wooden sides

As an aside, whilst searching for info on the company, I discovered they are now in

liquidation.  Such a shame as the sofas are really well made and very comfortable. 

Our lovely new 80% wool carpet was supplied and fitted for just £200, that includes underlay and gripper, from a local Birmingham firm, JJ's Flooring Supplies of Stirchley. They travelled out to us for just an extra £10 to cover the petrol. I have had many carpets from them over the years.

Other purchases these past few weeks have been:

Gorgeous Per Una cardi, looks new and I paid £1.99.  Wore it last week to the local pub quiz and it was just right for warmth!

Next shirt, not my kind of thing but thought I'd try something out of my comfort zone for 50p!

 Lots of attention to detail with it too, spot the velvet hem to stop it riding out of trousers?

Love my woolies, and treated myself to this Savida jumper with pearlised finish for £2.99.  I understand that the brand is Dunnes

Treated myself to these cute seahorse earrings, just 49p, along with a boxed Mary Kay eyeshadow in bronze for 20p.  I have a bit of a thing for seahorses, it might be something to do with my love of astronomy and seeing photos of the horsehead nebula at an early age. 

I thought they would go really well with a bracelet I bought a while back, by Souleido, which I think was 50p

My last bargain was most unexpected.  I popped in to the local Cancer Research shop, which is not cheap, only to find they had a pound and £2 rail!!  I began rummaging through several rails of coats, jackets and suits by Windsmoor, Jigsaw, M&S Autograph and other high end brands (pretty sure I saw Aquascutum too).  Found this gorgeous Laura Ashley grey needlecord jacket with pretty cotton lining, in my size and just a pound!  

I took OH to the very same shop when he was looking for a winter jacket.  He tried on a really nice James Pringle bomber style jacket then looked at the price (note to readers: I do it the other way round, look at price first!) the jacket was second hand and had signs of wear, it was £20.  We walked along the high street to the Edinburgh Woolen Mill shop, where the jacket was originally from, and they had a sale on.  A similar Winter jacket in OH's size was reduced from £55 to £16.99, he bought it!

We've had a few nice day trips in the past few weeks, and despite being incredibly busy we always keep Fridays for going out.

A few weeks back we visited Hanbury Hall and church (the church doubles as the church in the Archers).

There are some unexpected finds at Hanbury, the money tree for instance

I love the fruit and veg stall in the kitchen garden

Very fancy lead drainpipes

Lovely food in the cafe

The church has the most amazing views

when the weather is good!

Beautiful door

Pensive!  

Bertie boots from ebay, Laura Ashley cardi, bought new in sale many years ago, Principles skirt, charity shopped years ago.

Onwards a week and our next visit on a frosty morning was Baddesley Clinton and Packwood, again

We always enjoy feeding the ducks at Baddesley, they are very friendly, or is that greedy!

 Baddesley is undergoing intensive restoration and upgrading of electrics etc. over the next two Winters, so a lot of the house is closed off.  However, it was still a good tour, and we spent time finding new things, like the Unicorn horn in the corner of this room

What?  A Unicorn horn?  Yep, the King of France himself said it was, and if the King of France tells you he's giving you a Unicorn horn, you'd better believe it!

Love the leaded windows, all different shades of clear!

Old graffiti

Revisiting a spooky gravestone!

I just get the feeling she is watching.

Breathe in the fresh air and the views

Onwards to Charlecote Park, where a young Bill Shakespeare was caught poaching.

I love this bowl, the carving is amazing

Stunning plaster ceilings

The odd Royal portrait

Double selfie

Harp and ornately carved kissing chair

Wonderfully preserved kitchen

Massive taps in the brewhouse

Beautiful buildings

Well, I'm not sure when my next post will be, or my next bargain, so I will not promise anything but will at least try to post before the end of March!

We'll see

Half a ton

Last Sunday I turned 50. 

I'm in denial.

I actually don't feel much like an adult most days, I still feel 17, how can I possibly be 50?

OH is happy, now we are the same age, at least for 8 months.

