Saturday 14th November

This week started off on a sad note as the lovely guests left early on Monday morning, but this was short lived.. excitement took over because we had a film crew coming to film the first in our series of training programmes the next day.  We all pulled together to spring clean the house from top to bottom, tweaking the rooms a little here and there with three pairs of eyes each giving their opinion.  After a hard day’s work, I decided I would go and buy flowers for the hallway, kitchen and bedrooms first thing on Tuesday morning – I have to admit this is a favourite pastime of mine.  I bought several bunches of flowers in white and green, meaning that there was a theme running throughout the house from top to bottom.  

The filming took all day.  The film crew shot all of the bedrooms, bathrooms, front of the house and the communal spaces until about lunch time. Then it was Chris and I’s time to sit in front of the camera! It took a while to get the kitchen set up with lighting for our ‘interview’ as the crew called it. Deborah came over to ensure that the script was tight and in line with the way we wanted it to come across, took some photos of the day’s events and also lent a creative hand with hair and makeup!  I had read the script a couple of times but right up until the last minute changes were being made.  The editor directed throughout and had suggested that we have an auto-cue, gosh how right he was!  It made everything so much easier and the entire process took a couple of hours – I must admit I enjoyed it more than I expected to and can’t wait to do it again. 

It was also Zuzana’s birthday on the Tuesday, so after the long day we decided to head out to a local restaurant we hadn’t been to yet, called The Little Taperia, just down the road from Tooting Broadway.  It serves some excellent Spanish tapas dishes and I was very impressed.  I’m looking forward to recommending my guests to try it in the future. 

We also had a guest arriving from Hong Kong who is attending a five-day course with Robert Haynes who teaches Sugar Art Courses. Robert has sent us many guests over the last few years and I always send him a courtesy email to let him know that his clients have arrived. Attached to his response was a picture of one of his latest flowers, (header image) which is truly amazing!

We hadn’t taken many bookings this week as I was supposed to be going in to have an eye operation which ended up being cancelled by St Georges a week earlier. So we took the time to catch our breath and have some time out doing other things as it can be very full on with guests at times.  I spent the time searching for and buying Christmas presents online, which have already started to arrive in their boxes, so my recycling sacks have already doubled this week. 

I am very much into fragrances in the home and some of my favourites are from Jo Malone and Bamford.  I have bought some Bamford weekender sets for friends again this year and decided to try out their new morning and evening fragrances which come in 10ml sizes – great for your purse!

I’ll keep you updated of the things I am buying for the home and friends for Christmas.