Another step forward...

There are some parts of the business that I love, and there are some parts that I feel I'm constantly chasing my tail with, forever. Yep, you guessed it, the website. Whenever I talk to anyone in business about web sites I'm constantly met with the comment "they're great but they just constantly need updating!". It's true, no sooner have you uploaded your latest additions than you're thinking about how you're going to change it again!

So, at last we have made a huge change to ours, we've added a "click and buy" system, it's been long enough in the making, but I'm actually quite pleased with it. It's no great shake, loads of sites have it, we've just been extremely slow in getting round to doing it. The desire has always been there, but time is never on our side! Me being me, I was never going to be happy with using the standard Paypal buttons on offer, so I messed around for a while until I got something I was happy with, simple, but rather good looking, I think so anyway.

I say "we" as it's pretty much all of Gregg's hard work, I provide photos, text and design direction and he does the rest, without him, I wouldn't even have a website. For that I am extremely grateful. Aren't husbands wonderful things..... ;)

Have a look and let me know what you think, all feed back is greatly appreciated.

Happy Friday for tomorrow, I'm painting the studio door, making up a couple of orders for new shops that are opening and hopefully a little bit of gardening too. I might give you a sneeky peak of that door if you're lucky.

L x

The swallows have arrived.....

Summer must be on it's way as the swallows arrived this weekend. Sunday was such a glorious day, made even more special by their arrival, sat twittering away on the wire above. One pair has arrived, so hopefully there will be more to follow.

It's all go here at the moment, we have set a date for the "Grand Opening", Saturday 31st May and Sunday 1st June, so do come and join us for our tea party in the garden. The studio will be open with a new range of products (in the process of being made at the moment!) along with a collection of work from other artist friends. Katie's fab felted jewellery, Rach's stunning handmade quilts, Lynne's gorgeous felt and feather brooches, Claire's organic range of soaps and smellies, Ali's beautiful handmade cards, aswell as a nice little collection of gardening goodies to tempt you with.

We're having a marquee in the garden with a few other stalls in it, Pat selling her wonderful range of herbs and flowers, Katie with her range of vintage bits and bobs (she's a very busy lady!) and hopefully a local girl who sells the most divine cake and candy. We'll be serving tea, coffee and lots of home made cakes all day from 10am until 4pm, so if you can make it along it would be lovely to see you.

Over the past couple of years I have met a range of extremely talented people, so the plan has always been that as soon as I had my own dedicated space we would start to run day courses here too. I have managed to cajole a few friends into agreeing to come and teach others their wonderful skills so we will be holding classes in Keeping Chickens, Dry Stane Dyking, Needle Felting, Quilting, Knitting and Willow Weaving to name a few. Having done a few courses up at the pottery, the best bit (other than learning a new skill!) has most definitely been the great spread of food we've had throughout the day, from morning coffee with fresh scones, a great lunch and then afternoon tea with a huge selection of cakes, yum! We will most definitely be following suit in that department! So, if any of you are interested in the above please do let me know as I'll be getting dates in the diary fairly soon.

It's another sunny day here today but it's back to the sewing machine for me!

L x

P.S. The gorgeous posy of flowers are courtesy of my gardening guru and great friend John, fresh from his garden. x

Exciting times ahead

This week has been an exciting week, all the pieces of the jigsaw are starting to slot together now. When we came back from the Western Isles last summer I was very inspired by the Uists Open Studio event that had been on while we were there. When we were on Orkney earlier this year they had a superb tourist Craft Trail, the art up there is second to none, but more on that another day. So, I was really excited this week when I discovered that Perthshire is hosting it's own Perthshire Open Studio event later on this year, and we're going to be a part of it. This is exactly what we need to promote all of the small designer/makers thriving in this area, and I'm hoping that on the back of it all we shall be able to have a permanent art trail around the county.

The event will take place from Saturday 27th September through until Sunday 5th October, a bit like the Pittenweem arts festival, taking in two weekends with the week in between. We don't intend on being open 7 seven days a week normally but for this event we'll be open right through, which will probably be quite a good thing as I'll be mad busy making for Christmas by then!

Hopefully it will bring in lots of tourists, but also it will allow local people to see the vast amount of talent that is on their doorstep. So off you go and pop those dates in your diary!

Have a great weekend.

