So happy to see the huts finally arriving in Budleigh. It seems like the start of summer really is here, or the promise of it at least! It really is the place to be on most days of the season, the view is stunning and the beach is so pretty, with its amazing pebbles. The hut will be kitted out over the next few days and the drinks are scheduled for Saturday evening to launch the hut season! What could be better? A whole load of things are stacked ready to take down from the house. We really have something for all weather down there – so that we can enjoy the outdoors whatever comes our way!
Make sure that you have covered every detail you can before you open your doors, as no matter how lovely you are and how lovely your guests are it all needs to be perfect if they are to leave you a great review on tripadvisor! One of the best ways to check your room is ready for your first guest is to actually sleep in it for a night and use the room as a guest would. You will quickly find out if the lamps are in the right place, where the sofas or chair need to be in relation to the TV and other small but essential details. Can you get dressed in the morning and see yourself in a full length mirror? How was the shower, can you see properly in the bathroom, does everything work easily and efficiently? What about that morning cuppa, can you make it and enjoy it without feeling cramped? Can you watch the TV in comfort…these are the many questions you will be able to answer after you have spent the night in your own room! Well worth the effort!
You need to think about how everything functions first and then make it look fabulous! As well as then thinking how you are going to keep it in tip-top condition and spotless too! But that’s the easy bit …next you need to attract your guests and keep them happy so that they come back and recommend you to their friends.
So you are ready to stock your rooms with essential items, here is a check list for you to browse. Its not exhaustive, but its a great start, you may want to add in lots more items to personalise your rooms, which is really good. Just make sure you have all the items in place first to ensure your guests can enjoy their stay without having to ask you for the basics along the way!
Rooms Checklist:
tea tray, plastic so you can clean it easily
selection of teas & coffee +chocolate
water and glasses, cups or mugs, teaspoons
tea pot – your choice!
fresh milk
biscuits
sugar
coasters for side tables
magazines and books
tissues
hairdryer
magnifying mirror
stock of toilet rolls
shower scraper/cleaner – some will use it others won’t at least they have a choice!
shampoo 2 in 1
shower gel
toilet brush
flannels
guest book & pencil
folder with info … wifi code mobile contact details
basket of local tourist information, local OS map
key box if guests are checking in without you!
dustpan and brush
door mat
boot box and boot scraper
pillow protectors
under blanket/mattress protector
plenty of coat-hangers – matching of course!
spare items – cotton buds etc
bedside lamps – easy to read by, high so that the light shines on your reading not in your eyes!
towels and bath mat
bathrobes if you want to add a little extra comfort into your rooms
bathroom spray
bins for bathroom and room, with liner – keep the spare liners in a roll in the bottom so that they are easy to get to when you change the bin and guests can empty and put in a clean liner if they wish to!
soap or liquid soap for sinks – liquid is easier to replenish and makes less mess!
bath soak or something great for those luxury moments!
Having been inspired by a great article in Devon Life a long while ago, written by Tim Maddams, I have saved the recipe in a great big stack of recipes intending to get round to making some delicious preservative free bacon. So first stop Darts Farm to buy some belly pork, just a kilo to start with!
The recipe is very simple but you need to follow it to the letter, don’t be tempted to add any more salt otherwise you will end up with very salty bacon, the mix in the recipe just adds a fabulous salty – sweet cure taste. It is the best bacon you will ever taste, not only will you feel proud to have produced it, your family will love it too! It cooks so well you really don’t need to add any fat to your nonstick pan at all, the bacon will be crispy and tender too. So all you have to do is slice it as thinly as you can and then cook in your favourite way – ours is eggs Benedict with bacon and hollandaise made with lemon not vinegar! But everyone to their own!
enjoying the bacon! theborrowersmaking bacon theborrowers
Making an Easter tree, if you haven’t done it before it couldn’t be easier and it will look so pretty in your room. Well its a bit of a tradition in our house to make an Easter tree and we have made decorations with blown eggs over the years which we now treasure and enjoy year after year, it makes us smile when we remember all those days spent painting and making when the kids were a lot younger… but if you haven’t got a tree and are thinking of making one here goes…you will really enjoy the making.
Simply clip some branches or twigs from your garden or the hedgerow or buy some amazing contorted/twisted willow from your local florist or this year Lidl have it in stock, so pick it up when you are out shopping. The bonus is – if you leave it in water for long enough – it will start to root and you will be able to grow your own for next year!
