Happy weekend wanderings!

The house is super clean (viewings this weekend), bags are packed and while I wait for Mark to get home I'm taking random pictures, hurry up 5.30!

We are off to River Cottage this weekend I don't think we could be more excited! After the disaster holiday rental we had at Christmas I am wary about the place we are staying for the next two nights.  The weather forecast is so perfect too so surely we're not going to have a perfect weekend? Not Caroline and Mark....

Will let you know next week, hope you have a great sunny weekend!

Mothering Sunday wanderings

As a big thank you for helping us for our wedding and in perfect time with Mothers day last weekend I organised a couple of surprises for my Mum.  We have both wanted to go and see Jersey Boys in London for ages now and so I finally got us some tickets.  On a whim we booked a cheap hotel to be the hub of our adventures and it was pretty good with nice views of some surrounding mews.  

If I had to live in a city, this would be my dream location!

We started off the weekend with some window shopping around the swanky department stores.  We had never been to Liberty before so I became a bit of a tourist and took lots of pictures.  We chose the flower shop entrance to the store, I love flower shops at this time of the year and especially so this weekend with Mothers day right around the corner.

 

After Liberty we visited the Mary Portas department in House of Fraser and yep we both bought a pair of the Kinky Knickers (no photo sorry...) though the way that people were going mad for them in Liberty we wonder whether we should leave them in the box...

Our last store was selfridges where I darted straight for the stationary section and cooed over all the amazing paper products then the food hall.

That night we went to see the show and it was just amazing, I had never realised how many songs I knew!

We spent the next day really exploring London a bit more.  We figured out the cycle hire system and cycled around Little Venice where we had a nice coffee at a boat cafe and found a lovely garden centre to have a wander around.  The cycling didn't stop there, we enjoyed it so much we then went cycling right around Hyde Park.

My last treat was to take Mum for a Mothers day special afternoon tea at Bake-a-Boo.  It was so nice there, it's like entering a living room and the smell of baking was amazing!

Be careful what you wish for...?

I am so so excited to move it's unbelievable!  I don't think we will venture out as much as we do at weekends outside the front door because there will be so much to do around the house.  One of the things I am going to throw myself into is the garden.  I've never a decent sized garden before except a very shady one a couple of years ago which was so cold and miserable.  I was so inspired by Organic Blooms who supplied us with our wedding flowers that I wanted a piece of that myself and so I've been reading lots of floral blogs for inspiration and at the same time struggling to find a garden blog that's not too scary. 

Yesterday I read my daily dose of Miss Pickering who mentioned the amazing Laetitia Maklouf who has a new book out.  After my mad afternoon yesterday I spent the rest of the day pouring over the blog pages and ordered Laetitia's first book "The Virgin Gardener".  I ordered it from a certain big online book store and to my amazement it arrived this afternoon happy days! 

I enjoyed a quick read of it at the bus stop this afternoon...ahem a long read, buses round my way at the moment are taking an age to arrive (my tweets are a bit dull and moany at 5pm most days at the moment). 

So just to warn you folks there are some fun times ahead, does Caroline have green fingers?

This is my front garden at the moment...yes this book was needed!

 

As well as reading this great book I look forward to some real life learning at Jays allotment over the summer and posting up some more things on her lovely site (if she will let me ha!).

Around the desk

This afternoon I've been kept busy because of the horrible tragedy in Switzerland.  I don't know if I've said before but I work in international road safety which means lots of calls come my way when there are major road crashes throughout Europe.

For a bit of downtime and a bit of positivity I made a cup of tea and grabbed the camera while the kettle was boiling.

Old Basing

After wandering around Odiham we got some lunch at a pub near to where we live in Old Basing.  It's one of those places that's been too close to where we live to bother about exploring.  It's often the way isn't it? I used to live near Bath and I can honestly say I've never set foot in the abbey, the pump rooms or a place called Sally Lunns.  I lived in Manchester and never took a trip out of there to explore the Lakes, Liverpool or Yorkshire?!

Anyway, I'm older and wiser now and Old Basing really isn't that much compared with those other places but it's got a historical house there and so we took a look around.

Odiham

Since we're moving a bit further west we thought we would go and explore some more of the east.  On Saturday we took a trip to the very quaint village of Odiham.  I like to go to these places and pretend I'm a local, shop in the deli go for a cream tea that kind of thing but I also like taking photos and so probably stick out like a sore thumb with my camera.