Welcome Josje - and I have more news to share

Welcome Josje - and many thanks for becoming a Follower of my mini world.  I sincerely hope you visit often and leave a comment - all welcome.  It is such fun to share with others who share the same interests and who are from different places all around the globre.

And I have more to share with you about Flower Pot Cottage.  It is well on the way to being finished.  The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy and I haven't had a great deal of time to spend on it, but here is a photo as of last week:

The roof looks very pale in the photos - but it is quite considerably darker in reality.  It was quite funny actually, because I followed the instructions doing my interpretation of what I thought 'coffee' coloured paint would look like, then what 'taupe' is.  The result was more of a rich golden brown highlighted with taupe than a thatched roof vbg.  Very attractive, and indeed it suited the cottage very much indeed, but not the right colour for a thatched roof at all.

Some research on the internet yielded photos of beautiful English thatched roofs, and I also discovered as a side issue that there were about 6 or so different versions of taupe, including a purplish one. 

So I mixed my own colour until I got one that matched the colours in the photos.  And then I remembered that up in the top of our son's wardrobe was a 1,000 piece jigsaw of a lovely English cottage with a thatched roof and whitewashed walls.  We dug it out and sure enough my self-mixed paint was a perfect match.

 I made a  lighter version and a darker one of the same colour and used them to add highlights and shading.  I do become very frustrated when the colours come out too pale in photos!

In these two photos you will see some white patches on the ground - that is where I will have garden.  They are larger than on the model that Bea did because I envisage this gem of a cottage with a large garden.

And of course you have noticed that the furry resident has already moved in?  His name is Garfield, after my gorgeous ginger tom who passed away just 3 years ago at the ripe old age of 19.  And his sister Tinker (short for Tinkerbelle when she is good and just plain Tinker when she is naughty) will be there too shortly, named after my lovely grey tabby who went the year before aged 18.

Here I've removed the front and the front roof.  I'm putting a small bathroom on the first floor, and it is just sitting there at the moment - it has moved out of position somewhat and I didn't notice that when I took the photo.  You will be able to see into the bathroom - just a glimpse - through the open door or look down into it if the roof is off.

The quilt on the bed is just there for the photo too - it has to be tamed yet.  If I use it, then it will be properly draped and fixed into place of course.  As you can see, I already have a fair start on furniture for the cottage (remember all those kits I made up when I did the post called 'I could open a furniture shop'?) Unfortunately apart from the rocker there's nowhere to sit and relax at the moment but hopefully that will be remedied very soon.

And did you notice the fireplace in the bedroom?  It's Bea's full brick one; I've cut it down to be shorter, added a hearth and a mantle to it.  And downstairs the aga (from Jenny Wren, through Grace Shaw of Virtual Dollhouse),. will be housed in a 'proper'  cottage kitchen fireplace.  I've already carved a super beam to go across it and am waiting for Bea's 1:24 scale kitchen book to arrive so I can downscale the one from there to use here.  I have made what I think the chassis would be but am waiting to do the bricks and tiling or whatever until I check the measurements.

And here is the start of the garden.

Hmmmmn, you can't see the hydrangea bush or the ivy well in this photo, but you can see the hanging basket of geraniums outside the window near the front door.  And of course the arbor, which will have a vine (roses maybe?) climbing over it.  But it probably won't be located where it is here. 

Remember I said I wanted a large garden?  Well, I have that all mapped out on an extra piece of board, with positions of plants marked.  It will make an extra 3" at the front of the cottage and maybe go up the side too.  With lots of flowers and lawn etc.  Do you hear that Elly - LOTS of quarter scale flowers LOL!

I've made progress in fact - on Sunday I filled the garden beds that you see above so they are no longer empty.  I have quite a supply of assembled flower kits - again, you might remember them from a previous blog post.  Now the garden has a different hydrangea bush, especially shaped to fit against the wall.  The rest of the best is filled with ageratum.  Under the window near the door is a patch of daffodils and the rest of that bed is also filled with ageratum.  The hanging basket is attached to the roof so that it hangs a bit better (though it makes replacing the front wall rather an interesting extercise).  The pot in the corner of the walls is waiting to be filled and obviously lots more ivy will be added.  Now it  looks like this:

Drat! The ageratum don't show up well at all.  They do in reality, of course, and they look really pretty against both the hydrangea and the daffodils.

Here is a closer view of the garden area:

And now the cottage will stay at this stage for a couple of weeks because - I am having a holiday!  A real holiday.  It's the trip I mentioned before, with my miniatures friend Jan in Queensland.  I flew up this morning and Jan drove over 100 kms to meet the plane - which was delayed by an hour and a half so the poor girl had to wait.  Then we drove back - the long way, because the shorter way is flooded (yes, still).  And everywhere along the trip there is water laying beside the road and on the ground - over any lower-lying area.

We didn't come straight home though.  There is a patchwork shop in one place that just had to be visited, and happened to have a sale on......and another shop that had some lovely cotton lace.....and of course by then it was way past lunch time ...... and so we didn't arrive at her place until 4pm.  But I am settled in now, my body clock is somewhat bemused by the time difference even though it's only one hour.  Probably due to the fact I had a molar extracted yesterday (never an easy thing with my teeth) and I'm still getting over the 5 injections it took to numb it, plus lack of sleep for the past week plus a big few days.

While I am here we are going to mainly MINI - yaaaaaaay!  I packed both my checked baggage and carry-on to the absolute limit with mainly miniatures and tools and things.  3/4 of my main suitacase in fact vbg.  But yes, I did bring some clothes too!

So over the next 10 days - it will be the English Cottage by Debbie Young taking shape.  Keep tuned folks.