Chickens and Trophies

Well it's only been a week this time since my last post and there's still lots that happened! It's been a bit of a busier week than normal to be fair. The most exciting things are the fact that we've got the house keys (yay)! We've also got Brian's car going which is so good and meant we were able to go to the chicken keeping course yesterday! I have also been given my first ever blog award!!!!
How exciting is that!!?? I can't really explain how happy it made me, I rang my sister and Brian to let them know the exciting news but I'm not sure they completely understood what I was going on about though? :) The award came from one of my favourite blogs who I've written about before, the lovely Emma at Mimi and Tilly and she wrote this about my little blog

" Lizzyloolaa has moved 250 miles to fulfill a dream of starting her own B&B smallholding complete with alpacas. Completely fabulous. Follow her blog as she follows her heart. It's fantastic."

Thank you so much Emma. It's so brilliant to know other people enjoy reading my blog as much as I enjoy writing it. It's even nicer to get praise from a blog I love reading so much. If you happen to have a bout of bloghopilitus (see last post) then I suggest you hop over to Emma's blog here and read it from the beginning. It will make you giggle and think like never before :)

Well the rules of this award are to make myself a lovely cocktail and choose 4 of my favourite blogs to give this award too. I would have picked Mimi and Tilly if she hadn't given me the award in the first place so now to pick four other blogs...? There are so many lovely one's to choose from? Well with a mudslide in hand (yummy choc cocktail), In no particular order here are the four other blogs that I love for different reasons,

Diary of a Tinyholder : This was one of the first blogs I came across when I entered the blogging world. I sat and read the whole blog over a few nights and love it as much as a good book. It's so lovely to go back and see where Sian has come from and what she has achieved now. I wonder if she realises how far she's come? I recommend this blog for a good evenings reading :)

Faerie Nuff : This is a girl after my own heart living back in my homeland of Hampshire. She even has the same CK purse as me :) I love love love her blog shop Country Charm, especially her fabric snails (which I keep promising myself for the new house). She even has the matching dream of a cottage in the country with animals and land one day. Go and check out her blog for crafting loveliness :)

The Fairyglade : I love this blog for pure creative yummyness which can also be bought in her shop :) This is the type of blog that I like where you really feel like your getting to know the author and feel involved in her day to day life. I always know I can pop over to this blog and find a lovely post to read in the archives :)

The Pigeon Loft : I picked this blog for a few reasons. The first is mainly how much it makes me laugh. I love reading about the adventures of Mr. Pigeon and I would love my own one day. I also picked this blog as it's one of the few on my list that my other half likes to read as well. He loves the shenanigans of Mr. Pigeon almost as much as me :)

On the crafting front I have found my first project and have ordered in all the bits I need from trusty ebay. Here's a sneak peak at them all ready to go.Can you guess what I might be making? I'm really excited about my stroll down the crafting path as I'm hoping I'll have honed my skills enough by the time we have the farm that I can sell the bits I'm making.

On the subject of the future farm, myself, Brian and Cal all went on our chicken keeping course (finally) this weekend and it was brilliant! It was run by the loveliest man called Fenton Simpson. Here he is holding the pretty Pheobe who I got to have a hug from later,he also has the lovely Missy,and Sweet little sugar,
I have to admit, as much as I was really looking forward to the course, i was a bit worried. This was for a couple of reasons really. Growing up in the countryside I've always been around animals and do love them but have always been a little nervous around them. This changed a lot after getting Jessie a few years ago and she taught me a lot about animals. This being said, I was still worried that I would get to the course, see a chicken and go running. This might sound a bit strange when I'm so commited to our small holding dream but it's true. So this for me was my first challenge in our small holding dream and I'm happy to say my worries were unfounded. I loved the girls as soon as we saw them and jumped at the chance to hold phoebe and give her a hug. I'd never have guess chickens were so huggable! I can't wait to get our girls now. Fenton was great and taught us so much. He also took us to his allotment as I had mentioned in an email that Brian would be getting one this year. I real feel like we've started down our dream path now.

My final picture today is the lovely bunch of flowers Brian bought me on Thursday when we got our house keys along with the yummy rainbow trout he cooked for tea. I have a feeling next week will be as busy as this one has been so look out for a giant post then too. Today's has been written in between cleaning the bathroom and cooking a lovely beef stew and now I'm off to watch a bit of Hugh Fernerly Whittingbumble :)

Quite a bit of a catch up...

