Inspired Naturally – Kate MacAndrew, artist and school workshop leader based in Derbyshire

In between packing my weekend looked like this:

 It has been so hot and sunny here this weekend, it would have been wrong not to have enjoyed it a little bit! After tea, we enjoyed a lovely drive into Ashbourne and I couldn’t resist taking some photos. Image 1: Bunting up for a local fete - Image 2: A friendly cow we passed on the way to our walk by the river – Image 3: The river Dove – Image 4: A beautiful rose in a garden we passed.

I also spent some time tending to my vegetables in the garden and thought I’d update you on their progress: 

Image 1: The Jalapeno chilli peppers are getting bigger – Image 2: There is only one green pepper so far but it’s doing well! – Image 3: Ornamental thistle bought at the Gardener’s World Show last week – Image 4: A pretty flower we’ve had a while that reminds me of the old fashioned hard-boiled sweets!

As far as my Life List’s progress, I’m well on my way to beginning to learn how to grow my own fruit and veg. There are also a few tomatoes beginning to come, photos when they are a little bigger! Once I’ve moved, I will be planning out the vegetable patch with the help of this book. It has great allotment plans and info on how to grow every fruit and veg imaginable. It is full of beautiful photography which always grabs my attention!

Hello there! I thought I’d update you again with my cat painting’s progress. As you can see, the changes are subtle: I have added more shapes in the background and begun completing the hairs on the edge of his head – this has really made it stand out from page.

You may be wondering what my ‘new addition is?!’ Well, ever since losing Smudge I have wanted another cat………..

Please say hello to my new kitten who I will be bringing home at the beginning of August:

He’s a real sweetie and already very photogenic! He is a Maine Coon, a breed originating from North America. I am very excited about bringing him home and have already begun looking for things for him! I’m sure when he arrives I’ll be posting many more photos of him!

In other news, I’m busy packing ready for moving next week….I’d forgotten how much stuff we have!

Until the next post I’ll leave you with another photo of my new kitten (still deciding on a name!)

I am moving house in a little under two weeks time and will have a much bigger garden to play with! I have always wanted both a vegetable patch (which this garden has) and a chicken run. As it stands, there is a fenced chicken run next to the vegetable patch, with space for a large house and secondary run. The above picture is of Omlet’s Eglu Cube chicken Run and one will be arriving in my new garden a week or two after I’ve moved in! I have chosen to have mine purple because I plan to have lots of purple flowers surrounding the run. I am so excited to be finally getting my very own chickens!

If any of you are interested in keeping your own chickens I would recommend taking a look over at Omlet’s website; not only do they have various runs available but they have very useful information on hens and chickens which you might find useful. The lovely Bonnie from Goinghometoroost also gave me this very useful link to help you find the perfect chickens for you and if you’re in the UK, I found this site and this book which are also very interesting. I am going to get my chickens in September, after I have got back from my last holiday this year – I think I’ll be more excited about getting back off my holidays this time! Plus, I have yet to decide on the type of chicken I’d like….too many decisions!

Phew, what a hectic weekend! Saturday saw us visit the BBC Gardener’s World Show and it didn’t disappoint! Upon arrivng you were immediately overwhelmed by the sheer volume of plants and flowers both on display and for sale. I have to admit quite a few purchases were made, including:

Some Sarracenias – a carnivorous plant with beautiful colours

and a tree fern – here’s a close-up of one of its many fronds yet to unfurl.

I will include more photos of all the plants when they’re settled in their new garden – at the moment they’re dotted about randomly in pots and other containers. Despite promising myself I wouldn’t take any photos of the show so I could enjoy everything without carrying a camera, I took a couple of photos with my iPhone of a fantastic willow sculpture and one of my favourite flowers, the foxglove:

I love foxgloves and this large display was stunning.

This willow sculpture was incredible

After a bit of research after I returned home, I found this sculpture to be by Tom Hare, a very talented guy who specialises in creating large woven sculptures like this one.

I also came across an artist, Neill Jenkins, whose work I loved. I came away with a few of his fine art greetings cards. Below are the originals he had on display:

Later this week I will be posting about some other additions to my home……exciting stuff!

Hi everyone! I thought I’d share with you the progress of my cat painting (I hadn’t done anymore to it for a few weeks until today!) The scan above is after I started to paint the background. I needed to do this so I can begin finishing off the edges of the cat, bringing the white hairs over the background to give a more realistic finish. It’s also crucial to add the background before the main image is finished so you can see if it works together.

Here is my Smudge painting after about 10 hours worth of painting. I have begun building the background up further and started to add the blurred brown shapes which are leaves in the background of the photo I’m painting from. I’m hoping it won’t be too long until I’ve finished the background so I can start the eye – that will be my favourite part to paint!

I hope you are all having a good week, it’s gloriously sunny here so I’m going to try and make the most of it by working outside!

Hello everybody! It feel like a lifetime since I managed to blog anything! As far as I know the problem has been fixed (it was a combination of a server error with connectivity and my error of trying to upload too bigger pictures – which I thought I’d sorted!) Anyhow, enough of that, here’s the long awaited Scotland photos!

View of a loch as we drove to Ockle

View from our cottage window

Beach over the field from our cottage

The very beautiful Sanna Bay about 30 mins away

A crab we found in the shallows

Seals off Ardnamurchan Point (near the lighthouse)

A seal taken from from a boat we hired

Another view of Sanna Bay

A Buzzard – it was very high in the sky but managed to get a decent shot!

Scotland was absolutely wonderful and I’ll upload these photos and more on my flickr page for you to look at.

This is going to be a very short post I’m afraid….I have been trying to upload photos and update my blog for the last couple of days with no luck. There are some problems with my web host and I am in the process of waiting for them to get back to me to *hopefully, fingers crossed* solve the problem! It’s taken me lots of attempts to even log in and write this! So until then it’s going to be quiet around here.

I hope to be able to post properly again very soon!

K x

PS It feels awful not being able to include a picture!

A week last Friday we made our way up to Scotland via the Lake District. Our final destination was Ockle, a tiny village on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula, the most westerly point of the UK mainland. It is quite a journey so we decided to split the commute and stay in the Westmorland Hotel, Cumbria. I have to say I didn’t really know what to expect but it was beautiful.

The above photo was taken in one of the seating areas by the bar, overlooking the running water and waterfalls around the hotel. We enjoyed a relaxing afternoon: drinking tea and juice, eating cheese scones and in the evening we took a beautiful drive to a nearby town where we enjoyed fish and chips by the river.

The following morning we travelled to our final destination, through mountains and past fields and lochs.

Finally, we arrived in Ockle and spent the week relaxing and seeing/doing as many things as we could. I’m going to sort through the rest of my photos and put them in a separate blog post later today – an all photo post!

I just wanted to pop in and show you a tiny sample of the photos I took whilst on holiday in Scotland. I have been crazy busy since arriving home last night but didn’t want to leave my blog unattended any longer! I will update again very soon with lots of photos, stories and updates.

Until then take care