Harris & Lewis

As promised more photos of the holiday. We started our little island hopscotch by sailing over to Harris, one of the most spectacular places on earth. As we drove to the south of the island to spend our first night in the sweetest little B&B ever, all we could do was soak up the amazing scenery of one golden beach after the other.

An evening stroll along Scarista beach

Sorrel Cottage B&B, Leverburgh, a stunningly simple, home from home place to rest your head, made even more special by the lovely warm welcome from it's owner Paula.

Flying the kite on Luskentyre beach, Harris.

Luskentyre is also home to Luskentyre Harris Tweed Company, we had a great chat with Donald, who showed us his workroom, the weaving loom and how it worked. He designed and produced the Harris tweed that was used for the limited edition Nike trainer back in 2004. On looking out of his shop window I asked him where he got his inspiration from, but kind of knew I was looking at it, the aquas of the sea, the golden sands, the pale blue skye and the amazing colours of the machair.

The view from our first nights campsite, at Cliff on the West coast of Lewis. This patch of harebells just gently bobbed in the sea breeze.

Our second nights campsite on the beach at Garenin, the blackhouse village, a conservation village of traditional blackhouses, some of which have been turned into a hostal. There is also a wonderful museum set up as to how the house would have been originally, (another) Donald weaves all day demonstrating to visitors in the weaving shed, and then through in the kitchen there are demostrations of spinning, making oatcakes and the day we were there how to make butter. Theres also a superb little tearoom selling good coffee and great homebaking!

Donald weaving Harris Tweed.

Butter making with a roaring fire in the background.

Looking down through the black village.

Callanish Standing stones.

Feeding the pigs at the Callanish Visitor Centre - really nice little place that do a great bowl of soup, coffee and cake!

Uig Sands, a gorgeous big stretch of sands of Lewis.

Surfers at Dalmore beach, this was probably my favourite beach, a little cove of golden sands, aqua sea and great waves - ooh how I wish I'd had a surf board! It was so hot I ended up sunbathing for the afternoon, stripped down to my bra and my jeans rolled up as there was hardly anyone else there!

We spent our last night on Harris camping at Scarista beach, shown in the first photo. We sat down on the sands with a bottle of wine and watched the sun set (more photos but taken in a different format, will show them later!). It was such a beautiful night, not a single soul on the huge stretch of beach, then, all of a sudden what pops up in front of us but two dolphins! They gave us the pleasure of watching them play for a good five minutes, you can't pay for scenery like that. It just rounded off our first few days perfectly, we were off to The Uists the next day, once we'd seen a bit of the east coast of Harris. I have to admit I was looking forward to a soft bed and a good shower, our second night of B&B....

More to follow on the Uists next week, see you all soon.

L x

Back to work!

Back to work today after two glorious weeks of holiday. To say that we were both a tad stressed before we left would be a bit of an understatement, so our holiday in the Outer Hebrides was just what we were needing. We were lucky enough to get great weather the nights we were camping and met up with some really super folk.

The wildlife is quite amazing over there, and the beaches are just mind blowing, but more on that tomorrow.

As usual the work load has pilled up after two weeks away so we're going to be busy bees over the next few months. We've come home completely inspired by all of the artists living and working over on the islands so it's full steam ahead with building the studio and shop, I've put a deadline of the end of September on it................hmmm, we shall see, watch this space!

Will catch up with you all soon, in the meantime I'll just have to tease you with a couple of photos!

L x

Time to rest

We are away for a much needed break, off up north to the Outer Hebrides.

Any orders will be dealt with on my return to "the office" on 6th August, at last I'm having a proper holiday away from the business!

See you all soon, fingers crossed the sun is shining!

L x

Friday already and family fun

Can't quite believe that it's Friday already, where has the week gone? Maybe it's the fact that we've actually had a proper, summery week of weather up here, washing blowing on the line every day. You know what it's like when you've had visitors, the washing machine is on for about a week after they've left and you always find the odd sock that doesn't belong to you.

Linda, Ian, Hayley, Jordan and Joshie (aunt, uncle and cousins) arrived on Saturday afternoon, thankfully bringing some decent weather with them. We left the boys to put up the marquee and us girls headed off to the berry fields to pick strawberries and raspberries for Sundays pudding. Then we had a mass cookathon on Saturday night, marinading a couple of joints of meet from here, making the chocolate slab cake that was in last months Country Living mag (it's delicious by the way!) and generally catching up.

