Crescendo

Crescendo - now that's a lovely musical term and nicely sums up the activity happening in the studio, house and garden at the moment. One week now before Spring Fair Birmingham, the giant of the UK trade shows. Preparations got off to a gentle start after Christmas with designs going off to the printers, thoughts being jotted down, lists drawn up, but not a lot of activity to start with. We then had to move up a gear with some marketing - newsletters, surveys and the like. And now we're at a bit of a gallop....

Mr PLD is busy renovating the displays - hosing down our horticultural crates that make up the stand, painting bits of MDF, checking light fittings and the like. While I've been busy doing the more "creative" stuff (I like to think!) - cutting stencils:

 

and painting wooden clothes pegs!:

But I must be careful that my crescendo ends on a high, and not an awful bang....long bath and glass of wine at the end of the day helps!

Valentine's Day

With Valentine’s Day fast approaching, I thought I’d dig up a few interesting facts relating to the annual celebration. 

With Welsh cards being an ever popular part of our range, and Nicola now studying over in Wales, I was interested to find out that St. Dwynwen is the Welsh equivalent of St. Valentine, and that the celebration of this Welsh patron saint of lovers actually occurs on January 25th.

Dwynwen lived during the 5th century and fell in love with a prince. Unfortunately her father had already arranged that she should marry someone else. She was so upset that she could not marry her prince that she begged God to make her forget him and then devoted herself to God for the rest of her life. She founded a convent on Llanddwyn, off the west coast of Anglesey, where a well named after her became a place of pilgrimage after her death in 465AD. 

Here's one of our Welsh cards - big kiss!

"Big kiss"

The Chinese also do not celebrate Valentine’s Day on Feb 14^th, but rather, the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar year – personally I can’t work that one out, but I’m sure some of you can.

This last little snippet tickled me slightly: it turns out that 3% of pet owners prefer to give valentine gifts to their pets, as they are more grateful than humans, I’m sure there are a few of you that can relate to that! 

Who can resist this little border terrier!

We have a few Valentine designs that you may enjoy here on our website and on this page you can find some of our dog cards with hearts - but contact us if you'd like a gold heart on a different design.

Apologies

Oh it has been a long time since we last wrote anything here! It's been an amazingly busy few months, but help is at hand: Emma and I will be sharing the joys of writing here, with little anecdotes and stories, so there's a much greater chance that there'll be posts to read - starting very shortly.....