Choose a large vase and fill with water, then place the twigs in the vase and arrange, add the decorations hand-made or bought it really does not matter and it really depends how much time you have! there are some fabulous ones in the shops at the moment, waitrose, John Lewis, Lidl, Sainsburys will all have their versions!
Any size of tree will look great on your table and in your home, it makes the most of the spring colours and brings a smile to most peoples faces, it’s easier than lots of flowers – which we try to avoid as otherwise there is an early outbreak of hay-fever with all the spring pollen!
tripadvisor should be your biggest asset, if you have a fabulous room you should get fabulous reviews. The best way to make sure you get good reviews is to offer the best service, best facilities and best booking process you can. People genuinely look for things that please them, so if you can do all you can to make their booking easy, give them lots of information before they come, look after them when they are staying with you and follow-up when they leave, you should have happy guests. The worst thing you can do is ignore tripadvisor! Do register with them so that when reviews come onto their site you can comment on them which will help with your rankings and site placement. People leave great reviews and its wonderful to be able to go back and thank them for their generous comments.
If you do get an odd review which you are puzzled by the best thing you can do is leave a reply that is polite and factual and does not leave bad taste in anyone’s mouth! Don’t enter into any sort of debate, people are canny when they use tripadvisor and can spot the odd one out from reviews, so try not to take it personally if you do get those type of reviews! They are few and far between and the good that tripadvisor does for your business far outweighs any negatives. So make sure you list your business, it’s free after all and very important too!
Artificial-Faux flowers are now right on trend. They make good sense too. Cut flowers are extraordinarily expensive out of season and whilst without doubt are life enhancing they consume vast resource in their production and transportation around the world. So we are increasingly using them – and in the process acquiring a stock that will be with us for life! – for decorating our homes for the season.
Artificial magnolia flowers stems with real twisted willow from the garden create a stunning seasonal winter and early Spring display
You can get them anywhere!
High end stores likeNeptune,Oka have exquisite ranges of single stem, large-headed
flowers in different hues that match the current fashion for dramatic, dark tones. These convincing stems make stunning single stem displays.
As Borrowers we have tried flowers from high street stores including Marks and Spencer The Range The Range and Sainsburys and we think, when mixed with foliage in a display, are largely indistinguishable from the more expensive products.
The flowers and foliage are made of silk or paper with a delicacy of detail and colour gradation that are convincingly authentic. All have had our guests and friends sniffing our fake displays with disappointment!
This is how we do it …
Use foliage and stems from your garden with your artificial flowers. This will stop the arrangement from looking too perfect and conspicuous. We use willow and olive and silver birch stems that are bare, in bud ready to unfurl, or in leaf and add other foliage like rosemary and Skimmia to infill. For a really natural soft display we use delicate, smaller leaved foliage like Jasmin. Beautiful and convincing. Marks and Spencer have a simple to follow video offering helpful tips to create a structure for your display. Arranging Faux Flowers
Always fill the vase with water … Not only does this add to the deception it stops the vase tipping.
Your flowers and foliage will come with stems that are longer than you need . You will need to cut them using florist scissors, or as we do, simply bend them!
Ring the seasons … try to develop a stock of flowers that you can use as the seasons change. We have white magnolia stems for early spring, peonies, sweet peas and delphinium for summer, hydrangeas and dahilas for autumn and white roses for winter- in fact anything you really like!
Not necessary but we like tomist our displays with a surround scent. We like Jo Malones room sprays – roses or pear and freesia –
Your displays will get dusty. Don’t panic use a hair dryer to remove this or simply swish in some some soapy water and dry in a warm place the airing cupboard, aga or similar!
Wild garlic – Allium Ursinum – carpets the steps to the house at Westways in the Spring.
You smell it before you see it!
It goes by several names … ‘Ramsons’ ‘bears garlic’, ‘gipsy’s onions’, ‘stinking Jenny’ to name but a few. Its bright green leaves release a strong pungent garlicky smell that when eaten raw or lightly cooked have a delicacy similar to chives. Every step through the green leaves releases a garlicky sweetness. But its seasonal; here in March but gone by June.
Foragers and chefs wax lyrical about the herb and you will find many recipes on the net tryThe BBC Food – wild garlic recipes site for main courses using wild garlic. And, according to Dr Rob wild garlic has the greatest effect of all garlics on lowering blood pressure so enhancing our well being as well! If you want to find out more about the health benefits of garlic, wild garlic in particular have a look at this article in The Guardian.
