Summer is full of beach visits to sandy coves, picnics in woodlands and if your like me, searching brocantes for sewing materials and books. I make these colourful bags for all your favorite journeys. They can hold a flask, sandwiches, a magazine or book and your purse and mobile. Made with secondhand materials, often secondhand… Continue reading Bags of fun
We opened today and friends came, tea was drunk, cakes munched and conversations chattered. The shop has turned out better than I hoped. Its one of my favourite things to do, transforming spaces, making them work physically but also being emotionally stimulating. And upstairs we have crafting. Paper, paints, wool, beads, and glue to get… Continue reading Cou-Cou is open
It’s been a wonderful last 10 months with the Tea Lounge. It was successful. People loved the cakes, the food, the long opening hours from midday to eleven in the evening and that we were open every day. But we still had pressing long term projects. Tony music and myself, art and writing. My children’s… Continue reading New beginnings
It’s been a really hectic couple of months. We closed the tea lounge to work on insulating the ceiling and I had a lot of homework for my Poultry Science HNC, but the effort has got me seven weeks ahead! I managed to do just over 2000 words on my pirate book and read eight… Continue reading The Revolution
I am not even sure I wrote a post on The Tea Lounge. But for today, as its a hectic one, I am attending a poetry/writing slam to read parts of my novel, pictures speak louder than words in this case. The empty shell of a room is going to come alive with two themes… Continue reading The Tea Lounge
It’s mid afternoon and we are waiting for Carrefour to open so we can buy snacks, wine and cheese for tomorrow’s big opening. I am baking cakes and brownies, quiches, and other pastry items. Friends are coming to help. My sewing friend will see her products arranged in the shop and after a year of… Continue reading The Tea Lounge opens tomorrow!
It’s been a hectic month. We have finished the Tea Lounge, painted the atelier and tea lounge entrance and the gallery house too. With our prominent position near the N145 at Gouzon, we get a huge flow of traffic throughout the day and we wanted our establishment to be noticed. Today people slowed down, tooted… Continue reading Costin and Castille
Very busy with the new tea lounge, painting brocante finds, finishing the shop cabinets and bookshelf. Using acrylics, chalkpaint, mineral paint, decoupage papers and braid to finish edges. I use a dry brush technique to build up layers to give a worn, soft look. It saves on paint too. I then use coloured wax or… Continue reading Paint, paper and braid
A lovely article by my tax business partners daughter, Alix Marshall. She is working through a degree in journalism back in UK and she visited last month to dip into my world and my journey to France.
After 2023 when I was so ill with wrong medications for migraines, and was literally on the floor crying and having severe panic attacks, I never imagined that this two year anniversary of that month, I would be painting candy colours onto our forthcoming atelier tea lounge! After finishing the gallery next door in time… Continue reading Time For Tea
After a very successful year, the Maison has proved to be a huge asset for us. Found in a very neglected state, with leaking pipes, a rotten kitchen and no floor under the bath, we have finally given its soul back. We provide many workshops here each month, on art, poetry and writing. We hold… Continue reading The Gallery
Today at the gallery we had the lovely Celine Excoffen teaching the art of Cyanotype. With a combination of chemicals, it was a mix of photography and chemistry. After coating paper with the chemical mix, potassium and ammonia, we laid out feathers, letters, flowers and anything that hid sunlight. Then squeezing between glass to keep… Continue reading Cyanotype
Garages get neglected. Often left full of unloved or spare things. Full of cobwebs and oil stains. Sometimes with doors too stuck to even open. When we bought the atelier in Gouzon, an ex paint factory, it came with a house in bad repair. We are currently decorating it after our tenants left and it’s… Continue reading Pretty in mauve
The studio is almost complete. Boxes have been unpacked and 1950’s to 1970’s inspired fabrics, objects have found their home. Its a place of colourful happiness for me and hopefully it will find its way into my creative work. Full of toys and more to be brought over soon from my Farmhouse studio, its a… Continue reading Retro studio
Back in 2019 we purchased a 1970’s car paint shop just on the outskirts of our local town of Gouzon. It’s a bustling little town conveniently situated very central to the historic towns of Boussac, Aubusson and Auzances. It came with a house too, which we redecorated, removing alot of the issues a house lacking… Continue reading Recreating Retro
What a dirty, messy day. We finally installed the chickens and Bovril into the old coop and cleaned the garden again. It’s been a mammoth task after having left the garden for three years! The chickens are now scratching away happily. We had a horrible week with a fox attack and lost two of our… Continue reading Dirty Day
Finally after wrangling lime mortar, paint pots, breeze blocks, tiles, sewing machines that broke needles, the barn apartment is ready to rent. It’s taken about a year but so happy with the results. And why Giant Pea…Well we are artists and I am writing a story book about lost family and friendships and finding them… Continue reading The Giant Pea Cottage