L x

Taking stock

Today has been stock taking day to coincide with our financial end of year. I have never done this previously but seeing as I have a fantastic new accountant things are all done "properly" on the paper work front now. I never quite appreciated how much of a relief it would be handing over receipts and invoices at the end of every month and somebody else just "dealing" with the rest for you. She's very good and very focused and understands exactly what I'm doing here. She shares the same vision I have for the shop and can see the potential. She also likes to drink coffee and have a good old natter while counting things! I think we're going to get on rather well.

I feel like we're a grown up business now, all we need is for the studio to be finished and then the skies the limit as they say!

L x

P.S. Mr. Mouse has managed to keep out of the claws of the cats. Him and his friends will be for sale on the web site very soon. x

The perfect working day

Today has been the perfect working day. The sun has shone, while out walking Chissie this morning I stopped to let the sun beat down on my face for five minutes, that always sets me up well for the day.

A bit of sewing was done this morning, then a friend popped round for a quick cuppa, some cake and some gardening chat. Photos were taken of said sewing done this morning and a wander round the garden to see what else was in need of some camera love.

Seeing as it was such a lovely afternoon, the wellies stayed on and some gardening was done.

A bed was cleared ready for planting and some seeds were sown, sweet peas and cornflowers. I've come in rosy cheeked and full of fresh air.

Here's a picture of Mr. Bud cat giving my wellies some love and the next one is of him watching the world go by.

A wintry Easter weekend

It was to be expected I suppose, given that Easter is so early this year, that we would have snow in between fleeting visits of the sunshine. We've just had the most horrendous blast of wind, hail and snow all mixed together, and now the sun is out in it's full glory, Spring showers in their truest form I think.

The above cherry blossom tree hasn't quite come out yet this year, when it does it puts on a beautiful show of tiny delicate pink flowers. I've brought some branches in and hung the Easter decorations from them, the stove is lit so hopefully the warmth will bring the buds out fairly soon.

The dining room also looks a bit like a florists shop at the moment, jugs and jugs of daffodils and masses of branches of flowering currant. Gregg will come home and complain that it smells of cat pee, but I quite like the smell, I think it's almost earthy, a real spring smell. I've volunteered to do the flowers in Church tomorrow for Sundays service, so hopefully the daffodils will come out in the warmth of the stove too. One of the joys of living in the sticks is that there is still a lot of "by the gatepost" selling. The daffodils came from a local farm, they leave a couple of crates with bunches made up and an honesty box, 25p a bunch and locally grown, so a dozen bunches were bought for the church.

Our little enterprise of selling by the gate is also doing well, we now have 20 chickens and a bunch of regular customers that either collect their eggs or I deliver them on a Friday when I'm down in the village. It was Easter last year that we put the sign up, it still amazes me that we get so many people popping in, especially walkers with a little room in their rucksack to squeeze in a half dozen eggs!

Some of you might remember that we hatched our first lots of chicks last year, 9 in total, 3 hens and 6 cockerels. The three hens are doing great, one of them is a real little madam, she jumps up and pecks me on the leg every morning, although I am getting wise to her now! I'm obviously not quick enough in giving them their grain! Anyway, your probably thinking, what did we do with the six cockerels? Well, one of them went to a small holding up the road and as far as I'm aware he's still doing well. We ate the other 5. They were delicious. I'm now thinking we should hatch some free ranging table birds and then start to breed them for ourselves to eat all year round. We shall see, we need a bit more land and I'm still working on that one, hence the reason we have no pigs as yet :(

We also had to despatch our much loved cockerel William, he was very ill with an infection that hadn't cleared up, so he's now buried in the garden. I cried when we had to do that but it didn't bother me at all when we had to kill the others that we ate. I quite happily plucked them and got them ready to roast for Sunday night supper. So, we now have William II, he's another Welsummer cockerel and is enjoying strutting his stuff in front of the ladies and crows away quite the thing on top of the fence post.

I also mentioned the other day that I had to try and catch one of our drakes, we currently have 2 drakes and 3 ducks, all Indian Runners, as our little call ducks got eaten by something when they decided to sit on eggs and we couldn't find them to bring them in at night. Anyway, as you can imagine, with it being Spring and all, the drakes are rather randy at the moment and have decided that three ladies is just not enough for them, so our two chinese white geese, Florence and Felicity, have been getting chased to the point where they dissappear down the burn and don't know how to find their way back! One of the drakes has to go, we could eat him, but I'm going to give him back to Diana (pottery friend!) as she's just lost her drake to the fox. He has been given a reprieve at the moment as I've not had time to go up to the pottery, maybe this weekend, then hopefully peace will be regained in the hen house!