It was going to be a simple affair, lots of good home cooked food, straw bales to sit on, tables borrowed from the local village hall and foxgloves in jugs on the tables.

Sunday arrived with lots of sun and all of the visitors, nobody got lost on their way here and we all had a marvellous day. There were 30 of us in total and two babies, enough food to feed an army and much fun was had. A very competitive game of football was played, a dead frog was placed in a Prada shoe and another dam was built in the burn.

It made me realise how important family is to me, how important my family is to me and Gregg. We've been together ten years this week, he is as much a part of my family as I am, he's been welcomed with open arms and accepted as part of my life, the way it should be with your extended family. That means a hell of a lot to me right now.

Our home comes into itself when it's full of life, kids running around, laughter filling the air, just general happiness buzzing about the place. It was a very special day, my mum and her five brothers and sisters all together, my grandparents watching most of their grandchildren running around with each other and two great grandchildren bouncing about on folks knees. Bliss.


After the last of the visitors left late on Monday morning the house seemed very quiet, I hate it when it's like that. Never mind, we'll just have to do it again next year.

A year of blogging........

I knew it was coming up but didn't realise it was today....................a year of blogging, where has that time gone? I've had great fun telling you all about our adventures over the last year, doing up the shack, tales of the animals and running a rural business from home. I've also made loads of superb friends over the last year, a couple of which I've even managed to meet up with.

I do find this whole blogging thing a bit crazy, I can't do it every day, I just don't have the time. I know I've been lacking in posts and commenting on others lately but life is just a bit hectic at the moment, I promise I'll get back into the swing of things and catch up with you all again very soon. I think the longer you leave it the harder it is to come back.......?

Anyway, this week is a bit mad, getting ready for the family invasion on Sunday, I think we've got a head count of around 36 people coming and a couple of babies at the moment...........where are we going to put them all?????? And trying to tame the garden is proving to be a case of dodging the torrential down pours, we may all be wearing swimming costumes on Sunday.........!

I promise I'll be back next week with lots of photos and more tales to tell.

Thanks all for letting me share our adventures with you. Sending you all love and hugs.xxx

On a mission..............

Too much wild fun going on here at the moment and now a mad panic before a family gathering of around 40 in less than 2 weeks time.........

Spare room to be painted, the garden to be tamed (?) and a mink to be caught that ate two of our chooks last night, little bugger..............

The joys of country life, it's not all a bed of roses.

Marie Chantal

Just a quick post to let you all know that Maries on-line shop is back up and running. When I did my post the other day on her beautiful products, unfortunately her site was down. So any of you who are interested in her products go have a look, they're delicious!

Today was a bit of a shopping day as I had been car-less for a week, I'll show you my purchases tomorrow and tell you all about the dilemma I found myself in over a pair of wellies!

See you tomorrow.

L x

From the garden.....

All this great weather has brought the garden on in leaps and bounds, veg, flowers and most of all weeds! Except for the parsnips, all the veggies are now planted in the veggie boxes as the last of the frosts are now hopefully past. We've been eating salad nearly every night for the last week, it's fab!

We're having a big family get together next month as we have family over visiting from NZ, so I'm hoping we might have some new potatoes ready for eating and plenty of salads, fingers crossed we might even have some fresh peas..........

I just need to get those second sowings done now.........! What veggies are you all growing?

Lots of news

Gosh, it's Monday already where does time go?!! Thank you to everyone for their well wishes, I'm feeling a million times better, just need to get rid of the horrible cough now!

Lots to tell today, firstly, a post that has been long overdue! The lovely Marie, over at Marie Chantal sent me a parcel a little while back with lots of her beautiful rose skin care products which are scrumptiously packaged. I at last managed to get my return parcel in the post just before I was hit with the lurgy! Marie received her parcel last week and has very kindly posted about it at the weekend, thanks Marie. Having used Marie's products over the last wee while, they are gorgeous! They smell divine and the rose cream is silky smooth and lovely to use. I've also got the Skin Freshener and the Cleanser, which again are both delicious to use. Here's a picture of some of her products ( Marie, I've pinched the picture from your blog as it looks really good, hope you don't mind!)

Marie has just opened up her fabby on-line shop, so head on over there and get buying girls as, luckily for us, she ships overseas!

