My top 10 posts of 2025

January 26, 2026

Each year I like to take a look at which posts from the previous year have been the most popular and while I’m at it I also take a look at the posts that have been around for a while and still get looked at, and I like to share that each year. Yes, it’s nerdy, but I love it. I’m not sure why but there’s often surprises along the way, in both lists - so let’s get on with it, shall we.

Starting with my most popular posts from 2025, I loved the Unearthed exhibition so it was great to see that post topping the list:

1 Previewing Unearthed: The Power of Gardening at the British Library (Ad)

An exhibition about gardening, and at the British Library - which despite living in London for a very long time I’d never been to! It was great to be invited along to the preview and help share the word about this fabulous exhibition, which a cut down version of later toured the country. I’d love to know your views on it if you managed to get along to it.

2 Traditional Quilts by Hopkin Rees at the Newark Quilt Show

It’s great to see one of my posts from the Newark Quilt Show on this list, and the quilts by Hopkin Rees are amazing. It’s my local quilt show - just ten minutes or so down the road from home, and a bright spot in any January!

3 The Chef's Table by Adam Frost (Ad)

If I’m honest, this would be my perfect garden - and you can see why my love for succulents everywhere has come from! Actually, when I can I move into this garden? I know I can’t, but if I could, I would!

4 Gardeners' World Live 2025: Win a pair of tickets for Sunday 15 June (Ad)

Thankfully I’m not the only one that’s a fan of Gardeners’ World Live, and once again my competition post makes this list, so that’s good to know. I’m proud to partner with the Gardeners’ World Live team on this, and hope this partnership will continue.

5 The Biba Story: The outfits

This post is quite a different genre to my other posts, but I’m glad it’s here - and I was pleased to get along to see The Biba Story for myself, again in a museum I’d never been to while I actually lived in London. I guess somehow museums weren’t always on my radar in my busy working life!

6 Inside the fabric and haberdashery departments at Liberty

It seems I’m not the only one to enjoy a look around these departments in Liberty, and it’s easy to see why. I did leave with a couple of pieces of material, which I haven’t used yet, so I was quite restrained as I could have left with so much more quite easily!

7 Make a Metre Matter with Gardeners' World (Ad)

Another Gardeners’ World post on this year’s list, this one is a pre-show post that encourages us all to Make a Metre Matter - and that’s all it takes to make a meaningful difference.

8 Gardeners' World Live: What a show! (Ad)

We’re not done with the love for Gardeners’ World Live just yet - you loved this post almost as much as I loved the show. Choosing one photo to represent the show was tricky, but I’ve gone for Nick Bailey’s Make a Metre Matter garden and his rows of cabbages - I still want to grow any kind of vegetables in straight lines, maybe one day!!

9 Revisiting the Orangery at Belton

This is one of my favourite places, and one I’ve realised as I’m writing this post that I don’t get to visit as much as I could, or should. Belton is our nearest National Trust garden, so there’s really no reason not to get myself along there more often, is there?

10 Floral Art at the Devon County Show

There’s some truly amazing floral displays in this post, and who wouldn’t want to wear a hat such as this?

So that’s quite a list, and it’s great to see some of my favourite posts and places appear again.

So onto the second list

This list is posts created at any time by viewed in 2025, the year in brackets is the year it was originally posted - and this list is often very similar to the previous year, although often the order changes somewhat - and it has this year too, though not number one slot!

Filling our gabion baskets (2017)
A walk from Kinoulton to Hickling and back again (2024)
Previewing Unearthed: The Power of Gardening at the British Library (Ad) (2025)
My IKEA hack: HOL storage table to laundry basket (2015)
Our first visit to the Newark Garden Show (2024) new
Storing logs in our gabion baskets (2017)
Bagels, cream cheese & jam (2023)
In the Orangery at Belton House (2022)
Planting a strawberry border (2016)
Sean Murray's Great Chelsea Garden Challenge (2017)

There’s two new entries this year, but only one of those posts - Previewing Unearthed (at number 3) is from this year. The other new entry is at number 5, a post from last year which shares more from our first visit to the Newark Garden Show, which is another great local show.

Thanks for being here again over the past year, and bearing with me with this post which you know appeals to my inner nerd. I already can’t wait to see what this year brings!

I’ve added the *AD tag to some of the post links above as they contains links to posts which were declared as ads when they were published on my blog.

Twelve

February 17, 2025

Today I’ve been blogging for twelve years - and like last year I’m not sure where the time has gone, though I’m grateful to you for being here, and for being part of my online space and community.

Usually as part of my blog birthday tradition I indulge my other passion - and that’s for a list. This year though it’s taken me a fair while to work out what that list should be, and I guess as the number gets higher that’s always likely to be the case!

