Tales From Pixie Wood

A Whole World Of Before & Afters

I started one of our most risky make-over projects yesterday. We had ummmmed and ahhhhed over doing this since we moved in but really wanted to make sure that we were doing the right thing so have waited this long (ten months) before taking the plunge. I shall do a reveal/show & tell as soon as its all finished but starting on this project did get me thinking about all of the changes which have taken place in the house since we moved in.

The front of the house....

The Living Room......

And, the guest bedroom.....

to use three examples.

I have uploaded a huge amount of before and after pictures to my flickr account and created a set called Our House - Before & After which can be found in its entirety here!

I'm becoming rather obsessed with my little flickr account. I am very late, as usual, in realising just how useful it is to have your pictures uploaded, tagged and stored somewhere. I opened a flickr account about two years ago but sort of forgot about it and then I completely forgot what my user name and password were so I had to start over, and this is what you see here!

I'm often pretty slow on the uptake when it comes to something useful, wonderful, life changing or just hilarious. Case in point - The Mighty Boosh. I love them and recorded an entire 'Boosh-a-thon' over the Easter weekend which I then watched back on Sky-Plus. I'm only three seasons late. LBH thinks I love them, like REALLY loves them, and said as much yesterday.

LBH - Do you love them? I think you love them. This is ridiculous, you've watched a million episodes one after the other. You love them don't you?

Me - Don't be silly. Now pop off and fix me a hot supper, another episode is just starting!

I jest......he had offered to make the supper anyway, but its embarrassing to always be late on the hot tips. I remember a time when it was me with my finger on the pulse. My best friend and bridesmaid Jackie and I would be the ones bopping along to the latest disco funk in the closeted clubs of Shoreditch and would find our entire wardrobes within the hallowed lanes of Brick Lane market. Nothing was too dated and if we looked liked an extra from Pretty in Pink or Flashdance then our job was done. But that was back in 2003, only 5 years ago I grant you, but a lifetime in ones youth. I'm 33 in August and would only ever agree to go out clubbing all night if I was assured a comfortable car journey to the club, instant access to said club - NO WAITING IN LINE - and then the same comfortable car journey home - NO WAITING FOR A TAXI/NIGHT BUS/LAST TRAIN HOME where I would be deposited in to my bed. Oh, and I'd like a table for the evening in case I became tired on the dancefloor. God I'm boring.

HAPPY TUESDAY EVERYBODY!!!!

Lots of love, Cherry
ex- party-girl, lover of vertiginous heels and falling out of the Met Bar on a week night. Can currently be found in Ugg boots and very old jeans mithering about the youth of today and how short everybody's skirts are. And, it would seem, in need of a kick up the boring butt!

Madonna Or A Bubble Bath Bubble

I'm sitting here cutting out teeny weeny felt tree trunks for a project and thinking about Madonna, as she's just been inducted in to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. I like Madonna. Not because she burns crosses in her videos or has a penchant for simulating masturbation on stage, or even because she has a much better body than me at nearly fifty years old when I'm only thirty two. I like her because she is still here.

Lets be honest, we all have days when we feel like Madonna - or a Madonna type figure - powerful, brave, ballsy, carefree and then we have others when we feel like a bubble made by the bubble bath we use. Fragile, ready to be popped and never seen again with the most fragile of touches.

We can look around us and it can appear as if everything is perfect - so why do we want to cry?

The room shown in this post is our guest room.

This room has the advantage of almost never being untidy, simply because its used less than the other rooms. I come in to this room and lay on the bed when I'm feeling small. I stare up at the ceiling or look out on to the garden that LBH and I are finally making sense of. I ask myself whether I have too much and perhaps that is why I am feeling like this?   I ask myself if its me, what have I done wrong to have these invasive feelings? Perhaps I get up too early and work until too late and get so tired I sleep standing up? If thats the case then why do I feel as if I am never getting enough done? Perhaps I'm not cut out for this? Blogging, exposing, teaching, publicly crafting, publicising, dreaming, creating, hoping, wanting, writing, searching. Perhaps things need to be quieter, gentler, simpler, less 'big'? There is no time to fit it all in. I can't drink any more coffee and I can't set my alarm any earlier. I just feel small and my bottom lip keeps trembling.

