Monthly Archives: May 2018

Monthly Friday Book Club.

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In keeping with the Royal Wedding tomorrow I thought I would share with you this book. It was first published in 1998 but I have read it a couple of times and loved every page.

Georgiana Spencer (Princess Diana’s ancestor) became the Duchess of Devonshire and mistress of Chatsworth House in 1774. She very quickly became the toast of London and Society very much adored by the Prince Regent and friend to Marie-Antoinette.

Her clothes were copied, if she attended the theatre the play was a success and she also influenced the politics of the time. However in private her husband, The Duke, was indifferent to her charms and had an affair with her best friend, Lady Elizabeth Foster. For twenty years all three resided at Chatsworth which was at times fraught.

210 years later a similar scenario would be played out within the walls of Kensington Palace with Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Mrs Camilla Parker-Bowles.

Amanda Foreman’s writing is very easy to read and although she is delivering historic facts, they are not the same old dry boring ones of your school history lessons!

This book is definitely on my To Read list again. It is available from Amazon in all versions. If you like historical novels you will not be disappointed in this book.

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Georgiana by Thomas Gainsborough

I hope you are having a very happy Friday and looking forward to the Wedding of the Year tomorrow. The weather is set to be sunny, warm and 19°C so everyone should have a lovely day ready for the open carriage ride of the Newlyweds.

Hugs, Susie xx

#TBT.

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I should have saved the wedding pictures from the other day for #TBT especially as we are now only two days away from the Wedding of the Year. I do feel sorry for anyone else getting married this weekend, as their big day will sort of fade a little into the background.

It was definitely a benefit for DH and I getting married in November that we had no problem with venues/flowers/cakes etc as the usual wedding season had ended. In fact for our wedding breakfast we actually had Christmas Dinner!!!! The Queen got married on November 20th so we are in good company there for an Autumn wedding.

DH and I were lucky with the weather too as it was a very cold frosty morning but very bright sunshine and we married at 11.00am and arrived at the hotel for lunch at 1.00pm. After all the speeches, the cutting of the cake and pictures we left for Honeymoon that evening to the Lake District.

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We stayed in the Northern Lakes where it is a little quieter.

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This is Grasmere one of our favourite villages to visit.

Royal Wedding

Every hour we seem to be getting updates regarding the wedding and there must be a different programme every day looking at the wedding and the past Royal weddings which is great re-living them. I had just started work when Diana Spencer married Prince Charles and we got a day off work so we could watch it on TV. I remember it was a Wednesday and my Mom, Grandmother and I had “Sunday” lunch and watched the whole day on BBC1.

I was just 17 when Diana got married and really related to her as she was only three year’s older than I and I just loved her dress and flowers. It was very 1980’s New Romantics style.

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When William and Catherine married in 2011 I was 47 with two Boys of my own aged 11 and 15 and we were all on holiday in Scotland for the Easter break. In fact we were staying in a castle and I spent the day watching the wedding, whilst DH and the Boys were outside!!! The only problem with having Boys is that they are not interested at all in the wedding dress and flowers etc!!!!!

This is Foulis Castle where we stayed and in fact The Queen Mother was a regular guest.

This is where I watched the wedding from.

After the wedding and dinner the weather was so nice we went out and played baseball in the grounds.

I am looking forward to Saturday and am recording it as well as watching, although I do think it will be an entirely different wedding to all those that have gone before because it is Prince Harry and he is definitely his own person. The weather so far is supposed to be good.

Happy Thursday Everyone.

Hugs, Susie xx

The Wednesday Wag.

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I am not happy today as it is cool and Mom will not let me have the door open all day!!! So I have been looking at new films coming out at the cinema and I have seen this one which we will all like I think.

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It looks really funny and Mom says it is the Doggy version of Miss Congeniality!!!! I will let you know what Mom says if she goes and sees it!

Mom says I need to get my hat out for Saturday as it is the Royal Wedding, whatever that is. So long as it goes with my new Pink Collar I don’t mind!!!

Mom is it going to be nice tomorrow, can I spend all day outside?

