America

Well, it feels like a long time since I have 'blogged'! I have been enjoying the summer holidays and many a cream tea. We had so many that I'm wishing I had done some kind of point system and worked out which was best... Alas, I didn't. But I can say that a National Trust cream tea is head and shoulders above the rest, and we had a LOT of National Trust cream teas! Delicious!

Waking in the night to feed my baby boy is now a very normal part if my life. At first it was awful! But now I cope! The joy of a smartphone is that while I'm feeding I can catch up on Facebook, look at photos on Instagram, read the Bible, and even write a blog! ;)

Usually I will feed, be on my phone a bit to stay awake, but not do anything where I have to use my brain too much at 4am. However, last night I had a sudden intrigue to look at a map of the United States of America. My reasoning was threefold: I have recently watched the friends episode where Ross can't name all 50 states, my own geography is pretty shocking, and we have just had friends move out to California and I wanted to see where they were. 

So, having fed my boy and he had fallen back to sleep, I had caught up on Facebook and Instagram and what I should have done was to go straight back to sleep but I thought I would just have a quick glance at a map of the ol' U S of A (on the maps on my phone!). Big mistake! I now could NOT get back to sleep. I was trying to plan a holiday in my head where we would drive around America. Whether it would be when my boy was one or two, or if we should wait til he's older, and what if I was pregnant again and would we go at Easter or in the summer, where would we stay, we couldn't spend too much time driving with children... You can imagine how my mind was racing! 

Anyway, after being awake for well over an hour I feel I have now learnt my lesson. Don't look at a map of America in the middle of the night! 

Sense and Sensibility

I am a big fan of Jane Austen, I am also a big fan of the National Trust! I love wandering around the houses, finding secret doors, seeing the difference between 'upstairs and downstairs', the servants passageways, the grand four poster beds, chandeliers, curtains and ceilings! 

I decided to watch Sense and Sensibility on Monday night, the film with Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant etc. James my husband was out at football, and little Leo had gone to sleep. 

I utterly enjoyed having the film on and getting on with some card making. It is such a beautiful story and I love all the period costumes, language and houses! Plus some 'me time' to be creative!

On Tuesday my husband and I decided to have a visit to Salisbury, not too far from us in Winchester. We discovered, on our newly found National Trust app, there is a property right by the cathedral in Salisbury. 

We found Mompesson House in the cathedral close, it was beautiful! My favourite part was some doors that were actually bricked up behind! The guide was explaining that people would put these doors in that didn't go anywhere, to give the impression to visitors that their house was bigger than it was, that it went on and on! Brilliant!

We also found the little tea shop in the garden. The garden wasn't massive, but it was very tranquil and a bit of a haven. There were bees buzzing around the many lavender bushes and croquet on the lawn! We enjoyed a delicious and very peaceful cream tea.

All in all, a lovely day!

As we were leaving Mompesson House, I spotted a book by where we had left the buggy... Mompesson House was where they had filmed Mrs Jennings' London house in the 1995 film of Sense and Sensibility! 

So of course when I got home I just had to put it on again to spot the rooms of Mompesson House and figure it all out! Very exciting!

Do you enjoy visiting old houses and grounds? Have you been somewhere and spotted it in a film or on tv?