I think the pictures speak for themselves…
I had nothing to do with this. In fact none of us said anything about it, nor did anyone in the supermarket. Does this mean that they are used to this sort of thing?
So the fun did not stop at Hidcote Manor, no. On the long drive home we spotted a sign for The Cotswold Falconry Centre. We exchanged glances in the front of the car and decided a little detour was in order.
In case it has passed you by we have three little poppets who love animals and Charlie particulary loves birds of prey. The Cotswold Falconry Centre is set in the most beautiful countryside and has lots of falcons, eagles and owls.
After looking at the birds we watched a great display with massive vultures…
a golden eagle and some wonderful owls. This litle fella flew straight over to where we were standing at the side.
I think he knew he had found a friend. Owls are wise like that.
Charlie would have liked to bring his new friend home but the fish may have been jealous.
I have wanted to visit Hidcote Manor for some time to see the lovely gardens, I am so rock and roll you know. So I dragged poor Andrew and the Children across three counties to see these gardens on what was probably the hottest weekend of the year. We made good time driving through some lovely countryside whilst enjoying a spot of car bingo.
It was worth it as here is the lovely house.
I am not going to bore you with lots of pictures of the garden but they are both formal….
and wild.
There is something for everyone and it is all linked by little paths, bridges and holes in big hedges. At this time of year there were also lots of butterflies. It is great for the children to explore.
After some ice-cream on the croquet lawn (people were actually playing croquet – it was all so English) we stumbled upon a massive old tree with children climbing up it. Some wonderful people from Tree Frog were helping big ones climb up with pulleys while the
When the sun is shining nothing is a lovely as a big bowl of cherries.
Cherries are Lucy’s favourite…
and she also loves her Cherry Spotty Hair Clips.
It was such a lovely day that as soon as I took this photo she was off to play in the garden. It was much too hot for messing about with fruit and hair clips.
P.S If you love cherries as much as us you might also like our cherry bow hair clips.
Today we met up with our friends at Butterfly World near St Albans. We have been before but this was the first time in the summer with everything blooming. It is very pretty.
The butterfly house is a temporary structure which is really hot and full of lovely plants and lots of butterflies.
The children love the butterfly house, especially when the butterflies land on them.
They can get a really close view of the butterflies which Emily loved, it was very hard to stop her from touching them.
We had to come out of the butterfly house as it was so hot but we cooled down looking over the whole site which includes lots of lovely landscaping and gardens. Okay so this photo is included as it shows the little poppets in their co-ordinating ladybird outfits. Too cute.
We then explored the gardens which have different themes, our favourite is designed to make you feel like an ant. It is like being in Alice in Wonderland.
After a nice run about the gardens we headed to the study centre as there was an insect experience today. You may be noticing a bit of a theme here. Charlie does like to get hands on all types of animals.
Charlie is very brave and held a massive cockroach and a really fast stick insect but the praying mantis was just too weird and could have bitten him. He had a good look at it though.
I think we have another couple of budding insect handlers here but at the moment they might try to eat them, especially little William.
The leaf-cutter ants were our last stop and everyone enjoyed looking at them carrying their heavy leaves and making a complex city in the soil.
We really did all have the most lovely day (though we didn’t think the cafe was very good) and we will go back to Butterfly World again.
P.S We don’t have any butterfly hair clips so because the girls were wearing their ladybird outfits Lucy wore her ladybird clips. These were not only popular with the girls but also the butterflies.
We decided today that we would like to feel a bit of the London Olympic excitement so the children and I put on our red, white and blue clothes (complete with lottie nottie Team GB hair bows and took a trip into London.
We met up with Grammi and Grandpa and headed into town on the bus. This was Emily’s first trip on a London bus and we think she enjoyed it.
Ok i might have got a little bit confused and thought the marathon swimming was happening at the serpentine in Hyde Park today. I was wrong and this dawned on us as we approached and it was rather quiet. But this turned out to be much better as we saw the competitors practicing without any crowds.
We had lunch at the side of the serpentine lake with a wonderful view of the swimmers and the support vessels (we were itching to have a go on the RNLI jet ski).
After a yummy lunch we went to the massive 2012 shop in the middle of Hyde Park and we were so excited to see the Olympic Silver Medal winner Louis Smith. We had watched his fantastic pommel horse performance on Sunday and we were thrilled that he signed our Olympic 2012 team GB tea towel and we got to touch his medals.
This made our day. We are going to the Paralympics next month and can’t wait but today we certainly felt London 2012 Olympic Fever. Brilliant.
P.S Emily was thrilled with her new London 2012 duck for the bath. Duck Duck Duck.
I have spent a lot of time designing all aspects of lottie nottie, the logo, the cards the clips are on, the website, the photography – as well as the actual products. This has been a really enjoyable process and I thought I was doing well until I was designing a new image for the website homepage and facebook page.
I was cutting strawberries up for Emily and thought I would do some shots of our bestselling strawberry hair clips while I had a big bowl of strawberries. So while I was playing around with the strawberries I came up with this shot.
I was quite happy with it until I turned round to see that Lucy had been quietly working on her own shot behind my back.
Now I thought that was quite good. I was impressed with her composition but no, Lucy did not think it was not quite right.
And I think she was right, I like her reworked composition.
So I have appointed Lucy assistant creative director of lottie nottie and she accepted the role graciously.
P.S In exchange for her creative input Lucy will be receiving hair clips, lots of hair clips.
it is a wonderful thing when your baby says their first words and we were thrilled when little Emily’s first word was ‘duck’. Every duck she sees she points at and says ‘duck’ repeatedly. This summer while we have been out and about we have often stopped to feed ducks as it gives Emily such pleasure.
These are some of our favourites…
When we feed the ducks we don\’t use bread as it is not good for their tummies, we use proper duck pellets.
We also make sure that we are wearing suitable Duck Hair Clips (new ones to be listed tomorrow).
But as much as we love going to feed the ducks, Emily’s favourite ducks are in the bath.
P.S Emily can also say ‘banana’, do we see a yellow theme emerging here?
Inbetween watching some terrific rowing and getting ready to watch some amazing athletics we took the children for a quick dash out to the local garden centre. This was to be a rather dull trip to check out wooden posts and the children were less than excited about it.
Then we walked round the corner to find an animal experience event. Suddenly the children were in the middle of a whole selection of snakes, spiders and lizards. Not my cup of tea but they loved it.
I was so super proud of my poppets. The photo of the day went to Lucy though when she got her hands on the large snake.
Charlie then settled into a garden chair with a bearded dragon.
Suddenly a rabbit is looking like a much more likely prospect.
P.S I had to be a brave mummy in front of the children so I also held the big snake (but I didn’t like it).
Little Emily has been walking for over a month now and she has been kicking about in her ‘padder’ type shoes. This is fine but Emily can’t go out on the wet grass with them as they get soggy.
I remembered today that I had stashed away a small pair of wellies a couple of months ago. When Emily saw them she had to put them on immediately.
How happy is this little girl with her wellies. Priceless.
She loves them so much that she even wanted to wear them to bed. I let her say good night to Lucy still wearing them but I did remove them before I put her in her cot.
Tomorrow we will try them out in the garden. I think that there will be a fair bit of splashing in muddy puddles.
P.S I do plan on getting her some lovely first shoes but I am just waiting for the new stock of shoes to come in to our local shoe shop.
