Heritage open days 2016

Last week the Heritage free open days took up a lot of our time, we love this time of year and to get the chance to visit some of our local Heritage sites is always very exciting. Day one started with two garden tours, the Bishop's beautiful garden is a favourite of ours and has many different plants from all over the world.

This year there was an added attraction for the children, the Bishop's cat! Well we assume it was the Bishop's cat as it came running from the house to greet us and insisted on giving us a tour of the woodland gardens.

The children love the wildflower maze and the large swing that hangs from a very old tree near the ruins. As these visits coincided with the anniversary of when we first met, my husband and I took some photos of us sitting on this swing as a memento of the many wonderful years we have spent together.

The garden has some quite quirky plants like a tree that oozes the smell of curry, and a vine with flowers that resemble snails and smells incredible. Did I mention the little cat?... best buddies, they spent ages together.

After lunch we went on to look around a gallery housed in an old Victorian skating rink with a unique and extremely vast collection of South Asian art and objects. Followed by a medieval church in which our children got the chance to try their hand at some brass rubbing.

Day two we visited two small museums, another church and an old shawl and clothing exhibition. The first Museum is in a centuries old merchants house with a 14th century under croft and very old herb garden. We got to try on costumes, play old games, learn to write in Tudor letters, complete a shakespeare quiz and make old puppets on sticks.

We finished the week on day three with a visit to the castle museum, the children got to watch and chat to some stone masons at work which was very interesting. My daughter made a crown and they both made a shield using the heraldry pictures to describe themselves.

We had a wonderful time visiting all these places and were extremely exhausted by the end of the week.

The 5th Anniversary is Wood!

A few days ago my wonderful husband and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary, although we have been together much longer. If you follow us you will know that we made the decision when we first married to hand make each other a present based on the traditional gift guide each year.

This year it's wood....yes wood!... definitely a challenge for me. As my husband works with wood he had a slight advantage but I was determined to at least make something slightly presentable.

This is what I came up with, it may be very simple in construction but remember this is the first time I've worked with wood. The board is an old weather worn piece I chose for the beautiful grey colours that came through after sanding.

I fixed natural branches to the board to act as little hooks for his keys or tools and tried my hand at pyrography to get the words 'love hanging with you' along the top.

I am quite pleased with the results and quite enjoyed working with wood, I'm even thinking of some more projects.

My husband made a box frame for me to hold a very romantic piece of branch he found, which contained a heart naturally formed within the wood and added a few words of his own.

Would like to wish my husband a happy anniversary and I look forward to spending many more years together.

Seed Bombs

We have just had our 4th wedding anniversary and every year my husband and I try to make each other a gift based on the traditional gift guide. For the 4th anniversary the gift should be fruit or flowers, a little difficult to make... so we had to be a little creative.

As our love is so strong and very special and we both have a strong love of the natural world, I thought I would make a gift for my husband that would share the beauty of our love with the world... with nature. So I made him some seed bombs as these will grow into flowers.

These are so very simple to make... I just mixed a handful of compost with some wildflower seeds from our local area in a bowl, sprinkled in a little powdered clay and a few drops of water. Once mixed well I spooned the mixture into a heart shaped ice cube tray and left to dry.

When these are planted little pockets of wildflowers should spring up in bare patches giving a little extra help to our ailing bee population.

If this gift just feeds one bee or makes one person smile as they walk past we will have made a difference to this world, albeit a very small one.

Well that's my gift to my wonderful husband this year... Happy Anniversary. 

Third wedding anniversay

A few days ago my wonderful husband and I celebrated our third wedding anniversary, although we have been together a lot longer than this. We made a pact when we married to hand make each others gifts according to the traditional anniversary guide and the third anniversary is leather. I had two ideas about gifts to make, the first was a handmade leather journal as I think they look gorgeous, but I had a little trouble finding the right kind of leather, so this project will be put off until later in the year.

I settled on a leather bracelet as the leather thread is easier to locate, I love the multi stranded mens bracelets but thought that might be a little more of a challenge to a first time leather user. So decided to stick to something I have been trying out lately, Macrame.

This is a close up of the bracelet, it is made using the macrame square double knot stitch. It is quite tough to pull tight enough as it is leather but I think it works very well.

As you can see I used a bead as a fastener and this finished bracelet does look amazing on his wrist.

Just like to finish by saying Happy Anniversary to my wonderful husband x x x

Oh and if you like to see the lovely gift he made for me you can visit his blog here.

2nd anniversary

Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary, although we have been together a lot longer than this. So this is just a short post to wish my wonderful husband and true love of my life, a 'happy anniversary'.

We thought it would be fun to hand make presents for each other every year based on the traditional gift guide, this year is cotton and my husband made this beautiful piece of thread art for me.

We had recently been talking about thread or string art, which used to be popular in the 1970's, as I used to do this as a little girl with my grandfather. It is a beautiful gift to be surprised with and has a heart in the middle.

This is what I made for him, it is a photo frame covered in cotton fabric, which I then sealed. The little flower is made from a circle out of a very old, falling apart dictionary. The definition of love. I have also put in a photo from our wedding.

I had to include a photograph of this, an origami crane and say 'yay I did it' Last year on our first wedding anniversary (which was paper), my husband wrote me the most beautifully romantic poem (on paper) and one of the things I tried to make for him was this origami crane. Unfortunately those of you who have known me that long will remember I could not get the crane right and was quite disappointed... so this year I was determined to get it right and finally managed it... better late than never isn't it?