Foraging for wild garlic adds a renewed sense of purpose to our Easter walks. We use the herb in different ways; saving the small leaves for pesto and green salads and reserving the larger leaves for wild garlic bread and snipping in to pasta and risotto dishes. The pretty white flowers, which come later in June, add a rustic charm to our spring salads.
The favourite in our house is a wild garlic pesto. This stores well under oil for a few weeks in the fridge extending the season ever so slightly. We can do no better than the recipe in Hedgerow by John Wright, part of the Rover Cottage Handbook Series.
This is how we do it ..
Wild Garlic Pesto –
For one small jar .
A large pile of wild garlic leaves, John Wright recommends 50g but we’ve never actually weighed it!
30g of pine nuts, these are better if toasted in a frying pan first.
30g of Parmesan. grated finely
80ml olive oil
salt and pepper
Simply add all the ingredients apart from the olive oil to the food processor and chop. Add the oil slowly whilst continuing to mix. BB2 – the purist – prefers to indulge in a slow moment with a mortar and pestle … finely chopping the leaves and grinding them with the pine nuts and Parmesan before adding the salt , pepper and olive oil.
It rarely hangs around in our house but it will keep in the fridge if under oil for a few weeks.
We were talking one day … wanting a change of lifestyle, thinking about our lives in general, when we had the flash of inspiration- why did it have to be just the teenagers blogging and making an impression ? We could do it too!
The borrowers was born!
We both have families, pets and outside interests as well as work to juggle, but we yearn sometimes for a slower pace of life with a simpler footprint on the earth by #reusing and #recycling and generally making the most of what we have!
Well then why not share our joys, triumphs, challenges and calamities with others who are like minded! Our journey begins ….by just starting to blog, tweet, Facebook and Instagram our thoughts and ideas. We feel that an online daily digest of interesting and miscellaneous facts and have a go ideas could be interesting and some might find useful! – hopefully along the way you may get ideas and inspiration for your day to day living and lifestyle!
So take two women and their families and try lots of things out, take lots of photos and try to document everything! We are at the start of our journey, we hope that you find it interesting and share our enthusiasm! We are learning all the time about ourselves, our lives and the impact we have on the world, so if you want to join in our adventure do follow us, we are posting regularly about a myriad of topics which we find interesting and challenging.
Some are lifestyle ideas – fun and frivolous, others are more serious , there are foody tips, gardening extracts and home ideas too. We are not experts but we are unashamedly curious and enthusiastic and love to get involved and have a go at most things, to make our lives fun and enjoy the moment!
The borrowers idea came from the books by Mary Norton, as the characters #reuse, #mend, #recycle and #re-purpose to sustain themselves and it is now our mission statement! What better idea is there.
With our new pioneering experimental, mend and make do mentality we have had a go at upcycling – here, salvaging 2 mirrors. In our quest to tread more lightly and make do we still want to live in beautiful spaces …
Financially, upcycling makes sense and generally old furniture tends to be nicer, well made and has proven it can endure time (and family life!). There is much inspiration to be found on the net. Remade in Britain has lots of how to videos and examples of furniture that have been salvaged and upcycled for ideas. Clio Muse & Sarah Moore has even made a career out of upcycling and repurposing salvaged furniture.
We found these big wooden framed mirrors on Gumtree locally. 4 for £20! They needed a few screw holes filling but after this and painting with 2 or 3 coats of Annie Sloan paint were perfect and worthy of a space on our walls!
So easy … so cute and with a surprise egg to delight!
These bunnies are hit with our families this Easter. We all took turns in making them. More eggs were eaten in the process than napkins were made!. White napkins look good but we’ve used coloured ones too.
We used standard cloth napkins that weren’t too thick. The bigger the napkin, the longer and floppier the ears!
We used Haniela’s Easter Bunnies video on youtube to guide us and dressed ours with natural, raffia bows and spring primroses flowers from our gardens.
‘If thou tastest a crust of bread, thou tastest all the stars and all the heavens … ‘
Robert Browning
Homemade bread can be the greatest bread ever!And making it is therapeutic too! You decide what goes in to it, so for the savvy shoppers and their frugal friends it’s an excellent choice. What’s best is you can proudly produce your own gorgeous fresh loaf for less than half the price of a shop bought one. So whilst you will never be able to make it for the price of a mass produced loaf – but why would you want to ! It will be so much less than buying an artisan one from the shops and you get all the pleasure out of it!
