Fabulous Places

Deb at Fabulous Places has kindly chosen us as her fabulous place for May.

It's a great idea: Deb chooses shops, cafes and restaurants in Derbyshire that she loves and features them on her website. It's purely her choice as to whether or not a business is featured and you cannot buy your way onto her list. Visitors to the site can leave comments on the businesses featured - our pages are here and here (thanks to those of you who have said such nice things about us).

There are regular competitions and goodies up for grabs if you join the FP club. And it looks like Deb will soon be searching out lovely places in Nottinghamshire. Fingers crossed for further expansion.

If you live in Derbyshire put Sunday 26th July 2009 into your diaries. The Fabulous Places Summer Fete should be an event not to be missed. We'll be there along with many other FP businesses. Do come along and say hello.

Spring snow showers

Woke up to snow.  We weren't expecting that, although it was pretty cold last night.  The water in the bird baths was frozen and the countryside was covered with a soft layer of snow, melting rapidly in the sun.

Turned off our lights last night from 8.30 onwards as part of Earth Hour.  We played Boggle by candlelight for an hour and then went to bed because we were both exhausted.  Well, it confused the cat.  If we hadn't been so tired it would have been fun so I think we may schedule in regular candlelit evenings.

It starts here

The new clothes shop

Welcome to our new blog.

We'll be using it to discuss developments within our business, along with musing on green living, sustainability, creativity, and anything else that tickles our fancy.  We'll share projects, links, recipes, niggles and delights.  Do please contribute.

 

Our first update is on our clothes shop which will be moving around the corner to a new premises in Hope, Derbyshire (see above).  The building has been a pub (The Durham Ox), a bank and a cobbler's workshop and parts of it date back to the 17C.  We're busy with the decoration which will use our stock range of eco-friendly paints by Earthborn.  The seagrass matting will be fitted next Monday, and we've installed Marmoleum flooring in our kitchen area.  Marmoleum is the trade name for what is basically old fashioned linoleum, made from sustainable ingredients such as linseed oil, woodflour, pine rosin, jute and limestone.  It's also completely biodegradable but it is a bit pricey.

I'm currently working on sourcing low-energy light fittings and toying with LEDs, which have improved dramatically in the past year or so.  We haven't quite decided what to do for a desk as yet.  The existing one is made from reclaimed timber but will be in use up until the move; also it needs to be a bit bigger.  I would like to buy an old Victorian shop counter like the one that I managed to find on Ebay that adorns our Eco Eco Home shop, but the access to the shop area is limited so we will probably have to build something in situ.  I'm waiting for inspiration to strike.  The dress rails will be mainly recycled timber, painted in ProAqua eggshell, again by Earthborn.  It should be a nice place to work.