after the having tea and cake at the nurseries (see previous post) we headed over to Nunhead to see Jo and Rosalie's pop-up shop called 'Our Shop'. We had a lovely cup of tea in one of those stonking gurt cups!

littlun had a nap in the carrier for a while which was nice for us.

I love all the things Jo finds and makes, we have quite a collection of goodies at our house.

 

and now the tortoise comes in dark green!

(I bought the cushion on the bottom)

it wasn't long before she woke up and started playing with everything.

and then she discovered some choccy coins, and that was that!

this shop is open for about another month so you will need to get in gear and get over there! And you can follow all of Jo's work on her website here *

after that very relaxing interval, it was back to London traffic.

We also made it to Victoria Park area of London, with yet again snoozing tot. This place is very smart and affluent village in London, where even the estate agents looks like an art gallery.

some very nice cafes and shops, especially good for kids, (we bought those little mustard coloured shoes in the window!)

 

a really nice place to spend an afternoon if you are in the vicinity. Of course it helps when the sun looks like this...

We have been travelling around a lot these days, and I am sort of looking forward to spending some time pottering about at home. I feel truly summered, and recovered from that dark, drizzly winter.

Blimey we have been busy lately! We are trying to recover from that rubbish winter and get as much UV as possible. We had to go to London as usual, but we decided to make it a family trip in our van, as I also needed to collect a bed frame (long story) and bring it to the Isle of wight. I managed to get all my work done within a few hours, so I had lots of free time in London for a change.

The sun was shining the whole time, very nice. We made it down to Kempton park market in the early hours.

a bit too much excitement for a 1 3/4 year old to handle, a whole box of hats...to her, was like finding a trunk of gold bullion.

we used to go to this market regularly, and we always have to have a toasty from the toasty van.

I have been meaning to visit here, Alexandra Nurseries after seeing it on Leigh's blog

It is an amazing garden centre/cafe/vintage shop in Penge, South London (not far from where we used to live)

I think the pictures speak for themselves, what a place!

and I bought another plant to add to my collection in the van from a previous garden centre sale trip. There is Nao in the front seat somewhere.

next up: Jo's shop, and Victoria Park

I have been trying to preserve some of the flowers from our first summer in our house. I know that pressing flowers properly requires waiting over two weeks, but I am impatient about these things and can't wait that long. So I zapped them in the microwave.

I dried off the flowers a bit on some kitchen towel and then pressed them for about 30 mins in a flowers press.

once squashed, I took out the blotting paper sandwiches and put them on a dish, and then put another large dish on top of them and put them in the microwave for about 2-3mins.

Its a bit hit and miss, some flowers seem to lose all their colour, others go see through, and some just don't look very nice, so it's worth trying a few different flowers.

I found the yellow daisy types, geraniums and dark coloured sweet peas came out the best.

Littlun is soooo obsessed with 'wowers' she loves watering them and sniffing them, and when she saw the picture I made, she wouldn't let go of it! This resulted in level 9.5 tantrum.

I think I will appreciate this flower picture in the deepest depths of January.