Yes Treacle it is supposed to be better tomorrow and nice and warm by the weekend, in fact we will hopefully be able to eat outside this weekend if we get all the summer furniture out and celebrate the Royal Wedding in style!

Oh boy, more work jobs, think I will stay out of the way!

Happy Woofy Wednesday everyone.

Treacle

Another Warm Day and Wedding Fever.

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You can see someone has found the sunshine today. This was early this morning and she is now outside lying in the hot sun, baking!! It is a good job she is not white and I would have to put sun cream on her!!! It is 21°C today and tomorrow it is going to be 12°C, a 9°C drop. No wonder everyone is confused. Saturday is supposed to be back to 18°C and Sunday too so hopefully DH and I can get into the garden.

You may wonder why I am always going on about the garden. It is not as if we have acres and acres to deal with but, as my longer followers will know, it is getting to silly season with events on and then it means only the bare minimum gets done. So if we get it tidy and all done now after winter, we can cope with just minimum work. This also goes for our home too, which is why it was great getting the Spring Cleaning all done.

The Royal Wedding is now taking centre stage with all the news feeds and it will only get more intense as we get nearer to Saturday.

So I thought I would share with you pictures of my parent’s Wedding on March 19th 1949 below.

There was still rationing and so my Grandmother made my Mom’s wedding dress and their cake having saved their ration cards. This was outside the church after the wedding.

Here is DH and I on November 12th 1988. We will be celebrating Thirty years this November and are hoping to go away for the weekend after the 12th, as it is a Monday!!! What a yuck day to have an anniversary!!!!

DH’s parents wedding pictures are in the attic (!) and I cannot get in there to get a picture of those. When we sort the attic out one of my jobs is to sort out all the pictures that are up there and get them into albums. These are photographs inherited when we cleared out our parents homes and are just in piles in a clip box.

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Eldest and Girlfriend recently when they were out for dinner. Not jumping the gun or anything but this may be a wedding in the future.

I have been busy with Work and have also been sewing in the evenings. I have completed one thing but will show that to you in a while. My job this evening is to cut out my super secret blue quilt. I am also going to arrange to get my machine serviced eventually!!!!

I hope you are having a great Tuesday.

Hugs, Susie xx

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A Busy Old Weekend.

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It was one of those weekends which passed in a blur of activity but nothing got done!!!

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DH and I went to see this on Friday. I enjoyed it but DH was not impressed. In fact I paid £45 for him to sleep for an hour or so!!!! I will be seeing the final film next year but don’t know if DH will be coming with me!!!

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We spent Saturday evening here at the last round of the Derwent League swimming competition and our Club won, so well done to them. It was very warm and sleep inducing in the place and we got home around 9.00pm shattered. Evalyn, Owen, Mum and Dad appeared on our doorstep at 10.30am as they were picking a new, to them, car up and they stayed until 3.00pm so nothing got done.

Sunday DH and Youngest were at another swimming pool in Derbyshire with an all day competition and the swimmers did well and DH was announcing. I spent the day in my sewing room, finishing off the latest blocks for “It’s a Wild Life” BOM. I don’t know whether I like the blocks. I have never done one of these before and there has been some applique in it and I don’t do very good applique at all and the blocks are huge. I will finish it but not sure about it at all.

I did make one other thing which I can’t show you yet, sorry.

It is nice and warm here again for a few days then going cooler again, then getting warmer again!!! The plants, animals and humans don’t know where they are!!!!

Friday I was out all day catching up on errands so I will do Friday Book of the Month Club this Friday.

I hope you all had a great weekend and looking forward to a good week. It is the Royal Wedding on Saturday which begins at 9.00am so the TV will be on all day waiting for all the arrivals.

Hugs, Susie xx

Happy Sunday.

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To all my American and Canadian Friends and Followers

Happy Mother’s Day!

Mother’s Day in the UK is in March and I always think we should move ours to May when at least the weather has a chance of being nice! Ours in March, it is usually raining and cold!!!! Anyway I do hope all of you Moms have a wonderful day.

DH and Youngest are at a swimming competition all day today so I am off to my sewing room to get some more things completed and others started.

