I’m delighted to tell you that I’ve been featured in the 2025 Christmas edition of Country Living!
What an experience and I’m so thankful for the opportunity to showcase my work from “the middle of nowhere to your somewhere”.
About a year ago I sat stippling paint onto our lumpy cottage cheese wall, covered in dust having just ripped out our mantlepiece. It looked like a renovation disaster from the 90’s series “Changing Rooms”. Except there was no handy Andy or handy Mandy. Having taken off an old radiator, black radiator “juice” was now spraying up the wall and the leak in the roof meant megalitres of water cascaded down the stairwell. Buckets everywhere. Sanity lost.
At this very moment I was about to have a big cry when I decided to step away from it all and check my email. In my inbox was an email from the lovely Cara asking if Country Living could come and do a feature for their 40th anniversary Christmas edition. “We’d like to do a feature, visiting you in the studio and at home, with everything beautifully decorated for Christmas”. I looked up at the lumpy cottage cheese wall, the black radiator juice sprayed 12ft up and listened to the dripping of water where we had used ALL the towels and buckets in an eight mile radius and fell to pieces laughing.
…and that’s how it happened…I can’t quite believe it but my journey is now in the 2025 Christmas edition of Country Living. I’m so thankful…and so relieved to tell you because I’ve sat on this for a year!
Huge thanks to the @countrylivinguk team, Rachael Oakden for your beautiful words and to photographer Nato Welton (who my son decided to call Jeremy for his entire visit…we still don’t know why) Also MASSIVE thanks to my husband for helping me to clean the walls, build the fireplace and fix the leak. Handy Andy and Mandy turned up after all.
The December issue is out now.