I saw my doctor the other day with regards to my pesky hip, it keeps having spasms, spasms of pain. I like my doctor, she's......hmmmmm, what is she?......level, my doctor is level. I was feeling very discouraged that day because I knew that she was going to suggest physio and my first thought was "I don't have time!!!" We chatted and got on to a conversation about somebody in the press recently. I commented on how if we all were to realise that in fact each one of us were the same we'd be ever such a lot happier. She looked at me and said that she thought that was a truism if ever there was one.

So in effect if I believe what I said then I would be able to take great comfort in knowing that we all have bubble bath bubble days. You may lie on the couch or stare out of the car window. You may lay in the bath or sit at your sewing machine. I lay in our guest room, not for very long mind you, just long enough to .....well, to think.

And then I get up and get on, sometimes feeling a little better and sometimes not at all. I guess that's what I like about Madonna, she gets up and gets on, not always partaking in something I would do personally (although I do love her in a pink leotard) but she gets up and she gets on. Whereas the bubble bath bubble, well thats gone and its not coming back.

Cx

Still On The Mis-Matched Tip

As a storm rages across England and I snuggle down into the depths of my study/crafty room/ place where if you don't look closely you won't see me for all of the STUFF laying around, I thought it was time to tell you of my love of postcards.

I love postcards.

OK, thats it, I've told you, see ya, BYYEEEEEE!!!..............................hee hee!

I love their size and shape, the classic postcard I'm referring to, and I love the fact that you could decorate your entire home with postcards picked up on your travels and it would appear as if you had little works of art all over your walls.

I have carefully chosen postcards on my fridge and an entire row of vintage postcards balancing on the skirting board of my guest-room. I am going to be sprucing up the frames that this collection sits in and I'll post them here. They are all from Lake Como and need a little more attention than they have been given of late.

Anyway, I picked up the three postcards in the first picture whilst in Salzburg, Austria. I loved the colours that are featured in them and as I'm constantly trying to add colour to my kitchen I thought that these would suit the room. I had three, rather sturdy, plain white frames from Ikea to use but I wanted to give them their own look. It has to be said that certain Ikea accessories are good for a little make-over. I remember someone I know bemoaning their partners love of Ikea and how all their house needed now were the yellow arrows on the floor telling them how to get to the market place and they'd be all set! 

So, I covered the back of the frame in three different types of fabric, this is great for using up scraps...

....and used my old pal glue gun to fix the fabric in place.

Then I popped the postcards front and centre and placed them on the wall to your right as you enter from the hall in to the kitchen.

*note to self* May have to think about getting a new light switch due to its un-photogenic qualities!

At the moment, as you can see, there are only six frames adorning this wall. I am aiming to fill it over the next few months. I think that this small section of wall could cope with being filled and I'm aiming for a colourful diversion as one enters the kitchen.......this is in order for the MESS and CHAOS of the rest of the room to be glanced over as opposed to dwelt upon!

At the top are two postcards I bought in 2006 on a trip to Cornwall. We visited the Museum of Gardening, Trevarno, and I saved them until the right place popped up. Again I used little wooden Ikea frames but added some hand-painted polka dots to the frames in primary red and green.

I'm not leaving my study/crafty room/ place where if you don't look closely you wont see me for all of the STUFF laying around today. The storm can rage outside my window all day long but I'm in the middle of prepping some bundles of products for a couple of magazines and I HAVE to get them finished.

Have a good day wherever you may be. My thoughts are with you all today, whoever you may be. I had two intertwining dreams last night which were exhaustingly awful and emotional in equal measures and dreams like that always make me contemplative and more aware of the smaller things. So if you're reading this I'm thinking of you, even if I don't know you're there.

Cherry xoxox 

Mis-Matched Fun On Mothering Sunday

Yesterday was Mothering Sunday in the U.K. and so LBH and I invited everybody over to ours for a spot of lunch. We were going to be having ten of us around the table at two pm and when there are that many of us the table comes into its own mis-matched glory.

I have been collecting odd bits of crockery for years now. I often see one lonesome plate or a group of saucers which when put together with the rest of my collection seem to sit rather well. It would be nice to think that someday we'll be setting the table with Villeroy & Boch, but if that never happens I'm more than happy with my odd bits of Royal Doulton and Spode.

There is a plate in my mis-matched collection which is important to me and sits there so beautifully that if anything ever happened to it I'd be devastated. You can see it in the picture above. The creamy, pale blue trim of the plate, edged by the daintiest gold pattern you ever did see. It almost seems a shame to place anything resembling food onto the pretty flowers in the middle but I think Ms.Plate would prefer to be used than sitting on the top shelf and watching the proceedings from afar. This particular piece was sent to me by the lovely Susan of the NotQuiteJuneCleaver blog. It's taken me ages to post about it but I was excited about how the gift she sent me looked on this special day, although I can't quite remember which mother ate from the plate yesterday.

