Wine Room for Winter Warming!!

Hello Dear Friends!

I am so happy to be back here after a hectic week of paper work involving house sales,bonds, etc. Hopefully, I can also catch up with a few blogs and get some "me time" at last!

 It is a Saturday evening here and the temperatures are plummeting rapidly in Cape Town. So,  time to reach for a good bottle of red wine and to light the fire and a few candles. My current red wine indulgence is Vruchtbaar Cabernet Sauvignon  ~ full of gorgeous blackcurrent! Just the thing for a fireside evening.

Anyway, the wine and fire got me a dreamin, of course ...of fabulous cellars that I have had the pleasure of visiting and the obvious next step was to dream of my own personal cellar or wine room.... So, grab your glass and lets sip our way through a few  together...

Ahhh.... you all know by now, that the colours just has me captivated already ~ never mind the sublime nectar hiding in the bottles.

Makes me think of the line in " A Good Year" when Uncle Henry tell Max that "I enjoy making wine because this sublime nectar , is quite simply incapable of lying"

" All the planting, all the harvesting, all the fermenting, it's nothing more than bottling the truth

Par example : If perchance, one year it rains too much, the wine will tell you that very easily, by the depth of its colour...

And if it rain too little, it will tell you that too ...in its aroma and bouquet

Pick too early, pick too late, it matters not, the wine will always whisper into your mouth with complete unabashed honesty, every time you take a sip..."

My word, I can't seem to get away from this movie!!!

Pure wine  theatre above!! Wouldn't you say?

" When the wine is in, the wit is out."

                                    Thomas Becon (1512 ~ 1567)



These two rooms are more intimate but  sacrificing none of the theatre....

" Here's to the corkscrew ~ a useful key to unlock

the storehouse of wit, the treasury of laughter, the front door of fellowship, and the gate of pleasant folly"

                                                 WEP French

Lets move in and not leave!!



" If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good?"

                                                                                                    Cardinal Richeleu

"Wine is bottled poetry" ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach ~ Spanish saying

" In water one sees ones own face; But in wine, one beholds the heart of another" ~ Old French Proverb

" Wine improves with age. The older I get, the better I like it" ~ Anon

Um... I can totally confirm that this one is true!!!!

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder, because they are there.  ~Judith Viorst

Well, dear ones I wish you a beautiful Saturday night.

Here's hoping that you are sharing a bottle of wine with a good pal and making memories!

Thank you for your company

" So much wine ~ so little time"  ~ Veronica Clark

Cheers

Veronica

xxx

All images from my Pinterest Board called " Tipple Tales"

Lift yer glasses to all the fabulous photographers!!!

Thank You from the bottom of my Heart!

Hi Everyone!

It has been a while since our last chat.  The reason being that I turned 50!!!

It sounds completely impossible to me, but there you have it...sigh....long sigh!

With everything going on in my life, I thought that I would let it pass by quietly and unnoticed. Dealing with divorce, the sale of my home, finding another house in the country, etc, I thought it best not to make a fuss. However, my amazing kids and friends had other ideas....

As it turns out, loads of things happened in the space of a single week.  I put an offer in to purchase a house in the country (fingers crossed please!!!), put my current home on the market (fingers crossed again..please!!!) celebrations for my birthday started on the evening before my actual birthday, with my son and his best friend cooking a  six course meal for me, lighting loads of candles, jazz, flowers, wine and you name it I had it!!! Thank you!!! So special, so very special! This in the midst of exams, can you believe it?? Well, my son did the decor and helped with the prepping and his gorgeous friend the cooking. Sublime!! We watched my favourite two movies as well " A Good Year " and "Because I Said So"!! Loved it....

I had several celebratory breakfasts with friends, got spoilt rotten and had the best time ever! The boys also took me to a wonderful show and just when I thought it was over, my gorgeous daughter surprised me by flying down from Johannesburg, and she organised more friends to join me in a celebratory breakfast in an exquisite setting! Thank you!!! To say I was bowled over is an understatement of note...

Thanks also, to all of you , for all the wonderful messages of support and congratulations. My Blogland and Facebook family have been amazing!!!