Well the trouble with not blogging for a few weeks is so much happens in between! There have been ups and down but the downs are the things that make me fed up and a fed up me doesn't want to blog! What i really should be doing is blogging all the good things and that would make everything seem a whole lot rosier :)

The other thing that's been distracting me from writing my own blog is reading everyone elses. It's one of the most addictive things ever! It's like discovering a whole new world of crafting and loveliness and it just goes on a on. The problem is you'll read one lovely blog and spend a while on it getting to know the person and reading their lovely posts and maybe straying over onto one of their links for something yummy (like the new CK spring collection) but then as you excitedly decide this is someone you have lots in common with and click the 'follow' button, you notice they happen to have a list of blogs they enjoy and you stray over onto one of those and the process starts all over again! I think this problem deserves a name. I shall call it bloghopilitus. The other problem with bloghopilitus is you start to worry your blog isn't anywhere near as lovely as everyone else's. I am so excited to have 6 followers now and some great comments but it does make me slightly nervous about what I'm blogging about and whether it's good enough. I'm hoping this is just a beginners issue. I guess I should just carry on writing and hope for the best.

One of the blogs that's really inspired me the last few weeks is Mimi and Tilly. I love her way of looking at the world and the reason for starting her blog. It's make me really think about my own creativity and ways of exploring it. I think that may be a whole new topic for another post though! I have started my crafting with my very first knitting project. My lovely other half surprised me one evening with a pair of knitting needles and some purple wool. I used the utube tutorial I read about in Diary of a Tinyholder and here is the result so far...
This is actually the second attempt after I learnt the technique but I'm still not sure it's going that well. I don't think you can beat having someone with you to show you what to do. I think any other crafts I decide to attempt I may look at having a few lessons first.

Well we are still without cars at the moment. Minty has proved more complicated than first thought so we are focusing on Brian's car first which should be up and running by tomorrow night fingers crossed. The plus side to having no car is that I've been walking to work and back everyday which is about an hour of walking and I'm really enjoying it.

Only a week until we get the keys to our new house now which is so exciting. Brian is looking forward to having the garden and getting things growing. I've never been known for having green fingers (unlike my mum) but I thought if we're planning on living off the land eventually I'm going to have to green up a bit. Brian says it's all down to confidence so I'd like to introduce you to Mabel,
She was a bargain 17p and looked very neglected when I first got her but I'm pleased to report most of those flowers you see are new. My fingers have a greenish tinge already :)

Whilst on the subject of flowers, Brian bought me a lovely colourful bunch yesterday which make me think of summer every time I look at them...
There were a few extra buds which i couldn't bring myself to throw away so i searched for a suitable small vase and Brian came up with his whiskey glass and I think they look lovely. I do think I might look for a proper mini vase...or maybe I could make one? Hmmm?
Today we have had a nice day relaxing. Cal had his first football match since the beginning of November early this morning and me and Brian have just got back from a slightly soggy walk feeding the ducks in the park. There where some greedy geese...
and some pecking pigeons...
and then we took a stroll around the hot house where there were some lovely looking flowers...
and even some monkeys :)I shouldn't really tease him as he is currently cooking a lovely Sunday dinner with a Jamie Oliver recipe we had to try after seeing the picture...Yes that is a beer can and yes it is placed somewhere slightly uncomfortable. Here is our version pre-cooking,and Brian is roasting some red onions with home made rosemary and garlic butter which look amazing even before they're cooked!I think that's quite enough blogging to be going on with for now. I think my bloghopilitus is playing up again :) I'll leave you with a picture of another one of my favourite places, the long man of Wilmington on a warm summers day.

Small steps to big dreams

Hello blog land :) Here I am again. I could blog about our silly cars that have decided still not to work, the many snow covered mile that me and Brian (mainly Brian) have trekked for parts and food, the central heating dying or the trauma of the Christmas tree removal but I won't. As you can tell from that one sentence it would all make for stressful reading and writing so I won't subject you to that. Instead I will blog all about the most exciting thing that is happening right now, our new house! We have just found out that it's all gone through OK and we should start renting on the first of Feb (hooray!). And here it is....
The main thing we love about it is the space. All the rooms are lovely and big which makes a change from the 2 bed flat we're in now. It was fine for Brian in his bachelor days but now with Hayley and me moving in and Cal being there a lot of the time it's a bit of a squish to say the least! This really feels like the first step on the road to our small holding. It may be a long way off but every little step makes it seem more real. Our new house now gives us the room for chickens, fruit and veg and even has the massive bonus of a mature apple tree that I'm so looking forward to getting our hands on :) You can see it here with the bench under which I'm sure we'll spend many an evening on.
We are planning on spending about a year here at the moment and then will look at buying our own place so that when our saving plan ends in 5 years we'll also have the equity in a house hopefully to give us the best chance of finding the perfect farm house and land. We are seeing the next five years as a good opportunity to learn as much as we can about small holding and running a B&B before we jump into the deep end. Our friends and family are helping loads already with brilliant books and hopefully the chicken keeping course next week will be the first of many courses. I'm really glad I've started this blog now as a diary of our trials and tribulations on the way to our dream.

The picture I'll leave you with today is a reminder of summer in the middle of all this snow. Brian took it at the camp we go to every May and September with 60 others. It's probably in my top 5 favourite places in the world. Brian is stood outside our tent when he took the pic of me having a conversation with the cows over the stream between us. I can't wait to be back there again.