Christmas

Yesterday i went to pick up my daughter from university.

Driving home was lovely, i enjoyed all her stories of the last few months.

How the years fly.

Pink and White Anniversary Bouquet

Today i will be posting off a lovely bouquet,

Hope they like it.

Pretty Paper Roses

Debbie.x

Pink Chicken House

Today we have sold our first chicken house on Ebay.

It was a beautiful pink chicken house.

in fact we sold two, one of the ladies who didn't win ordered one as well

Dungeness Again

Hope your weekend was as good as mine,we had a lovely weekend away at the seaside.
I don't know why i am so drawn to the sea, i stand and look at the waves for ages and feel so fantastic afterwards.
The place i love more than any where in the world is dungeness.... near the power station!! i go there every week if i can and i would love to live there, but sadly the prices of the little houses that are lovely wooden huts are way beyond my reach.
Who knows though what the future will hold, i dream of my life on the beach making my Paper Roses from my little wooden house with a vintage airstream caravan outside and living happily ever after.
I will just have to dream for now.
Debbie

My new banner

Over the weekend i was very lucky to win my new autumn banner from isabellascloset blog competition , i am so pleased and surprised. i have changed my colours to match,she is so clever please take a look at her blog.

We had a good weekend and even went to the beach at Camber Sands on Saturday had a paddle and collected some seashells too.

I really do miss taking the children its so different now that they are all grown up.
We rang them from the beach,they know how much we miss it.

My chickens are still alive and well, i feed them and and look at them they look back they seem happy.... i am going to put a mirror in so they can have a look at their selves.
Have a lovely week.
Debbie

My chickens are really here.

I am so excited, at last i have 3 little chicken's they are only about 10 week's old so are a bit shy,we picked them up yesterday from the son of a good friend of my husband he breed's the chickens for showing and he was so kind to give us them as a gift.
I think he realised how spoilt they were going to be.
As i was taking them away i mentioned how i wanted to make their home heated for the winter and maybe put in sheepskin beds to keep them nice and cosy ....
Well when we put them in their run my husband had made. they ate some food and lettuce drank some water then hopped into the chicken hut and lay on the straw.
i can't stop looking at them they are so lovely.
They do go to the toilet a lot though so maybe no sheepskin beds just lots of clean straw.
I have to keep them in the run for a few weeks to get used to where they will live.

Must go and make some Rose's now i keep getting distracted.
Debbie

Hay wagon

Recently we went to Pluckley summer fair.
This is a beautiful village in Kent very near where The darling buds of may was filmed.
While we were there my lovely husband Ed brought me the most fantastic Hay wagon for our garden .
He isn't what you would call the most romantic of men but he gave me this present out of the blue to display my Paper Roses on .It was such a lovely and unexpected surprise.
I love this so much it was made in France in the 1920's.

My chickens will be here soon.

My lovely husband Eddie has made me a fantastic chicken house ,
I have been looking at old magazines and some lovely chicken huts and wishing i could have a pet, i came up with an idea... a couple of chickens.
Perfect,so i brought some wood and asked Ed if he could build me a chicken hut like the ones in the books .
He made such a good job that i think he's little house was even better than the ones we saw in those magazines.He is so clever.
All ready now for the chickens which are coming later in the week.
I am so excited.

Lovely Anniversay Bouquet

I have been so busy since the last post.
My daughter is home from uni so i have been spending a lot of time with her.
My Roses have been doing well, i love making each bouquet different to send a romantic gift

Orders on Ebay

Over the past few weeks i have been busy .
I have had some very romantic guys order Roses for their wives for the 1st anniversary .
I have made Red Roses bouquet. Ivory Blue and Brown bouquet. Ivory. and some Pink
How sweet of them....
I hope they were a lovely surprise.

Hamstreet Country Fair

On Saturday we went to a fair at Hamstreet Kent.
There were lots of traditional stalls and lovely things to eat.

One of the displays was a old fashioned apple press, i have seen it before and had spoken to the gentleman who owned the machine once before.
This time i noticed a bucket full of wooden flowers that had been handmade , i asked the lady on the stall if i could buy a few.

