Tales From Pixie Wood

Easter Bunny Cosy Project - brought to you by Cherry Menlove & Yvestown

When she's behaving my bunny cosy sits nicely, with the flowers and the easter nest.

She'll even give you a twirl and show you her cotton tail bottom.

Sometimes she is naughty and hops off to hide in the crocuses.

But she always comes back and will perhaps settle down for a spot of reading.

But when you can't find her ANYWHERE, she's usually to be found in the cookie jar!

Woo hoo! Today is the day that Yvonne and I launch our Easter Bunny Cosy project, Download easterbunnycozy.pdf 

Yvonne and I have had some great chats on the phone recently and she actually came up with the cosy idea, I promised to come up with the next one, which I'll be popping across to her any day now!

We really want you all to have great fun coming up with an Easter Bunny cosy or cosies of your own. Create a character or better yet a whole family of them and DON'T FORGET to blog about it and upload it in to the Easter Bunny Cozy Flickr group that has been set up especially. I suppose that the closing date, if there is to be such a thing, would be Easter Sunday, but we all know bunnies aren't only for Easter......at least my one, with that demented look in it's little stitched eyeballs, will hopefully be around for a lot longer than that!

Have FUN, FUN, FUN and we can't wait to see what you come up with!

Cherry xoxoxo

One For All

Well hello there!!!! You guys are LOVELY!! I feel like we have all just sat down and shared a pot of Fortnum's tea over a toasted tea cake and a gossip. We have all shared baby stories and squeezed our eyes shut as we remember how cute and edible little people are when they first come out. My sister's new daughters are on the minds of our family members all the time right now. LBH asked me what I was thinking about early the other morning, before we'd even turned the light on, and my answer was "the babies". I held Truly last night as her little feet poked out of her blanket and her toes said 'hello' to the rest of the room. I kissed each toe and tucked them back into the warm.......before unwrapping them again to have another look and a kiss. Hahahahahahaha!

I wish I could send each person that left a comment a copy of the magazine. I'm super touched by the amount of American people that there are who read this blog. "Hello America", I love your country and am going to be there later on in the year! It seems that we have three, or is it four?, copies to give away as other people have donated their copies, so of course I'll open it up to Canada and to Australia.

Thank you for your interest.

The house and the look of it is changing all the time, still, and I think it'll be a W.I.P until we leave here. I bought some paint for a mirror just this afternoon as it suddenly looked soooo DAY-TED in it's current state. I also dropped the sample I had just bought all over the floor of the store and had to use two leaflets to scoop as much back into the pot as I could as it was the last pot of this particular colour. Does anybody else have days when their brain leaves their heads, goes out for the day, on a picnic or perhaps a drive with friends, and then returns in the evening? This happens to me like clockwork at certain times. I even walked up to the kitchen cupboards and began looking for a book as I thought I had walked up to the bookcase which sits in the living room a few months back. It took a moment for me to realise that I was in fact looking at a door and not a row of books. Good lord!

ANYWAY, enough about all that nonsense. I have made a decision to move my food blog over to Pixie Wood. I'll never be a food blogger in the truest sense of the word so it seems rather silly to have it in another location. I love to cook, bake and fiddle about in the kitchen and I have hundreds of recipes that I would very much like to share with you but I simply don't update my food blog as much as I would like as I am too focused on this blog or other things. So if you see a recipe pop up from time to time don't be alarmed, I put it there!

I would also like to take a risk here and be super pushy and insistent to anybody from the U.K. who reads this blog or, in fact, ANYBODY who can get Channel Four on their television set. The Big Food Fight starts tomorrow and if you get the chance to watch any of the season PLEASE DO!

The three titans,  Hugh, Jamie and Gordon have teamed up and are taking on the poultry industry amongst other things. If you follow this link you'll be able to see the trailer to the series, it's very funny and these three chaps have been promoted to gold status in the hero stakes in my opinion.

I'll leave the draw for the magazine open for a few more days and then announce the winners in a post shortly. I'm also going to blog about something that we have been discussing over in the forum. Last year I chose a word to take me through the year instead of making a New Year's resolution. My word was Organisation. I found that doing this helped me inordinately and gave me the ability to organise our house move, my business, my thoughts and even things like my wardrobe. If you'd like to join me and others then think about a word for yourselves which may be pertinent or applicable to you right now. You can pop over to the forum and we can chat about there or you can post it here in a few days when I post mine. I really would recommend doing this. It's easier than a resolution and there can be no radical sense of failure coming along with it. It's simply a word, one word. We can all manage a word, I promise you, we can ALL manage a word.