Looking back over the years and those three cupcakes to celebrate my third year was looking very promising, but even for me twelve cakes is a lot - so it needed to be something else…

Last year I looked at what had changed for me since I started blogging, this year I’m going to try to capture the differences between city and country life - and trust me, I don’t have a list of twelve as I start to write this post - so once again it could be interesting!

But here goes:

Mud. There’s a lot of it here, and obviously way more than in London. I’m not a huge fan of mud, especially walking - or slipping - across it, but walking boots definitely help, which leads onto…
The countryside is on our doorstep. Sometimes quite literally. But we can walk for less than 10 minutes in any direction and be surrounded by fields, that’s a big plus and vastly different from before where even if we drove for 10 minutes we wouldn’t have reached much countryside - though there are clearly pockets of green and wooded areas in and on the outskirts of London
Transport. We still live on a bus route, as we did in London - in fact there are three different routes which pass us here, rather than the two previously. It’s just they’re much less frequent, one route only runs four times a day and the other two twice an hour - but within minutes of each other both times, so if we’re using the bus it takes planning.
Greengrocers. Now this is an odd one, there are no greengrocer shops in Newark. Yes, there’s plenty of farm shops around, but the nearest actual greengrocers is either eight or eleven miles away, depending if you’re heading towards Bingham or Bottesford. There are generally more markets though, and the best veg I’ve found is from (what I call) the muddy veg stall in Newark, but they’re only there on a Friday and Saturday. Their veg though is fresh and has that feeling that it’s just been picked (most likely because it probably has) but often it’s still covered in mud.
Takeaways. Our takeaway consumption has dramatically lowered. We had fish and chips last week for Valentines, and before that our last takeaway was fish and chips in September. We’ve had a takeaway Chinese and Indian but I think they were probably before that. There are plenty of options in Newark and around, and we were clearly spoilt before just being able to walk around the corner to pick one up, having to get the car out and drive the four or so miles doesn’t happen that often.
Milk. This also takes more planning - I now buy two four pints of milk regularly, rather than just picking some up when we needed some. Our local farm shop only sells milk in glass bottles, which takes a level of planning which I just don’t have or aspire too. I also have an ‘emergency’ two pints of milk in the freezer, something that I wouldn’t even have considered whilst living around the corner from an M&S Simply Food.
Farmers & Tractors. Not unsurprisingly we see a lot more of these in our rural village, though I suspect if you’ve been in Westminster lately you’ll have seen a fair few more than usual too. Being a Londoner I don’t think I ever realised how much work farmers put in, but here we see just part of that first hand as they make multiple journeys a day past our house, almost always with a friendly wave for anyone they see as they do.
Washing vegetables. Yes I know you’re supposed to wash all the veg, even the ones that come in those sterile gas-filled bags from the supermarkets, but I rarely did as a rule. Now though, buying as much of our veg from farm shops and markets I routinely wash more of our veg, apart from MOH is called in to scrub some of the more muddier veg!
Eating out past 8:30pm. It’s not all bad, far from it, as there are plenty of fab places to eat but we have readjusted the times we book tables for. They’re mostly timed to coincide with the time the bus arrives, and are often much earlier than we would even consider booking for in London. We’re off to London this week and are heading out to dinner before our almost last train home - and we’ve booked that for 6pm too, so we have enough time to have a relaxed meal, and not have to dash to Kings Cross for the train.
Living in a 30mph zone. On the face of it this hasn’t changed, but in London there was so much traffic that it could rarely reach the speed limit, whereas here there’s so few traffic that it’s rare (but not completely unheard of) for traffic to bother to slow down to actually 30mph from the 60mph zones which buffer the village. Sometimes there’s an effort, sometimes a car does and a trail of four or so cars follow, but often some just don’t even bother.
Exterior house lights. Country people are obsessed with lighting up their houses, and I’m not sure why. We have lights on the front and back of ours, and they’re handy to have, but they don’t go on every night. Maybe I’m missing something?
People talk to you. Now this probably should have been higher up the list, and probably isn’t a surprise. In London people rarely talk to you, unless perhaps you might have passed each other on the street for say six months or a year, and never on public transport. Here though, that’s not the case. The first time we got the bus to Nottingham - it was a mini bus at the time, since upgraded to a single decker - it was like the whole bus was part of the conversation. And many of them had watched as our house was built, seeing progress as they whizzed past on their twice daily journey and were pleased to have met the new owners, reassuring us that the house had been well built. I’m getting more used to it, but occasionally do have to remind people that I’m from London and so not used to all this chat, and they often sympathise with me!

Actually the list came together more easily than I expected, though it was helped by a brief pause while I headed out to Zumba, which relates to another one that could have made the list - the number of village halls - but didn’t. I’ve been to many of the village halls local to me for various activities and classes, but I don’t think I ever went into a church hall back in Blackheath, or if I did not regularly.