I was thrifting on Friday in my local town (I love it when you haven't been for a while and the stores are full to the brim of thrifty treats once again) and I came across this little fruit bike. Its wheels spin with ease and the fruit compartments can be lifted out and filled with miniatures. I left this on the table yesterday as I liked how it looked. There are NO RULES when it comes to entertaining if it looks good and makes nobody feel uncomfortable. My little bike was a reminder that Spring is well and truly on its way and before we know it the table will be filled with glorious sun fruits. Cherry pie, tropical fruit salad and blueberries for breakfast will be back. You can also see a small piece of green glass in the background of this picture. My mother passed that on to me just the other week and earlier in the day I had a tea light sitting in it. Until LBH said he needed a receptacle for the garnish he had made for lunch and the tea light was duly blown out and the green glass became a holder for lemon rind, rosemary and garlic.

I even managed to sneak in a Christmas plate yesterday, which is something I may not do every day but we had so many bodies in the house that every plate was needed. It was a lovely afternoon and I am struggling to believe that we are already in the third day of March. We have less than five months before we get married and there is still a fair amount to do .......Eeeeeekk! But its all OK, I think that the excitement of actually being married is far outweighing any stress that some little thing going wrong could bring, at least thats the way I'm feeling right now. Its also busy over here at Pixie Wood which is a great way to alleviate any stressful wedding thoughts.

I'm signing off now as I have a list to crack on with but I should take this time to mention two glaring points that I failed to explain before the start of the weekend.

The first is that in this post  I described the container for my Easter tree as a bed pan, when it is clearly a chamber pot. My cousin was good enough to point this out, which I'm glad she did as I had a feeling that I had got something a little wrong on that particular post and this was exactly it.

The other is that on Friday, just gone, I was meant to be telling you about a project/blog event which Yvonne and I are hosting. Having spoken on the phone last week we decided to put it back until this Wednesday as there were some bits and pieces we wanted to iron out and with both of us being a touch hectic we needed more time. I really hope you'll stop by on Wednesday and see what we're getting up to as it would be great to have you all join in.

Have a wonderful start to the week and if you have any mis-matched china collections yourself then let me know and perhaps it would be a good idea to start a Flickr group??

Cherry xoxoxo

The Start Of My Easter Tree

Here is the start of my Easter tree for this year. It resides in the hallway atop my Singer phone table and is no longer on the plate that you see in the picture. My aim for this year was to begin the run up to Easter with a fairly bare tree and see what goodies and random bits and bobbles I would end up attaching to its branches by the time Easter was done and dusted.

Recently, LBH and I rid ourselves of some Hazel branches which were growing in a crazy way at the bottom of the garden. So I nabbed one of them and painted it Green Ground, using one of my ever trusty Farrow & Ball sample pots.

When it was dry I plunged it into one of two white ceramic bedpans that I own, but which look far prettier as planters or receptacles for pretty Easter trees than their original use.

Bleugh..... bed pan..... BLEEEUUUGGHHH!!!!!

I covered the soil up with some bright green, 'straw like' material that I picked up in Salzburg and placed two tiny sheep in amongst it, in order that they may frolic in the sun which comes in through the front door each morning.

I also added some forget-me-not type flowers so that they may have some colour against the blinding green.

I added two painted bunnies. A pink one and a green one ,which was camera shy at the time of this shoot!

You'll also notice, standing guard, these wonderful little gnomes. I also bought these while in Salzburg from a lovely store called Mia De Roca. Regina, the owner, is a member of my forum and we had a lovely time meeting each other on our recent trip.

I've added some tiny hand embroidery......

...and the obligatory song bird.

I look forward to seeing how 'crowded' it gets as the weeks go on. There is nothing like the colours of Easter and Spring to revive me and whip me into a feeling good frenzy. Lashings of pastel shades, offset by vibrant greens are all I need to say '"Hello house, what shall we do today?" 

Does anybody else decorate their homes for Easter/Spring in a similar way to me?

Cherry xoxox

I Could Have Sworn I Showed You This.........

I had a couple of thoughts over the weekend that related to my previous post about a television presenter and the subject of focusing on all things perfect. At times I thought that I really should have been MORE aware that posting about this particular topic  and television show was incendiary but its important to own and take responsibility for what one writes whilst blogging and I do feel strongly about the enormous amount of pressure that seems to bleed in to our lives from various corners.

