This Week

 Improvements in the garden. Growing broad beans, strawberries getting big and finally some colour.

 A super duper shopping trip instigated by Dan!

 Quiet country drives exploring our neighbouring villages.

An after school National Trust trip to Stoneywell. 

 Our first meal from our garden.

Catching Up

 As usual, the week after a holiday is a busy one. Catching up on washing and settling back in a home. Unfortunately, back to school and work too. Camilla (the camera...!) has been firmly rooted in her camera bag, but I have been snapping on instagram, so here's what we have been up to.

The new, 'emergency' boots I bought on holiday have become a great pair of garden boots! Easy on and off when the lawn is a litle damp! The basket was giving me a helping hand too, as usual ;) It was so nice to come back to my little (and I mean little) garden empire. It has come on so much from starting out with nothing at all. I can't wait to show you how it looks in a few weeks!!!

We returned from our holiday late Friday evening and Saturday was a fine day, so we decided to have a barbeque, the first outdoor meal in our new house, very exciting! We had yummy (and healthy!) kebabs with a range of salads followed by marshmallows, of course!

Sunday featured a last minute nip in to the city, I was treated to some goodies from lush. A lavender scented bubble bar, very fitting for our wedding anniversary.

And in the evening, we went to a local restaurant to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. They even had wheat and lavender in jars and bottles on the tables. It was far too perfect. 

 And then when we were home, we snuggled up and watched The History Boys, brilliant film!

 Tuesday we made fajitas. Mr Bee was very excited to assemble his own dinner. It was glorious.

 Breakfast on the go. A strawberry and oatmeal smoothie from my new breakfast recipe book. YUM!

Soup Wednesdays. I made roasted tomato and basil soup for dinner and baked a delicious pesto swirl loaf to accompany. It was divine!

Nicer weather! Our afternoons after school have been blessed with a little bit of sun! Three evenings this week we have been able to sit and play in the garden. We have been dreaming about days like these. 

And lastly, a beautiful bit of cow parsley on the school run. Beautiful!

So that is a little snippet of our week. What have you been up to?

Suffolk

We decided to take our annual holiday in the May Half Term this year, to celebrate our First Wedding Anniversary (which is actually today!). We picked Suffolk as it was our first holiday together 6 years ago, so it seemed like a fitting place!

On our way through, we returned to Anglesey Abbey, a place that I have been desparate to revisit for such a long time! Although it was just a passing visit, we spent a while exploring the woodland walk and the rose garden, counting clocks in the house and then a hearty lunch to set us up for the remainder of our journey towards the seaside.

 On our first day, we made a beeline for the beach. Of course! The boys played on the beach whilst I enjoyed the beautiful scenery. We had a delicous lunch, the product of the many delis and bakeries in Southwold. Then there was more playing on the beach (of course!) and then we went for a long walk around to the harbour for a fish and chip supper and a nose at the boats.

 We couldn't come all this way without making a trip to Felixstowe, the venue for many of Dan's holidays as a child, and the place that we stayed those many years ago. More playing on the beach, yummy Italian for lunch and it wouldn't be a holiday of ours without stopping in to the nearest Waitrose. We are all for little traditions!

Our National Trust visit of the week was to Dunwich Heath. We have fond memories of Dunwich from our last visit, but this time we chose the Heath. It was beautiful. We had a lovely stroll around the kids trail, including a play on the, you guessed it, BEACH! But of course the main feature was the famous scones. I chose Raspberry and White Chocolate and my goodness, I think it was the most delicious cream tea I have ever had!

Then I had a day cameraless. You can guess what we started with. Beach! And shopping for a few souvenieers. To celebrate our wedding anniversary as a family, we went to the local posh hotel for Afternoon Tea. Finger sandwiches, tarts, macarons, scones. Delicious. And Louie thought it was very novel!

And to end our week away, another National Trust property to break up our journey. This time, Ickworth. What a beautiful house indeed and one which Dan was completely enamoured with. Especially because of the electrical engineering magazines from 1936 in the basement. He was just a little excited when he found articles on Switchgear, and even more so when he found details of a unit he was updating only a few weeks ago! We ended up staying at Ickworth much longer than we intended and didn't get home until bedtime!

You can find more about our day trips here, here and here.

Picture Postcard

A quick hello from our little spring break at the seaside!!

The Little Kitchen Garden

So we have been living in our little house for 8 months now and for many of those months we were just settling in. Then it was cold. And then our plans for our veggie patch just went up in smoke when I realised that there was absolutely no sun in that area... So with the lovely veggie planter idea out of the window and Dan's scepticism of the whole grow your own idea, I assembled some pots and a grow bag or two just to have a little go.

 

I have absolutely no gardening experience what so ever. House plants, well I can't ever keep them alive, but this time, I am determined.

Firstly, I bought six tomato plug plants from my local garden centre and well, only two survive.I have salvaged what I can and sent them to Intensive Care, but I don't hold much hope for them. Luckily, Anna came to the rescue and gifted some to me which she has grown from seed.

Next was some broad beans. They were a little sickly looking and were 5 plants for 40p but I have planted them in the grow bag and they are growing nicely now! Maybe I am a good plant nurse after all?

 Strawberries. I've always wanted to grow strawbs! The strawberry on its own (and not as mature as the other two plants) was rescued from Calke Abbey in January from their sale shed. It was wrapped in some kitchen roll and looked very sickly. Now it has the beginnings of what will be about 5 berries, just from what I can see so far. The other two plants I picked up cheaply and one flower is already pollinated with another following shortly.

I tried my luck and planted some peas from seed about 4 weeks ago and they have shot up, much to my amazement! I have erected a little frame for them to tangle around and hopefully we will have some peas to pod, which Mr Bee will be incredibly pleased with! Not forgetting the little pot of Sweet Peas which I have planted for Dan as he has a fancy for them. 

On the other side of the garden, I have planted a few pots with some bulbs, mainly gladiolis and dahlias. There are a few shoots popping up, possibly 3/4 weeks after they had been planted. The centre piece is the super bargain rose bush which I bought in January! If I remember correctly, it should produce some pale pink, peony style roses, but who knows!

And lastly, what garden would be complete without a little family sunflower compeition? They seem to be very slow to get going as they have been planted for a good 5 weeks now but hopefully they will start to shoot up soon (if the weather ever decides to perk up!).
Place your bets now, who is going to win?

And that is how our little garden stands at the moment. We have lots of plans, including a patio expansion so that we can sit out, a new shed for all of our goodiesm a lick of paint on the wookwork and hopefully, some more permanent planting areas for next year.

Keep everthing crossed for me and sit tight for some more updates as and when anything progresses!

One Year (well, nearly!)

So its May, and nearly time for our first wedding anniversary. Only we have quite a few weeks worth of plans, so we had a quiet little Sunday afternoon stroll around our wedding venue, Calke of course.

In the gardens, there was a tree that had been chopped making it perfect for climbing. Mr Bee had a fun time climbing up, and down, and up again. It kept him quiet for a good 10 minutes anyway...!

The ornimental garden was blooming with wall flowers looking utterly stunning. Mr Bee's shoes were causing some trouble so we spent a lot of time walking barefoot in the grass and looking in to the pond.

Then he took a one year on photo for us!

Here's to plenty more wedding anniversary trips to this lovely, lovely place!