Well, I hope your Easter holiday break has been fun, the showers of April are in full force here in the UK, I think of it as rainbow weather. Sunshine often appearing moments after the rain creates magical coloured arcs in the sky, and I always try to work out where it ends ... It's also the time for baby wildlife to be born, something Im very close to.
One of my favourite discoveries over the last year are the candles of The Botanical Candle company. A one woman operation, with the added twist being the lovely vintage containers that Amalia finds to pour her fragranced soy wax into. From tins, to jelly moulds, it is hard to choose. Amalia Apothecary lives in Shaftesbury and often sells at the Frome market, which Im hoping to check out as I really want to have a look around that town.
The vase above is from a small collection of Chippendale Art Deco glass that we have at home, recognisable by the weight and the trophy style handles.
April brings more light, longer days and, of course, more blooms in the garden, little vases are all over the house with snippets of forsythia, grape hyacinth, daffodils and forget-me-nots. It will soon be time to visit the bluebell woods near my home, always such a feast for the senses.
My two personal favourite candle containers are the old blue glass Ball jars and the ceramic marmalade containers.
Ive started collecting the last scraps of soy wax candles and I then melt them down in an attempt to make a whole new one. I bought some wicks and, inspired by Amalias inventiveness with containers, made a candle in a victorian jelly mould.
For the last three months I have been receiving flowers from Bloom & Wild, a postal delivery service. While waiting for my own garden to supply me with blooms this has been lovely. I've been stuck in the house quite a bit as currently I have some foster baby squirrels to look after so having flowers around the house has kept me happy.
Some of you may know that Im a volunteer for a wildlife hospital called St. Tiggywinkles. One of my areas of voluntary work involves feeding orphaned baby animals who require care every few hours. The hospital have trained me so that I can bring the orphans home where I have set up a room where my cats can't go. Here I have a cage with heat pads inside as it is vitally important to keep small baby animals warm. I mix up a warm milk and feed it to them from a pipette, not always very easily I must say, some take to it better than others. So right now I have four little squirrels a few weeks old, still with their eyes closed but cheeky as you would expect.
Tiggywinkles has started to fill up with orphaned rabbits, foxes and such, and before we know it the hedgehog season will be upon us.
Styling The Seasons is a concept from Katy at Apartment Apothecary and Charlotte at Lotts and Lots. Many bloggers join with the theme and so to search for it use the hashtag StylingTheSeasons and hopefully you can find some inspirational ideas.
Similary if you go to At Mine, you can also search for Styling The Seasons and perhaps while you are there look at the blog post I wrote for them about how to gold leaf items around the home. You can find it http://blog.atmine.com/