Another lovely lady who has inspired me lately is Cherry over at Tales from Pixie Wood. I was catching up with her blog, reading about her trip to Florence last week. This time last year we were in Florence, I looked back at some of our photos from the trip and thought about how happy we both looked, it was such a fab holiday. So, feeling a bit "down in the dumps" last week I promptly went about booking us a holiday. Now, in the Hector house this is generally Mr. H's job, and a grand job he always does! But, I needed something to pick up my spirits and get me back into the swing of things, so holiday hunting I did.

Not one to go down the "let's go to the travel agents and let them do it all" route, not that there's anything wrong with that, and to be honest there's probably not a travel agent that could organise this type of holiday, I got surfing on t'internet!!!!! So, where are we off to I hear you all mutter..............

Here's a clue.......................

stunning beaches.....................

rugged landscapes.................................

Have you guessed yet?

We're off to the Outer Hebrides to do a bit of an Island Hopscotch, and how are we doing it? Well, we're camping, yes, camping!!!!! And the bit I'm looking forward to is this.........

.........sitting on the beach watching the sunset, with a large G&T and then sleeping under the stars!

Most folk that we've told think we're nuts, but hey ho, we were both in the Guides and the Scouts so we at least know how to put up a tent!!! Lets just hope it doesn't blow away in the wind like the last time!!! ( We have bought a new, slightly smaller and cosier tent for this trip!)

So the plan is, we sail over from Uig on Skye to Tarbert on Harris, spend a couple of days discovering Lewis and Harris and then sail over to North Uist, to do a whistlewind tour of the Uists and Benbecula. We are booked into two B&B's, the first night and the middle night, just in case the weather really is awful!! And if it's just not good enough weather for camping we can hopefully stay in some of these cute little places that are dotted around the islands........

We have both always wanted to visit Lewis and Harris, the thought of being able to camp on those amazing beaches just fills me with excitement. The opportunities to spot some of the wildlife that surrounds the islands is another huge spine tingler for me, imagine being sat quietly on the beach and then suddenly seing an otter in the wild? You can't get much better than that can you...? The camera will be at the ready........!!

On the nature front, I witnessed an amazing scene in the garden this morning. I was busy sewing away in my workroom, looking out over the garden, when I saw the familiar flash of the woodpecker fleeting over to the peanut feeder. A couple of seconds later another woodpecker joiner her, a fledgling woodpecker! She pecked away at the nuts and then fed them to her baby, it was like a scene from Springwatch but in our own garden! I shall try and get some photos but I can't promise anything...............

See you all soon,

L x

P.S. the photos are thanks to the visit hebrides site.

A quick hello.....

Just a quick hello from me before the weekend begins. The dreaded lurgy attacked this time last week, needless to say I ended up in bed for a few days. Not one to play the martyr I slept it off, best way in my opinion! So, feeling a lot better now but sounding like I smoke 40 a day (although I do quite like having a Mariella Fostrup type voice!), I've been playing catch-up these last few days. I have managed to get a few parcels in the post and have another order ready to go out, so roll on the weekend!

I'll be back on Monday with lots to tell, I've spent a good bit of this week cheering myself up by organising our holiday, all will be revealed on Monday, lets just say I'm VERY excited!!

Have a great weekend, what are you all up to?

L xx

P.S. The picture is of Jacobs Ladder, we've got tonnes of it in the garden just now, it makes a lovely cut flower so I'm off to fill up loads of jugs to dot around the house! x

A rainy day

At last we've got a rainy day, drizzly and dreich.

So much time has been spent in the garden lately, yet there is still so much to be done, but we're getting there, slowly but surely. It's nice when people comment on how much we've changed the place, I met more friends of neighbours at the weekend and the first thing they commented on was how much we had improved our little corner and tidied it up, all the hard work is at last starting to pay off.

We at last relaxed for a bit on Sunday afternoon, a walk in the bluebell woods and then a pub tea in the Taybank in Dunkeld, my favourite (reasonably local) pub. Friends visited yesterday so the house got a quick tidy and much coffee, tea, scones and cake were eaten!

Here's a picture of my favourite tool at the moment, my riddle, I've been using it loads lately, great for getting nicely toned arms!

Sewing today, and then a visit up to Glenshee Pottery to collect some more stock this afternoon. If the rain stays on we'll hopefully get a bit more work done on the website, which desperately needs updating, when will there ever be enough hours in the day?!!

L xx

Busy, busy, busy............

Well, as you can probably tell from the lack of posts we've been a tad busy here at Primrose Hill. What with those cute little chicks to drool over daily, we've not been handling them much, but there has been the odd little cuddle! It's been a tad busy with the business and the garden has been keeping us both out of mischief in all of our spare minutes!