All you need is scales, an oven and a bowl!
You can use an electric bread maker, knead by hand or use your mixer with the dough hook (we must admit to using the Kitchen Aid frequently). And, it is possible to fit bread making into a busy life or the working week. The hands on time is not as much as you think and the rewards of a fresh loaf are more than worth the effort.
This is how we do it …
Flour – as Dan Lepard says ‘go cheap on white flour and expensive on the rest’ White flour is all of excellent quality so buy confidently from Lidl. But for the rest, the granary, rye and wholemeal, choose wisely and invest in a flour where the milling processes has protected the grain and its flavour.
Yeast –fresh or dried the results compare. (BB1 finds it easier to use fresh, BB2 dried!) You can obtain fresh yeast free in most supermarkets. Keep it in the fridge and its a doddle to use.
If you can, use the sponge method– whilst an extra stage, it is not difficult and produces bread with a superior flavour and softer texture.
Enjoy the hand knead ! Its just 10 minutes and good for you … think slow living, mindfulness and enjoy.
Turn your oven up as high as it will go. Try and get as close to 260 degrees as you can.
Put a roasting tin in the bottom of the oven and fill with water to create steam and mimic the steam ovens of professional bakers. When the dough hits the hot oven it will puff up – this is the Oven Spring. The yeast in your dough sense the coming heat and panics! Fermentation and respiration speed up and a final belch of carbon dioxide is released that lifts the dough for the last time. The steam from the water keeps the atmosphere in the oven moist and the crust soft – to allow this final rise. It takes about 10 minutes so don’t open the oven during this time. Your oven spring is a good measure of your crumb, so its worth taking these two steps seriously!
After the first 10 minutes, check your bread. Open the oven, turn the bread to get an even colour. If you like a crust all over, take the bread out of the tin and return the bread to the oven upside down to crisp up the bottom. If you don’t think your bread is cooked, keep it in and bake for longer. Turn the temperature down if the crust is looking too brown – the worst that can happen is a slightly thicker crust – and there is nothing wrong with that!
Store your bread carefully … it slices with ease if you can let it cool -something we frequently struggle to do! Don’t keep it in the fridge, wrap it in paper and store somewhere cool. Homemade bread freezes beautifully and there’s little need to refresh!
Have a go … ! Enjoy the slow moments; the smell and the pride of knowing you have made something wholesome, timeless and special – with love!
Whilst we are all still waiting patiently for Spring, try this take on the French classic poulet au vinaigre.The Tarragon flavours the chicken with a mild aniseed that the sweet mixture of sherry and sherry vinegar balances perfectly. Use chicken thighs if you can, they are cheap, full of flavour and juicer than the other joints of a chicken. This is quick to prepare but tastes as though it has taken you hours!
Serve with crusty bread or any type of potatoes with some boiled green peas and mint.
This is how we do it …
Allow 2 or 3 chicken thighs per person, skin on is best to get the rich golden colour
150 ml of sherry vinegar
450 ml of sherry – we used Waitrose cream sherry, but any medium dry will work
5 small onions or 12 shallots
oil for frying
4-6 springs of fresh tarragon leaves
Heat some oil in a frying pan, season the chicken thighs and fry the chicken. Do this in several batches so it browns well and takes on a nutty golden colour. Remove these from the pan to a plate. A lot of oil will come out of the chicken when you are frying it. Drain this off periodically.
Add the onions or shallots to the pan and brown these too.
Arrange the chicken thighs in a shallow casserole dish, add the onions or shallots, scatter the tarragon leaves over the chicken and pour in the sherry and sherry vinegar. Leave to come to the boil and then gently simmer on the top of the cooker for 45 minutes.
When its ready, transfer the onions and chicken to a warm serving dish.
Reduce the sauce and stir in some creme fraiche. Pour over the chicken and scatter any remaining tarragon leaves over the top.
Just managed to get the cuttings to root in under a month, amazing really! Free plants from a bunch of flowers! hoping to plant them out when the weather settles to a warmer Spring feel! Will pot into a large terracotta pot and hope they flower in the summer! Heres to make do and make again!
Hunkered down this afternoon and made a pre-ferment for sour dough in readiness for Mother’s Day!
50g of @Doves Farm White Strong Flour and 50g of Otterton Mill Wholemeal Strong Flour with 100ml of warm water in Kilner jar whisked until smooth and then rested on the Aga for an hour.
theborrowers 