Busy Start To My Summer Holiday

There's me thinking that now I'm on summer holiday I'd have more time to blog. Yeah right! My ten year old nephew came to stay for nine days. My daughter had travelled down to Bournemouth to pick him up and bring him up to London. I'd forgotten how busy a ten year old could be, so the first week of my holiday was spent getting up early, planning meals for regular times and entertaining. It was lovely to have him stay over and I totally enjoyed his company. Hopefully he had an amazing time and would like to come back and stay again.

My daughter was totally in charge of his daily activities and had planned lots of exciting things for him to do, including the Natural History Museum, Southbank and her favourite place, the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as pancakes at My Old Dutch, where apparently they do the best pancakes ever!!! Sadly, because I'm gluten intolerant I couldn't vouch for that, but they do look ridiculously delicious. Oh how I miss pancakes.

After running back and forth to the launderettes over the past few months I have finally got myself a new washing machine and believe it or not, I actually unplumbed the old and plumbed in the new all by my little self. Aren't I the clever bunny! My neighbour had shown me how to do it ten years ago, that's how long I've had my old one, so it did do me well. It was heavy work pushing the washing machine into it's space with only millimeters to spare. And no floods.

I bought this dining table in a charity shop for twelve pounds, so no more eating off laps. It even has fold down sides which is perfect for my limited space. I'm now on the look out for a lace table cloth or old lace curtains. The chair came as a pair for ten pounds and are very sturdy and comfy.

The Giant Begonia has grown quite a bit since May, but it still won't flower.
The smaller begonia, which was given to me by a friend, keeps producing the most amazing flowers.

If you look carefully you will see a little round green thing. It's a tomato! I'm a little disappointed this year.
The plant shot up to over six feet, gave loads of flowers but no tomatoes. I've found two, so fingers crossed there'll be more. I have a new cactus plant which was quite tricky to repot, those needles are blooming lethal. The chillies, below, are looking promising so hopefully I'll have better luck than the tomatoes.

My daughter has been featured in the September issue of the online Asos Magazine.
Mummy is ever so proud! And, I can now say that I'm a published photographer, as I take the majority of her photos. If you haven't seen her blog yet, do go and have a peek, you might be inspired.

Enjoy the rest of your week and have a fab weekend. Hopefully we'll get a few more summery days.