So, I hope you all have a lovely Easter weekend, we'll be dodging the snow showers, hopefully getting some more studio building done and a bit of gardening. We might even go and roll some eggs!

Love,

L x

WRI night

Tonight is the monthly meeting of the Mount Blair rural, yep, I've joined the rural, or should I say WRI. And no I've not started putting a blue rinse on my hair and wearing a pleated tweed skirt before you ask! Our group has a real mix of ages and some real characters. The first night I went along I was warmly welcomed and taken by the arm by one of my egg customers (a dear little lady who lives up the road) and she took me round and introduced me to everyone, now how sweet is that? I've made loads of new friends and really do feel like I'm a part of the community now. I've been cajoled into entering competitions and the like, and if I'm totally honest I absolutely love it.

Tonight we are having a joint meeting with the Kirkmichael group, over at their hall. The talk tonight is "A day in the life of a vet" by one of the local vets from Blairgowrie, I'm really looking forward to it as it's one of the many jobs that I fancied doing when I was a child. For me the best part of the evening is most definitely the supper, some groups just have tea and biscuits, whereas our group really goes to town with a full supper of savoury and sweet goodies, so no dinner is required before you go!

The competitions this evening are a bowl of bulbs and a jar of marmalade. As usual I checked the programme at the beginning of this week (always at the last minute!) and luckily had some hyacinth bulbs flowering, so I've titivated them with some pussy willow twigs and raffia. I made marmalade a couple of weeks ago with some lovely organic seville oranges, so bobs your uncle I'm all sorted for tonight!

Right, better go and get on, eggs to collect, dog to walk and a drake to catch, more on that one tomorrow!

L x

And the winner is.........

Drum roll please.............






The lovely Katherine at Chatiry World is the winner, a tea cup and saucer cushion will be winging it's way to you this week, can you send me your details please?


Right, off to walk the dog and let the chooks out, will be back later with tales of our trip to Orkney.


Bye for now.


L x

The month that was February!

Well, February has been and gone and we're well into March now.......where has the time gone? It was a busy month, so much happened........

I met up with this lovely lady for a day in Glasgow, we had great fun shopping for fabric and trimmings, I took her to VV Roleaux.......need I say any more!

I received this amazing gift in the post, not only is she a great friend she's a very talented lady - could you whizz up one of these in a weekend?

A friend recommended her hairdresser at Christmas time when I commented on how lovely her hair was, so I went and got a new hair cut, 5" off as I hadn't had it cut for over a year, very drastic but I'm now getting used to it. I'm not a fan of going to the hairdressers but I think I'll go back again...!

The reason behind the hair cut was because we were going to a christening here and a wedding here, a post about this will follow as I've got so much to tell you all about it!

It was a busy month with work too, lots of sewing for Valentines orders and lots of shop orders winging their way out of the workroom.

We've also been busy with the studio - what do you think so far then?

Ooh and it was also my birthday on March 1st, my mum and my two sisters came and visited for the day and then we had friends round for supper. Gregg cooked, Greek lamb with lemons and feta, I made pud, marmalade ice cream and chocolate brownies - good food and good company, what more could a girl want?!

So, now that I'm back out of hibernation I shall do the cushion draw tonight and post the winner tomorrow.

See you all then!

L x

P.S. Hope you like the spring cleaned look of the blog!

Keeping out of trouble....

....yet I feel a little bit naughty, only 4 posts in January, that's a bit slack isn't it? Well, all I can say is that I've been a very busy girl, even though I have really struggled with the January blues.

Last week saw some new designs coming out of the workroom,
and a stack of lavender hearts and bundles, can you tell Valentines Day is just around the corner?! I also managed to buy some lovely new fabrics that I'm enjoying being creative with, so keep an eye out here for new things arriving soon.I also popped down to Glasgow on Sunday to the Scottish Trade Fair. I'd been a couple of years back, and to be honest it was pretty rubbish, so I was glad to see a huge improvement this year and felt it was well worth the visit I'd paid.

I've also been busy planning for this, which I'm getting really excited about. The roof is hopefully going on the studio this weekend so I'll post some photos next week.

Seeing as this is my 100th post ( I know, it's taken me ages to get here!!!) I thought I'd do a little giveaway, the lucky winner can choose one of the above cushions. So either leave a comment or drop me an e-mail (info@primrosehillinteriors.com) and your name will be added to the draw.

Good luck!

L xx