HALL TABLE

The hall table is finished and back in it's original place by the front door; sanded down and freshly painted. I'd been wanting to re-paint it for a long time but could never find the correct colour.  Luckily, a flick through Farrow & Ball's colour chart revealed 'Light Gray', the perfect mix of grey with beige.

above - The table before it was re-painted.  It was originally painted to fit with the theme in our previous house; a much lighter cream.  It shows the peeled paint on the top which was damaged by over watering a plant.

FLOWERS IN THE ORCHARD

 

Our orchard is showing the first signs of life after the winter months.  A stunning carpet of white snowdrops mixed with yellow aconites (below).

 

Purple Cyclamen (above) and yellow crocus (below).  Soon there will be daffodils of all varieties in yellow and white.

APPLE TREE BLOSSOM

It's amazing how a few days of warm weather brings everything on.  The apple tree blossom in the orchard has begun to open.

FREAKY WEATHER

Spring is on its way - to be precise it's Thursday 20th March 2014 just 20 days 8 hours remaining til its here. We've been noticing a glimpse of it already; sunny days, flowers blooming, birds tweeting, and a gentle breeze. 

Today started off as one of these beautiful early spring mornings, 

then ..........

all of a sudden from nowhere comes a mass of hail stones......huge loud hail stones that make you stop what you're doing and look out of the window.  

The photo above is taken from the main bedroom that over looks the conservatory roof. 

The above photo is a detailed 'close up' of the large lumps of ice that now cover it and the garden.

Then as quickly as it arrived, it all stopped, the sun comes out and shines again!!!  

Isn't mother nature a versatile and wonderful thing?

STILTON CHEESE TASTING

Our neighbours set us a challenge.... that they would be able to taste Long Clawson Stilton Cheese from all the other Stiltons from around this area. 

We bought 4 Stiltons in total - Long Clawson, Cropwell Bishop, Colston Basset and Stichelton, then tasted them 'blind' without knowing which was which.

The 'reveal' showed us which cheese was which and it's place of origin.  The four of us were divided down the middle, two in favour of Long Clawson and the other two in favour of Stichelton.

Stilton was first recognised as a type of cheese at the beginning of the 18th century.  It was given its name by the village Stilton, south of Peterborough. Having originally being made in the town Stilton, protection by a certification trademark (PDO - Protected Designation of Origin) - means that today the world famous cheese can only be made in the three adjacent counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire.  

CLOAKROOM OBJECTS

Details of the things and objects in the downstairs cloakroom...

 

 

 

CLOAKROOM TOILET (UPDATE)

Once the renovation of our cloakroom toilet was finished, it was time to decorate it with some interesting 'bits and pieces'.

We found this gorgeous head in one of my favourite shops, Baileys Home.  Their principles are recycle, reuse and repurpose found objects....and that's exactly what we did.  We call him Bailey and he sits on the window shelf in the corner beside a glass jar with twigs in it.

 What could be more simple and perfect?