My Entries to Mendham and Withersdale Horticulture show 2015

Well we are bedding into our new lives and love it so much. With our new love for gardening we thought we would enter the local horticulture show for Spring.  Being my first time i was really a dither as to what to do.   We had a brief look at the autumn one and it did look very serious with loads of very knowledgeable people with impressive entries.

So taking as all a bit of fun and to make friends with the locals i put in 4 entries, but there were many to choose from.  The theme unsurprisingly was spring flowers daffs and tulips of varies types, there was flower arranging, miniature arranging, potted plants, baking and handycraft, gosh i cant remember all off the top of my head but that gives you a flavour.

The daffs were categorised and had to have certain measurements in trumpet length and petal length and my head was spinning as i was choosing my entry.  As i was going around the garden measuring petals and trumpets i started getting all judgmental over the lovely yellow flowers gazing up at me, poor things,  no your not pretty enough, your petal is bent, your looking a bit scabby, your not yellow enough, until i got the 3 perfect stems i needed for my entry, it turns out after all that i had put my entry into the wrong category anyway and got NS !!! darn it   But look how perfect the entries are below.  hit the picture to see some lovely daffodil porn.  If you do hop over my entry is the 8th picture and multi headed small daff.

So on to the tulip stage and i have to say last autumn i planted a 1000 bulbs in the garden of which i had a right mix up of tulips but i had 8 stunning tall big yellow tulips at the front of the house so snip snip with my scissors which i was a little sad to do, especially after seeing my neighbors entry who tulips would not look out of place down in covent garden.  Look at these lovelies so red and perfect

So image my surprise when we came in after judging and i saw i got a 2nd i was so pleased.

And here is the winning tulip very pretty red and yellow mix, and my neighbor came 3rd who i thought would win, shows you never can tell.

As said above there was also a handy craft section so i popped in some felted eggs i had made for the Easter branch that hangs over our dinner table, and blow me they won,

My last entry was for ginger biscuit of which you have to enter 4, again i was being so careful to make sure they were the same size, colour, thickness etc and these came 3rd so it ended up being a really great day for us, and our new friends and neighbors said it was great having new blood coming in as to so that's not bad seeing as we are completely clueless up against all these more experienced people around us.  The next horticulture show is in Autumn and Ali is already sweating about his veg and wants a go at the pumpkin queen.

ps hit this picture to see the ginger biscuits
                            

Halloween 2014

 Any excuse to dress up ourselves or the house and celebrate.   Halloween came early to our neighborhood and our house 2 weeks early !!  Well we started by celebrating Autumn and making our window display deliberately under pimped as Halloween would Jazz it up, with even more lights and candles, giving a lovely orange glow. Lots of gourds and a couple of fake crows one called Colin and one called Cawra.

 We did a little every day for a week, dressing the inside and outside of the house, the girls even have their own window to dress up as they please with Halloween lights and tinsel.  We even went to a pumpkin farm to look and choose our pumpkins, of which we have loads at the front of the house including BLUE pumpkins !!!  The front of the house is suitably tattified with fake grave stones, rats, an old dead tree we found in the meadow which we cobwebbed and added spiders.  For Halloween night we also have a fog machine to cast a spooky mist across our drive.   Both girls really enjoyed dressing the house and Sophie asked every day PLEEEEase can we do more Halloween.

 The weekend before Halloween we joined all our neighbors in the village hall for a massive party where everyone really went to town on their costumes really there was an amazing effort by people and we felt really under dressed.  Being new to the community we didnt know how far people went or even if they liked Halloween, but all the grown ups seemed more into it than the kids were and this just made for a more special night.  Sophie was taken by Fester from the Adams family as he kept making a light bulb glow in his mouth and she could not work out how it was done.

Ella won best kids costume as she was a baby skeleton and she was even more excited of the party than Sophie and couldnt wait to shake moves on the dance floor, which just made lots of people ohh and arr.  The party was really wonderful with a spooky pinata, lots of karaoke, raffles, cakes and the bonus of a bar for dutch courage to get up and sing.  We really can not wait for next year and the next party.  

However Halloween did not stop there the next night we decide to do a spooky glow in the dark hunt, think Easter hunt in reverse !! however there is the added danger of daddy monster creeping around in the dark making scary sounds and chasing the girls as they hunted for Chocolate goody bags in the dark marked out by glow sticks, pumkins and lots of glow balloons that blew around the garden flashing colours.  Our garden must have looked liked aliens had landed.

As we hide the chocolate 2 little noses were pressed really hard on the glass trying to see what we were up to.   Sophie did a lot of screaming as daddy scared her but Ella was brave and not scared at all and chased daddy, it wont be long before daddy changes that and has 2 girls running round the garden screaming in fear.  Sophie woke up the next day asking to do the Halloween hunt again so i know she loved it.

 Finally we have one last Halloween task to do this Friday and Sophie can not wait.   Friday will be the neighbourhood trick or treating and again we are surprised all our neighbours have already been planning a week in advance for the children who will come knocking,  I really in awe listing to them as a number of them sounded excited and were asking us to please knock on their door as they had loads of sweets to give out and i think that is something quiet unheard of in a neighbourhood most people shun Halloween, even Dotty a really lovely older lady has been asking us to please come and knock i really love where we live, it truly is a wonderful community and the people really do make the effort to make this a specail place.  3 months into our new life here and still every day i pinch myself.