Those of you in the UK will no doubt remember the snow we had a few weeks ago. For those that aren't in the UK, the country had a decent dusting of the white stuff, which lasted a few weeks. I was incredibly excited as I live in London and when I moved here I was told, by numerous people, that it never snowed in the city.

Last year it snowed, my first winter in London had snow and I was very happy. It appears that I've brought the snow with me, second winter and it snowed again! It snowed pretty much all day on Friday, to the point where my work closed early and we were all sent home. By Saturday it had stopped snowing so I took my camera to Kew Gardens and went to see what I could find.

Minka House

The Minka House is one of my favourite spots to visit when I visit the Gardens. It's an old Japanese house that was dismantled, the wooden frame shipped across the world from Japan to London, and then reassembled by Japanese carpenters and the folks that worked on the Globe Theatre in London. It's very pretty, and looks lovely whatever the season, including winter!

Lazy Snowman

King of Winter

There were lots of snowmen around the Gardens, lots of people were out with their children and snowmen were the main task of the day. One group had made one on a bench, and nearby he was being presided over by a snowman crowned with some oak leaves.

Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed for a little bit of February snow, and then I'll be ready for spring!

Have a nice day!

SNOW!

My first year living in London and I've been lucky enough to get some snow! My main worry about leaving Hertfordshire was that I would miss one of the best bits of winter, the village I grew up in gets snow and in previous years me and my siblings have had a lot of fun building snowmen in the garden but London is always a little bit warmer than the rest of the country so snow isn't that common.

I will confess to staring at the weather forecast all week waiting for the good news. Then on Friday afternoon everyone was announcing that it was meant to snow this weekend. On the one hand I was incredibly excited and on the other I was very worried that it would miss us and hit the rest of the country, my luck has been terrible recently so I expected lack of snow to follow suit.

Imagine my excitement last night then when a few flakes fell, and then a few more, and then the snow started properly. I was bouncing between my bed and the window on a regular basis to see the progress of it settling. I even slept with my curtains open last night so I could occasionally lift my head up and see the snow falling, although this didn't work very well as I'm short-sighted and don't sleep with my glasses on so every time I tried it all I could see the orange blur of the streetlights XD

When I woke up this morning it was already starting to melt, so I downed two cups of tea and ate a biscuit, pulled on a multitude of layers, grabbed two cameras and went to Kew Gardens. I took quite a lot of photos with my Dad's old Canon Digital Rebel and two with my aging pocket Nikon, the Canon ones are in RAW and will need to wait until I get a new PC before I can edit them, the Nikon ones are simply awful quality so I won't be posting them up on here. However regardless of photos the actual Gardens were beautiful covered in snow.

I also ended up going to Marks & Spencer to buy a scarf as I don't have one and since the cold is due to hang around a while longer I figured I should get one, and then I also ended up buy 2 cheese scones XD

I've already had chicken soup and a lovely fresh roll and more tea, this afternoon will feature baking some cookies and then I'm doing roast beef for my dinner tonight!

Have a lovely weekend everyone and if you've got snow, have fun with it!

Kew Fete

Yesterday was an event I’ve been looking forward to for weeks! The Kew Fete. I’m a big fan of fairs and fetes, most of them are focused on the local community so it’s quite interesting to see which small businesses are around in your area that you may not have realised existed!

Unfortunately it rained in the morning while I was there, but this is England and it’s summer so I pretty much expected it.

Along with stalls hosted by both businesses and charities there were also some traditional fairground rides!

 Tibidabo Carousel by bomobob

I love carousels, but I’m 25 years old and I think it would have looked very odd if I had gone on it all on my own. And sadly my family were in Cornwall this week so I couldn’t persuade them to visit me and go to the fair as well (I could have dragged my sisters on easily).

Since I couldn’t splurge my money on rides I decided to fill up my stomach instead!

 Crepe Divine by LipSmackinCreations

One thing I’ve been craving recently is crepes, French pancakes. Not quite like the one above (which also looks delicious) but simply filled with sugar. You can imagine my delight when I found a stall making them fresh!

I also had a delicious homemade burger from the stand run by “The Naked Turtle” (and ended up walking down to Richmond feeling like I might explode if I ate much else).

 Candy Floss Lip Balm by morganstreet

And then finally I bought a bag of candy floss, which I am currently eating (well, letting it melt on my tongue) as I write this.

Overall I had a lovely day. Obviously the appearance of sunshine in the morning would have been good but frankly I was walking around on my own so even that wouldn’t have kept me out much longer. Everyone there was very friendly, while I was waiting for my crepe to be made (by the company Opera Ice Cream) I had a nice chat with the owner’s wife, who’s an opera singer, and a gentleman passing by told me he’d had a crepe last year and it had been “brilliant”. And he was right, it was seriously delicious, if you ever see this stall at a fete, fair or market around London I really can’t recommend them highly enough!

I’m now desperately Googling to find more similar events in London XD

Have a nice day!

Kew Gardens

It's another Bank Holiday weekend! Sadly no Royal Wedding accompanying it so it was only 3 days off rather than 4 (I think we've been spoiled by that this year XD), but it's still nice to have a Monday off work.

So I went home (aka back to my parent's place) for a few days. Which meant that they brought me back to Kew yesterday (Sunday) and since they were here we decided to make a little trip to Kew Gardens.

And as it turns out, there's several people on Etsy who have been to the Gardens and received a bit of inspiration from them!

Kew Garden Gates by lindabutterfly

Palm House Kew by FlaxInk

Palm House at Sunset by 4artssake

Clearly they're not the only ones, we saw several photographers and at least one artist (complete with paint and multiple sketchbooks) as we were wandering around, although potential visitors need to be aware that Kew does not allow "commercial photography" without prior consent.

It's a lovely place to visit, there's more information on their website. If you're in London (namely south-west London, it's a bit of a trek from the center) then check it out!