Weekends were made for...

Exploring with friends...

Running through gardens...

Swimming in rivers...

Lounging in the porch...

Starting a new project...

Bonding with family...

Enjoying a 'double-yolker'...

Scoffing cake...

Pulling funny faces.

This weekend has been the best.

'It will not always be Summer; Build Barns'

 {Title quote by Hesoid... Who also wrote 'Do not let a flattering woman coax and wheedle and decieve you... she is after your barn.' He needs to calm down REF: Barns}

We've been fanning the flames of DIY here at Derbyshire Towers recently, from Chicken Palaces to Glitter Jars. We've been thrifty, handy and cunning; producing some pretty nice bits of furniture and ornaments and fully taking advantage of the brilliant weather we've been having!

My top favourite has to be the beautiful rustic farmhouse table and benches my husband made at the weekend.

It's high up, sturdy, and has that homely rustic country feeling that sits so well on a warm Summer's evening. We had friend's over for an evening last week and the extra space for food and drink was well received. 

 Not to mention the extra room for well-fed stomachs to expand.

Initially I wanted to decorate the entire inside of the gazebo with these tissue paper garlands... but then I remembered that I'm a Mother who barely has the patience to put my pants on, let alone sit for hours twisting and tearing paper, life's too short.

These looked so pretty fluttering in the breeze though.

I made my handy-hubby {ew to the word 'hubby' but for alliteration's sake I'm sticking with it} a really special dinner to sit on his table, home-made pasta using eggs laid that morning from our three girls. You can't get fresher than that... except for the fresh watercress and parsley I used to make the simple sauce.

Gone are the days of Ikea and Argos, we've taken it upon ourselves to build new furniture and refurbish the old stuff worth saving, flat pack is out, individual custom-made pieces are in!

Things are not as they seem...

I've gotten a lot of lovely compliments from people/family about this photo saying how terrific it is, which is nice, but unfortunately we do tend to put our nicest photos on Instagram and Facebook.

They are usually carefully filtered, altered, and uploaded with appropriate tags such as 'love' 'family' 'cute' 'candyfloss' 'fucklookathowperfectweare'

Sometimes it's lovely to look at photos like this... on other occasions (usually where you look like shit and are having a rough day because your daughter did a sneaky poo in her nappy and you didn't realise until she'd spent the morning bouncing on it happily) you feel like shaking these perfect photo-taking people and shouting

'Shut up with your perfectness you dicks!'

So I thought I'd be honest, and reassure you that this picture is far from perfect...

~

The picture is artistically cropped because my Husband failed to point out that my pants were on show. They weren't nice pants either, they were comfy, well-worn pants with frogs on them.

I look like I'm about to sweep Nahla up into my bosom for a loving embrace, I'm actually pushing her away in an attempt to get her to stop pulling my hair.

The grass was soaking.

Nahla hated Daisies and showed her dominance over them by eating one.

We had walked for half an hour, in the heat, through a building site, for something to do whilst we waited for my Husband's car to pass it's MOT.

The car failed its MOT.

I had a blister the size of a terrier and the wind kept catching my dress so people got a good view of my frogs.

Here is an unedited photo from this scene that didn't make it to Instagram...

{You're looking for the frogs aren't you?}