You Guys Rock!

It is also my one year Blog-a-versary!! I started blogging as a Birthday gift to self a year ago and what an amazing journey it has been, wonderful friendships have been forged and my horizons have expanded beyond my wildest expectations. The support from fellow Bloggers have been overwhelming. Thank you!

I thought that I would share a few special pictures with you today to celebrate. No, they are not particularly good photography, food, decor or garden related, but rather captures a moment when I was able to make a decision to significantly change my life!

So, a few defining moments in the company of a delightful person...

Sunset Boulevard

Simple Pleasures...delighting the soul.

All aglow...a wow moment of perfect light!

Si Said..." This place has this affect on people..."

I kept on wanting to linger and linger and make it last....

The colours were captivating....

I drove back to the city singing and happy as can be! My heart did skip a beat or two though, when I came over the mountain pass and the City lay sprawled beneath me, bathed in the glorious sunset with Table Mountain as a backdrop and I momentarily thought... "How could you leave all this?" But, it is not far to the city and I figured that I can now have the best of both worlds!

I can definitely live with that!

Thank you one and all for your hand in this and my wonderful birthday celebrations and for making my blogging journey such a voyage of discovery! I am truly blessed and totally delighted...

Live Well

Love you all

Thanks for your precious company

Veronica

xxx

all images are my own but thanks to a stranger's perfect timing

Madame Duflot's Lavande!

Hello dear ones!

Friday is upon us and the weekend is winking....are you doing a happy dance?

My week improved quite a bit since my last Blue Monday rant!

Sadly, I have not yet been able to sort out the issues for readers subscribed to my blog via e mail. Hang in there please, I am busy with Feed burner and hopefully I can work it out!

I have had a song stuck in my head all week long and I just had to go find it and share it with you. It is the  "The Wedding Samba" by Edmundo Ros and his Orchestra,  from one of my favourite movies, "A Good Year!"

If you can keep your feet still whilst listening to it, well I will be devastated to say the least. So, like the beguiling actress Issabelle Candelier in the scene where she is sweeping the floor, I implore you to grab your broom and lets get moving...turn up the volume and lets go!!!

Wonderful ! Isn't it just!!

Now, my whole point  besides getting you off that chair and taking a turn about the room is this.... Whenever I hear that song, I am actually reminded of another scene in the movie, when all the visiting guests find an odd bit of lavender in a bowl in the window sill, and tosses it in the rubbish bin, not knowing its use fullness.  And only later when they are  confronted by a nasty creepy crawly called a scorpion does Madame Duflot explain that "Lavande keeps them outdoors where they belong!" I love the scene and the wonderfully sunny character of Madame Duflot.

So grab your baskets and lets head into the lavender fields to gather some lavande...

Now, I am delighted to tell you, that we do not have scorpions where I live and mostly my lavender hedge gets used by Smirnoff my Labrador. He brushes against it and loves the smell. Fortunately I did not meet a scorpion either when I visited Provence either.

I have encountered scorpions on a canoe trip down the Orange River. We normally just sleep under the stars and we wear shoes at all times when we hit terra firma. One morning I woke up and sat up to admire the view when my eye fell on the tracks in the sand around my sleeping bag. I slept next to the fire and when I turned around there were no less than five scorpions lazily draped on the rock next to the fire. They very politely travelled around all the sleeping bodies to the warm rock. There were some horrified squeals but no one was hurt and we all made very certain not to leave our sleeping bags unattended!

Apparently the Abrial essence, the strongest form of Lavender, dabbed on the walls and window sill will deter these creepies from entering your abode.

Hence Madame Duflot's warnings not to toss the lavande!

Pretty bunches of Lavender is just a delight to your senses. I remember stepping into a shop in Gordes and the smell was just enchanting.

What a wonderful spot to take our tea...

...with lavender biscuits...

There is something so romantic about a lavender field...



I would love to make this for my bedroom door.

The very well known scene of The Notre- Dame  de Senanque near Gordes and the lavender fields are just spectacular.

Wow...amazing!

Burlap and lavender....timeless.



