Splash of colour - February

Although I've mainly been looking at greens, browns and oranges this week, there has been a little bit of extra colour too.

Hyacinths on the mantelpiece - belting out fumes of deliciousness

A tiny crocheted pincushion that my sister-in-law gave me, studded with colourful pins

Both of these pictures are my contribution to the last of Silverpebble's Splash of Colour weeks.  There are so many wonderful, colourful photos in the Flickr pool now.  This has been a great, cheering winter project - thank you Emma!

Splash of colour - January

I always think of January as a clean, white month.  I love the sense of a new start and empty pages in a fresh diary...everything plain, simple and clutter-free after the green, red and gold excesses of Christmas. 

I wasn't sure how much colour I would find when I went looking for it for Silverpebble's Splash of Colour project yesterday, but it is here.  The house may be refreshingly free of decorations and holiday clutter, but there is still plenty of colour too.

My beautiful new green satchel, a Christmas present from G.  Other delicious, vibrant shades, sizes and styles can be found on the Cambridge Satchel Company website.

Strawberry and vanilla buns in bright, cheery, red paper cases, waiting for their icing.

Another Christmas present - this magnificent book.  I picked up some good, bright shades of cashmerino and organic wool yarn in the John Lewis sale, and have started by making the sprig of lavender you can see lying on the book in the picture above. 

I am a little obsessed by lavender at the moment.  When I finally made it to Oxford over Christmas, Mum gave me some of the lavender she harvested from her garden in France last year, and which she dried out over the autumn.  She had so much of it that we lost perspective somewhat.  She gave me three carrier bags full of dried stalks, which when I got it back home to London, suddenly seemed like an enormous quantity.  I stripped the stalks from just one of the three bags and have ended up with a huge bowl of lavender - so full that I can submerge my hands in it up to my wrists.  The resulting smell of lavender throughout the whole house is astonishing.  This may be adding to the general, and very welcome, sense of January calm and simplicity which is enfolding us all at the moment.

Splash of colour - December

For this month's Splash of Colour there could only be one photo - my newly re-arranged shelves of tea.

Instead of a meddly of boxes shoved higgeldy-piggeldy at the back of one of our deep shelves - behind egg cups, water bottles, flasks, teaspoons, jars of hot chocolate and packets of yeast - we now have two tea and coffee shelves, right above the kettle and the coffee machine.

I just love how all these boxes look together - matching and yet not.  If you'd like to see more clearly what's in each box, go and look at this photo over on Flickr, where I have added a whole pile of explanatory notes.

Splash of colour - November

The autumn colours in our part of East London are incredible this year.  The small part of Epping Forest that I drive past on the way to school each morning, has me exclaiming every day.  And there is one road which is lined with small trees of such vivid orange and flame-red, that even the children are moved to admire.

In our own garden, the cherry tree has put on quite a display for us; but the show is nearly over and I have much raking and bagging up to do if I want the grass to survive the winter.

The best splash of colour however, is to be found indoors, where I am baking little vanilla fairy cakes today.  They are cooling on their rack in front of the toaster and later will be topped with pale pink, rose-scented icing and some pink sprinkles.  Because sometimes little, simple girly cakes are just what's needed.

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This post is for Emma's inspired Splash of Colour project which you can read about here, and then go and admire everyone else's November contributions in the Flickr pool here.