In the footsteps of Miss Potter - the movie

It's been a busy week, trying to paint our house window frames in between rain showers, sewing a new bear and lots of sketching. Back to my trip in the world of Beatrix Potter..... After visiting Hill Top we went on to the Beatrix Potter Gallery in nearby village, Hawkshead. A wonderous amount of original sketches and watercolours are displayed within the old solicitors offices of her husband. A beautiful 17th Century building, with wonky wooden floors and low ceilings (not good for bumping your head if you're tall like my fiance!).



Then we went in search of Yew Tree Farm , that was one of the farms that Beatrix had owned, and was used as Hill Top in the Miss Potter movie. If you click on the red link above you can see why the actual Hill Top was not able to be used in the Movie. We had a lovely cup of tea in their garden, with little lambs sleeping under the benches! A truly beautiful house, wouldn't you just love to live here, I know I would!






I have just changed my banners here on my blog and on my website, hope you like them. Many more photos coming up soon. Wishing you all a happy weekend. Hugs, Catherine x

In the footsteps of Beatrix Potter

It has been a wish for a very long time to visit Hill Top, the home of Beatrix Potter in a little village called Near Sawrey.

For those that have seen the Miss Potter movie you will know that she bought Hill Top in 1905, at a very sad time of her life when she had just lost her fiance to a sudden illness. She bought Hill Top with the royalties from her first few books, written at her parents home in London, but inspired by her annual holiday visits to the Lake District. She visited as often as she could, but never for more than a few days at a time, sketching the house, garden, countryside and animals for her new books. After she bought the farm, she busied herself writing more books and running the farm. Beatrix wrote many of her famous children's stories in this little 17th century stone house. Characters such as Tom Kitten, Samuel Whiskers and Jemima Puddleduck were all created here, and the books contain many pictures based on the house and garden.

I took lots and lots of photos of the house, village, bunnies and gardens (more than 40) which I have put on my Flickr page. Just click on the red text to get to Flickr and then click on the first photo of the set and follow my journey :) I hope you have a good time!

We also visited the Potter Gallery, full of original illustrations as well as the beautiful farmhouse that was used as Hill Top in the Miss Potter movie, it was also owned my Beatrix and was so sweet. More photos coming soon! Yesterday I started on a new bear inspired by the beautiful beaches on the West Coast of Scotland! I have also been busy drawing, who could not be inspired having been in the home of Beatrix Potter! Hugs, Catherine x

Join me on holiday!

Hi everyone, we're back safe and sound, we had THE most fabulous holiday in The Lake District and Scotland, finishing with a few happy days visiting family before driving back to Belgium. We took nearly 2000 photos over 2 weeks, no ... no.... come back, don't worry I'm not going to show you ALL of them ;-) We started off taking the Eurotunnel from France to Kent in the UK, this is quite an experience, driving into a train, sitting in your car for half an hour and then driving out and voila... there you are in England -isn't that just magic! Here you can see the train and a few shots taken out of the car on our road trip up to the North of England and the beautiful Lake District. This is the most beautiful area, with lakes at every turn, charming hand built dry stone walls dividing up the fields up and down the hills, with sheep dotting the hillsides. We stayed in a lovely hotel on the Lake Side in Ambleside, look at that sweet window sweet in our room. I was excited as a little kid on Christmas morning because the next day we were going to visit Hill Top, the farmhouse where Beatrix Potter lived! I'll show photos of this as well as the landscapes over the next few days. So do hop back along my garden path to visit Peter Rabbit's playground!






Hugs, Catherine x

Berty dreams of being a cowboy!

Look who wants to be a cowboy when he grows up! Liberty is his name but his friends call him Berty. This little bear loves horses and after a day riding out in the meadows he likes to read a good story. In fact really he prefers to have a story read to him, the books can be rather big for him and so it takes a long time to read each page! He is a little bear at only 4.5". He dreams of America, galloping across the plains so I gave him his cute outfit of red and blue with soft gold velvet paw pads, so now he feels a true red, white and blue cowboy! He has his fireworks ready to celebrate the 4th of July!

He is ready for adoption, you can see all his details here on my Bumpkin Bears Website. If you would like to adopt him just send me an email.





We are off to the Highlands of Scotland at the weekend. We are driving with our car and stopping in The Lake District to break up the journey and to visit the home of Beatrix Potter, Hill Top. Click on the Hill Top link to read all about it, we will also visit her gallery nearby with lots of her original drawings, I am so excited! Needless to say I will have heaps of photos to share with you all when we return in a few weeks time. I have also recently joined Twitter where I post little tweets about what I'm getting up to in between blog posts, so feel free to follow me..

When we get back I've got lots of exciting treats and special offers for my Etsy Store. Any orders placed when I'm away will be delivered from July 22nd.

We are having a heat wave here in Belgium at the moment, let's hope we take some of the sun with us to Rainy Scotland :) In the meantime you can click on the tags at the end of my posts to visit places I've seen before. See you all back here soon. Hugs, Catherine x