Post Comment Love 5 - 7 January

Hello there, Happy New Year and welcome back to this week’s #PoCoLo - a friendly linky which I co-host with Suzanne, where you can link any blog post published in the last week. Please don’t link up posts which are older as they will be removed from the linky, and if older posts are linked then please don’t feel that it’s necessary to comment on those. We know you’ll find some great posts to read, and maybe some new-to-you blogs too, so do pop over and visit some of the posts linked, comment and share some of that love.

We’ve had all the weather here - including a lot of rain; so much so that when we walked towards the River Trent on New Year’s Day it was easy to see that it was full again, and we’ve had more rain since. There’s just nowhere for the water to go at present, here’s hoping that the weather behaves more over the coming days and weeks so that the water tables can return to more normal levels, and that no more storms head our way (and I mean that for us all).

Our first Christmas in our new house was good, with lots of family visiting and plenty of memories made. We even had one of those rare nacreous clouds over our back garden, and while it’s not the greatest picture, that’s the photo I’m sharing this week. It was much more dramatic in real life.

Here’s wishing you all a happy and peaceful 2024, and here’s to another year of our friendly linky - please do pop over to some of the other posts and share some love, it’s one of my intentions to read more blogs this year.

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Enjoying the lights at Belton

Belton House isn’t that far from us, about 30 minutes or so drive towards Grantham, and it’s one of the places we’d visit whenever we were close by, it’s a lovely place - and I love the Orangery there - but somehow we hadn’t managed to get over there now that we actually lived closer - isn’t that always the way?!

In fact our last visit to Belton was a pretty special one, after viewing our house again and agreeing with the developers to proceed, we stopped at Belton on our way home. We wanted some time to reflect on the decision we’d just made, and wanted to do that in a beautiful space in the open air rather than in traffic on the A1.

Crazy I know.

But reflect we did and less than two months later we moved in to our new house, and we hadn’t been back to Belton since. So having seen their Christmas lights advertised we booked tickets for one of the off peak entries (the prices are crazy, even with free parking for National Trust members), but anyway, it was worth it - and a good way to mark our first Christmas out of London.

Once we’d found the way in - ahem, there were plenty of signs to get you close and to all the fairground rides, but the way in was less obvious to us, though I’m not sure why as it’s quite often the way we’d go into the garden anyway - clearly we were dazzled by the lights!

As you’d expect there was a planned route around the garden, which meandered along paths and took us further through the gardens/ parkland than we’d before. Next time we’re there we’ll be checking those areas out in the daylight! There were plenty of people there, but it didn’t feel overly crowded. There was a mulled wine and refreshments stop part of the way round, it was understandably busier there, but we didn’t stop and found it easy to get past those that had.

The lights were pretty spectacular, I think they had been refreshed and revamped for this year - and those on the lake were probably the most striking. But there was plenty to see, with something for everyone.

The bright colours of the flower-shaped lights really popped against the dark sky and I’m sure provided many Instagram-worthy locations. The next part of the garden focused more on lighting up the trees bringing a magical feel to them, and the walk through them.

The display at the lake was probably the most spectacular, and the one which benefitted most from the music which accompanied it. I have many iterations of this photo in various colour schemes, but this is the most striking and one of my favourite photos from our visit.

My favourite area when we visited was this quite simple triangular shaped tree section - the lights changed colour and was quite calming. They have a look of daleks about them, but what I didn’t realise until I edited my photos was that there’s an very subtle inverted tree amongst them - I think that makes me like them even more!

The other that I was particularly taken with were the robins - they were large - but it was their coloured shimmering metal discs that were impressive, like a large sequinned robin hovering above you!

The last archway that you walked through as you headed out of the garden was also pretty spectacular, and proves that simple isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but can be equally as magical.

So it was good to get back to Belton, and it’ll be even better to get back again in daylight - as the car park changes they’ve made in the past six months look to have improved that no end. No more parking in a muddy field, and that has to be a good thing!

Repurposing my autumn wreath

17 October I went to a workshop to make my autumn wreath, and almost a month and a half later it was still looking pretty respectable, if not slightly weather worn, which given the weather we’ve had - rain, wind and snow - isn’t surprising! And with a new workshop, and wreath, booked in for the start of December its days were numbered.

And while the autumn wreath was fading, it wasn’t completely done - which was just as well as I had plans for it.

Back in 2016 I shared how I’d bleached some pine cones, and how my top tip was to start early - I think I took my own advice there as I’d not used them properly, so by my reckoning eight years is plenty early enough!!

This year was going to be their year

At least I hoped it was.

I brought in the autumn wreath as by now the weather was too chilly to do this outside, and was immediately grateful that I thought to put this on a towel and on paper. It was wet from the recent rain, which was no bad thing as keeping the moss wet helps. The towel soaked some of that up, and the white paper helped easily identify bugs crawling out of it.

I snipped off the Chinese Lanterns and some of the more faded greenery and the berries which were past their best, but left as much as I could.

To check the viability of this primping project, I placed my bleached pine cones around the wreath to check I had enough to fill the gaps. I did. So with more optimism than skill I set about wiring them into place. I had thin wire so I think this was harder to use than the thicker short lengths of florist wire which could be more easily pushed through the moss, but I go there and all the pine cones were attached successfully.

It doesn’t look too bad laying down does it?

I knew the proof of the pudding, or at least my newly acquired wreath making skills, would come when I held it vertical - and thankfully none fell off, so I could move to the next phase of the project - putting it on display.

Not taking any chances with the wind gusts, I’ve tied this on in four places - top, bottom and both sides - and it’s stayed on the gate, so far. What’s more, the pine cones have also stayed attached to the wreath, so I’m calling that a win - and a pretty and sustainable one at that.

Though this will be its last stand, with the majority of it heading to the compost bin (actually our brown bin as we haven’t sorted new compost bins yet) in the New Year. I’ll be saving the pine cones, and if I can the metal ring, but you’re not surprised by that are you?

This is likely to be my last post before Christmas, so thank you again for continuing to read and support my blog. I hope you have a great time over Christmas celebrating and/or spending time with families or loved ones, and doing what’s important to you.

We’re looking forward to spending the Christmas period with family in our new home. I hope to share a post of my Christmas wreath before the New Year, so I’ll save wishing you a Happy New Year until then.