Afternoon tea at my new desk

Today my new desk arrived! 

I have needed a new desk for a few years now because my 50-year-old formica-topped table was starting to fall to pieces. The back extending flap was beginning to fail, and I was in danger of losing my computer monitor which was sitting precariously on it.

Over 2 years ago I saw this desk online and fell in love with it. I dreamed of owning it and put a picture of it in my One Notes dream list app.  At the time the price was too high, for me, and I didn't think any more about it. Then at the beginning of this month, while I was browsing online, I saw that the desk was on sale with 40% off the original price. I couldn't believe my luck. 

The desk is made of solid oak and has 3 drawers. It is not as deep as my formica table, but it is much wider. 

I have also pre-ordered an oak floating shelf, for the back of the desk, to sit my monitor and speakers on. This will enable me to store my keyboard and mouse underneath the monitor when I want to do paperwork or crafting. The floating shelf should arrive mid-to-late August. Something else to look forward to 😊

After the delivery men assembled my desk and placed it in my room, I couldn't wait to set it up with my ornaments and computer monitor. There is plenty of room in the drawers for my A4 folders, notebooks, pens and anything else I am not using at the moment. 

The desk is a little bit high, so I added a cushion to my chair, and it is very comfortable.

Once everything was set up on my desk, I decided to have my afternoon tea there. I had English Breakfast tea in my Redoute Roses teacup, which my sister-in-law gave to me. And with it I had a couple of pieces of Ginger Slice which were yummy. It was lovely and I am so happy. 

I hope that you have kept well since my last post in April. My chest infection and collapsed lung cleared up after a couple of months and the x-rays came back normal. No more patches on my lung which is a big relief. As a result, things have been rather quiet here.

Winter is here now, and we have been experiencing some really nice days in-between the rainy squalls. The plants in the garden seem to think that it is Spring and we have had daffodils (Earlicheer) already flowering. And anemones, freesias, ranunculi and bluebells are poking their way through the ground.

I have been yearning to start gardening again due to the warmish weather. But the frosts are still to come (if we get any). A few days ago, I took some fuchsia cuttings from unusually early, new growth. The cuttings are keeping warm inside the house. I used rooting hormone to help them along. At least it has satisfied my gardening urge. 😊 On the next sunny day, I plan to take more cuttings of different shrubs to see what happens.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Lots of hugs, Rose xxx

Happy Easter 2025

 

Wishing you a very happy Easter and that you have lots of fun with friends and family. And don't forget the chocolate!

Lots of hugs, Rose xxx 

Happy New Year 2025!

Happy New Year to you and all visitors to my blog! 

I will catch up with you soon.

Lots of hugs, Rose xxx

Merry Christmas from Rose

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas. Have a wonderful time with family and friends. Keep well and safe over the holidays and I will see you again soon.

With lots of Hugs, Rose xxx

Making table decorations for my pre-Christmas lunch

 
I enjoyed myself, this past week, doing a little craft project. I decided to make Christmas cracker boxes for my pre-Christmas lunch table. Ones that I could fill with little treats and Christmas jokes for each of our guests.

I had thought of buying Christmas crackers from the shops, but the contents are never much good. So, instead I searched through hundreds of ideas on Pinterest, my go-to website for ideas on things to make. 

This little template appealed to me. It didn't link to a webpage, there was only the template with no instructions. But I managed to follow instructions from other pins for Christmas crackers to assemble it.

I re-sized the image and printed it onto glossy photopaper, one cracker box per page. 

It was easy to cut out with scissors, but I used a craft knife to cut out the internal diamond shapes. Then I folded the paper along the dotted lines and glued the tabs to the opposite side to form a tube.

I bought some thin red ribbon and tied a bow around the diamond ended parts which made it look like a Christmas cracker.

I left the bottom ends open so that I could fill each Christmas cracker box with Christmas chocolates and also Christmas jokes, which I printed from the internet. 

Then I closed the ends with a tiny dab of glue, so that the cracker boxes could be easily opened up to get the treats out.

Now I still need to iron my newly washed white tablecloths and napkins. And sort out my placemats, cutlery and dishes that I will be using. There is no hurry to do this as I still have 11 days to get ready.

The menu and the shopping list have been sorted, presents all wrapped and Christmas cards written. 

I have assembled the large Christmas tree, which needs the lights and decorations to be put on. For some reason it feels like a bit of an effort to do this year. Maybe it's just because it is so hot at the moment.