Have a wonderful start to the week

Cherry xoxo

Jumping, A Little Too High, For Joy & Producing A Giveaway

I'm trying to work out what it was that I was thinking when I decided to blog about the birth of the twins without the new parents permission!! The post was up for but a few moments but it simply wasn't the right thing to do. I'll get to share pictures with you soon, I'm sure, but I really should have waited a touch longer.

I put it down to sheer excitement and the fact that Truly - five pounds, eleven ounces and Daisy - six pounds, one ounce are the most beautiful little darlings this side of heaven. If you had nieces that cute your senses would leave you also, of that I am sure.

By way of a distraction and to keep me out of trouble until I am able to see the twins face to face I am organising a giveaway. The divine Ms. Maxwell of the lovely blog Miss Vandroo emailed me over the Christmas holidays to say that she had bought two copies of the recent issue of 25 Beautiful Homes with my article in it. She went on to make the wonderfully generous offer of giving one of the issues away to an American reader who has been unable to get a copy of the magazine in the States.

I said that I would love to take this kind offer of hers up and would blog about it forthwith.

I'm not going to make it hard or ask you a question or anything like that, but simply offer the magazine to a reader in the simple way that it was intended by Ms. Maxwell to be offered. If you would like the issue please feel free to leave a comment saying just that. If more than one person wants it I'll have a go at the 'random number generator' thingy and make sure that the winner is chosen fairly. I'll email you, asking you for your postal address and then pass it on to MM.

I should point out that this draw is only open to those who live in the USA.

Have a wonderful start to the year and may all dreams come true. My sister's have.......Eeeeeek!

Lots of love from me to you
Cherry (Aunty, if you please) xoxox

Important News For Forum Users

I have just posted an update for anybody who has had trouble logging into the forum. The update can be found here!

Cx

Autumn Supper

Do you not find that weekends crammed with events and things that have been planned make the weekend seem altogether longer somehow? I do. This past weekend was full to the brim, but I enter Monday with the sense of having done so much. I like that. I also like the other sort of weekend which means that LBH and I do nothing but veg and eat so it's handy that we have one of those coming up.

Anyway, Friday started rather early. This time of morning is still so magical to me. We have lived here for over 6 months but I love to peek my head out the door and take a look at all that is occurring in the morning light. That evening we were having folk over for an early bonfire night supper before wandering down into town to watch the fireworks and marvel at the bonfire. So, as you can imagine, there was a lot to be done.

First off I prepped some of the glass jars that I have been collecting for my lantern project. It turns out that you need many, many jars to make the mystical impact that I am looking for, so I'm glad that I have been collecting every jar I come across. But, the good thing about this project is that it is a great way to re-cycle glass and they last, if you look after them, forever! That has to be worth the effort.

Once I had finished painting the soon to be lanterns (I'll post the tutorial for anyone whose interested soon!) I raced to the supermarket, picked up all the ingredients for the supper that I was working on and the work in the kitchen commenced.

Baking on a Friday afternoon is something that makes me so happy. I had Classic FM going in the background while the mixer did it's thing. I was trying out a chocolate cake recipe that I had never tried before and mixing it with a frosting recipe that, again, I had never tried before. But I felt like a culinary Harry Potter in my kitchen that afternoon. Switching this measurement for that one and adding a touch more of this than was written in the recipe. All was well inside and it was my responsibility to take care of people that night, making sure that they were fed and watered.

As soon as it was dark enough my mother and I began to put the lanterns that I had managed to finish out the front of the house to be lit. We placed them at different heights on the logs and the bench and the wall. Little glowing embers, hopefully working as a warm welcome to my home on a cold November night.

We popped some more tea-lights onto the windowsill to light the frame. It looks cosy in there.

I don't think that there are enough lanterns out there so I shall continue to squirrel away the glass jars. But you can see what I'm trying to do with them, no? We have steps up to our front door so I'd certainly love to have them littering each step by the time Christmas rolls around.

By this time people were starting to arrive and they needed to be fed with bread and lashings of butter, chili -con-carne and the aforementioned chocolate cake.......

