.......Collectors Envy!

This year we accidentally renewed our National Trust membership. This was mostly due to my inability to read the renewal letter properly and stupidly assumed that if we didn't do anything it would just be cancelled if we didn't renew. How wrong I was! I don't mind though as it meant we could visit one my new favourite places, Snowshill Manor in Broadway. It's a beautiful countryside estate nestled in the Cotswalds and so not too far away from Worcester. I also wanted an excuse to go for a drive in my new car!

Cafe

Snowshill Manor was owned from 1900 to 1951 by Charles Paget Wade who was an Architect and Artist. Throughout his time at Snowshill he amassed large collections of everything and anything that took his fancy. He particularly coveted items which were handcrafted and well designed. It was the perfect property for me to visit as, being a bit of a womble, I love to collect interesting items and so can relate well to Charles' ways.   

Mr Charles Paget Wade

His vast collections started to take over the Manor House on the estate so eventually Charles decided to move out to a smaller cottage in the garden. Although as you can see from the photo below the cottage was by no means lacking in clutter! 

  

Charles's cottage

The Manor House

We had an interesting talk from one of the garden volunteers about Charles' garden design and flower preferences. The gardens were beautifully laid out in a terraced design and contained only flowers in pink, lilac and mauve colours as was his taste. It was nice to hear that the plants were the ones that he had originally planted when he lived there. 

Being an Architect Charles liked to draw and sketch buildings and this was shown in it's most magical form by his lovingly created miniature village by the fish pond. Complete with pub and even some miniature concrete steps. He also loved children and felt a great amount of joy and satisfaction in watching them playing in the village.

Model Village

Tom enjoying the gardens.

Amazing chair!

My favourite part of the house was the rooms full of sewing and shoe making implements. 

I was completely in awe of his room full of spinning wheels! My sister would've been in absolute heaven and I'm sure she would never have been able to leave this room!

Weaving shuttles.

Big loom!

The music room was very impressive and filled with instruments I've never even seen before. It made me feel a bit better as I have a bit of a habit of buying instruments I can't play just because they look interesting or pretty! Charles Wade was a man after my own heart!

I took so many more pics but want to leave you with some surprises if and when you decide to visit Snowshill Manor. I would definitely recommend it as a good day out and the cafe is lovely so well worth a visit. 

....Festival Fun!

Festival season is still in full swing so I thought I'd do a little post about a couple that I've been to this summer.

First up was Secret Garden Party Festival back in July. I went technically as a trader offering weaving workshops making festival headbands and friendship bracelets. I shared the marquee with vintage traders Second Hand Rose and Minimum Mouse so had good fun watching people enjoying the fun costumes for sale. 

It was a surprisingly massive festival with amazing treats for the eyes such as a giant straw fox, a sunken shipwreck - complete with attacking octopus, walkways of colourfully lit shrubbery and jellyfish paper lanterns. It was like being in a dream! 

The food selection was amazing with almost too much choice but as it was quite a long festival we managed to squeeze in quite a few culinary treats. 

Here are some general pics for you to peruse.

My little craft area.

The King!

The stall next to us sold nothing but tails so of course me and Clare decided to try some on for a laugh. They were actually really well made but definitely purely a festival accessory! 

Disco in a shed!

One of the highlights, as it happened to be a heatwave this weekend, was being able to swim in the lake to cool off. It also was a big help for those early morning hangover headaches! 

Lissie  performing.

Celeb spotting! We spotted Proudlock and Francis Boulle from Made in Chelsea so had to take a sneaky pap shot!

Another of the highlights was embracing my crafty side and booking in for a Moccasin making workshop. We got to choose our own leather or suede and then we set to work. The suede I picked was so super soft and it makes the perfect cosy house slippers! 

Ta dah!

We had some fun times and some not so fun times (being kept awake until 6am by thumping Yacht Club speakers!) but we had a good time and started festival season with a bang!


Next up we headed off as normal festival punters to Leopallooza in Bude in Cornwall. We went with Tom's brother Henry and his fiance Sarah and it was their first ever music festival. 

The journey down was interesting as it was the first time we had travelled with 4 of us in our campervan Ratty. It was a surprisingly easy journey with a couple of stops for breakfast and ice creams before hitting Cornwall about lunch time. The sun was shining so that was a great start!

Here's our little camp for the weekend!

When we first arrived we set up camp and cracked open some cans. As the sun was shining we decided to chill out for a bit and have some fun people watching. This guy was our favourite in his skin tight leggings and no top! We saw him a couple of times over the weekend in different leggings but still topless! 

Here's Tom and Henry fooling around on the cool surf board benches. A great idea for reusing old surf boards but they were completely wrecked by the end of the weekend.

Leopallooza is a super cute little festival, a stark contrast to Secret Garden Party, and is set in a beautiful forest setting. The best bit was that we'd paid a bit extra each to have VIP tickets which made much more of a difference than we thought. We had access to the backstage area which had it's own bar, sofa area, DJ tent, loos and showers (although these broke halfway through the weekend). 

We saw some great bands and live music with an eclectic mix from hard rock to mellow acoustic.

Straight Lines

Bebe Black

Albert Jones

Eliza and The Bear

For such a small festival the food choices were great with a very unusual fresh fish stall selling mussels and various fish. Not your normal burger and chips! The crumpets from this lovely stall were delicious and very handy in soaking up all the cider!

We met some crazy people!....

So much fun was had by all and I'm looking forward to going again next year!