Do you remember this post? Well here's where we are with this little project, looking a lot smarter, wouldn't you agree? Still a bit of fencing to be done and the wild flower seeds to be sown, but I am rather loving my new gate!
Lots going on in the garden and the greenhouse, these arrived in the garden this weekend....

........what do you think? they'll make great sweetpea and cornflower supports. They were hay stooks in a previous life, nothing better than a bit of recycling in the garden.

In my last post I showed you some of our pruchases at the market, well one of the buckets is planted up at the front door with marguerites, very welcoming with all those friendly little daisy heads bobbing around! And yes, that is a little pot of violas hiding beside it from way back in March when I potted them up for the Country Living Fair, still flowering away, healthy as ever!

Well, I'm off to the post office with another order and I really must catch up on all those e-mails that I owe you all, especially this lady, your parcel will be in the post this week, I promise!

L x

The chicks!

As promised more photos of the chicks! They ventured outside for the first time yesterday and are getting quite confident on their feet, they seem to be able to fly from one end of the run to the other in a flash! I've been spending far too much time just watching them tottering around and jumping on their mums back, so very cute! Two of the chicks are black with little tufts of yellow, they are Maran cross Welsummers and the other seven are pure Welsummers. Hopefully not too many of them will be cockerels!

It's raining today so I'm getting on with work and watching them from my workroom window and the study window.I told a little fib the other day when I wrote I'd come back empty handed from the market, I didn't bring back anything of the feathered variety, but I did manage to spend some pennies in the "Bygone Era" auction. I was amazed at the amount of really interesting bits and bobs that were for sale, I could have spent a small fortune but I didn't! Everything from old glass butter churns to ploughs! Even a rusty old post box! There were a few things that I lost out on but I did manage to get some really nice galvanised buckets and baths for planting up in the garden and some old tattie baskets. I managed to get something in the sewing line too, a really special find at an absolute steal of a price, but I'll save that for another day!

I just have to decide whether I'm going to plant them up with flowers or veg now!

The wonders of nature

Don't you just think that nature is a wonderful thing? Yesterday was the big day, 21 days ago we'd sat our broody maran on a selection of 10 eggs in the hope that they would hatch in to little chicks. She has sat on those eggs religiously turning them and keeping them warm.

Gregg had popped out first thing to check but could hear no cheeps, I went out at 11am, lifted the chicken up and there facing me, cheep, cheeping away was a pile of fluffy chicks! 9 out of the 10 eggs hatched, the 10th chick had made it half way out of the shell but unfortunately had been squashed, survival of the fittest as they say. Today they are running around inside the little hen house, they've been shown by their mother to eat the chick crumbs and drink water so fingers crossed they will all grow into healthy chickens ( or possibly cockerels!). Maybe tomorrow they will venture out on the grass, lots of photos to follow I think!!!

Our day at the Rare Breeds sale on Saturday was enjoyable although the chickens were going for ridiculous amounts of money, I was outbid on everything so came home empty handed. Chicken keeping seems to be quite fashionable at the moment, certain breeds were reaching £45 per chicken?!!! One breed in particular, the cream legbar, was proving to be very popular, all because they lay a blue egg! They were actually the chickens that I was after, but luckily my uncle keeps them so we'll be trying to hatch some of our own this summer.

We also watched the livestock auction, cattle, sheep, pigs and goats. Seeing the piglets was interesting, there were Gloucestershire Old Spots, Great Blacks and Tamworths, all tiny little things squealing away. Gregg did pose the question " so if we do get a couple of weaners are you going to be able to take them to the slaughter house then?", there was a slight hesitation in my answer, but I'm pretty sure I could.

I came away feeling quite sad as some of the sheep weren't even getting as good a price as the chickens, one going for as little as 4 gn (4 guineas = £4.20). An animal that could provide the wool to put clothes on your back and feed a family for at least a couple of weeks was being sold for less than a bird that provides approx. 200 eggs in a year and probably wouldn't feed a family for one night, where is the sense in that?

Anyway, I shall leave you with photos of our proud mum and her chicks and some photos from the market. I really should be getting on with work but I just know I'll have to go and check on the chicks again!

Feathered friends

This stretch of superb weather has brought the garden and local wildlife on in leaps and bounds, lets just hope that our summer hasn't arrived early and this is it for the next few weeks. Ever the optimist, I'm hopeful that we'll have a long, balmy summer, stretching through to September, how fabulous would that be.......

