Emporium feature

We are in the latest edition (November) of Country Living Magazine, in the Emporium section, our famous dotty door stop gets a lovely little mention. We were last featured nearly two years ago in December, but we weren't "click and buy" then, so it will be interesting to judge the difference in sales. Let's hope lots are doing their Christmas shopping on-line this year!

Ooh, it's all very exciting!

L x

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

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 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!

Vintage buttons and Country Living

I've just come in from walking Chrissie, windswept and rosie cheeked, it's wild and dreich out there. "Dreich", such a great Scottish word, don't you think? At last, my March Country Living has arrived, it's normally here long before it hits the shelf of our local newagents, was not impressed when I popped in yesterday to see it sitting there and I STILL didn't have mine, humf! Anyway, I'm so pleased, my friend Caroline who has the Twice shop, has a little feature in it this month, her sewing roll has been featured in Emporium. We met last year when we both had stalls at the Travelling Souk and at Perth Mart Christmas Fair. Her products are gorgeous, real vintage beauties made into a lovely selection of gifts and goodies for the home.

This lovely little lot arrived in the post this morning too.............

Just over 100 real mother of pearl vintage buttons, some of them are really gorgeous, I have a real thing for mother of pearl buttons and use them on so many of our products. I'm also waiting on another lot arriving, this time 600! Yes, 600! I'll maybe have to part with some of them and sell them in the shop............. hmmmm, we'll see!

We're also waiting on another arrival, but of a different sort, the geese are apparently due to start laying on Valentines Day, but so far no eggs from them. I went out and spoke to them today, I told them that if they didn't start laying soon they'd go in the pot, that normally works with them! Their eggs are fab, they are huge with really tough shells, great for baking with and Gregg loves them for breakfast, they make HUGE fried eggs! Fingers crossed they'll start laying soon.

Thank you all for telling me what you got up to on Valentines Day, it's nice to know there are still some romantics out there! The chocolate cake was yummy, I was worried it wouldn't be very nice as it was a bit hard when I put the chocolate ganache over it, but as Julia over at Chrystal Mountain said, 20 seconds in the microwave with lashings of cream and it was dish delish! Left overs for pud tonight, guess who's going to be a few pounds heavier by the end of this week!