Things I am loving this week...

Well.....last week really but I am still loving them this week too....!

Drinking ginger beer in a beautiful beer garden in Ditchling. The sunshine was beautiful, the beer garden was amazing and the ginger beer delicious! The packaging of the ginger beer was so cute too it made me smile. On the inside of the bottle (you can just about see) when you drink it it reveals a little picture of ginger!

Spring flowers - This is a photograph from my neighbour's garden. The garden is only small but packed full of beautiful spring flowers and it smells amazing! The garden is up from street level so is quite high up when you walk past which means you can smell it even more. It makes me smile every time I walk that way with Rufus.

Rufus! - This rather naughty ball of fluff returned home after nearly 3 weeks away at residential dog camp! Even though he looks like butter wouldn't melt in his mouth he is a rescue dog with some quite severe behavioural problems. It was lovely to see how far he has come and we were able to go down to the beach and let him play, dig and meet other doggy friends! I love him even when he is naughty but love him just that little bit extra during moments like this!

Easter rabbits! - Apparently you are never too old to receive chocolate bunnies through the post! These arrived just after Easter so was even more of a lovely surprise as I thought I didn't have any Easter treats and then these landed on my doorstep! 

Roast Dinner - A lovely Easter Sunday roast dinner with new friends. What a treat! The roast was amazing and I had my first ever Ham cooked in Coca Cola.....yep....thats right.....ham cooked in coke! It is DELICIOUS! Check out the recipe for ham cooked in cola with maple and mustard glaze here

The Dorothy Days Xx

Wordless Wednesday - Cat Graffiti

On Wednesdays all over the internet, bloggers post a photograph with no words to explain it on their blog. Hence the ‘wordless’ title. The idea is that the photo itself says so much that it doesn’t need any description.

The Dorothy Days Xx

What I have been up to.....

Hello everyone,

Thank you so much for stopping by my blog and happy October! I can't actually believe it is now October, how has this year gone so fast?!

The last week or so has been really fun and I have been really enjoying myself. Being the big kid that I am I went to the funfair which visited town. I first went on the waltzer which I haven't been on in years and used to be my favourite ride. I was really really excited to go on but I soon realised that when you get older, the staff on the ride spin you much much faster! We arrived quite early to the fun fair, so the people spinning us were feeling rather energetic and ready for the night of work they had ahead.....never realised the Waltzer span so much! It wasn't quite the same as being spun gently as a child on the Waltzer and I came off very dizzy indeed.

So what is the best way to cure dizziness.........go on another spinning ride of course! So off we went on more rides followed by a nice gin and tonic in the pub! It was a really fun night at the fair and I can't wait for it to come to town again next year.

The rest of my week has been a mixture of catching up with old friends, being glued to Great British Bake Off, making new items for my shop and posting off new orders, wondering how it got to October and puppy sitting the cutest French bulldog in the world! It has been a good week and I am feeling positive about October.

Hope you all have a wonderful and joyful October.

Thank you so much again for reading my blog.

The Dorothy Days X

This week I am loving.......

The Dorothy Days Xx

The Dorothy Days- Wordless Wednesday- Adorable Cat

On Wednesdays all over the internet, bloggers post a photograph with no words to explain it on their blog. Hence the ‘wordless’ title. The idea is that the photo itself says so much that it does not need any description.

Wordless Wednesday- Sunset over Brighton

On Wednesdays all over the internet, bloggers post a photograph with no words to explain it on their blog. Hence the ‘wordless’ title. The idea is that the photo itself says so much that it doesn’t need any description.

Hope you enjoyed this week's Wordless Wednesday. If you enjoy reading my blog I would love to hear from you, please leave a comment in the comment section below, it will make me smile :) !

The Dorothy Days Xxx

A funny old place called Brighton!

Hello lovely blog readers!

I have noticed with my blog that I have been getting lots of views from outside of the U.K which is amazing and makes me smile so much that people are actually reading my blog from different places around the world. The majority of my readers used to be from the United States but recently I have had a huge increase in the amount of Russian blog readers, so much so that the Russia makes up my biggest percentage of blog readers! Some of the other places in which people have been reading from include Lativa, India, Germany, Australia, Canada, Sudan, Pakistan and Finland :) ! So exciting to have readers from all over the world.

I thought it might be nice for my blog readers who aren't familiar with the U.K to find out a little bit about where I am from. I know that I always love being nosy and finding out about where other people live so I thought it would be fun to give you a mini tour of Brighton which is where I live. Brighton is a sea side city on the south coast of England. I absolutely adore Brighton, it is a beautiful place to live and has such character and charm as it is a bit quirky and unique (and yes I know I am ever so slightly bias but it is beautiful!)

I originally was going to do the tour of Brighton in one big blog post but I think that might be a bit of an image over load because I will get far too excited and carried away!! So instead I will show you Brighton bit by bit over several different blog posts :) . I hope you shall enjoy this. Would love to hear about where you are from as well and what it is like where you live so please get in contact by leaving me a comment in the section below.

First up for my Brighton tour is one of the most iconic places in Brighton, the pier.

Photograph- Dan Taylor

You couldn't get much more British seaside than this. Think fish and chips, old school lights (there are 67,000 light bulbs illuminating the pier) , fairground rides and lots of lovely benches to sit on and look out to the sea. Building started on the pier in 1891 and it was opened in 1899. It is rather famous and has been in many films and TV series. I love to wander down there and have fish and chips down by the sea as a treat in the summer time. It is also lovely to go on at night as you can look back towards Brighton.