So life is different, but not in a bad way at all.

Here’s to another year, I hope you’ll stay around.

My top 10 posts of 2024

February 1, 2025

It was easier to collate the information for this post this year - way easier than it was for me last year, and of course I’d been putting it off based on my last experience. There’s a big life lesson there isn’t there - something about eating a frog and all that.

Anyway, I like to take a look at which posts from the previous year have been the most popular and while I’m at it I also take a look at the posts that have been around for a while and still get looked at, and I like to share that each year. Yes, it’s nerdy, but anyway.

Starting with my most popular posts from 2024, I was pleasantly surprised to see the post which topped the list:

1 A walk from Kinoulton to Hickling and back again

It was a great walk though! And I guess we’re not the only ones looking for walks to explore our beautiful countryside. Sadly the pub we had lunch in on that visit has now shut, but the tea rooms remain open - and are just reopening following their January break. They do a great sausage cob, so we’ll definitely be heading back that way.

2 Gardeners' World Live 2024: Win a pair of tickets for Sunday 16 June, plus discount code (Ad)

I was proud to partner with Gardeners World again to host this great giveaway. It’s always great to go along and see the show too - though this year our journey from Nottingham was vastly different to the intercity from Euston, but the show was as good as always.

3 Book Review: The Ultimate Sewing Machine Mastery by Katie Matthews (Ad)

This remains really useful book, so if you’re a sewer (of any level) do pop over and take a look. I think all sewers can learn something from it.

4 Gelli printing using stencils and shapes

I must do more of this. It was great fun and while I use the prints I did in the class I’ve yet to tackle this at home - and yes, I really did print that many!

5 Industrial open shelving in our pantry and utility room

I still love these and they make me smile every single day. Seriously. And what’s more everything’s pretty much still in the same place, and even better MOH knows where to find things, and where to put things back!

6 Getting organised with pegboards in my craft room

What’s not to love with a bit of organisation? These really are fab pegboards and still in use in my craft room cupboard. They’re so nice that you don’t need to hide them in a cupboard, but for me, I wanted to maximise the space I had there. I’ve more tweaks coming for my craft room, as it’s true you really learn about a space the more you use it.

7 Hamid Zenati at the Nottingham Contemporary

This was a great exhibition - and local too, so a good find for us. I’m still in awe of the patterns and the size of the exhibits, and this is a great reminder for me to check what else is on locally. I’m so pleased that I don’t have to go to London for exhibitions, though they do have some fab ones, there’s often something close by as well.

8 The Fontana Garden (Ad)

This was a very striking garden at Gardeners’ World Live from the 2023 show, and rightly was the image that made it into most of the press stories from the show. It was a fab garden, and no doubt the pictures were helped by the blue skies, but don’t let that detract from the design, there’s much more to it than that. And in case you’re wondering why at 2023 garden made the 2024 list, I didn’t share it here until then as one of my posts which ran alongside the ticket competition post (which is on the list above).

9 Admiring Carolyn Forster's quilts at the Newark Quilt Show

Amazing quilts and my first visit to my local quilt show - and a quilt show I’ve been back to this January too. I’ve many photos to share from this year’s show which are very different to these. I think my heart really is with the scrappy quilts, and all their charm though.

10 Getting started with Gelli Plate printing

A new to me craft, and the post I shared after my first class - it really is addictive in the Pringles sort of way, in that once you start the Gelli printing you really can’t stop! I need to set aside an afternoon (or longer) to do this again!

It’s interesting to see which posts appear on the list, and there’s some of my favourite bits of 2024 there too. As I said the number one post was a pleasant surprise, but I guess people are always looking for a good walk.

So onto the second list

This list is posts created at any time by viewed in 2024, the year in brackets is the year it was originally posted - and this list is often very similar to the previous year, although often the order changes somewhat - and it has this year too. There’s a couple of new entries, including my number one post from the list above and another surprise at number six.

Filling our gabion baskets (2017)
In the Orangery at Belton House (2022)
My IKEA hack: HOL storage table to laundry basket (2015)
Planting a strawberry border (2016)
Sean Murray's Great Chelsea Garden Challenge (2017)
Bagels, cream cheese & jam (2023)
Tintagel Castle and 148 steps for starters... (2015)
Storing logs in our gabion baskets (2017)
Temple of the Four Winds at Castle Howard (2018)
A walk from Kinoulton to Hickling and back again (2024)

So not always what I expected but each of them are great posts, and it probably means I should spend some time on these to make sure they’re as good as they can be!

Thanks for being here again over the past year, and bearing with me with this post which you know appeals to my inner nerd. I already can’t wait to see what 2025 brings!

I’ve added the *AD tag to this post as it contains links to posts which were declared as ads when they were published on my blog.