That said I am now moving on to a subject that I was convinced I told you about already but my published post are having a ball telling me otherwise. Our Bathroom - I previously posted about here, way back in June of last year.

Here are a few reminder pics of how it used to look.........

And here is how it looks now........

Photo by Colin Poole, Photoworld Ltd

Photo by Colin Poole, Photoworld Ltd

These pictures were taken for the magazine shoot way back in September and we have made a few minor adjustments since then, such as different door handles etc, but we're happy with the way it has turned out and it looks a lot bigger, which for a small bathroom is a 'good thing'. The wall that you see by the sink in the above picture is bare at the moment and LBH and I have agreed that we need more room for storage. You know how it goes, before long the edge of the bath and around the sink gets littered with bottles, jars and so many potions that it begins to look like an apothecary from hell! I have a wonderful, original late 1940's early 1950's cabinet which is currently in storage at my parents. I'm desperate to get it over here and see just how it would look suspended on the wall. As soon as its up and I have tinkered with it I shall post more pics.

Hmmmmm......it does seem more than a little odd to be telling you that I'll post pictures of the room which is more commonly known as 'the loo' but I have to admit to loving every room in other peoples houses and feel especially privileged when they deign to take pictures of the water closet for everyone else to see.

Today I am blitzing the house, as we have guests staying for the next two weekends, and I am getting cracking on some Easter projects that I shall share here. I shall also be  finishing my part of the project that I am running alongside the gorgeous Yvonne from Yvestown. I interrupted her sushi last night with an untimely text message because I didn't take into account the time difference. Yvonne is the type of person that is good to have around. If you have read her blog you'll get some indication as to what she is like but when you meet her and hear her laugh THEN you'll know that Yvonne really rocks. She's a good girl and I'm really excited about this little project that we'll be launching, at the same time, on our respective blogs on Friday of this week.

Have a wonderful start to the week. There is just time to tell you that I have set up a new email address which is dedicated to answering specific questions which you may wish to ask me. I miss questions which are sometimes sent as comments on this blog or to my regular email address and for this I apologise. But, when I see messages come through from this address - ihaveaquestion (at)cherrymenlove (dot) com - it shall be much easier for me to answer them in a more timely and organised fashion. 

Phew! I can see light at the end of my email inbox already.......can I go out in to the garden now and play?

Cherry xoxo   

A Cosy Corner of Constants

I appreciate what LBH does during the week. Don't get me wrong, his commute is about three hours a day and he works hard - but I find it hard when he has to stay late-ish on a Friday night. There is something about Friday nights that we look forward to. I'll be honest, unless we have plans to go out or have guests arriving we always do our grocery shop on a Friday night. We arrive at about eight thirty pm, start at the top end where its warmer and pretty much have the place to ourselves. Before Christmas we signed up to the 'scan your own items as you shop' scheme. LBH and I are both the eldest children in our respective families so it was fun experiencing another person being just as determined to use the scanning gizmo as I was. In fact it got so heated at one stage that I stopped in the middle of the freezer section and threatened to kick LBH if he didn't let me have a go. There I was staring up at him demanding that he hand over the scanner so that I could have a go, I may have even stamped my foot, all the while he wasn't looking directly at me but directly at my forehead. Now, I knew that I had the mother of all zits growing up there and so, apparently, did LBH. Which of course infuriated me even more until, through clenched teeth I uttered "Stop staring at the spot on my forehead!!!!!!!" to which LBH replied - deadpan- "Shall I scan it for you?" bringing the hand held scanning device up to the offending barnacle on my head a zapping a red line across it.

LBH has never been as close to landing in a freezer cabinet full of bags of summer frozen fruits in all of his life and it was only because I found this charade very funny that instead of kicking him I told him off for making me laugh while I was trying my best to be mad.

I digress. Right now I'm here alone with a fire going, blogging and waiting for him to come in from work. I thought that I would take this opportunity to show you my very favourite corner. The corner is the one you see in the picture above. It looks that way when I come down in the morning and when I go up to bed at night. Its neat, colourful and serves a purpose. You see, on that table I keep an ever changing collection of cookery books. The bulk of our collection is in the living room on the bookcase but the ones we use most of all, from season to season, sit right there and are regularly picked upon.