Some years go by and the poultry garden changes with the addition of rescued and adopted birds, and new chick’s and ducklings. Younger members of the flocks suddenly mature and their characters form fully and relationships are formed and friendships bond deeper. Then the clock ticks and certain milestones arrive…three years, six years and maybe… Continue reading Over the Rainbow Bridge
We bought this barn for a song, way back in 2015 and since then have had a roller coaster of events, all lurking somewhere on this blog, from failed businesses, to property investments, new career paths and health scares. But, and a drum roll please……we are in and its cosy, bright and beautiful! Since buying… Continue reading Home at the barn
Back a few months ago, Mollie became broody, she often does, but this time I decided to leave her with a few eggs, including three duck eggs from our Indian Runners and Pekins. The ducks had been vigilantly sitting for a month, but the eggs went bad and after I checked by candling, shining a… Continue reading I am a hen
Autumn has arrived here in France, the air is still humid and heavy rains fall. Its cow country snd pasture appears never to cease growing here, but after September it slows, the leaves start to turn their autumnal colours and we have a couple if beautiful months of bedding down for winter. I have a… Continue reading Bird October
I have always loved fabrics, often walking round fabric stores with my thumb and forefinger primed to rub and feel the weight, grain, texture and weaves. You can tell alot by simply doing this, mainly if the fabric is a natural fibre or man-made and its density of weave. I woukd swiftly skim through bolts… Continue reading Fragments
During molting season, just finishing now, the poultry garden is full of feathers, sometimes like a soft snow fall over night. Meticulously I gather them, long, strong flight feathers and tail feathers from the geese, pure white ones from the pekin ducks and pretty patterned, spotty ones from Bovril, our guinea. The gingers, coffee, clotted… Continue reading Feathered friends
Ronnie rooster…gentle, caring, last to bed and liked by all the hens. Since Pipi passed, Bovril our guinea has befriended Ronnie and since Ronnie has got more wobbly on his feet, won’t go to bed till his sideways crowing friend has gone in the coop. We adopted Ronnie a few years back. He was being… Continue reading Rooster Booster
Owning over fifty birds, you get eggs, lots of them and this year I wanted to try for babies now that we have a more organized set-up. The cous-nous flock with Rudi needed a few additions and I so wanted more Pekin ducks. Poor Heff, our big six year old has arthritis badly and lost… Continue reading The babies arrived
After a tonne of elbow grease, or as one friend put it better, a tonne of elbow geese (te he), polishing the wax coating to a soft sheen, the wardrobe is finished! I added couple of sweet little poultry hangers to the keys and at last the brown elephant in the room has vanished.
We have lived at The Farmhouse for over three years now, in a pre-renovation mess of undecorated rooms, boxes and drab creams and browns. The building was a good size, but had funny qwerks like no access to the rear, a kitchen next to a bedroom, a tiny bathroom, and for a house that could… Continue reading Country Colourful Bedroom
The lower room in our farmhouse is a little dark, so why not go a little darker and create a cosy snug? Inspired by my Scottish ancestry and the collection of tartans and tweeds I have in my fabric stash and using the lovely Aubusson Blue chalk paint, which is funny given Aubusson, the tapestry… Continue reading Snug in a snug
Drum roll please!!!!!Apart from painting the walls, and making curtains, my studio is finished. A lot of chalk painting and waxing brocante finds, and suffering from cracked skin on my fingers, a sore back and bruises from I don’t know where….I love it! Somehow it seems to have manifested a French red, white and blue… Continue reading Thistle Cottage Studio
I haven’t posted for a while and wanted to catch up with a few updates. It’s a longish post but bare with me…I promise over the next few weeks they will be shorter and very varied. A lot has been going on and I have exciting things happening. But it had to start somewhere….. In… Continue reading Pipi found me
As you probably know by now, I am crazy about poultry. Not only do these guys bring me daily joy and a sense of worth, but they have been the catalyst in finally finding my new vocation in life, illustrating and story writing. They are the source of my inspiration, the bedrock of my day… Continue reading Sharing support
I have hurt my back again. Mowers with pull cords are absolutely dangerous! I have a lot of grass and land weeds to contend with and petrol mowers are a necessity. But they do not make them suitable for women. I am not a feminist but I do expect manufacturers to know our upper body… Continue reading Factory House to Apple Puree
A recent post on Facebook perches prompted me to do a quick post on my perches. . There are a lot of different types and views on perches and after keeping chickens now for three years, I realized the old fashioned idea of round perches, like a thick broom handle, were wrong. The girls suffer… Continue reading Please perch
