One year ago today

It all seems like a dream now.

And I still feel nervous when I think about it.

But we really did it.


Happy anniversary my gorgeous husband! You are the most kind, funny, generous and intelligent person and I'm so proud to be your wife xxxxx

drilled pebbles

Some pebble pendants in progress. I've engraved a little wild strawberry flower on one of them since I took these photos. Sitting on the bench in the garden waiting for inspiration to strike, I looked down at all the tiny wild strawberries and white flowers and went to get my tools. Working on the bench in the sunshine was lovely. You can't beat this time of year.

salt laden tales

So many things made our holiday in Cornwall special and memorable so in no particular order... a list!

• Turquoise ocean on the Penwith peninsula and beautiful white sandy beaches.
  
• Spotting the naked man on the beach from high up on the clifftop at Treen ;-)
• Gorgeous fishing villages, full of quirkiness.
  
• The powerfully evocative (and heart wrenching) atmosphere of 'the dry' where the minors would get showered and changed at Geevor Tin Mine. It's preserved just as it was left when the mine closed down in 1990.
  
• My most favourite smell in the world - the white lichen which grows on the rocks all over the coast - please smell it next time you see any! It's especially fragrant when the sun's shining. I would love to know if anyone else shares my passion!!
  
• Browsing through the galleries in Marazion, St Ives and Mousehole, oh and Fowey!
• The arty souvenirs we've brought home with us... we fell in love with this Pure 3 Design lamp in the Porthgwidden Cafe in St Ives and decided it was too expensive but then found it for 50 pounds less in a gallery in Fowey and snapped it up!
  
• Hooper and Shaw in Port Isaac - full of arty crafty handmade things (photo from their press site).
  
• The view from the apartment over Porthmeor beach in St Ives - we could watch the surfers and there were two old ladies who went belly boarding together very early in the mornings - very inspiring!
  
• Listening to the waves crashing on the beach whilst falling asleep - bliss!
• Mr P getting stuck in a wetsuit whilst trying it on in a shop - I had tears streaming down my face I was laughing so much! We thought we were going to have to ask for assistance to remove it because it was so tight and it just wasn't budging. The image of him with it round his ankles will stay with me for evermore!
• Watching the 'ansome Seth Lakeman perform at the Minack Theatre!!!!! We were running very late after eating fish and chips by the harbour in Mousehole and thought we'd have to perch ourselves on a rock somewhere right at the back but on handing our tickets to the usher she got on her two way radio and said "Have you got room for 2 more on the front row?"(!!!!!!!) Must have been our lucky day!! It was excellent and a fantastic atmosphere made all the more compelling by the songs which were written about the west country, the sun setting over the ocean and of course the theatre itself, cut into the rocks of the cliff and exposed to the elements.
  
• Eating fish every night for tea! Lemon sole, dover sole, sea bass, megrim, john dory, cod, hake, mackerel, oh and a bit of crab too.
  
• Lots of lovely walks along the coast path and the coconut scent of the gorse wafting through the air.
  
• Cornish hedges so high and full of spring flowers, and the clifftops full of pink sea thrift, wild garlic and the like.
  
• Catching the passenger ferry from Polruan to Fowey (and back!). It's not a proper holiday without some kind of boat ride!
  
• Seeing Show of Hands at the Daphne du Maurier festival in Fowey - just completely fab live. Especially Phil Beer with his fiddle.
• The lovebods we found in Marazion at the Avalon gallery (loads of gorgeous art and craft!!). We only discovered later that they were filled with lavender, what a lovely surprise! We picked up a lovely Ken Eardley jug here too.
  
• Some scary reversing manoeuvres in the narrow country lanes - poor Mr P!
• Spotting lizards, slow worms and even a snake on the coast paths! I don't think I've ever seen a lizard in this country before.
  
• Drinking cider in my favourite pub in all of England, the Blue Peter in Polperro, last pub before France! Tucked away by the harbour this place has brilliant live music, is filled with characters (especially in the winter) and is very cosy.
  

If you've made it to the end of the list then thanks for sticking with me!!! I'm sure there are lots more that I've forgotten but I think I'll stop there before blogger has a tantrum!

