Finding Smiles On A Gratitude Scavenger Hunt...

Hi Honeys,
What do you do on days when smiles are a little harder to find?  Not every day can be fun, especially when living with a chronic illness (gentle hugs for fellow spoonies 💕 be well dear ones.)  It's so important to have coping mechanisms for not so great days in our self care kit don't you think honeys?

As a child I was taught to count my blessings and on days when I'm not feeling so good or it's just a wee bit more difficult to find my smile, taking stock of how blessed I am in my life really helps me to appreciate how lucky I am and to cope with whatever life is throwing at me.

Scrolling through Pinterest looking for smiles recently I saw the sweetest graphic that immediately made me smile and truly brightened my day honeys, here it is...

Garden Smiles: After Storm Hector..

Hello Honeys,
Well we survived Storm Hector, with its 70 miles per hour winds and heavy rain.  In the garden we lost a few precious roses but the new fence, which Hubby completed during his recent holiday from work, is still standing.

After past storms he would usually have been outside looking at the wreckage of a fence, and facing days of work repairing it, but thankfully now that he's lowered the height and allowed for those 2-3 times a year storm winds by leaving a slight gap between each of the fence panels to allow the winds to flow through, the fence should (touch wood) survive any other pesky storms in the future.   

I really do feel blessed honeys, with all of the damage reportedly caused by storm Hector, that all we lost this time were a few roses.  The rose shrubs are still standing, there are still pretty roses in bud and I know they'll bloom soon.  As with the limited damage in the back garden, we've been very lucky this time around and I'm so grateful.

Fun In The Garden Part Three: Being Blessed By Our Garden...

Hi Honeys
I hope you've had a fabulous weekend.  It's been a little strange here to say the least.  After over three weeks of solidly (very) warm, sunny days... right up until Thursday when we had a lovely rain shower that lasted around 10 minutes or so and saw Jade and I in the garden loving the soft sprinkle of rain. Well, late on Saturday afternoon we were hit by the most incredible rain storm!

It was torrential and went on for around forty minutes or so, managing to flood my workplace and to include hail stones too!  On a day when the temperature was around 18C we had hailstones 😲  It was a shock to the system dear ones but as soggy as everyone, and everything, got.... well I think the gardens must all have breathed a huge sigh of relief to be finally seeing a proper end to the mini drought it's been enduring.   

Speaking of the garden, just wait till you see what's been happening out there!  Almost (wee shower and then torrential rain storm aside) four weeks of (mostly) unbroken sunshine here in Scotland.... unheard of! 😊  All of that gorgeous sunshine has worked wonders dear ones, it's truly beautiful out there and I'm so grateful that we've been so blessed and can't stop going outside to just stare 😊

As grateful as I am for the beautiful flowers our garden has blessed us with this year, I'm also grateful for all of those lovely, sun-drenched days we've had this past month.  Sunny days mean laundry days around here and you know how much I adore doing laundry 😊 

I know, I'm odd.  I've been told this.  Usually by people who wonder how I can adore doing laundry so much 😊  I've always adored laundry, it's by far my favourite part of housekeeping.  There's not a single part of it I don't love 😊

Back to today's post then dear ones, wait till you see what's been happening in the garden during this very unusual for us (but we're not complaining!) dry spell. Why not grab a cuppa and maybe a cookie (or two) and meet me back here in a few minutes?

Fun In The Garden Part Two: Re-Building The Garden Fence

Hi Honeys,
Another beautiful day and I spent part of it doing laundry as usual 😊 Carrying on from yesterday's post where I tried to make a start on making our garden a little more bee (and fairy) friendly, I thought I'd share our biggest garden project for a while although, weather permitting, we have a couple of other large projects we'd like to have done outside, such as painting and possibly setting up a new seating area on the patio. 

This was all Hubby's work bless him (great work sweetheart x) my contribution was to bring him lots of cups of tea and things to eat... and every now and again get in his way with my camera 😊  I can't wait to share what he achieved honeys because the difference to our little garden is like day and night.  I keep going outside just to look at it 😊

There are lots of photos in this post so it might be best to fetch a cuppa and maybe a cookie or two, meet you back here in a couple of minutes dear ones...

Fun In The Garden Part One: How To Encourage Bees To Visit Your Garden...

Disclaimer: I haven't been paid to recommend any products, just sharing my latest fun filled project in our garden x

Hi Honeys,
How are you today?  All well I hope and able to enjoy the glorious weather we've been having.  Hubby was on hols from work all last week and I had last weekend off too so we spent all week busily working very happily on home projects and given the gorgeous weather, we decided to concentrate on the garden 💮 

Hubby has worked so hard during this holiday bless him, taking down the high garden fence between us and our neighbours (a left over from the previous owners) and re-building a lovely new, much shorter, fence in its place.  I'll share lots of before and after photos in my next post, it looks fabulous and I'm so proud of him he did it all on his own.

I've gone back to de-cluttering cupboards and drawers again and we're building quite a collection of things all ready to be donated.

On Tuesday of last week we went grocery shopping and managed to find a few things to help in two long awaited and very much wished for projects in our garden 😊  Let's take a look shall we honeys?

We've all been hearing this past couple of years how the worlds bee population is shrinking terribly and I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that this is disastrous for humans as well as for our little buzzy friends.  Bees play such a vital role in so much of the food we eat.

Image and lots of useful info found here 

I very often see bees hovering around our much loved roses in our tiny front garden but I wanted to do more to help them so I set about finding out as much as I could about how to encourage them to feel welcome in our garden.

Imagine how pleased I was then honeys to see this marvellous little bee and insect hotel while grocery shopping...   

We spotted it in the gardening aisle in Home Bargains and I was thrilled.  I was even happier to find when we got to the checkout to find it was actually priced at £4.99 (even though it says £12 on the wrapper.)

We took it home and I was so happy with it I asked Hubby later in the week when he took a trip back to our local retail park for some masonry paint to bring me another one back.  Unfortunately Home Bargains didn't have any of the large ones left (although they may well get them back in stock) when he went in but they did have a smaller model...
 

As you can see it's around half the size of the larger bee hotel but as it turns out that makes it perfect for what I have in mind too!