Happy Halloween!

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Shadows of a thousand years rise again unseen,

Voices whisper in the trees, "Tonight is Halloween!"

~Dexter Kozen

The bowl of sweets will be placed on the front door step, for the trick or treaters. The lights will be turned off and the candles lit. And, out will come the bat shaped biscuits while husband and me watch a suitably scary film!

Whatever you have planned for tonight I hope you have a SPOOKY time and remember......

be careful out there.... MUHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!  

Mellow fruitfulness

There are a number of good parks local to me where I regularly walk Flossie. Today I took her to one of my favourites. We had a lot of fun kicking up the Autumn leaves and generally enjoyed being out in the fresh air.

In the top left picture Flossie is trying to decide which way to go. Either, continue the way we were heading or follow a fellow dog walker with a King Charles spaniel!

The bottom right picture is a wonderful carving of a fox at the base of a huge tree that's died off. It always makes me smile.

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There was a little surprise waiting for me when we got home. The postman had delivered my first Graze box. You may have seen these on other blogs, it's a subscription to a box of healthy snacks, delivered to your door (it fits through the letterbox so no fear of missing the post!) The website and customer service is brilliant. It's well worth checking out and your first box is FREE with this code 5L9KQJ1D

So far I've only tried one of the snacks in my box, "natural vanilla pumpkin and sunflower seeds" and they are absolutely delicious! The other snacks in the box are:

*Fruit and seed flapjack

*Love mix- cherries, gogi berries and apricot

*Korean chilli rice crackers

All of the ingredients including calories and nutrition values are supplied in a little booklet. When you've tried your snacks you can rate them on the Graze website and "bin" any you don't like so you won't receive them again. You can also unsubscribe from the service at any time.

Originally, I only signed up to Graze because I couldn't make my mind up whether or not to indulge in one of the popular monthly beauty box subscriptions! I thought I might as well eat something while I read all the reviews! 

Maybe it will make me beautiful on the inside?!  ;)

Tiffany Blue

For my birthday earlier this week I received a very special gift from my husband. A Tiffany & Co ring! It was lovely to open that little blue box to find a beautiful treasure inside.

The ring is a chunky, concave design, engraved with the Tiffany & Co hallmark, it's from the 1837 range. I love it because of it's classic simplicity, I could never tire of this item. I feel very lucky to have been given it.

Later in the day I was whisked off for a luxury afternoon tea at Davenports Tea Room. This really is the most beautiful place. There has been a tea room here since 1930 and it has a whimsical, nostalgic feel to it, with traditional furniture and lace tablecloths, stunning wallpaper and sparkling chandeliers.

The food tastes as exquisite as it looks. The tea rooms form part of what is Davenports Farm, there is a wonderful farm shop (I bought some apple chutney!) selling local organic produce and a florist on site.

Belinda Davenport is unbelievably knowledgeable about tea and the menu consists of no less than about 20 different varieties, I, of course drank Earl Grey!! No wonder then, that Davenports is a proud member of the Tea Guild.

All of the food we ate had provenance, and Belinda could tell us where all the food was sourced. For example the egg mayonnaise on our sandwiches was made with eggs from the farms own hens, Belinda herself had baked the cherry scones, the beautiful cupcakes are by Katjas Kupcakes who learnt her craft in America, the ham we ate is from Maynards Farm, one of Rick Steins "food heroes."

Everything was served to perfection on vintage china with silver cutlery and even our cups were taken away to be warmed before our pots of tea were brought to the table.

One of the best things about Davenports is the animals! If you look at the picture of the tea room above, there is a glass fronted cupboard. Inside is wool to buy made from the farms alpacas! How cool is that! There are also ostriches and my favourite....donkeys!

As we were finishing our wonderful afternoon, I was presented with a beautiful bouquet of flowers that my lovely husband had ordered, full of Stargazer lilies, roses and anenomies and my favourite scented eucalyptus foliage (random fact: cats seem to love eucalyptus, when I worked as a florist I had 2 cats and they'd go crazy for me (!) when I'd been using it).

It really was a perfect birthday and one I'll always remember.

Words on Wednesday

Retail Therapy: Dress & shoe combinations

1. Stripy dress  Wallis    2. Chevron dress  Peacocks    3. Spotty dress  Miss Selfridge
4. Brown Heeled boots  Wallis    5. Knee high riding boots   Topshop    6. Oxford brogues  Asos

Chit chat!

This is a bit of a random post really! I just thought i'd put up some recent photos and have a ramble.

I made Malteser cupcakes this week as you can see most of them had gone by the time I got around to taking the photo. You can't tell from the picture but they were sprinkled with edible gold glitter, well, everyone needs a bit of sparkle in their life don't they?!

I got a cute air freshener with a chihuahua on it, from Accessorize and the other I've had for a while it's a Yankee Jar which I love because they smell amazing, this one is Vanilla lime.