The smell of lavender evokes many wonderful memories of my grandmother' s home  where I grew up.



Every cupboard had one of these... and the comforting fragrance wafted out when doors were opened.

I can not imagine a garden without a few bushes of lavender. There are so many wonderful varieties. Oddly my favourite remains Lavendula Angustifolia. I love the way it sways in the wind!

I hope you all have a great weekend. I am off to explore the Elgin Valley Wine Route this weekend and hope to come back with some good reports!

Thank you for you company and how about another samba with that broom???

Live Well

Veronica

xxx

All images from Pinterest

You may leave your comments below... I am all ears...

My Blue Monday!

Hi Everyone!

How was your weekend? I had a lovely weekend away with my kids in the tiny seaside village of  Paternoster. It was a treat to have both kids under the same roof even if it was just one night! We ate seafood, drank wine, explored the beautiful village and stared at the sea...

This was the lovely view from our  balcony...

The whitewashed houses are all so quaint.

We walked on the beach ... of course!

I loved the colour combination of the blue and terracotta and what a cute name. 

Many homes have shutters and various different colours but these caught my eye...

And then, it was  Monday morning...and a few wheels fell of ... or should I rather say, that I seem to have had a techno meltdown!!

I struggled to get into my blog!

Many of my emails in my outbox did not send!

I discovered that I had scheduled a blog post meant for last Tuesday for tomorrow!

One of my readers Lauren, who subscribes to my blog via Feedburner, advised that she has not received my blog in her in box for many weeks and that she tried to re subscribe (Bless her!) and it said that she was already subscribed ~ of course... Phew!

I have been trying all morning to find the problem but to no avail! Have any of you experienced similar problems with feedburner and if so, do you have any ideas of how to sort it out! I would appreciate hearing from you.

So, it is a bit blue over here in my Monday!!

 I tried to find some prettier blues...

Anyway, moving on to beautiful things...that is why you are here!

That picture I took in Paternoster of the blue shutters sent me in search of more inspiration and I found these..

Now, as you know I am not all that into the colour blue in my home... yes...sadly. I do love it but it just has not worked out that way for me.

However, the house I have been looking at buying in the country is a bit of an old lady. She needs a new look and I have been thinking that  a new creamy coat of biscuit or sandstone along with blue shutters might just be the thing for her. I am not going to get too excited, yet, as it is a long way off ~ fingers crossed please!! But, that has not stopped me from a dash of daydream believing...hence these images from Pinterest!

Remember the picture of the lil fishing boat above in this post...

It seems to resonate here...

Picture perfect ~ and the colour combination that I have in mind.

Lovely combination...

This is the image, below, will accompany me to choose paint, for sure!



I do hope that your Monday is better than mine!

If not, I leave you with a bouquet of Proteas to improve your Monday...

I took these shots during my spring garden visits in Franschoek.

Thank you for your company

Live well

Veronica

xxx

Please leave your comments and remedies for feedburner in the comment box below... I am all ears!

Sassy and Succulent

Hi everyone!

Happy Mayday!

It is also my birthday month ~ not that I am into getting older ~ but I don't seem to have a say in the matter!!

I am heading out into the countryside later today, in search of a new abode  so I thought I might leave you with some images to ponder and study!

I am afraid, it is what I do, study images like these....

Is she a dame or what?

I have the urge to recreate her!!

She is definitely a keeper!

 

 

Love this wreath with echeverias.

 

I have a vacant urn sitting in my breakfast room  ~ Maybe for just such an arrangement of succulence as above...!

The colours are fantastic. This is so eye catching and yes, you need time to study it!

Another pretty wreath to add some green to winter decor indoors and out.

All ablaze and beautiful!

 

My chippy birdbath could look gorgeous too ~ I will have a riot on my hands though ~ of the feathered variety!

And some  new ideas from the Flower Arranging Committee?

 

Seated in succulence ...

 

Spiked beauty...

I hope you had a relaxing day.

Thank you for your company.

I am off to Elgin...

 

Some of the colours are just magical...

 

Live well

Veronica

xxx

all images are from Pinterest

Please regale me with a comment ~ I am all ears...