And then, once the tummies were full, it was time to go to the event. We made sure that Boo was safe and sound inside and told her not to worry a jot about the loud bangs she would be hearing over the next couple of hours. She seemed to understand.

We made our way through the streets and down into the town. We crossed the town bridge, all the while keeping our eyes and ears out for the sound of fireworks. This being our first Bonfire Night since living in the town we weren't quite sure of where it was being held.

We needn't have worried. As soon as they began the show the lights and sounds lit up the black night and we all gazed upwards towards the sky. Shows of this sort rarely go on for longer than a few minutes and before we knew it it was over.

Mmmmmmm.....what to do next? Some went to the pub for a good old fashioned pint while some of us went back for more chocolate cake. I was in the latter group, it had been a long day after all.........

Have a wonderful week and don't forget to check out www.cherrymenlove.com for all the latest news and postings.

Cx

The Black & the White Of It!

I found myself thinking about you all over this past weekend. I occasionally go into my stats, not as often as I used to as it can can drive one crazy after a while, but I can see on a day to day basis how many people visit. I came away from my statistic visit in awe of the people who would want to visit with me. Especially to a place called Pixie Wood. Can you tell I regret calling my blog that?

I'm not about to go into a hideous display of false self-deprecation, I always want to pinch people who do that just under their armpit, but what I am going to say is how nourishing and warming it is to be in such good company. I feel we need those feelings of warmth and nourishment to be given to us by other people, whether on-line or not, because we are so very used to other people giving us their anger and hurt. I saw a man assaulted on the platform of a train station the other day and I'll never forget the look of fear in the man's eyes as he looked up at the man who had him by the scruff of the neck. It was all I could do not to jump on the back of this bully and box his ears.

Anyway, the catalyst to this outpouring of gratitude on my part is the overwhelming atmosphere of generosity and openness that was displayed as we all gave feedback for Mrs Dalloway. I am hoping from the bottom of my heart that NOBODY felt unable to give their opinion. Of course I felt a little relieved at finding out I wasn't the only one who didn't enjoy the book. I have been made to feel stupid more than once in my life, as I'm sure we all have,  and I was hoping it wasn't going to happen again. But then again, reading the wonderful points of view and experiences from those who did indeed love it made me certain that I would once again re-visit Mrs D. and the day of her party.

So, as it stands right now at 07.38 on Monday morning it is eleven votes in favour of P&P and 12 votes in favour of Scenes. If someone had said that wouldn't mind reading either of them then I counted that as a vote for each book. Seeing as the vote is so close how about we do Scenes next and P&P after that??

I shall update the side of my blog with a link through to Amazon for any folk that want to buy it to do so. But please do have a good look through any thrift or charity shops in your area before buying a new copy. It's a great way to re-cycle and it means that those pages of print get to live on the minds of even more people.

LBH and I made you all some Vanilla Bread & Butter Pudding on Saturday. It was lovely and I hope you enjoy it just as much as we did. I love and adore cooking with that man that I shall marry on the 1st of August 2008. My Dad once described watching us in the kitchen together as like watching a well oiled machine. I felt oddly proud at this, such is my penchant for things running smoothly. Don't get me wrong, we have spats about three hundred and thirty times each day, each of us is passionate about our feelings although they are expressed differently. Invariably these spats end with LBH saying something that makes me laugh which then leads to him getting another telling off for not taking the spat seriously. HA!

Today he headed off in his uniform 'The Suit' in the dark of the morning. He remarked that it was rather nice to be out this early as he headed off down the road. I called after him "You'll have to feed the cows one day in darkness like this!"

What was it Walt Disney said? "If you can dream it you can do it".......and Disney started with a mouse! 

Patiently Waiting

Now, this little chap has been waiting around for almost a year. I picked this 'pigeon hole' unit up in Leominster last October/November for the grand total of five english pounds. I had some idea of what I wanted to do with it before we had even found our house but since then it has languished. It  spent time in my parents garage, our old flat, the spare room and the back garden.

It wasn't until this package arrived that I knew that I could finally get it on the wall and looking the way I had imagined.

