Fairies and foraging.....

After the success of the painting for my mum - she loved it! and chatting to a lady in the haberdashery shop I plucked up the courage to ask a local shop in town which sells the most delightful things mainly to do with fairies, if I could put some art in her shop, she said yes and ever since then I have been really joyous and enjoying painting when I can squeeze it in around the garden and boys, I came across the idea I would do the four seasons, so I started with autumn, I love the warm colours and listening to the crispy leaves under foot and my painting just appeared thinking of these things, you can't see on this pic but it has got glitter and little diamante on her wings, there are gold leaves that glisten in the light on the trees too and she is looking at a hedgehog. I have completed spring too but not took a pic yet.

Other things I have been up to is really getting into the idea of free food and foraging, this has appealed to me for the past year or two and I'm finally getting around to learning more, so with my trusty flower guide in hand we went in search of elder flowers, I guessed we would have a fair trek to find some but lo and behold around the corner from our house in the cemetery was loads of the stuff! now I will add, this was not near any graves - I'm not THAT bad....and I did ask the gardener who was more than happy to let us have some, even though he did that smirk, you know the one, where they think your a loony hippy mama who has been let out for the day!

We filled our shopper with elder flowers, the boys did take some persuading at first as they thought they would "get done" for taking it, they did voice the opinion "that we could just buy some". But after a mum talk they came round to the idea, mainly to stop me going on I guess!
They quite happily started picking off the flowers to put in the bucket but after half a bag got really bored with the whole thing, my eyes and nose was streaming as it really set off my hay fever, Adam was not happy at being covered in pollen, but finish they did and then into the kitchen to add the lemon, sugar and boiling water....

Ooh the stench that filled the air of floral, sweet pollen when the water went on, it really was strong, that made them laugh at me for coming up with such a daft idea as drinking flowers!
Lets hope it tastes OK or this will be another "where mum went wrong" story!