Tea Rose Home in a Bed and Breakfast

Posted by Mr. Tea Rose Home on behalf of Mrs. Tea Rose Home.

Hi everyone! I know I usually update my post on Fridays. Today's post is a little boring, so bear it with me. I went in to the hospital to get a procedure done this morning. Even though I'm home, I can't do much right now. For those of you who are new to this blog you might be wondering, "What procedure?".... No I didn't get plastic surgery or anything like that to improve future pictures of me. If you want to find out go here, it will explain a little of my condition.

The procedure is pretty routine for me, so I am OK. Besides, Mr. Tea Rose Home is taking good care of me. I should be able get up and resume my regular schedule sometime next week.

Meanwhile, It is the perfect time for me to catch up on my reading and I might be having a breakfast in bed. So I can't complain.

So Everyone, Have a nice weekend and see you all next week!

Mr. Tea Rose Home: Well that's it folks, I guess I have to try and figure out what to do for breakfast. "Honey! Where do you keep the milk!?"

White, Silver and Wood

With Hubby out of town all week, I decided to paint our kitchen walls. But let me just say (in case I've implied otherwise), that I absolutely dread painting. I think by far the hardest part for me is just getting started.

For example, I put on my calender "Paint Kitchen Tuesday." Wednesday came and about 5pm, I called my Mom and said, "ugh, I have to paint the kitchen today...at some point." It was 6pm before I started and almost midnight before I finished.

I painted the walls Simply White (eggshell finish), which is the color we used on the cabinets, shelves and trim (in semi-gloss). With a fresh clean slate, I then experimented with creating a not so kitcheny kitchen!

Jennifer over at The Newlywed Diaries inspired me with this post! As I began gathering up some not-so-kitcheny items, I started to gravitate towards all things white, silver and wood.



I added a clock, some candlesticks, an alabaster bud vase that I put toothpicks in (to add some wood) and my sweet little owl figurine.

I didn't spend very much time on arranging things - can you tell? I sort of began with the basics of all the whitewear dishes and drinking glasses we'd be using on a regular basis. To balance out those kitchen items, I added my Grandmother's old candelabra, her big silver tray and her old little lamb print...oh, and her old owl print that I reframed. xo

I tried to break away from my previous tendency to create too much symmetry. I still tried to balance things out, but in a more irregular way.

I like how the light reflects on the silver things.

I also really love my owl figurine.

And look, here we are...I think this will be Hubby's favorite not so kitcheny addition to our shelves. xoxo

A DAY IN SAFFRON WALDEN ..........

The other day, I went to a town about 40 minutes away from me, called Saffron Walden.

When the Doomsday Book was compiled in 1086, Saffron Walden consisted of 120 households. It's a little larger now !

The Saffron crocus was being grown here in the late 1300's and by the early 1500's was the centre of the saffron industry in this country. Saffron was in great demand for the woollen industry and brought wealth to the town.

This is part of the market square. The town market is said to be one of the earliest markets, starting around 1141 and the town grew up around it.

Malt was another commodity which Saffron Walden successfully traded in the 1870's. Conical shaped roofs of the malting's dominated the skyline and there were once as many as 15 pubs in the town of which only a few remain today, the above pub, The King's Arms, being one of them.

The Sun Inn.

Pargeting is the ornamentation of plastered and rendered building facades that would otherwise be smooth. The term was once also used to include internal decoration.

Pargeting ranges from simple geometric surface patterning to exuberant sculptural relief of figures, flowers and sea monsters. English plasterwork became increasingly elaborate in the 16 century and there are some lovely examples in Saffron Walden. The Sun Inn being one of the most elaborate.

The original raw material is called Parge.......... a mixture of sand and lime with a binder like hair. Many additional ingredients are recorded including urine, loam, soot, tallow, road scrapings, cheese, dung, blood and salt !! YUK !!
It's a bit of a worry of how and where they got some of those ingredients from !!!!

A quaint old English town with a great deal of history.... and, I've only just scratched the surface of the history of Saffron Walden.

Jackie