Karin from the blog MardreKarin sent me a care package. Just look at it! Wrapped to perfection in vintage wallpaper, that has now been ironed and is carefully stored away for a project I have in mind. Her parcel  contained a never ending stream of beautiful gifts, craft projects, ceramics and trinkets. I had seen the M.Stew crafty kits online but had never held some in my hands until this parcel arrived. *I just tried to link to the MS website for you to see the craft kits but randomly it appears to be down for maintenance*

As I went through the parcel that had been sent to me it became clear that finally I could decorate the postal unit I had picked up all those months ago. As the unit itself is made from a wood that has been stained to a dark colour I knew that each compartment needed to be bright and colourful. I also knew that the unit would be going on a wall in our guest 'Blyton' room. This is the only room that I have used such a plethora of primary colours in. It's not a subtle, tasteful room. But it's bright, interesting and has lots to look at. I love rooms like that. So I wanted one in my own home and Karin's package helped me to obtain it.

Take a look..........

Can you see them? In some of the compartments there are tiny little bathroom fixtures. There sits an old fashioned sink and vanity mirror.

And here you'll find a roll top bath. Everything you see in this picture apart from the pot of Glossies and the unit itself was sent to me by Karin. Does the blogging community's generosity know no bounds? I don't think it does. And it was this act of generosity that got me thinking.

It seems that although the crafting, homemaking, working women, decorating, young things, older things, female entrepreneurs, small business owners, writers, knitters.....BLOGS OF THIS TYPE WRITTEN BY WOMEN (and it would appear some men too, welcome boys!!) number many, many thousands there is still a deliciously respectful and intimate feeling to this particular online community, you'll find that the food blogging community has a very similar atmosphere. We are invited to take part in tours of peoples homes, views into books that are being written, family life, craft projects, new recipes and the basics of life.

The basics of life.

I LOVE THAT and I feel oddly protective over this corner of the world wide web although I have only met a few of you all in real life. Am I alone in this? Should I feel that or let it go? Does anybody else feel like this or am I being too sentimental?

As the house is pretty much finished I can get back to work on the items that I will soon be adding to my store. The shop has been closed for far too long and needs to re-open. I am working on only two products for the Autumn and one product for Christmas. It's not a great deal but I'm able to spend time on them and create a finite number of limited edition, handmade items for your homes that I hope you like. Of course if nobody likes them and refuses to buy them I'll have to keep them all and use them here! Mmmmmmmm.........

Karin, thank you so very much for your wonderful gifts. I hope you like what I have done with them.

I'm about three weeks behind on emails right now but am slowly catching up and hope that no offence is caused by the delay in my responses.

Have a wonderful September day.

CM x

*good lord, did you all see the spelling errors in todays post!!!!!!! I'm sorry, I was listening to some article on Radio four about Bill Clinton and my attention was not on my spelling. How embarrassing* 

For You.........

The flowers in the teapot are for you, to say thank you to you all for the lovely birthday messages that you took the time to leave me. I am immensely grateful and will be spending time over the next couple of days answering messages that have come in via email. Apologies for the delay.

LBH is off work for the next two weeks and we are cracking on with the house. We have approximately three weeks until we have to have it in some sort of order so it's great to have him around and helping.

My latest SheerLuxe article can be found here!

I've got some thrifty finds that I want to show you over the next few days but I really wanted this post to be about thanking you for your birthday kindness.

Thank you

Lots of love

Cherry xx

*comments are closed*

Halcyon Days & Why 'Every Little Thing' She Does Is Magic

Each day I work on a different part of the house. That way I spread the load a little bit, I don't feel imprisoned by one room in particular and I have also found that each time I go back to a particular room I have more inspiration to use in it.

The unit in the picture above was found while thrifting in a place called Leominster way back last year. It has been sitting around for all these months and I haven't really known what to do with it. It is sitting on top of some old oak drawers in the guest room before we attach it to the wall. At first I thought that the guest room would end up being rather sweet. I was expecting it to be the one room that would contain various shades of pink and be rather fluffy in it's appearance. But my thoughts on this have evolved now and it is slowly transforming itself into a throwback from the halcyon days of long ago. I like to call them my 'Blyton Days'.

Both my parents and LBH and I read the Enid Blyton books while we were growing up and I'm almost certain that LBH's parents would have done, although it's never something that I have asked. While I was growing up l aways found myself a little miffed when I read that the only famous person to share a birthday with me was Enid Blyton. Nowadays of course I'd quite happily wear that information emblazoned across my chest on a t-shirt.