Happy Sunday everyone.

Hugs, Susie xx

#TBT.

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Youngest, Girlfriend and Eldest on holiday in The Highlands at Ballater near Balmoral, the Queen’s summer holiday home. This is from 2013 and they have all changed in those five years. We had a great holiday and the weather was good although we were all wearing jumpers that day.

We went to see the Highland Games and here are the marching bands.

The view on one of our many walks.

Of course no matter how old they are, they still behave like little boys!!!!!

We are going up to Scotland the first week of August this year and can’t wait.

Happy Thursday Everyone.

Hugs, Susie xx

The Wednesday Wag.

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Although Mom thought I was hiding from her in this picture I wasn’t it was just a great place to keep an eye on her in the kitchen. Especially if she went near my food cupboard, then I could be straight in and help!

The weather has been wonderful over the last few days and the door has been open all day and well into the evening so I have had time to run in and out whenever I wanted to. But with all this fresh air and running around, I am so tired. Mom has been working at her desk all day today so I have been snoozing in my basket, which you would never believe but Mom washed it!!! As it was so sunny she left it outside to dry in the sunshine and it now creaks a lot more than it did!!!!

You are not taking another picture are you Mom?

I need a snooze I am so tired.

I am going to ignore you now and go back to sleep!

Fooled you Mom, where is my lunchtime biscuit please?

Woof Treacle

Tuesday Really?

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We have another lovely warm day today and tomorrow but Thursday will be back down to 14°C a 7° drop from today, so jumpers will be out again!!! I do wish our weather would settle down and if it is going to be nice and warm stay that way!!! We are not due any rain until next Sunday so hopefully Saturday we can get some garden jobs done.

Here is Treacle today outside (in this weather it is very hard to get her in) she blends in very well with the plants and I think she was trying to hide from me!!!

Pictures of the garden in the sunshine. You can see how green it is as everything has now woken up from its winter slumber.

A very blue sky that is almost opaque!

My Daffodils which I thought were not going to do anything are still going strong.

I bought two new terracotta pots for some new plants and my little grow house is doing really well.

This is the queue for her lunchtime biscuit earlier.

This is the queue for her lunchtime biscuit, hoping I had forgotten that I had already given it to her!!!!!!

I managed to get the two blocks for April done on the “It’s a Wild Life” BOM and just have May’s to do. I have picked out the pattern I am going to do on my super secret quilt and started to cut out the pieces for it.

Happy Tuesday everyone.

Hugs, Susie xx

Bank Holiday Monday!

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Yes it is a three-day weekend here in the UK and we have made the most of it!

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I have finished my Spring Cleaning with lots and lots of help of DH! He got home early on Friday evening, well early for him, and we started then and worked our way from the top of our home to the bottom and we got it finished last night and I couldn’t have done it without DH’s help. Although it is eleven weeks since I had my Op and there is no pain, my hip does get stiff especially if I have been doing lots so DH did all the moving of furniture and cleaning of high stuff so I didn’t have to climb. So our home is all clean and sparkly now!!!!

We have a couple of weekends of swimming competitions which DH and Youngest are going to but we have another long weekend at the end of this month and are hoping that the weather is nice but not too hot so we can get into the garden and get our jobs done then. I am busy ticking jobs off of my To Do List but still have two big jobs to do, the attic and our garage but we need help from our “Staff” to do those and that means sorting out times when everyone is around but as the summer months are coming up I am hoping we will find an odd weekend here and there to do them.

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It is very, very hot here today 25°C/77°F, Treacle is loving it. She lays in full sun and then is panting!!! She does take herself off to the shade for a bit and then I find her laying in full sun again, silly puppy!!!!

Today DH is announcing at the final day of the East Midlands Swimming competition so he won’t be home until tonight, so I am going to be getting the above fabric cut out so I can get on with my super secret quilt.

Whatever you are up to today I hope you have a wonderful day and a great week.

Hugs, Susie xx

She spent all day yesterday outside in the sunshine so last night she was so tired, she was straight in her basket (which had also been cleaned) for a snooze!