Photograph- Mac Ivan

Another photograph of Brighton Pier in all its glory :) ! It normally has lots of seagulls swooping over head and trying to find spare fish and chips to nibble on!

This and next 2 photographs credit to: pahudson

One of the rides which you can go on. I used to love going on these when I was younger. So much fun!

Yummy lolly pops which shows the Helta Skelta on Brighton Pier and also Brighton sticks of rock. YUM!

Photo credit: adactio

and of course it wouldn't be a proper British seaside without fish and chips!!! You can buy fish and chips all over Brighton and it is particularly popular down by the pier. In the summer lots of people go down to the beach and sit and eat fish and chips while looking out to the sea.

Hope this has given you a little insight to the place that I call home!!! 

The Dorothy Days Xx

5 things I love about the countryside....

Hi everyone,

I thought I would do another 5 things blog post so this week. I am lucky enough to live in the beautiful English countryside in a really rural location so this week I am doing 5 things I love about the countryside.

1) You can see the stars and they shine really brightly as everything else is dark around and there isn't so much light pollution. Where I live there are no street lights and the nearest town is about 10 miles away so on a clear night the sky looks incredible.

2) Not having shops or entertainment on your doorstep means you have to find your own entertainment which results in a lot of fun and enjoying the landscape around you. I love going down to the beach or going on a walk through the woods with friends. Means there are no distractions and it is perfect for catching up.

3) Local produce! In the garden we have lovely apples and also other types of fruit but just down the road is a farm who sell the most wonderful local produce in one of their outbuildings. They sell local meat, honey, biscuits, fruit and vegetables, amazing jams etc. There is also a lady who has her own chickens and sells their eggs out the front of her house. The eggs are about as free range as you can get!

4) Community spirit. It is wonderful to see how much of a community there is and how willing they are to help each other out. When our lawnmower broke down and the grass in the garden was getting rather long we had a knock on the door and a neighbour offered to cut the grass for us.

5) Living in such a beautiful area makes me smile nearly every day. It is so quiet and peaceful here and although I love to visit the city and make regular trips to London, it is wonderful to return to the countryside. I can't wait for the leaves on the trees to start changing colour and for us to have the log burner in the evenings.

What do you love most about where you live?

The Dorothy Days

By the seaside- Brighton Beach

Hello everyone :),

I have been featured in a beautiful treasury of Etsy sellers from Brighton which, because we are a seaside town, has a seaside theme. The treasury made me smile so I thought I would share it with you all. We have been having lots of rain here in Britain at the moment so as Freya (the lady who made it) says the sea is "a bit stormy at the moment but these will remind us of those beautiful days on the south coast". Please take a look at the different items featured, there are some beautiful items and all are from sellers in Brighton


The Dorothy Days

Renovating vintage furniture with 20sixltd

Hi everyone :),

Does anyone else love vintage furniture ?! If you are anything like me, somewhere in your house will be a vintage piece which you adore! The weather here in England has been so bad (rain, wind, more rain and more rain again) that I have been unable to get out in the garden and get working on some of my vintage pieces of furniture which need a little bit of tender love and care and the weather certainly has not allowed for any upcycling projects! However, I am forever the optimist that this weather is on the way out and we will have blue skies and sunshine soon so I have been speaking to the team at Brighton based fit out company, 20six, about restoring, upcycling and reworking vintage pieces of furniture.

The team recently put a question to their Twitter followers; “What do you prefer, original or reworked pieces?” It wasn’t a shock to hear that the answer seemed to be largely in favour of original, vintage pieces.

Of course, sometimes renovating a piece is unavoidable, so the 20six design team have put together a few tips to for anyone looking to refresh or up cycle existing furniture:

“As part of a large PFI public library refurbishment, we were asked to try and retain and recondition as many original interior features as possible to play homage to the original 1960 Basil Spence modernist building. 

Part of the original furniture specification was the Fritz Hansen Series 7™ chair designed by Arne Jacobsen. The Series 7™ chair is by far the most sold chair in the history of Fritz Hansen and perhaps also in furniture history. The pressure molded veneer chair is a further development of the classic  Ant™ chair.

In embarking on this project, we realised how difficult it can be to find the balance between keeping the classic touch of the original design whilst refurbishing it to make it more usable in the modern day.

After a lot of different attempts, that included re-upholstering even painting artwork onto the chair, we settled on re-lacquering the designs - but not before we learnt a few lessons from the whole experience!

So here are our top tips:

1) Keep it as simple. The old design saying of "Less is more" applies here. Whilst some ways of reconditioning make items more suitable for new purposes, when dealing with iconic classics - try not to undermine the integrity of the design.

2) Test first. If trying out a new decorative colour of design finish - try and get a small sample of a similar material to test out your ideas on first. This could potentially save you a lot of time and money in the future!

3) Ask questions. If in doubt there is a phone book full of professionals and craftsmen with a wealth of experience ready to tap in to.  Alternatively you could always look online in design forums and websites for advice.”

Thank you to the team at 20six for sharing their knowledge and tips.

I hope you all enjoyed the article and fingers crossed for some sunshine so we can get outside and start our furniture projects! 

Has anyone from other, sunnier,parts of the world started a furniture project? If so I would love to hear about it, please leave me a comment in the comment section below :)

Thanks!

The Dorothy Days