Little ones
Last week excitement peaked when two little goslings hatched. As of today these guys are growing both in size and in their demands for lettuce. Spoilt to be honest with mum, dad and auntie Bumble...
View ArticleBehind the wall.
Well you buy a place, you plan your renovation, you argue, you draw it out merticulously on graph paper with little paper shapes denoting cupboards and chairs and even rope your electrician friend in,...
View ArticleContrasts
Today was a day of contrasts. First thing this morning we headed off to Boussac, a lovely French provincial town just north of us with a chateau high up on a stony outcrop, to collect a painting by a...
View ArticleVantastic!
After nineteen years of sterling service getting me through London rush hours and traffic jams on the M25, the Ford Focus very unceremoniously ended it’s days in a French scrap yard. 149k miles and...
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The mundane and the magnificent
A homestead is a isolated dwelling, especially a farmhouse, and adjacent outbuildings, typically on a large agricultural holding such as a ranch or station. A homesteader is a lifestyle of self...
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Fridge
I opened my fridge today and realized it represented all my plans and resolutions for 2020. There is fresh cooked chicken joints with a rich jelly for our cats. Tired of uneaten tins of cat food and...
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Resolutions
I have so many plans afoot for 2020 and wrote about a few in my rather long post – Fridge. Here’s a brief pictorial version for you busy bloggers. Happy holidays everyone.
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Inspired by comments
I am so behind with blogging I should pay a fine! I have also to catch up on everyone else’s wonderful blog posts and apologise for being so sloth in adding my comments. But tonight I managed to read...
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It’s a poultry thing
Because I finally found my vocation…. Every day this chicken slave trudges through mud to do her egg collecting and cleaning duty. My bleary eyed morning routine at the farmhouse starts with a hot cup...
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Bottles and steel balls
Our Notaire is a very jolly guy and I think with a bit of wicked sense of humour. Unfortunately I have yet to master French and with our rather ambitious renovation projects of doing up four...
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Tap
A design original! After buying the farmhouse the kitchen tap lasted a month. It broke in two! This amazing replacement design of ours featured a simple rocking motion to turn on water. Couldn’t...
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Sofa sogood
I didn’t really want to mention the Coronavirus but this lock- in period hasn’t really caused us any inconvenience apart from having to slightly rearrange projects to deal with a few material...
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Little daily musings
A misty morning should mean a mellow day ahead? Hardly. Our mellow is unloading two new cast iron stoves, bagging up our flurry of leaves for composting and making a new chicken ladder. The silly cou...
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Marriage in the time of isolation
Facebook prompted a celebration of marriage this week and I wanted to share. * In this honestly shameful and tragic time of Coronavirus, you really feel how precious your life and relationships are....
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Eau de Nil
I love to have Brocante finds and personal objects I love on my desk. I worked from home since 2001 and making a home office that felt comfortable and workable was important. We recently completed my...
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Thoughts in a 2CV
New mats in Amelie. Made in Italy. Thats good. I am avoiding ‘Made in China’. Have been trying to avoid that for years, as I feel its tiresome that Europe has sucumbed after being pioneers of the...
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We have a cellar
After a very heady youth in the 1980’s spent in the City of London between working as a banker and sliding at most lunchtimes into the local pub, by the time I was in my late twenties I had somehow...
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Brocantes and vases
Vases. In my case as seductive as shoes, as mint chocolate thins, as the very mention of “fancy going to Chambon resourcerie”? https://m.facebook.com/Ressourcerie.La.Dynamo/ I inherited a lot of hand...
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Bella
Just over six months ago we finally got two Jack Russell’s, my favorite dogs. Since the day I visited a friend, whose mother was asigned to baby sit me at 18 years old, after a jaw reconstruction...
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New career move
When I came to France I had visions of relaxing on a terrace, Pimms in hand and a good book to loose myself in for a few hours. Ok there would be renovations to do and a new business to set up after...
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Little studio
With September almost upon us and most mornings a little damp from the cool night and rumbling thunder most days, French outdoor renovation days are drawing to a close. The intense heat in August as...
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Views to wake up to
I still feel exhilarated every time I wake here in France. In fact I have to pinch myself sometimes. The morning light is amazing and filters softly through our trees creating long shadows across the...
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There’s a Cou-nou in the compost
A year ago we acquired a lonely Cou-nou cockerel. One of three wandering henless around our barn, bachelor cool and social, Mr Chicken made a beeline for our coop every day to trill at the girls and...
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Simple
Yesterday we had our first meal at the farmhouse with friends who have lived in France for almost twenty years. They made the escape and have had a wonderful life here. We are novices compared but...
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Wild deer
Today we stopped to help a lady filming a trapped deer. Probably a Fallow deer. Why she wasnt untangling him, I have no idea. The deer was a young male, probably just under two years old. Likely lost...