But I have decorated my little Christmas tree on my bedside table with vintage ornaments and some of the little paper house decorations that I made for the dining table last year.

And I have tidied up my desk and made it look Christmassy 🎄

I hope that you are enjoying yourself during the run up to Christmas this year, 

and that things are not too hectic.

See you again soon,

Hugs, Rose xxx

Flowers in my garden mid-Spring

This Spring the amaryllis flowers are amazing. There are 19 stems of flowers in-all and they have grown really tall. Their red trumpets are huge and look like rich velvet. I have never seen them do this well before. Maybe the mild Winter had something to do with their success. 

This is the gravel pathway between the house and garage where we grow plants in pots and tubs and also raise new cuttings.

The clematis is also doing well, it is absolutely full of pretty blue flowers. We love it so much that we have bought 3 more in different colours. One has buds on and the other 2 are madly climbing up their stakes. I will take some photos of them when they flower.

We also bought a red mandevilla plant, it has lots of new growth on it and quite a few buds.

We're not sure where we're going to plant the mandevilla. It may look good growing up the fence at the front of the house. Or we may put it in a large plant pot and keep it where it is.

This yellow snapdragon plant has been growing and successfully flowering for over 3 years.

We didn't know that snapdragons could be grown as perennials. We trim each stem, when it has finished flowering, to just below the seedheads, and leave the plant alone through Winter.

Dad has created a new flowerbed at the side of the water tanks. We are planting hydrangeas, foxgloves and aquilegia here as it is quite shady under the fruit trees.

This flower bed now joins the existing bed where the arctotis and cineraria grow.

And the flowerbed continues around one of the lime trees to where we have planted white irises and phlomis. 

Dad is going to widen the iris bed and I have ordered more irises in different colours to go here. They will be arriving in late January, so there is plenty of time to prepare.

The abutilons that we planted at the far corner of the garden are growing well, and the self-seeded white foxgloves are much taller than me now!

The orange clivia put on a good show this year. I am thinking of maybe getting a yellow-flowered one to put in another shady spot, next to the garden shed, under the plum tree.

I hope that this post finds you well. Wishing you a lovely weekend.

Hugs, Rose xxx

Fright Night was so much fun!

 

It was officially Fright Night in our village on Saturday evening from 5pm to 7pm. I decorated our entrance with the paper spiral ghosts and pumpkins that I had made earlier, plus plastic spiders and bats. Nothing too scary as our house was registered as a safe house as opposed to a scare house.

We bought about 3 kg of Halloween-themed sweets which I put in a large wicker basket covered with black netting with a bat pattern on. Then I hung orange and black balloons on our mailbox at the front of the drive.

This year we kept our door closed so that the children had to knock and say trick-or-treat when we opened it. Last year we just kept the door open which wasn't as exciting for the kids. The children started arriving at 4.45pm and finished at 7.30pm. 

My 92-year-old mum sat on a chair in the hallway, excited to see all the costumes and watch the children's reactions. Mum kept a tally of how many children visited. She counted 167 in all 👀👻🦇

I had a great time handing out the sweets. The children were all very polite, asking how many sweets they were allowed to take and saying thank you. I loved seeing their costumes and how excited they were. One dad brought his baby (less than a year old), dressed up for Halloween, and took a sweet lol. Some of the children had made their costumes themselves, but the majority had been bought or made by parents. 

One boy was dressed in a huge inflatable dinosaur outfit. But the outfit had an air leak, so his friend held onto the dinosaur tail to get more air into the body, but when he let go, the neck and head deflated and fell to the ground. It was funny to see, but I did feel sorry for the kid. I gave him extra sweets for his effort. 

I asked the children if any of them had a trick prepared, only one girl had who did 4 cartwheels for extra sweets. Then another boy said he could do backward flips but was too tired and another said he could ride a scooter.

The children liked the decorations that I had made and inspected them closely. One boy told his friend that this is the spider woman's house because I put plastic spiders out this year and last year. So now I am known as the Spider Woman 🕷🕸

The Halloween-themed sweets were very popular, especially the red eyeballs and vampires blood lollipops. One young girl asked if the eyeballs were real. She looked rather worried, so I told her they were made of jelly but she could pretend they were real. She was very pleased with my answer!

 I can't wait until next year's Fright Night. Mum was so happy she said it is better than going out. She thought that some of the costumes were scary, but most of them made her laugh. And she really enjoyed counting how many children came.

I hope you had a fun weekend too.

Hugs, Rose xxx