Rustic kitchen sign.......

well, it's another wet morning here so I've decided to stay indoors and concentrate on painting and making - that makes it sound like a chore but you know the rain is just an excuse to enjoy myself!!

Yesterday I finished a sign for my kitchen, I found out that the barn I work in was originally a dairy so it seemed right to use that idea for my sign....

As usual I was able to find an image from Karen at the Graphics Fairy  which I transferred and then over painted and I used the same technique with the lettering, then a bit of distressing and waxing and...ta da!

my new kitchen sign :) 

Now all I need to do is to redo the whole kitchen!! Lots of plans for walls coming down, moving things around, retiling, reflooring ... the list goes on and on - and then there's the bathroom, bedroom, courtyard, garden room...somebody stop me!!

One of those days...

you know when you have one of those days where everything you touch seems to go wrong? Well, I was going to bring you the new wall art I'm making for my kitchen today but...........I won't go into detail, it's too painful. Here's something else instead... do you remember last Summer that I revamped an old mirror, turning it white and shabby?

Well, no sooner had we moved into our new house than I broke the glass, luckily the frame was undamaged and so I used a piece of fabric I've been hoarding to make this....

Sorry the photo is not great, it was taken in poor light as we never seem to see daylight here at the moment! Hope you can see the details on this lovely piece of botanical toile including snails, bees and flies. It looks perfect in my new garden room and picks up the colours and designs in the quilts piled on the French day bed. Speaking of which:

here's something else piled on the quilts and day bed!

And I finally got a good shot of our woodpecker visitor to share with you

Isn't she gorgeous?  Have a good day x

Escape to the country........

It's a long time since I last wrote anything because we moved just before Christmas and life has been just a little hectic!

It has taken a long time to find the right house for us as we wanted something rural and old but still close enough to a railway station to let my husband commute sensibly.

We found a converted Victorian barn in just the right location with large rooms, exposed beams and so on but the previous owners had decorated it in a style I needed to change. So here's the first room I've started.............

 This was a dining room painted in a fetching shade of bile  which made me feel quite ill ......

Also, it has lovely views onto the walled garden at the rear of the house so we decided to make it into a garden room.....

It's now our favourite room, very warm and so restful and here's what we can see out of the window........

we have lots more wildlife here than in our old home and we can waste hours watching them.....

In the meantime the local predators are taking it easy....

Symi has found all the hot spots in the house including the range...

Lots more to tell but this is a long project so I'll save some for another day.

Wishing everyone a happy and healthy 2014 x