My husband decided last weekend that our cherry tree needed cutting back. All I can say is I wouldn't want him to be my hairdresser! He got a bit scissor happy, I know it will grow again and it did need cutting, but I couldn't even bare to take a photo of it so I took a picture of my bright red Celosia flower instead. I have 6 of these in the garden at the moment and they are so beautiful and bright, like flames against the grey weather. They are nearly finished now for this season so I'm enjoying them while I can.

After his hard work butchering  pruning the tree, we sat and drank some organic cranberry juice. Lovely!

Flossie is enjoying her walks better now the rain has gone and so are we! It was getting a bit much every day getting soaked. Afterwards she likes to plonk herself right in the middle of the sofa and admire her surroundings! (spoilt!) 

It's my birthday next week so I will hopefully have some goodies to blog about! Have a wonderful weekend! Wrap up warm!  :) xx

P.S If you look over to your right you can see I've made a little "Pampered Sparrow" button which if you wish you can put onto your blog by copying and pasting the code! Let me know if you have a button I can put on my blog too, because I really love them, I think the images always look pretty and it's a great way to find new blogs to read. :) xx

Driving

Sweating slightly I eased forward on the accelerator. The traffic was bumper to bumper due to an accident further up the road.
My passenger was sat silently beside me. Earlier he'd been chatting away and had put me at ease, now my palms were slippy on the wheel and I felt a little sick.
We'd been sat in a traffic jam for almost 20 minutes. No biggie I said to myself, stay calm, it's only my driving test. As the traffic finally started to move my passenger or rather my driving examiner looked as relieved as I felt.

Thankfully after only 13 weeks and 13 lessons I passed my driving test first time! I was elated, excited, thrilled.....deflated.
.....I didn't have a car. The cost of lessons had screwed me and there was no way I could afford a car.
Fast forward 12 months of scrimping and saving and borrowing my boyfriends (now husband) car and sulkily sitting on buses and trains I had finally saved enough to buy my first car, which can only be described as "a bit of a banger!" It was a Nissan Micra and I absolutely LOVED it. I was free! I was independent!
I used to bomb it along the M62 on a Sunday night back to university after visiting home and just feel such a sense of freedom. Actually, I say "bomb along" it was more like a  "splutter along!" The car devoured oil like nothing I've seen since, the radio (what radio?!) oh yeah, no radio. One good thing though, I could fill the tank of petrol for £5, yeah, they were the days.

Not my actual first car but exactly the same model! Mine was pale metallic blue :) 

That was 12 years ago and I've driven several cars since then. I still love driving and couldn't imagine not being able to. To this day it still gives me the same sense of freedom it did all those years ago. Yes, I get frustrated with other drivers and yes I think fuel costs are ridiculous. But I wouldn't be without my car.
I'm going to leave you with this little driving related story over at Kate Louises blog which absolutely made me laugh out loud!

Happy and safe driving :)

Words on Wednesday

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Retail Therapy: Animal Hats

All hats from River Island  £15 each

Recent purchases: Dresses

Whilst nipping into ASDA on Monday, I got a little distracted by the George clothes range. I normally do my weekly food shop online because, frankly, I hate food shopping, life is too short and well, I can't be arsed! :)

So, it was a bit of a novelty for me to go wandering around having a mooch at this and that. It was nice and quiet too, being a Monday.

Dangerous thing "mooching" I ended up buying two dresses. Not bad considering I only called in for a butty!

Cute little Tea dress £16. Bargain!

At £11 It'd have been rude not to!

Day Tripper: Blakemere

Recently, Me, my Husband and Flossie took a trip to Blakemere Craft Village. It's somewhere we visit fairly regularly, because it's a nice drive through the countryside and we often stop at a country pub or tea rooms on the way there or on the way back.

Within the craft village there is a restaurant and a coffee shop, a falconry, a huge candle shop and pet shop and then there are smaller shops housed within an Edwardian court yard.

First things first: Breakfast!

We had breakfast first. I didn't get to eat the teacake shown on my plate because we were sat outside and an angry, determined wasp kept buzzing around our food. My husband bravely squished it with a napkin. Unfortunately he squished it on my teacake!! I got it replaced though so not all was lost!

One of our favourite areas of Blakemere is the Antiques Emporium. It's a huge treasure trove of old pictures and glass, weird and wonderful artifacts and mirrors and jewellery. I've spent many hours here exploring the past.

I had a good rummage and purchased this little fellow for the princely sum of £1.00. I love donkeys! They just look so sad though, and I felt this one needed a good home.

In the old Edwardian stable block and I came across a lovely little boutique while having a wander.

Once inside I found a suitcase filled with little handmade trinkets! Beautiful little brooches made with cameos and feathers. There was also this lovely couch and cushions.

                           

We had a really lovely day which is always made better by being able to take Flossie with us, therefore not having to worry about getting back home because she's on her own.

Just before we left we paid a visit to the wishing well, we threw some money in and wished for..... Obviously I'm not going to tell you am I, otherwise it won't come true! ;)

Words on Wednesday

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Purple Reign

One of my favourite colour combinations for interiors is purple and gold. It's rich and classy but quirky enough to be individual.
The following images are fit for a Queen, imagine curling up with a good book and a mug of hot chocolate, pure indulgence!

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