Summer fun

We are enjoying the sunshine here in Warwickshire and having just returned from 12 days away in France I cannot believe the change in the garden!! It's as though the plants have been on steroids!!

 

Canoeing on the Dordogne ...

The Motley Crew En Francais...

After a lovely break away its always nice to get back and look at things afresh - I'm also very inspired by some things I've seen both home and garden...

The next thing on our list - getting some decorating done.

It's surprising how already some rooms are looking tatty!  In fact there are lengths of skirting board and architrave that didn't get painted in the first instance?..

And so I finally finished the hall last week!

Next job the lounge: 

We have decided after painting everywhere white to add some colour in the open plan lounge, dining, kitchen -well if you can call it colour? It's really just a neutral by Farrow & Ball.

I am also going to put up some curtains at the back of the house; you can see from the photo that whilst it's nice having a real open and light aspect at the back, when it's dark and the lights are on we do feel a bit exposed. 

I'm amazed though at the cost of curtains.  Having always made my own I thought I'd 'treat myself' and have some made or buy some from John Lewis..... Ok that was a shock!!..

* this is not our kitchen! Image taken from Pinterest - it shows the colour we have chosen!

The one room in the house that has not proven to work is the utility room.  It's turned out to be a very dark room, with poor natural light as the verandah over shadows it. The worktop I chose is dark wood & although we bought the same high gloss units as the main kitchen we opted for dark grey; as we had 2 dogs at the time, we thought that it would be their 'domain' - it turned out with the thermal store it is much too warm in there (and in the house generally - no complaints!!)

So we have decided to rethink it all and replace the grey with white high gloss doors.

IKEA kitchen units do not work with standard (bought elsewhere) worktop so we will have to replace it with an ikea worktop. This will mean getting a new one cut out for the sink!! 

..... it's really our only rookie mistake!! 

I think Richard and I seem to like a deadline and as we have guests at the end of September we'll hopefully get all these jobs completed by then?! 😳😊😎

The garden evolves as time passes and at the moment I'm just nurturing the plants and trees that are in. 

We have many future plans & ideas like a large wisteria covered pergola and a Japanese influenced Koi pond and deck area in front of my studio -  perhaps we'll have this done in time for the NGS Open Gardens next May......😂😂😂😵

We are finally ready to do the drive - oh how we have longed for this bit!!

It makes the house look very unfinished and as I'm sure I've mentioned before; it's the one question we are asked over and over - "what are you doing with the drive"!!

We are meeting with Paul our builder this week to discuss as we do need to get it done before the winter - this is the sort of thing we're going to do:

And finally I've decided after returning from France to have a much needed month off during September (I'll be recuperating after an op so a great excuse!!). I'm planning to spend some time developing my textile workshops for the Autumn and completing some of the sewing projects I've started! 

I'll be back very soon with updates, thanks for reading my blog 

Wendi x

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