Finally the front of the Farmhouse looks respectable. It’s taken over a year to renovate my studio externally, repair the well and install the ancient well winding gear and repoint the wall. We put in the picket fence, pruned the roses and removed layers of plastic bags in the flower bed, supposedly put there to… Continue reading Front of house
Moving crates and boxes of fabrics into the Factory sewing rooms, found these wonderful old linen sacks and strips. Not only are the textures wonderful, but so too the painstaking work to repatch and darn the holes or tears. The patches to me create a new design. I don’t see them as repairs of damage,… Continue reading Make do and mend
Last year I was given a box of baby guineafowl. They were supposed to be banthams. Billy Bantham my adopted, feisty cockerel needed girls. He had adopted the role of deputy to Ronnie roosters flock of Rhode Island hens as Ronnie had an amputated toe and found rounding up the girls at sunset difficult. But… Continue reading Pipi Pintade
Dogs need a dog house. It can get -23 degrees here and upto 46 degrees in the height of summer. Dogs need to be spoilt sometimes and dogs need a quiet, calm down when your hot over excited space too. Dogs need to share their house with cats. A two tier system with a cat… Continue reading In the dog house
The little house was a grim sight when we first purchased the farmhouse back in 2019. Very unloved, it was full of dumped furniture, cobwebs and grit from the windblown gaps in the tiles. We were unsure what this building would be but settled on a guest house for friends if they stayed over. We… Continue reading Thistle Cottage at last
Well I am not so sure about maiden, I am too long in the tooth for that olde title but today the frosty snap produced a wealth of chilly bucket ice disks and panes that this ‘young at heart’ enthusiast had to install around the goose field. Bonnie the head goose watched me with his… Continue reading Ice maiden
Everyone was full of beans yesterday…not literally but the extra ration of meal worms in the meal worm hunt had resulted in a group of feisty ducks and chickens. Mr Chicken led the hunt and as per usual showed off for the benefit of the camera and the girls. Now for clarity these girls are… Continue reading Cooped up
In a previous post I wrote about my journey to finding a home. Buying property in France was the best decision I had ever made. Having now an open slate to work on I wanted the French dream. I wanted to bring together everything I had learnt and wanted for so long – the comfy… Continue reading From cattle stall to Scottish snug
For as long as I can remember I wanted a home. Not merely a house you decorate and live in between work and socializing outside, but a real home, full of homely noise like dogs barking, cockerels crowing, the sound of my husband chopping wood for the fire, the kettle whistling. I suspect I have… Continue reading Property dreams
This morning was a sharp, crisp take your breath away chill, but the sun was peeping dramatically between the thunder clouds and that meant camera time. Saturated greens and greys and white frost crystals made the shots relatively simple. I went wide angle to stretch the perspectives more and gave a minor contrast tweak in… Continue reading Morning light
If I had to say my third obsessions after fabric and ceramic tiles, its buttons. I have many boxes from brocantes and what seems a jumbled lot of buttons that have little to love about now, once sorted a few gems appear. Some buttons are damned ugly and have to go, but others are a… Continue reading Button up
As a child my walk to school took me through a rambling footpath between mighty oaks and horse chestnuts. The latter supplied conkers that resulted in many bruised fingers from conker fights. Now this childhood right of passage has been banned. Shame, but it was actually rather dangerous. But also rolling around in leaves could… Continue reading Fallen leaves
With the French lockdown coming into affect tomorrow and the generally pathetic display of judgement by the powers that be, re Covid-19, I am arming myself with an eclectic library of reading, from science fiction, fashion, tapestry renovations, to bohemian souls, poultry farming, no-dig gardening and French decorators. I wont get bored. My latest delivery… Continue reading Bucket list at lockdown
A few weeks ago a visit to our local brocante found us hauling another van load of furniture back to the farmhouse. Now much of the land has been tamed and the ground cleared of fallen branches and sadly household rubbish, we have the foundations of a garden, orchard and meadow. This means the farmhouse… Continue reading Restoration chairs
Well I painted more of the new chicken coop today and it seems most of myself too! Had this comfy work T-shirt for years but hey, I can now have a colourful graffiti one for another few more.
We have a small cottage next to our farmhouse, a little two roomed building that I have decided will be the perfect writing and photography den. Sometimes you need your private quiet space. I know my husband would agree. There are times we spend too long in each other’s company, working on the buildings all… Continue reading Studio scheme
One of my little pintades (Ginnea Fowl) has a cold. It prompted a quick sketch and an idea for a character in my future book. But more so, this sudden change of weather had arrived a little quick, finishing the creche pen to avoid drafts was getting me in a fluster. The new birds had… Continue reading Pintade problems
A French Creative Life 