Please share any of your loves of Cornwall, I would definitely keep them for next time... fave beaches, villages, things to do, boat trips, coast walks, gardens... please list them in the comments. All welcome! Thanks!

Can you guess where I've been the last couple of weeks?

I'll give you a few clues...

Mmmmmmm!!

There's a naked man on this one if you look closely!! ;-)



Finally... a white cross on a black flag.

Have you guessed?

little onion pot

A birthday present from my mum and dad. I fell in love with him when we visited an antique centre months and months ago, and they remembered and went back for him :-) I have a thing about making objects into little characters. I really want to play with some of these from paperchase. I am always seeing faces in things.

Tomorrow I am off on an adventure. So I'm signing off for a while but I will be back with tales to tell hopefully. Bye for now!

another year older

Definitely more wrinkles than last year but no point obsessing over them! I had a lovely time on my birthday. For the first time in years we went to pizza hut for lunch where we had the tastiest pizza ever. Now usually I prefer thin base pizzas but this time we had a deep pan and ohhhhhhh it was delicious! I interrogated the waitress as to how they make them so tasty but she wouldn't tell me! Said it was a secret. I think it would be worth getting a job there just to find out!

The other real high point of the day was this amazing place. Tell me if I'm wrong but I'm pretty sure this is where they filmed the recent newspaper advert with the little boy pressing his hand up against the glass as a shark swims past. I tried to get Mr P to reenact it but he was too shy!

The tunnel where you can stand on the conveyor belt is amazing to go through. I loved seeing the fish swimming in shoals around us.

Mr P kept pretending to be eaten by the sharks. Can't take him anywhere ;-)

I laugh every time I look at this!

In the evening Mr P had booked a table at a swanky restaurant not far from where we live but we both admitted later that it hadn't been half as good as pizza hut! I know pizza is very calorific, but after eating onion soup which was literally a bowlful of cream with onion flavouring and gruyere I thought I would have to spend 3 hours on the dance mat the next day to burn it off!

So here I am, a little bit older. More comfortable in my own skin, more aware of who I am and that's it's ok not to be perfect and perfectly fine to make mistakes. It's all just a series of experiences, good and bad. I like to think when something bad happens that to balance things up something good will happen at a later date, especially when you have a run of bad luck. Like yin and yang. My french teacher used to say you make your own luck and I suppose that's true to a certain extent but you can't control everything. So that's how I deal with it. Incidentally I don't spend my life worrying that if things are great something will go wrong! That wouldn't work at all! Hopefully this will be a great year. There are some exciting things planned already!

Listen to me rambling on! Anyway, have a lovely weekend everyone whatever you're up to. :-)

a long weekend

Well the weather was a bit pants for the bank holiday weekend but we decided to ignore it and make the best of it which resulted in us getting a bit wet but didn't stop us from having fun.

We've driven past the cotebrook shire horse centre loads of times and put it on the list of things to do one day... well that day was bank holiday monday.

We were expecting to see lots of shire horses but there was so much more there and the setting was so lovely. Like a rural idyll.




We were lucky to see the farriers in action. When they were putting the new shoes on the horse the smell of burning hoof was intense. Of course the horse didn't seem to mind but the poor lad with the horse's foot between his legs kept getting a facefull of steamy smoke. Bleurghh!!! The photo below makes me laugh... he probably needed a very long shower before his girlfriend would go near him!

Lots of different characters in the hen house. I would love to keep some hens! Definitely one day!


Lots of cute baby birds and bunnies.

And of course, lots of shire horses! Shire horses are such gentle giants. This one was having a bit of a stretch like a dog does and it made us giggle.


The pub next door has a lovely atmosphere and there was a cozy fire crackling away to keep us warm. It's a proper old traditional country pub, just how I love them the most. I giggled at the photos on the wall of shire horses waiting to be served at the bar!! I think we'll have to go back here for tea sometime.

As I love making lists, some other things we did over the weekend:

• a day out in chester... window shopping mostly
• a bit of gardening
• feeling really really lucky to have a pair of redpolls visiting the bird feeders again
• cake baking
• drinking cider and dancing around to a great local band called the cheeky monkeys
• chatting with friends
• a spot of decorating
• watching amelie... again!
• planning a camping trip for the summer
• getting excited about my birthday, more about this later!!

Bye for now!