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Bucket list at lockdown
With the French lockdown coming into affect tomorrow and the generally pathetic display of judgement by the powers that be, re Covid-19, I am arming myself with an eclectic library of reading, from...
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Mad about the birds
From previous posts you probably gather I am starting out on a new journey to get back into art that I abandoned as a teenager. Part of that journey over the past year has been sourcing inspirational...
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My fur family
A post of just photos this time. My fur family make my world complete. But there is always a chicken too!!!
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Property dreams
For as long as I can remember I wanted a home. Not merely a house you decorate and live in between work and socializing outside, but a real home, full of homely noise like dogs barking, cockerels...
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From cattle stall to Scottish snug
In a previous post I wrote about my journey to finding a home. Buying property in France was the best decision I had ever made. Having now an open slate to work on I wanted the French dream. I...
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Sketch Avergne
Back in 2006 I visited the volcanic area of the Avergne. Little did I know then that in just ten years I would be permanently settling just about hour North in Creuse. I always adored France and...
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Ice maiden
Well I am not so sure about maiden, I am too long in the tooth for that olde title but today the frosty snap produced a wealth of chilly bucket ice disks and panes that this ‘young at heart’...
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Crafting and shipping
This week, after a quite stressful start from loosing a little guinea fowl, to finding French postage is way more than UK postage, I felt I needed to go into print. I have successfully printed all my...
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Geese in the grass
I have been absolutely useless in posting recently but I do have a few genuine excuses. The weather in France has been one long spring of rain, and although it is exactly what creates this beautiful...
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Front of house
Finally the front of the Farmhouse looks respectable. It’s taken over a year to renovate my studio externally, repair the well and install the ancient well winding gear and repoint the wall. We put in...
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Factory House to Apple Puree
I have hurt my back again. Mowers with pull cords are absolutely dangerous! I have a lot of grass and land weeds to contend with and petrol mowers are a necessity. But they do not make them suitable...
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Pipi found me
I haven’t posted for a while and wanted to catch up with a few updates. It’s a longish post but bare with me…I promise over the next few weeks they will be shorter and very varied. A lot has been...
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New Cous Nous
A few years ago now, pottering about the old chicken coop, there was a strange sight…a sort of chicken shaped bird but with a long red neck, featherless and topped by a head with a huge beak and a...
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Fateful Fabrics
From way, way back as a child I loved fabrics. My mother’s wooden chest in the hallway provided hours of fun for me exploring the Colefax and Fowler, Laura Ashley, Cole &Son and Liberty prints,...
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Thistle Cottage Studio
Drum roll please!!!!!Apart from painting the walls, and making curtains, my studio is finished. A lot of chalk painting and waxing brocante finds, and suffering from cracked skin on my fingers, a sore...
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Snug in a snug
The lower room in our farmhouse is a little dark, so why not go a little darker and create a cosy snug? Inspired by my Scottish ancestry and the collection of tartans and tweeds I have in my fabric...
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Country Colourful Bedroom
We have lived at The Farmhouse for over three years now, in a pre-renovation mess of undecorated rooms, boxes and drab creams and browns. The building was a good size, but had funny qwerks like no...
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French Expo
The last few years have been very tied up with renovations, Covid, starting my illustration business and struggling with migraines…some things on the agenda had to postponed, but this year I refused...
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The babies arrived
Owning over fifty birds, you get eggs, lots of them and this year I wanted to try for babies now that we have a more organized set-up. The cous-nous flock with Rudi needed a few additions and I so...
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Home at the barn
We bought this barn for a song, way back in 2015 and since then have had a roller coaster of events, all lurking somewhere on this blog, from failed businesses, to property investments, new career...
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Winter slumbering
Trees slumber and this quiet time allows them to create majestic frost covered winter monuments in the landscape. I love the detail of twigs and branches now leafless and the parasitic ivy even looks...
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Going to a Gallery
A recent opencall from a lovely gallery in Neath, South Wales, led me to be a little cheeky. I didn’t want to risk loosing my original illustrations, sending from France during the end of year postal...
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The Giant Pea Cottage
Finally after wrangling lime mortar, paint pots, breeze blocks, tiles, sewing machines that broke needles, the barn apartment is ready to rent. It’s taken about a year but so happy with the results....
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Autumn Expositions
The French love expositions, artistic ones, wool fairs, potatoes fairs, poultry fairs, if it’s a rural, local pastime, there will over the long summer and into autumn, be an event occurring in a...
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Tales of Yo Ho Ho
After copious notes, migrains, a bout of strong depression that lasted six months, and the fear of not being able to continue what I started, AI came to the rescue. I know it’s controversial, but for...
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