Tuesday 26 June 2012

My Garden

I love my garden, I spend  a lot of time, effort and money on it, although most of my plants are grown from seed.
It was quite  a challenge
 to get it all planted up before we went on holiday and I did worry about it when we were away. in case it hadn't rained and it all dried up, but as you can see it flourished.
This is my main flower border and faces south so can get very hot and dry

The tree in the middle is a damson tree bought in 2005 from 'Woolies' and it is loaded again this year so another feast of jams and wine, which DH makes.
The little water feature called 'Gladys' works and the trickle of water is a very pleasing sound.


The other side has a small veg plot, we have had courgettes already and a few stawberries.
It's not big, but just enough for us.
The christmas tree looks as though it is growing out of the chimney!

The beans are already flowering so a nice feast is promised there!
We love sitting out in it for our morning coffee, lunch and tea breaks. We even have breakfast some mornings in the sun and loving every minute.
It is our little corner of heaven!

Chris xx

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Tuscany, our holiday in Italy


We have just returned from our holiday in Tuscany. Beautiful scenery and wonderful cities.

We have thoroughly enjoyed ourselves but all the walking visiting cities was tiring.
We stayed in the hotel Vittorio in Montecatini... quite a grand hotel. Our room was good and the bed huge and fairly comfortable. The food was tasty but not spectacular but we did have some wonderful lunches in all the different places we visited, which were real Italian food to me.  

Although it had a swimming pool, I only dipped in my feet after a day of walking around!!The spectacular city of Florence was our first place to visit. Just a short train ride from Montecatini. It was so beautiful with wonderful architecture.

Siena is the city where the famous Palio horse race takes place twice a year. During this special occasion, the main square in Siena, the Piazza del Campo, is prepared for the race as the ring around the square is covered with tuff clay.

We had lunch in this piazza and the most delicous ice cream!

Of course you have to visit the famous leaning tower of Pisa.. its amazing how it stays up.

We rested our feet and jumped on the open air bus tour here and it was a lovely way to see all the city.

This amazing tower is in Lucca;every where you looked was the most beautiful buildings

And this is just one of the many little shops in San Gimignano  a very pretty little village with narrow cobbled streets rising up to a centre square. It was very, very hilly!!
Our last day was a visit to a castle, Castelo di Meleto. This castle is a favourite venue for weddings and we met the bride who was to be married there the next day

It was a spectacular place..

This where  we were shown some authentic Italtian cookery. A volunteer was asked for to roll out the home made pasta and my DH had a go. (He was the only one !!)

Not a very good photo because it was me taking it and I pressed the wrong button and took a video! But he loved doing it!!
It was a superb holiday in Italy, which we went to by train across Europe. First stop by Eurostar club class was Paris and then from there first class by TGV to Milan and then onto Florence and from there to Montecatini. The train took us through the Alps and then beautiful Tuscan scenery.
A holiday to remember...we ate an ice cream every day!!  It did however take us a day to catch up with our sleep, as on the last day we were fifteen hours travelling back from Turin,another city to see,  but all in all well worth it.

It has been nice to be home and our own bed is bliss!

Chris xx

 

Thursday 7 June 2012

WIPocalypse update

It might not show but I've done quite a bit of the beading at the top border, in the letters SUMMER and two of the motifs on the left.  I also stitched the line of back stitching around the whole design. The beads are slow, not just the stitching of them on as I like to do a cross stitch to make sure they are secure but threading the beading needle!!LOL

And for my Quakers and Quilts  I have stitched the last quilt block after a lot of frogging.. I had allowed two stitches between the blocks and only one was required... grrrrrr

But it is coming along.. and this with my Christmas ornie and various sewn pieces is my work for May.
I hope to complete Summer Celtic Lady in the not too distance future altho' I have a quilt to make before the end of August  so still a busy time.
Happy stitching all

Chris xx