Our Beautiful World - AROMATIC

The theme over at the Our Beautiful World blog this week is AROMATIC. What a delightful prompt! I adore aromatic plants. I grow herbs in tubs round the garden and love walking past them and just stroking them to release the wonderful aromatic fragrances. Of course, I love cooking with them as well.

This little old zinc wash tub contains rosemary, sage, parsley and chives -

And this tub holds peppermint. Freshly made peppermint tea is so refreshing in the summer! -

I also managed to snatch a little time in the craftavan to make some tags to go with customer orders -

Wishing you all a wonderful week,

toodlepip xxx

Behind bars! And meet the neighbours...

Sometimes, I really don't know what goes on in my darling Poppy's doggy mind. I am usually pretty good at reading her, but a couple of days ago, she had me stumped. 

We were clearing out the barn in preparation for the party, all the future projects which had accumulated in there, garden furniture, tools, work benches, well, you know, tons of stuff. The antique metal bed frame we had bought years ago is still waiting to be sandblasted, but I thought it would look nice put up in the garden for the summer, rather than just being crammed into DH's work room. 

A couple of hours after putting it up, this sight greeted me and made me chuckle, my Poppy girl behind bars -

Does she look slightly bewildered to you? Is she saying ' hang on a mo, isn't there something missing from this bed? '

Strange girl, she was quite happy sitting in there for ages.

And as we are talking animals at the moment, I thought I'd introduce you to our newest and closest neighbours, the fluffiest little white baby Charolais cows -

For a split second this looked like a many legged cow, lol, until I realised there was a little calf behind the mummy cow -

Gorgeous little creatures.

Not quite so gorgeous are spiders, but they do construct the most beautiful webs-

The veggie patch is supplying us with loads of fresh veggies every day. Digging up potatoes is like digging for treasure, it is so much fun. Beans are very plentiful and so delicious, and the round courgetty things are rampant. I swear they double in size over night. Tomatoes are coming along very nicely now and I pick cherry tomatoes and Andine Cornu tomatoes every day. Just as well that we love eating toms. Beetroot are a decent size now, and I think I would like the balsamic vinegar roasted beetroots with our Sunday dinner. Oh, pumpkins, gorgeous French pumpkins for soup. We found a lovely sounding recipe for a Thai pumpkin soup, so I am looking forward to that.

Just a couple of garden pics. Round courgettes -

Pumpkins, such a gorgeous colour -

Climbing beans -

Had to edit and add a couple of pics of the potatoes and beans I picked for dinner. They are the tastiest knobbly pink spuds, and the beans are sooooo long, yet so tender. Delicious!

Morning view -

At the moment, the sun is shining, but we are preparing for the forecast thunderstorms today, and hail overnight/tomorrow.

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend,

Toodlepip xxx

Its a Man Thing

Thats the theme over at the Tag Tuesday blog this week. I like 'manly' themes and I had great fun making this tag. My man is an adventurer, a rather well known explorer, and his 'thing' is travelling around in his hot air balloon. Oh, the exciting life he has led, the stories he has told! You should hear what happened when he travelled to Paris one time, and landed his hot air balloon right in the middle of the Champs Elysees, but I can't possibly repeat that story in this fine company ;-) -

For the background I used a piece of light blue paper from an old book which had fallen apart. The stamp is a lovely old office stamp I found at a brocante not long ago. Cut out the Eiffel Tower and my man, added a vintage cigar band, and cut the title of a story out of a 1910s Je Sais Tout magazine. Oh, and added a little watch face to the hot air balloon basket. Just for fun.

And now its back to work for me. Just posted over at my vintageland blog re the new items which will be listed tonight and tomorrow, so I had better get cracking with the packing ;-).

Toodlepip xxx

TIME on my hands to make TAGS

The theme over at the Our Beautiful World blog this week is TIME. My shabby old French clock face on the mantlepiece was kind of staring at me from behind the candlesticks and other assorted bits, so I had to give it the starring role and photograph it :-).

This is what the mantlepiece usually looks like -

but clock face wasn't happy, it wasn't centre stage! So I removed the candlesticks and flowers -

but I could still hear grumblings about alabaster urns trying to pinch the limelight and those two were fighting about who should be closest to clock face, so I made the decision for them and ruthlessly removed one -

That worked! At least for me, lol.

I also got to spend some time in the craftavan. I had to make a bunch of customer freebie tags as well as the Tag Tuesday tag for this week.

The Tag Tuesday theme this week is STATUES, and I immediately thought of the beautiful angel statues I have often admired on the internet. This is what I ended up with -

I found so many beautiful images when I was searching, I just had to make some more angel statue tags. Like this one, for example -

Thats all for today. I am listening to test match cricket on the computer while I am doing some more Etsy stuff. 

As always, thank you for stopping by. I wish you all a very happy day,
Toodlepip xxx

Coup de Coeur

If you saw yesterday's post about my brocante finds, you'll remember that I mentioned a big folder. And that it was an absolute must-have even though it cost a fortune, lol. And I did promise to show you today what it was that got me so excited.

Well, I won't tease you any longer. What I found stashed away in a number of smaller folders were...............

THE most wonderful fashion magazines from the 1870s and 1880s!!!

They are so rare, so very hard to find. Very occasionally you come across one or two at a dealer's stall, so you can imagine how delighted I was to find a whole bunch of them. The stall was manned by an elderly couple, and we got chatting and they told me that his grandmother had been a dress designer and had collected all these publications. I wish I had had more time to talk with them and find out what else they had stashed away, but it was such a very busy brocante, I couldn't keep them away from other customers for too long.

I took a few photographs for you, of course -

I also got these almost pristine 1870s embroidery and dress patterns, on the most delicate lilac coloured tissue paper -

I suppose I should list at least some of them in my Etsy shop, but oh, that will be hard, they are all so very beautiful.

Wishing all a very happy Sunday, and a great new week. Toodlepip xxx