Posted on by wherethejourneytakesme

dear diary :: capturing a little colour

It was wet, wet, wet here yesterday – certainly a day for staying inside – but I did sneak out to take some photos as I love to capture those tiny glistening raindrops balancing on the leaves and dripping slowly from the berries. There is still some highlights of colour around the garden to brighten up these grey days. Even the little Violas under our open porch are hanging in there and continue to flower.

And inside too thanks to those many jars of posies I made for the tables at the christening buffet and which are now scattered around the house.

I came across this little gem yesterday in Wilkos – the rose gold ridged jam jar. It came with 3 silk peonies but I have removed and replaced them with fresh flowers. I am not normally a ‘sparkle’ person, prefering a minimalist Scandinavian look, but a few touches here and there add something to our guest room….

…which is a very calming grey with just a hint of soft blush pink (thanks to Sadie who introduced me to pink and for which I now find I have a bit of a crush on it).

I also bought these Christmas foam stamps and glitter stickers for £1 each in The Works. I thought Little L would love to make something Christmassy with them – secretly I do too.

And what is this…….DH’s workbench in operation and that means….

….the pantry is now well underway and has units installed. He still has the wall cupboard to go up on the wall to the left of the window but first he has to do a major Ikea hack and cut down the depth of the cupboard so it is much shallower. To the right of the window and running along the wall on the right to the tall cupboard will be open shelving for storage jars.

The left hand floor cabinet will have a series of five drawers of different sizes to take extra utensils and tea towels and the other cabinets will have open shelving. We are now waiting for the man to come and fit the worktop as it is ‘L’ shaped and will need an expert join at the corner – as most workmen at the moment he has a lot on and will ‘fit us in’ – before Christmas I hope.

I have been busy too – remember the tablemats I made recently – well I have at last finished the remaining two using the other pattern of tea towels in the pack. The reverse is just a plain white honeycomb cotton.

This fabric was not as easy to sew as it is a looser weave but once I had started there seemed little point in stopping and now they are finished I do like how clean and simple they look.

DH decided that as it is beetroot season he would try his hand at making Beetroot and Ginger soup. It is such a lovely Christmas colour and a sprinkling of green chopped chives on top of the swirl of yoghurt would have been a nice touch. It didn’t quite have enough beetroot flavour for me – I much prefer it raw and grated in a salad – or roasted with root vegetables….but if you don’t try you don’t know. Having said that I would make it again but maybe not that often.

I need to turn my attentions now to focus on Christmas – December will be here on Sunday and there will be little time left for anything too creative so it will definitely be a simple affair this year and in my book that is no bad thing. I am already thinking of what will be necessary to do and what I can leave out. More on this another day.

So that was my day…how was yours? x

22 Replies to “dear diary :: capturing a little colour”

  1. We were hibernating at home yesterday nursing the end of my illness it was a wet, cold, gloomy day. My plans for December are mostly in place, I am keeping things simple as we always do. I have already made a few decorations as presents and bought most of what we will be gifting too. I am looking forward to a simple, gentle December now.

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  2. It was Thanksgiving in the US yesterday so we celebrated it at my daughter’s house with half of our family and some of my SIL’s family. Nice day.

    I think I have serious pantry envy (lol). What a glorious little storage room you will have. I was already thinking of things I could store there–like all those pesky baking sheets I have with no good place to go–they would fit nicely in that slim cupboard on the right. Ah, well, I will leave it for you. You will have a great time placing all your things in it when it is finished.

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  3. Once again, you take beautiful photos. Love the first one with the red berries!

    Sunday, I hope to declutter the living room and put up the Christmas tree. I have a count down candle to light every night and a wine advent calendar from Aldi.

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  4. I’m rather envious of your table mats. I’m a fan of simplicity and clean lines myself.
    The bright red berries in the first photograph look stunning. X

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    1. I love all the red berries around our garden and for the first time my clipped and self seeded holly tree has some. I shall certainly buy some more teatowel packs to make some more mats – the fabric is just the right weight. x

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  5. Don’t renovations take ages to complete? But so worth it in the end, and you will simply love it when it’s finished.
    The beetroot soup was intriguing – your photos make it look delicious!

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    1. The soup was better to look at than it tasted! It wasn’t awful I would make it again but I much prefer some of the other soups we do. I cannot wait for the pantry to be completed now and get everything back and the kitchen sorted.

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  6. Pantry well under way and beginning to take shape. You must be looking forward to the project being finished. Love your garden photos – nothing left in my garden except a few rather dessicated berries on the Rowan tree! Here it is called Mountain Ash.

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  7. The table mats you have made are lovely! I’ve not made table mats before but must do so one day as it’s the kind of project I like with pretty fabric and simple sewing. The red berries you’ve photographed are very festive, ready for December! We don’t have berries like those here but there are bright red flowers blooming on trees in our neighbourhood right now which make me think of Xmas whenever I look outside our window or go for a walk. Meg:)

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  8. I know what it is like to have workmen (tradies here in Australia) in the house. We started renovations a year ago this month and they are now finished but we did have a six month break to recover from the first lot 🙂 We could certainly do with some of the rain you are having as it is as dry as chips here.

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    1. Hi Chel – lovely to hear from you I will send some rain over – wouldn’t it be great if we could and you could send us a little sunshine! The worktop man should be coming to look at the job on Monday….we shall see….often they don’t even turn up. Ours is a small job too just fitting the worktop on top of the units – DH is doing all the rest himself but didn’t have the tools to do a corner join and they are too expensive to buy just for this one task.

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  10. Your pantry is taking shape and I’ve got pantry envy! It’ll be fabulous once it’s finished! I love your photos, as always, particularly the red berries one and the beetroot soup. I really like the placemats, nice clean lines 🙂

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  11. Love your pantry – I’m sure you’ll be sneaking in a few suitable Christmas decorations to it this time next year! Fitting worktops seems a bit like quantum physics – DH is going to fit our kitchen (Howdens) and utility room (Ikea), but we’ll get a professional for the worktops for both. I’m envious of your wee cyclamen. I went looking for some this week to pop on top of a big pot of tulips and dwarf narcissi I’d planted, but there were none to be had in my little corner of north east Scotland. Probably just as well – I have lost many to frost in Edinburgh over the years, and it’s even colder up here. But I do love them.

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