An Invitation to Everyone

You are cordially invited to join me on our new blog

Our New Life in the Country

everyone is welcome!

Follow the ongoing story of our conversion from town dwellers to country folk, with the guaranteed mishaps, the tears and the laughter and the love but always with our usual zany, wacky take on life, (and by the way the lavender story will continue, as soon as I get it planted).

Thank you for reading Lavender's Blue.

Sue xxx

Moving Day

Well here it is.......moving day. The boxes are packed, we don't know where anything is and the cats are completely freaked out. Their catflap is being removed and they are confined to quarters, (I think they are actually forming an escape committee as I type).

My kitchen cupboards are the tidiest they have ever been!!!!

We have spent the last couple of days trying to eat our through the contents of the freezer, the fridge and the food cupboards. I told my lovely son off for having the audacity to buy 4 tins of soup to eat for his dinners instead of making meals from our supplies and then I went to a friends charity auction and came home with 2 lovely food hampers...........his words are unprintable!!

Yes that is a tree you see in the top picture, lovely Hubby came home with a 'bargain' plum tree that 'he just couldn't live without'. If you see a Rover 75 estate driving down the M6, M42 or M40 anytime tomorrow with a plum tree sticking out of the sunroof that will be Hubby!!

Never say life at Chez Hall is boring!!

This house has been a happy home and one we are quite sorry to be leaving. The only downside to this 3 storey townhouse is the 2 flights of stairs that run creakily up the middle. We now know we will never again live over 3 storeys, it just doesn't suit our lifestyle.

But it has been a warm and cosy family home with lots of love and lots of laughs, what more can you ask? Since moving here we have got married, I have opened my shop, my son has graduated from University and found himself 2 lovely jobs, where he has made lots of friends. We have been accepted into this lovely little market town, we have had some lovely neighbours, lots of brilliant friends and aquaintances and we have gained our lovely little Archie.

All in all it has been a wonderful 18 months. Now we are ready for our new adventure.................Oxford here we come!!

Sue xx

My old man.......

50 years young and still a sex god!!

My old man........said follow the van!!! Well actually he did, seeing as the council bin men decided to let the large wheelie bin roll into his little white van and smash the indicator light panel and on his birthday as well!! Yep...my old man is 50 years old and I love him to bits. He, however cannot say the same about the council bin men!! Good job we're not moving till next week, because now we have another little job to organise.


Poorly van!!

Seriously, thanks to Alan for being the love of my life and for all his help in the past couple of weeks helping me to wind down the shop and supplying me with endless cups of coffee at every opportunity, for being there when I need him and for all the happiness he's brought me over the last four and a half years.

Our adventure begins in earnest in the next couple of weeks and if we didn't have each other (and the help of a strapping couple of sons) we couldn't do this.

Happy Birthday Babe

Sue xx

Teddy Bears

My final week in the shop..........in most ways I'm looking forward to our new adventure, but saying farewell to my little shop is terribly hard. The past week has been SO busy. All the stock is flying out of the shop, and many of the things I thought I may have to take with me are now gone, including bears.

Teddy bears have always been a brilliant seller in the shop, I have been selling mostly Boyds Bears, which are gorgeous.....and many of my customers think so too. All my Christmas bears sold straight away and now the last of my back up stock is in the shop. I love it when little children pick their favourite bear and leave the shop clutching it, (after paying I hasten to add!!)it reminds me of my youngest son who was an avid teddy bear collector for many years, he was always SO thrilled to get a new one for his collection.

Well there aren't many left now and as the last bear leaves the shop it will feel very strange, the final countdown has now begun. This is my last week, just 6 more days of trading. I am busy preparing the shop for my friend who is taking over the lease until April, then she will decide whether to keep it going in her own name.

I will try to get some pictures of the shop this week, last week was just too busy, my lovely hubby dashed back and forth from the house with fresh supplies of stock but we struggled to keep fully stocked. Everyone was in shopping mode in Ulverston and business was brisk and exciting.

Hopefully we will sell out this week and have little to pack away for the move in 2 weeks time, and who knows, maybe one little bear will sneak out of the shop and into a box to greet us on arrival in Oxford...............

Sue xx

A Happy New Year

At last....I return to my blog!! After a busy busy time in the shop in the run up to Christmas, I had to do it....start the dreaded Closing Down Sale. My customers are being lovely, loads of good wishes and genuine interest in what is to be our exciting, hard-working future.

Many of them have started to read the blog and pass comment on it in the shop, I hope they will continue to read as I vanish from their day to day lives on the high street and into the ether.

I have wilfully neglected my blog, and feel SO guilty when I read all the other lovely blogs that I follow, they have all somehow managed to keep things going and have a family Christmas. I have been up and down the country travelling to visit relatives (a lovely time was had in Scotland for the New Year) and to clean up our lovely new farmhouse ready for its coat of fresh paint.

The immediate future now is to be taken up with closing my beloved little shops door. I have today (Saturday) and then just one more week before the closed sign goes up for the final time on 'Lavender's Blue... ' the smallest shop in Ulverston.

There is no photo on this post, I could not think of one in my collection that sums up how things are at the moment, I will take some of the shop as it winds down and post them for posterity.

Sue xx

Merry Christmas

A very Merry Christmas from the littlest shop in Ulverston. The shop is tucked up after the busiest shopping season ever, looking slightly bare and very tired.

I locked the door at 4.30pm tonight, and tootled off home for a reviving and much needed cup of coffee with my family.

A huge THANK YOU to all my customers over the last year. The shop has been a HUGE success and without my lovely, lovely customers where would I be???

Enjoy your time with your families as I intend to enjoy mine. We are off to the new farmhouse on Boxing Day to begin the biggest clean up of our lives..........the future starts here!

Merry Christmas to everyone and a prosperous New Year. May next year bring new surprises around every corner and happiness to all.

Sue xx

Christmas is coming.........

Christmas is coming.....the shop is SO busy, so why did we pick this time of year to move house? We must be mad!!

We are packing up and taking down to the farm half of our furniture on Monday when we will have the use of a large van, the sofa frame is going, so we will only have cushions to sit on, the bed bases are all going so we are currently sleeping on just mattresses on the floor, so Christmas is to be a low level affair.

Its a good job we are game for a laugh and the wackiest Christmas ever is just around the corner. It's quite liberating to be having such a different Christmas. We have no tree up yet, no decorations, Christmas cards are just piled up on the coffee table. I intend to have a decorating night on Monday while my lovely sons and hubby are taking the furniture to the farmhouse. Only then will I be able to see what I can do to get the house festive, at the moment we are living in a sea of cardboard boxes. (Who bought all the books? Maybe it was me! I LOVE Amazon!)


The shop is emptying nicely of all the lovely goodies and the core stock for the new website will be picked soon and then packed ready for the move, the rest will be sold off at a massively reduced rate to thank all my lovely customers for their support over the last year. I have met such a mix of really nice people through the shop, many have turned into friends and I hope that they will visit the website, when I finally get the time to set it up properly.



Finally, A special message tonight for my Dad, we have given Mum and Dad a computer for Christmas and one of their first lessons was how to get to here.......well if you've managed it Dad HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Leave me a comment if you can!!

Sue xx