I also painted underneath the pebble dash and the door and window frames, so it’s looking super smart for the first time in a long time! You can just about see that the front has been dug over, and Tom worked really hard doing that. He’s planted some wildflower seed so hopefully we’ll have a mini meadow in our front garden this summer!

I thought I’d share a few photos I took in the garden – I know I do this every year but I just love the flowers so much![/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”7313,7314,7326,7315,7325,7324,7321,7322,7320,7316,7323,7317,7318,7319″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no” choose_frame=”default” img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1428958028357{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]We didn’t get out in the garden much at all this year, so really hoping that this year will be different…fingers crossed! Hope you had a super weekend too! :-)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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I have loved taking part in Make It March this month! I found the prompts really helpful and it has been so good to see what everyone else is up to as well. There are some very inspiring people on Instagram and it has been great to connect with some of them. You can see a little round-up of Kate’s favourites over on her blog today.

I’ve been following Xanthe Berkeley on Instagram for a while now (and I’m keeping everything crossed that I can go on the photo walk with her at Blogtacular in June!) and love her stop motion videos. Anyway, she has been sharing her trade secrets in this post and I’m hoping to give it a go next month. I’ve never made a video before (other than silly little ones on my phone, like being on a carousel at Beamish!) so it will be good to learn a new skill.

This month I have mainly been listening to Bear’s Den. I saw them for the first time on TV when they played whilst Dermot was doing his mega dance-a-thon for Comic Relief and I loved them. I love how their voices blend together – they played the track ‘Agape’ live and I bought their album straight after hearing it. It’s great for crafting to! I imagine it will be on repeat a lot in April too…

I do want to share a few of my March photos with you too! We celebrated 10 years together this month, and I am amazed at how quickly that has gone by. So much has happened, and so much is yet to come

I am constantly admiring and snapping the beautiful spring flowers that are appearing all around. My friend Tiffany came to stay with us for a couple of days last week and we had a little wander along the river. The blossom had bloomed and we played Pooh sticks on the bridge – fun times![/vc_column_text][vc_gallery type=”image_grid” interval=”3″ images=”7259,7260,7264,7268,7261,7262,7265,7266,7267,7263″ onclick=”link_image” custom_links_target=”_self” column_number=”2″ grayscale=”no” choose_frame=”default” img_size=”large”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1427962008335{padding-top: 30px !important;padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]Next month, I’m really looking forward to making a Tilly and the Buttons Coco dress with Daria – after a lot of searching we have both finally found suitable jersey fabric! Neither of us have sewn with jersey before, so wish us luck…I’ll be sharing photos here I’m sure, so you’ll get to see the results!

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1427962321249{padding-bottom: 30px !important;}”]I am really looking forward to spending some time with Tom this weekend and we’re hoping to get out in the garden if the weather is ok – fingers crossed! It’s a tradition to have hot cross buns on Good Friday so I’ll be making some today (so they’ll be on the blog tomorrow). Whilst looking for a recipe I did come across this hot cross bun fudge, which might have to wait until next year if I can hold out that long!

I hope you enjoyed my first Bits & Bobs post and that you had a lovely month too. Feel free to share anything you enjoyed in the comments below! :-)[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

The post Bits & Bobs: March 2015 appeared first on Hello! Hooray!.

Today we’ve spent the whole day in the garden, which has been so lovely! The weather was sunny but not too hot, which meant that we could tackle some of the jobs that we’ve been meaning to do for ages. This involved a lot of digging! The first job was digging up the strawberry patch, which had pretty much been overrun by weeds as you can see:

The plants had also spread out quite a lot, so some of them were growing in the lawn! Having cleared all the plants I was really pleased to find that our peonies have survived the winter – they are quite difficult to grow but they are in quite a sheltered corner. I’m really looking forward to seeing them bloom this year – hopefully I’ll be able to get a photo!

This year, we’re trying to keep the strawberries a little more contained, so we made a little area for them using this willow edging – it looks a little bit like an Anglo Saxon settlement, but I’m hoping it will stop them spreading too much! It will also help to keep snails at bay, so fingers crossed…

After lunch we carried on digging in order to get rid of more weeds! We cleared the raised beds ready for planting and tidied up around them. This is what they looked like before and half way through:

Once cleared, we planted some veg – carrots, spring onions, courgettes, rocket and spinach. All of these things seem to grow well in our garden, and we’re hoping that they’ll do even better with these raised bed covers that let light, air and water in and keep everything else out! The woodchips around the edge should help us to keep control of the weeds.

The final job was to plant some potatoes in pots – we’ve gone for Charlottes because you can pretty much do anything with them and they’re easy to grow! As they grow we’ll keep covering them with soil until they reach the top of the pots.

I did have a little incident whilst gardening today – I stood on a rake and it hit me in the face! It was just like in a cartoon and it really hurt…my eye socket is rather sore now! So to make myself feel better I took these lovely photos – I can’t remember the exact name of the ones on the right hand side but I’ll look them up and let you know when I next do a gardening post.

Hope you are having a great weekend!

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Apparently, it is spring…but you could have fooled me! It is snowing as I write this, and as I look out at my garden it seems as though spring is on hold. The bulbs have half come up and have realised that it is far too cold to contemplate flowering – I just love how they do that.

We do have some beautiful crocuses that have decided to brave it, and it was quite sunny a couple of days ago (only briefly, which fooled us because it was still freezing!). I managed to get some lovely snaps of them and they are really beautiful!

This variety is called Crocus Pickwick and I love the patterns on the inside – so striking.

We’ve got lots of lovely spring bulbs waiting to bloom, so hurry up sunny weather!

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