Over the past week, we’ve probably spent 15 hours or more each day outdoors; we’ve eaten brunch and dinner al fresco and done lots of gardening jobs. We’ve even taken our ‘home office’ and ‘photography studio’ outside!

Sugared rose petals

Last week, we mentioned that our Korresia rose was just coming into flower. They’re a lovely lemon yellow colour with a wonderful fragrance. Each bloom only lasts for a day or two before the petals begin to fall off, what a waste! Well, not this time, I used one of the flowers to make sugared or candied rose petals. All you need is an egg white, caster or icing (powdered) sugar and a pastry or small paintbrush. I’ll probably use the petals in the next few days to decorate a sponge cake, cupcakes or shortbread biscuits.

Shop stock session

As we said above, we’ve barely been indoors this week… not even to work! Justin did a shop stock photography session in the garden, making full use of the natural light. I’ll probably list all the items he did on our online shop tomorrow… while sitting on the garden bench at the front of the house… according to the MET Office, this run of sunny weather is set to continue for the foreseeable!

Ynyslas

We decided to make Thursday a day at the beach; it was mid-week, before the bank holiday, so it wouldn’t be crowded. We found out the low tide times, packed a rucksack with a flask of coffee and a couple of pieces of flapjack and aimed to get to Ynyslas for early afternoon. As you can see from our video clips above, other than a wind-surfer, a couple of kitesurfers (it was warm, but fairly windy) and a few other dog walkers, we had swathes of sandy beach to ourselves.