We started talking and she told me her husband had made the flowers and that he was a Romany Gypsy, i mentioned that some of my family were as well and that we came from Erith.
She couldn't believe it and took me over to see her husband.
Isaiah Jackson
We quickly discovered that we were related . Amazing.

What a small world i am going to see them again at The Kent County show at Detling Maidstone which is coming up soon.

They still go fruit picking and i had a lovely time talking to them,

Some garden pictures

Today the weather is lovely took some pictures of how green everything is.

Single Stem Ivory Rose

I have been asked to make some single roses to use for a wedding table setting

Nan Grandad and Olive and why i make the Roses

When my Nan and Grandad stopped travelling and the land they owned and used to stay on in the winter time was compulsory purchased by the council , part of the agreement was the council gave the gypsy families money for the land and a house to rent, as you can well imagine it was a big shock for them after being born and raised in a caravan.
My Nan loved her house but because she was so used to going out she would still get ready at 7 o'clock in the morning and sit on a kitchen chair with her coat on waiting for the shops to open at 9 o'clock she would be out and about all day i used to see her on buses all over the place she just could'nt stay in.
Now my aunt Olive lived with them and never married, she was my favourite person in the world ,words cannot describe how lovely she was, she never went out and i mean never not even up the road .
All day long she would clean the house top to bottom it was spotless. They never owned a washing machine in all the years in the house, olive would wash everything by hand on a scrubbing board then wring it by hand or on the mangle and out it would go on the great big line my Grandad put up.

My Grandad got work on the council building houses and laying pavements he liked the work as it was out of doors,he used to walk me round and point to all of the places he worked on.
He used to have a bird aviary in the garden at the house he bred finches and canaries and little singing birds as his hobby he used to breed some lovely coloured ones and good singers as well.
Well they would all tell me stories of how they made things to sell when they travelled around Kent my Nan and the other women would make flowers from paper and also from wax.
They knocked on doors and would sell quite a few to the big houses although sometimes people were nasty and said terrible things most were happy to see the gypsies and would chat and buy things year after year.
My Grandad made wooden pegs for my nan to sell and his father was a knife sharpener and people would come out to get their shears and knifes sharpened .
What with making wooden caravans to sell to other travellers and fruit and hop picking they earned quite well.

When i was a girl I asked them to show me how they made the flowers and found i was able to make them too.
Making them brings back memories.
If i would have been born when they were in the caravan i would probably be selling them door to door.
But times have changed and guess what i am selling them on Ebay now.
I even have my own website. Pretty-Paper-Roses.com.
And my lovely husband Eddie has brought us a caravan by the coast.

Some of the colours i have made

Travelling around Kent.

Today i have added one of a very few pictures of my Grandad Tom as a boy,
he is travelling with his parents and brothers and sisters and cousins in their wooden caravan,My Grandad Tom was a Romany Gypsy,he is wearing the dark waistcoat, next to the boy in the white shirt.
He always wore one of those caps and handkerchiefs tied round his neck.
He told me hundreds of stories from his time as boy travelling round Kent ,fruit picking, hop picking and all the different things they did to get by,they had a hard but good life.

Orange ones today

Today i made a some orange roses they turned out ok.

Long Ago Roses

Today i am going to make some roses , because I'm feeling nostalgic,

I have always loved roses ever since i was a little girl, i remember my grandparents garden all kinds of roses rambling over the fences and a big climbing rose that always seemed to be in flower.
I remember a big old apple tree that my Grandad made me a swing on.
He used some old rope and a plank of wood.
I remember standing in his shed watching him make holes in the plank and then tie the rope into a knot underneath we walked out to the tree and he used a rickety ladder to climb and tie the rope on to a high branch, i must have spent hours and hours on that swing , happy memories of long ago....

I.ll make yellow roses and think of my lovely Grandad Tom ,who was a wonderful person and a very special man, i miss him so much.....

Pretty Paper Roses.