From left to right - Nigella Bites, The River Cottage Year, Nigella's - How to be a Domestic Goddess (out of site) Apples for Jam, The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook, Hugh's Meat book, Falling Cloudberries & Peggy P's Pretty Party Cakes. As I am in the process of shifting my food blog over to here I thought it might be a good idea to show you which books I work from when I am stuck for inspiration.  Each one serves as a guide to making and presenting food, in all its forms, to the highest possible standard and each one encompasses how I feel about different types of food on different occasions. So these chaps will pop up again and again I'm sure. I've been working with Nigella and Hugh's books for years now and even my Tessa Kiros books have been in my collection for over 18 months. Peggy is a fairly new addition to the clan, arriving last year and my Martha books were given to me in the summer by the wonderful Barbara. B.

They sit there, in my current favourite corner, upright and ready. Beautiful books, with beautiful contents and created to inspire beautiful occasions. Altogether beautiful.

Speaking of beautiful, you all know Yvonne right? Yvonne is my good friend and we have decided to collaborate on a project. I prefer her aesthetic to mine actually and am truly looking forward to working with her. The catch to all this is that you get to join in and I shall divulge all anon. Until then, have a safe and wonderful weekend and thank you for letting me show you my 'inspiration point'!

Cx

 

I'll Be Home For Christmas

LBH's mum arrives today. This means that Christmas has REALLY started as she is with us for the duration. She will arrive bearing gifts of venison and beef as well as practical items such as spare quilts and carpet shampoo.

This is her room. The guest room. This room has been the most well behaved room in the house lately. Why? Because it has sat there, without complaint and kept itself in shape and tidy. This means that apart from a little plumping and sprucing I have had to do nothing except close the door behind me and wait for our guest.

The cushions are fat and the tissue box replenished. I keep a postcard sized print of my favourite artist in the whole world, John Currin, by the bed and of course there is a candle. We light candles a lot in this house around this time of year and I want any person who stays here to feel free to do the same. How many of us have read by candlelight lately and gone to sleep having puffed it out and buried down into the bed?

On the other side of the bed is a more traditional 'lamp'. It was slightly dull and a little grubby so I re-covered the shade in some odd bits of fabric and added a button trim. Hand-cream is a must and I always have two or three on the go in the drawer of my nightstand, our guest gets Penhaligon's. The rose scent lasts all day and fills the room.

Look at the books. Ahhhhh, Susan Branch. Who would have thought? I have been given so much, including friendship, Rachel and more inspiration than I can shake a stick at.

Let me take a moment while I pop off to the guest room and have yet another flick through the treasures...............................................................................................................................................................

.........I'm back. Inspired and ready to continue.

I picked up a grand total of SEVENTEEN Beatrix Potter books in the thrift store just this week. They cost me thirty pence each and although there are not the classic square, white versions I am in love with the colourful spines they sport. The stories are the same, as are the pictures and I think that every home should have a little BP in it, for cosy englishness if nothing else.

This is the view that any guest will wake up to if they open the curtains in the morning and then retire back to bed. Frost. It's the closest we shall get to snow I believe and I like it. It adds a white shimmer to everything and is so fitting. It disappears as we head towards lunchtime but if the weather report on the radio is anything to go by we are headed for a cold snap.

The part of the garden that you see in the picture above is our 2008 project. I can't wait to plan, clear, dig and sew and then entertain!

Supper, al fresco by hand painted lantern light. Thats the recipe for next year. Let me at it, let me at it!

If you are reading this I'd like to wish you a wonderful day. These next few days are my absolute favourite days of the entire year. I shall potter, shop, hobble a little, tweak, hobble some more, cook, bake, wrap, sing, eat and be merry. It's not always been like this. My goodness, I spent five Christmases on the trot single, lonely in a crowd,  in between boyfriends, dating a loser or in the midst of a break up with no home of my own and only my precious family and a dream of cosiness to rely on.  I remember those years too acutely to take even one mince pie for granted.

Merry Christmas

Lots of Love
Cherry xoxoxo

You Stop, For Just A Moment, And It Hits You

I discovered this week how pain makes me terribly weepy. LBH comes home slightly early from work and brings a box of Thai food for two with him, I burst into tears at the emotion of it all. I sit on the sofa with the fire going and my hip throbbing away and Boo comes meowing down the stairs with a sock in her mouth and presents it to me on the living room rug as a kill. I sob into her fur how much I love her and how there will never be anybody who loves her as much as I. LBH clears out the kitchen cupboards while I direct operations from a seat in the kitchen and then he vacuum's the house, goes out and picks up the Christmas booze stash and waters the two trees and again I can feel my eyeballs welling up.