The Famous Five Series was my favourite, while I know that LBH loved the Secret Seven books. I wanted to be one of the gang in those books and to go on those adventures with them. Of course through the magic of Blyton's writing I could and did go on those adventures but nowadays, as an adult living in a much changed world, I appreciate the books even more than I did when I was small and just beginning to realise how important it was to fill my mind with the written word.

I bought the two books in the picture above on Saturday as I already knew what direction I wanted the guest room to go in and it seemed as if these two were sitting on the shelf and waiting for me to drop by and purchase them. The Adventures of Pip opens with this glorious first sentence...."Pip the pixie was doing the washing up for his Aunt Twinkle"

Ahhhhhhh! I love that. I love that there is a pixie called Pip, I love that he does the washing up and I love the fact that he has an aunt called Twinkle

This is not a twee, sickly sweet yearning for days gone by or a desire to turn back the clock and halt any progress. No, this is a genuine need to get rid of some of the dross that pervades my mind and life through todays media and get back to basics. Simple stories of simple adventures. Where children caught fish in jam jars and would spend days on end in the open air. Eating foods that would contain little or no additives and bask in the shade of an old oak tree if the sun grew too hot.

Ahhhhh, lazy, hazy days of summer.

This is one of the bedside tables in the same room. I'm showing snippets as I haven't even finished the room yet but I like all of the colours on this table. I picked up the embroidered pouch last week underneath the pepper pot in my town. I have filled it with soap, body spray and some other treats for my next guest to use. The Cath Kidston soaps were given to me by my mum and I have to admit to loving the way they have been wrapped up.

That enamelware jug in the background seriously needs filling with some wild daisies or cornflowers but having spoken to our local florist cornflowers have been in short supply this year. Which is sad. I do love cornflowers.

I spent most of yesterday feeling rather small. I was super dooper tired for no apparent reason and I could feel a little confusion creeping in, arm in arm with a sense of being a tad overwhelmed. It's so important to have these types of days. They are our very soul's telling us to stop, look around, check things out, re-evaluate, rest, breathe, laugh or perhaps to do what Mr R. Kipling advises and simply "delight in the simple things"

Today is clearer. I have my to-do list ready and will steadily make my way through it.

Did you see my new arrivals in the top picture? You didn't? I shall give you a close up then......

I have a family of little ducks now. Eeeeek! Amanda from Every Little Thing sent them to me all the way across the Atlantic. I love Amanda's blog and I urge you to read the post dated 30th of July. I have told her many times that I would like her to live down the street from me. We have both come to the conclusion that we probably wouldn't get a great deal of work done but what the heck! The only wrinkles we'd be cultivating would be laughter lines and that's OK with me!

My little duck family sit in my new guest room, the Blyton Room. The room that reminds me of my childhood days in the summer, the good things in life and friends. Even if they are very far away.

Have a lovely day and thank you so much for reading. I checked my blog statistics yesterday and was totally blown away by the numbers that I saw. I don't know who you all are, where you come from, what you think or how you found me. But I'd like to say welcome and thank you. I know how busy you all are and it humbles me to think that you would take time out of your day to spend it with me.

Today I'm back in the Blyton Room. I have to give some of the walls a second coat of paint. It is also exactly a year from today that LBH and I marry. If that isn't the most delicious thought to carry through the day them I'm a lost cause!  Oh how I love that man.

I'll see you again on Friday.

Lots of love

Cherry x

Humbled By You, A Lemon And A Lime

I can't tell you what a humbling experience it was to receive your comments to my last blog post and subsequent emails expanding on your thoughts. I am humbled and in awe of the kindness and generosity that people have shown in the last few days and I only hope that I can repay it, in some way, one day.

Thank you, thank you so very much.

Something else that is rather humbling, as well as awe inspiring, is finding out that your younger sister is pregnant. LBH and I have known for a while now but I have been unable to tell anyone until the scan has shown that all is well.

Jodie and her hubby Garry went off to have to have the scan on Monday and discovered these little monkeys...........

Twin One.

Twin Two.

Apparently they are as big as a lemon or a lime right now. And Jo-Jo finally knows why she has been feeling THIS tired!

Congratulations to you both. We cannot wait to see them.

Jodie darling, you're going to make a great mummy and I'm looking forward to taking our broods to Pony Club! Hee hee!

Garry, not only are you a superstar DJ but you also appear to be a bit of a stallion! Grrrrrr!

All our love to you all.

Cherry & LBH