Inside-and-out

This is the somewhat less-than-attractive view from my kitchen window! The joys of living in a town, I guess ;-)

Anyhoo, I rearranged the windowsill ~not only that, I gave it and the surrounding area a jolly good clean, too. I now have more pots (some of which are waiting for plants) and less chickens on there now, plus a pretty red glass vase which my Mum gave me recently. The vase casts a lovely light in the kitchen when the sun shines through it, so it looks pretty whether it has flowers in it or not :-)

There were more chickens on the windowsill previously; they are now living on top of the wall cabinets (which Adrian and I cleaned and rearranged at the weekend), so they are still able to survey all that goes on in the kitchen ;-)

The pretty pink cyclamen is still going strong and has been in bloom for such a long time now. It really needed to be repotted but I was waiting for it to die down ~ which it has shown no signs of doing yet! Since I was repotting all my other houseplants the weekend before last, I decided to take a chance and do the cyclamen, too. Thankfully, it still seems happy, so hopefully being repotted hasn't been too much of a shock to its system :-)

Naturally, I couldn't post without sharing a photo of the precious pooch ;-) Looks like her toy piggy has been naughty, the way she is holding him down with her head LOL Watch out, moosie ~ you might be next!

Little Dottie is another hard plastic doll which I have added to my collection. She is so sweet and looks ready to take her seat at the top of the Christmas tree :-)

Anne is a gift from a Flickr friend; isn't she lovely! She has the most wonderful costume and looks like she could be married to Henry VIII :-) Perhaps that's why she has that worried look on her face ;-D

These two meat platters and covered vegetable dishes were being stored on top of the kitchen wall cabinets. When Adrian and I rearranged and cleaned up there, we brought them down ~ they were very dusty and greasy! Now that they are clean and gorgeous again, I have put them in the sideboard in the dining room ~ a more sensible place to keep them, methinks. I don't use the meat platters very often as they are so large, but they do come in very handy at times like Christmas.

Mum gave them to me a number of years ago. She had been given them years earlier by our next-door-neighbour, and they had belonged either to her mother or grandmother.

I adore how they have faded with the passage of time ~ very shabby chic! I must admit, though, that I would love to know what they looked like when new ;-)

Well, would you look at that ~ another photo of Amber, this time enjoying the autumn sunshine in the garden. It was obviously very tiring watching Adrian and I tidying and rearranging 'Steptoe's Yard' LOL

I do love this lantern :-) Adrian, though, thinks it should go in the dustbin since it is now so "tatty"! I adore how gorgeously rusty it has become ~ and it is most definitely staying put!

Oooops, another photo of poochie ~ now, how did that slip in ;-)

Just look at Miss Babs ~ she is now a tail-less chicken! She is moulting and as usual, her tail feathers have gone first LOL Prudence and Abigail look like they are starting a moult, too, and the hen house looks like there has been a chicken massacre in there with all the feathers laying around! Let's hope they all get it over and done with before the cold weather sets in ~ else I will be knitting them chicken-sized sweaters ;-)