As per usual on birthdays we had a drive out, visited an English Heritage property, this time to Witley Court, where the young lady who made me a hot drink from their machine told me about her mothers recent 50th birthday, and then driving down unknown roads to find the nearest pub serving food and having a meal. We hit the bullseye with the pub when we arrived at The Dog Inn in Dunley, no sniggering at the name please, it took a while for the penny to drop!  The French maitre d' made us feel most welcome and the French chef created a masterpiece, large portions, low prices, and as it was chucking it down outside, hardly any other customers!

Here's what we had, huge gammon with an egg on a bed of fried onions, with fried mushrooms and tomatoes cooked on the vine, with extra chips. It looks small, the gammon was 9 inches wide and half an inch thick! This lot was £9.95

Witley was unbelievably wet, we were only the second party to arrive that day.  We had a swift walk over to the house and a swift walk back!

All shots were taken undercover!  

As we left the Dog after our huge meal, it had thankfully stopped raining so I was able to get a nice shot of the pub sign

As you can see from the photo below, we were able to eat in solitude, it felt quite exclusive

On New Year's Day, we took a ride out to the National Trust managed Packwood House in nearby Warwickshire.  I love Packwood and Baddesley at Christmas, as they dress the houses and it is so atmospheric.  Before going to Packwood, we stopped in a village where I had heard about an Anthony Gormley statue alongside the canal, we had to visit.

I felt the need to copy the pose, but love the old lock keeper's cottage on the towpath side, isn't it gorgeous?  

Packwood, of course, was a delight, from the little wren in the car park

to all the Christmas trees and decorations

  I lost count of all the trees, and missed some too

 Outside, the topiary and the gardens were dormant

We had a pot of tea and admired the hand made Packwood tiles

I hope all of you have had a good Christmas and a great start to the year.  We were spoiled with food and drink gifts and I am feeling like I weigh half a ton already!  Much exercise is needed to rectify the situation.

 I am hoping this year will be good for us here, we have so many things to do so we are hitting the ground running hard and fast into 2016.  Hopefully, I will soon be blogging regularly again, in the meantime keep an eye out on my facebook page for snippets!

   

Not a year end review

As I've not blogged regularly for quite a while, it seems inappropriate to do a year end review, so I'll just round up the past month.

The build still rumbles on, it was supposed to start at the end of August and take six weeks. The builder was delayed on his previous job by around 5 weeks, and started work during the first week of October. As it took just a day to demolish the old extension and remove it, we thought we were going to be done and dusted by mid November. 

Oh, the best laid plans!  Once the external structure was up, the delays began. As we got closer to Christmas it became obvious that the build would not be done to such a finish as to get the decoration done. We still cannot use the new rooms properly as they are not yet fully painted or carpeted.  The outside has yet to be rendered as the builder was let down at the last minute by his sub contractor, so the cottage looks very much like a building site from the outside too. I imagine we will not be straight until the end of January, as everyone appears to take a two week break at this time of year. It has been a very disappointing time.

I was going to forget the Christmas tree again this year ( we had just moved in last year and there was no time to get our decorations out of storage) but OH insisted I put it up in our makeshift lounge.

      Not bad, and it certainly has made the place a little more festive!

We managed to cobble together presents and OH was spoiled by some of his students, with lovely bottles and boxes of sweets and biscuits.

I was given the first off the production line of his new ladies t shirts, only available to students.

No make up and half drunk!

These had to be my favourite themed pressie, always a sucker for jelly sweets

I've had a few nice little charity shop bargains in the past few weeks, although OH found a rather lovely leather Linea jacket for £7.95 when I reluctantly took him to the local chazzas. 

I managed to find these gorgeous soft leather gloves for £1.50

Just today I managed to pick up this fab top for a pound, my final bargain of 2015

The label just says 1974 originals, so I've no idea of the brand, but the top is unworn.

Even though we are living in a dusty mess and have run out of money, at least we can start the new year healthy, and with the majority of the work on the house, and associated mess, behind us.  

I will be starting the new year with only two chickens, as my lovely large French copper black Marans, Duck, passed away on Christmas Eve. I am pleased she got to spend a year in the countryside, and as she was 6 years and 9 months old, she had a good long life.

I am 50 in three days time, something I'm finding hard to take in, and hopefully this next year will be memorable in a good way.  We are both keen to see the back of 2015 for many reasons, most of which I'm not prepared to share.

I hope you have all had a good Christmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year!