It's all happening

Oops, it's been some time since my last blog. Sorry about that. A few things have happened since last. First of all, my project has been completed and is now adorning our kitchen window. The chillies look really amazing when they catch the sun. They almost become translucent and you can see the seeds inside. Obviously I had to photograph it.

Secondly, the spring has arrived! For two weeks now the weather has been lovely. Sunny, warm and generally pleasant. This means that our garden has come alive. It's all very exciting to see which plants will come up etc. Specially since this is our first spring/summer in the house.

I've been particulary keen to see how the bulbs I planted will do. And yes! a few weeks ago I saw the first purple crocuses appearing :-) Unfortunately the wind/frost got some of them pretty quickly, but not before I got a chance to photograph them.

Next in line where the daffodils. They been cheering us up for the past two weeks and are still going. The tulips is in the process of coming up and soon the flower bed will have some purple in it again.

The weekend saw a proper spring clean of the garden. Ian had fun laying grass turf and plant a hanging basket whilst I was tearing down the naugthy climbing plant (not ivy but it behaves like it) and ensuring all the weed and snails are non-existent. All very satisfying work. The garden looks so much nicer now.

That's it for me, soon time to get off the train. More photos of the garden will follow as it progresss...

Kitchen project

For the past weeks I been working on a mobile to hang in our kitchen window. As I came to the conclusion that a curtain would block out too much light and (yes Mom you are slowly converting me) the window seemed a little bare, I thought a mobile could do the job. I guess I got a bit inspired from the mobile shop we found in Japan.

The question was what should I hang in it. As it is a kitchen dried chillies and limes seemed to be the obvious choice. So I've spent a week or two drying them.

Next question was what should I use as a hanging base? I was pondering on this whilst the chillies were drying. The only thing I could come up with, which didn't involve a complicated shopping trip, was gigantic tooth picks. Not ideal perhaps but should do the job.

The week turns into weekend and my in-laws came for a visit. On the Sunday we all went out for a nice walk when it suddently hit me; I can use fallen down tree sticks and branches.

So I came back with an assorted collection of branches and sticks. Next was just to assemble it all. It was a bit fiddely but then again, that's the kind of job I like. Last night I strung the last bit together and voilà, we got a mobile for the kitchen. You can see the result below.

All that is needed now is some heavy duty drilling to put the hook up in the window. I might leave that to Hubby, he enjoys that kind of job more than I :-)

Shopping weekend

So, the weekend is nearly over now. It always goes so quickly.

It has been a shopping and sorting-things-out-at-home weekend. IKEA trip on Friday where we got lots of stuff for the bathroom and some other bits and bobs. That was hard shopping for poor Ian. We didn't get home until midnight! But we did get Swedish meatballs for dinner :-)

Saturday, food shopping and rearranging the kitchen a little bit. The wine rack was in the way so needed to find a new home for it. Cooked a fab dinner, duck legs with sweet potato mash...yum...

Shopping continued today with a trip to Guildford. I was looking for boxes to fit into our new bathroom shelf, but couldn't find any that fitted. I did find a very nice basket for our fire wood instead and lovely bed linen by Orla Kiely.

While I was out shopping, Ian spent the day drilling holes. All the shelves etc are now up in the bathroom. He's done a fantastic job, it looks really good now. You can see some photos on my flickr.

Today's photos are of our bedroom lamp. The lamp consist of a metal garland that you wrap around the light bulb. You can then shape it in anyway you want. Tonight I've added a second garland to make it bigger. It creates really cool shadows in the room as you see...

Time to get ready for bed.