Saturday, 3 April 2010

SNOW, STRAWBERRIES AND A LOVELY SURPRISE

So, home again after a few days preparing Daisy Cottage for our first guests of the year and oh boy were we tired arriving home last night.  We woke up this morning to aching backs and various other pains caused by our excessive hard labour over the past days!  It's amazing how much work is to be done even when the house is already clean and tidy.  But when guests are arriving EVERYTHING must be perfect.  We worked so hard for the past few days, painting and decorating, cleaning every nook and crannie, hanging new paintings, and of course the making up of beds (all seven of them!).  We were only just ready when our guests arrived ~ sadly to wet and cold weather.

Yesterday morning we had awakened in Daisy Cottage to a crystal clear blue sky and sunshine and I was so happy thinking that our guests would arrive to blue skies and sunshine.  How wrong was I?  By lunchtime the skies had darkened and then came the rain ~ bucket after bucket of it!  Better I suppose than the snow we'd had for a couple of days before that, but still not as good as the sunshine I had expected.

Snow at Barnesmore Gap ~ April 2010

But as they say 'every cloud has a silver lining' so I lit the fire a couple of hours before our guests arrived so that they could arrive in from the miserable weather outside to a warm welcome inside ~ the living room of Daisy Cottage is so cosy with a fire glowing in the grate and the lamps on and I like to think this makes up a little for guests who arrive during wet or cold weather.

Our guests duly arrived, tired after their long journey but delighted to arrive in to a warm fire ready for them to relax in front of.  I made a strawberry flan for them as a little 'welcome to Daisy Cottage' gift and I think this pleased them even more than the fire!


A devilishly delicious Strawberry Flan

And later, I got a lovely surprise too ~ our guests had brought beautiful flowers for me, and in some of my favourite colours of white, blue and mauve.  How nice was that?  I was totally overwhelmed and delighted at their thoughtfulness.

A lovely surprise from our first guests of the season!

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