#passiton

I have been tagged by lovely Josie at Sleep is for the Weak to help spread the word and get people to sign the petition for Save the Children here.

Here’s how it works…

1) Get your child to either draw or craft a self portrait of themselves now or in the future, perhaps imagining what they will look like or what they might do. Check out Red Ted Art’s self portrait post on some tips to get started!

2) Sign the Save the Children petition and share news of it with your friends.

3) Write a blog post about it as soon as possible, featuring your children’s pictures and perhaps how you made them together, and including info about Save the Children and the petition. We want as many people linked up AND signed up the petition by Sunday 29th May 2011

5) Tag 8 blogging friends to do the same – #passiton!

6) Come back and link up your posts, either here, or at Josie’s blog or over at Red Ted Art, so we can all see each other’s posts and if you have time, go and leave some comment love on each others posts! It’s a blog-hop link-up so you can even publish the list of entries on your blog too.

Here are my eight bloggers:

Heather at Home to Heather
Emily at More than Just a Mother
Cherry at Cherry Menlove
Nova at Cherished by Me
Becky at English Mum
Carol at Further South of Granada
Mary at Kyootycenter
Maxabella at Maxabella Loves.

Have fun. And don’t forget to sign the petition and #passiton!

and the winner of the teapot is…

(cut and pasted in a virtuous, straight from my laptop fashion!)

Congratulations to commenter no 44, Muddling Along. And thank you all for the billions of comments, which were really lovely and I promise I will reply to them later this weekend.

Rachael
x

Royal Windsor Horse Show 2011

I have a strange sort of pre-Canada bucket list going on. I keep thinking of things I want to do before we go (yes, I know, it’s not far away and we can come back, but still). So on Saturday I went to Stow-on-the-Wold with my friend Nicola, to have the best cup of coffee you can get in England at the gorgeous hidden gem that is The New England Coffee House.

Yesterday we went to Royal Windsor Horse Show. That’s been on my things to do list since I was small, and England seemed like a far away country.

The Queen was in. However she was too busy doing Queenly things to say hello, so we spent the day doing horse show things.

Spanish horses were dramatic and beautiful, and the minor incident where one of the Andalucian stallions got a bit, er, over excited during the class made everyone laugh.

No1 child, who has inherited my love of all things horse-related, sat with me and watched the showing classes. It’s funny but when I was in the horse world they seemed deadly serious.

Bowler hatted men, judges in funny hats, and rows of shiny horse bottoms*.

Hunter wellies, tea in polystyrene cups and overpriced, underdone beefburgers. Horse shows all over the country, even Royal ones, are pretty much the same. I love them.

That’s another thing off the list. Next stop a return to Hidcote Manor Gardens, one of my favourite gardens in England.

If you haven’t yet entered the draw for the Cath Kidston teapot, go to the main Tales from the Village page and scroll down.

*if that doesn’t get me some weird Google hits, nothing will.

one year later – something for you

Tales from the Village is one year old this weekend, and it’s been a really lovely year for me. The title I chose was a bit of a misnomer, really, because it’s more tales from my garden. I’m sure that was a disappointment to the village gossips, who were hoping I was going to dish the dirt. But all good writers save the best details for their books, and whilst doing some final tidying of my first novel I already have plans for the second, and village life has given me lots of inspiration. Tee hee.

So to celebrate the first birthday of the blog, I decided to give something back.

A photograph of a teapot. I know, I’m too kind.

Not really, it’s a very lovely Cath Kidston Provence Rose teapot I bought yesterday, and it’s my little present to say thank you for reading, commenting, and sharing the blog with your friends.

I’m going to send this lovely shiny new teapot to someone who leaves a comment on this post. So go on, all of you, even those of you who read and never comment, because it seems scary – it’s not, I promise. Say hello, and I’ll number your comments and then put them into a magical randomising thingy and send one of you a present. Because I’m nice like that.

Unfortunately it would cost me about a million pounds to send a teapot overseas, so if you live outside the UK and your number comes up, I’ll send you this lovely (and rather less expensive to send) Cath Kidston Provence Rose double oven glove instead.

Exciting stuff! Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

To leave a comment: if you’re reading on the main page of Tales from the Village, you’ll see a little speech bubble up by the title of this post. Click on it, and scroll down to the bottom of the page. Fill in your name, your email address (this won’t be disclosed, don’t worry) and then write something in the box. ‘Give me a teapot’ will do, or ‘hello, I’m very shy and don’t comment on blogs’ (I spent years reading blogs and not commenting!). Then click the little box which confirms you’re not a horrible spam thing, and lo! a comment. It’s that simple.

And if you click ‘like’ on the little Facebook box to the right, or join the site using Google Friend Connect, or subscribe by email, that would be rather lovely, too.

Here’s to the next year, and the transformation from tales from the English countryside into something rather different.

- Rachael

House for Sale

4 bedrooms, detached, in desirable village in North Bucks, midway between Oxford and Milton Keynes.
Within the Royal Latin school catchment, complete with 100 foot garden.
Famous as the setting for Tales from the Village, the lovely blog you’re currently reading.
£385,000

It’s official – the big ‘for sale’ sign is on the way. Do you want a little tour of the house? There’s nothing nicer than nosing around and looking at people’s houses, I think. I can’t wait to start house-hunting when we move.