I'm always waiting in anticipation at this time of year for the arrival of the swallows. The house and sand martins have been here for a good few weeks, darting around in the sky. I checked the diary from last year, they had arrived on 2nd of May, a year ago today. We were getting ready to go to the local farmers market on Saturday when I spotted the arrival of the our first swallow, sat on the telephone line chattering away. Such a fantastic sight, and a feeling that summer is just around the corner. We have the remains of a few nests in the eves of the stables but since we've lived here none have ever nested there. Maybe this year we'll be lucky enough to have them as guests over the summer.

The warm weather has been kind to all the young birds that we have too, the feeders are constantly covered in tits and finches, we even get regular visits from the woodpecker. We have a couple of blackbirds and a thrush constantly bobbing around on the lawn hunting for worms so they must have nests close by in the hedgerows.

While in the workshop yesterday morning fishing out some screws to go with a pinboard order, I could hear the constant tweeting of what sounded like a young bird, I assumed it had maybe fallen out of it's nest, so I went to investigate. To my delight, I found a mother dipper flying back and forth to her young fledgling perched on a stone in the middle of our burn. It slowly followed her down the burn, carefully flying from one stone to the next. She kept returning with beakfulls of food for it. Our ducks were quite intrigued and followed them all the way down the burn! I heard it again in the afternoon and amazingly managed to get some really close up pictures of the baby, looking very fat and fluffy!

On the domestic fowl front we are getting very close to hatching day with our french cuckoo maran, hopefully this Sunday or Monday we'll be hearing little cheeps of chicks from underneath her, I'm so excited. A hen takes around 21 days to incubate fertile eggs, believe me it's been the longest 3 weeks ever!

After our disastrous attempt at moving our little duck and her nest, we managed to find the other nest with 11 eggs in it, tucked underneath a tuft of grass in our neighbours garden! I took advice and moved the eggs into a little coop and have sat one of our broody bantams on them. Duck eggs takes around 28 days to incubate, so we'll be at the halfway mark this Friday. Fingers and toes crossed that they hatch, I'm so looking forward to playing surrogate mummy this summer.

Catching up

Well it's the 1st of May already, where did April go? I forgot to get up and wash my face in the dew this morning, although to be honest it was more frosty here than dewy.

So, as I said in my last post, the inspiring Tash over at Vintage Pretty has nominated me for a "thinking Blogger" award. I'm pretty stunned as I see my blog as a bit of a rambling thing, me blethering on about life in the sticks and running my wee business from home, but hey, I'm not going to complain, it's lovely to know that there are some people out there that seem to enjoy it.

The hardest part is having to choose my 5 favourite blogs, there are so many out there, people who do truly inspire and make me think, compared to others who just moan and have a jibe at others, they tend to be the blogs that make you roll your eyes, move on to the next one and put you off blogging........! But don't worry I'm not put off that easily ;O)

The first blog that I love to read every day is Tash over at Vintage Pretty, I know that seems mad as she put me up to this, but I just have to return the favour. From the stunning photography to her heartwarming posts, it just all makes fantastic reading and I can tell we would be great friends if we lived close by.

Secondly it has to be my cyber twin, Rach over at Oh, the glamour, her blog is a hilarious read about the daily goings on in her life and has lately included some of her amazing patchwork, now there's a talented girl. I'm lucky enough to have met Rach and I think we'll end up being pretty good buddies.

Thirdly, one of the first blogs I started reading is The Accidental Smallholder, it's been inspiring to read up on Rosemary and Dans' progress with their small holding, in fact I'm hoping to chat pig keeping with Rosemary this weekend at the Rare Breeds Sale in Inverurie.

Another one of my daily reads is Cherry over at Tales from Pixie Wood, Cherry has proved to be a real star in more ways than one, many an e-mail has gone flying through cyberspace between us! She is such an inspiration to me, I adore the fact that she is just so organised in every aspect of her life and is a real home maker at heart. If I could have just an ounce of those organisational skills I know my life would be a lot easier!

And lastly, a blog I've just recently started reading is Kelly over at Nesty. Her blog is beautifully put together, always has fantastic photography and I love being a part of all her crafty projects.

There are loads more that I could mention but I'd end up boring you all to tears!

I shall be back tomorrow with more news, I'll leave you with a picture from the garden.

Nite nite,


L x