I have decided that I am not going to dismiss this soppy time as simply something that will pass when the pain of my dislocated hip does. I am going to remember EXACTLY what it was that made me feel these indescribable moments of tenderness.

They are as follows.........LBH, food, kindness, time, warmth, help, Christmas and love.......

 

....and that face. I lifted myself off the sofa and onto the floor for a much needed change of position and she joined me. Thank you camera for being plugged into the laptop and by my side, and thank you Boo for ........um........well.....your 'Boo-ness'  There's no other cat breath I'd wish to envelope me as I grasp for respite on the living room floor. No really, I jest not, I loved it........truly.

;-)

How We Got There!

Now we have finished most of the hard work on the house I am able to rest a while, sort of, coffee in hand and show you all of my thrifty finds and subsequent make-overs. This darling I picked up in my local town for £10. I saw it in a thrift shop window being fondled by a man wearing a rather short pair of shorts. Surely not, I thought to myself, that mirror wouldn't suit him at all. He needs a mirror with army camouflage adorning every corner, not fake gilt. His fingers lingered for a moment longer before he took himself and his hot-pants off to the book department. It was at that moment that I wisped into the shop, lurched into the window and was making my way out the door with this mirror, having paid for it of course, before man in short shorts could flick through his first Andy McNab novel.

Now, I knew that once LBH saw a gilt mirror sitting in our house I would get the inevitable "Will that be going after the shoot?"
My name is LBH, I live with Cherry Menlove, I precursor everything I say to Cherry nowadays with "Will that be going after the shoot?"

Well, to be honest it seems that everything I bought into the house in a rush in order to get ready for the photographer arriving was bought with my instinct firmly in place. I had to think super quickly about whether or not this item would look good in that corner or whether that piece of thrifty goodness really should be shizzled up a tad in order for it to make a positive difference.

This mirror was one of the items that needed shizzling up. At times of needed shizzle I reach for my trusty sample pots of Farrow & Ball. This time in the colour Bone.

And this is what happened to my faux gilt friend. He now looks rather nice sitting in the corner above the tallboy in our bedroom.

You can't tell from these pictures but I assure you that I didn't blot out the whole of the mirror's former look with the new coats of paint. I took an old brush and stabbed the new paint into the gilt, very small amounts at first. I didn't want the mirror's edge to have a flat, matt look to it. I wanted to retain the texture that the gold and the blackness gave it while at the same time lightening the whole object up so it hung like a contemporary antique .....er.....thing!

Mmmmmmm, antique indeed. Ms. Menlove it cost you £10 and is as light as a feather. In fact it could very well be made from papier mache or plaster of paris!!!

Do I care? Not a jot!

I keep going on about the new website but I'm so very much in love with the whole idea of having everything in one place. I have been working on the look and the feel of it all week and I know that I want it to be clean, fresh, simple to navigate and for the only real colour to come from the pictures that I add to it. There will be how - to's, projects, ideas, articles, stories, pictures, recipes and another rather secret function that will give us all the chance to discuss again!

We also have the round up of Mrs Dalloway coming soon. I have had a few emails through that have told me they either adored it or didn't quite get it. Let me make it clear that WHATEVER you thought of this book it is entirely valid. There is to be no judgement here. Do not say that you liked it when you didn't or that you throughly understood the sub-text and the use of imagery when all you really saw was a lady talking to herself. Ms. Woolf was a very particular type of person and this is wholly reflected in her work. I am thinking about adding a book club to the new site depending on how well this one goes. We could cover classics, modern classics, biography's. Anything we wanted really and discuss in an environment that we all feel safe in.

Have a wonderful weekend. Whether you live in the town or country, have a family or live alone do one thing this weekend that makes your house a place that you want to come home to just that little bit more. It could be buying a humble packet of crumpets and some real English butter for your supper on Sunday evening or it could be poking your head up into the loft and measuring up for some insulation to see you into those chilly winter months. LBH and I are going to our local farm shop. We are going to walk SLOWLY around it and I am going to pick up and fondle, in wide eyed wonder, every single muffin, pie, organic chicken breast, turnip and truffle that I can get my hands on. Then we are going to come SLOWLY home and watch a movie. That, my friends, is all we shall be doing. Shall I tell you why we are doing nothing more extravagant? Because we've finished the house!! .............................................................................................(almost)!!!!!!!

Cx

Please feel free to contact me at cherry@cherrymenlove.com with any questions or thoughts.