I wrote a letter

On Sunday afternoon, we decided to go to one of my favourite bookshops ever Much ado books in Alfriston in East Sussex. It's a real delight full of quirky, old and new books and has a great section on crafting and design as well as cookery and the famous Bloomsbury Group who lived nearby in Charleston House.

As you come in there is a covered courtyard to greet you with shelves of old books which never cease to delight the likes of me. I could spend days hours looking at all of these, from their design to their smell to their contents (Yes, I love the smell of books)

Some Spring flowers to delight the senses too before going into the shop.

I bee lined to the beautiful selection of cards first as they have a wonderful array of Ravilious prints as cards and this pleased me no end for we are great admirer's of this artists work.

It was warm and cosy in the shop despite the breezy chills in the afternoon air and we spent what felt like hours there admiring, paging, drooling over the books.

I just love all the owner's attention to detail and secretly pipe dream about owning a quirky bookshop myself and what I would do to make it interesting and encouraging people to read.

Anyway, back to the letter writing. The owners just happened to be celebrating national stationary week upstairs in their beautiful extended bookshop and open studio. Well, who can resist the offer of a choice of delicious stationary, cards, stamps and pens to put pen to paper? I know i can't.

Because the letter had to be to someone in the UK, the only full address I could remember was my own(!)and a friend of mine who lives down the road. A bit sad I know, but I decided to write to card to Alice just because she knows about the joy and excitement of receiving post beyond emails(!) and to Janie my friend whom I know will appreciate some pen on paper too.

Alice got a Dottie Angel card and Janie got some beautiful paper with my ink writing on it. It was so relaxing just sitting and thinking in the sunny studio upstairs, a really welcomed break from the hub bub of everyday life.

I wrote a little list to Alice, just because...

Much Ado Books have promised to send our letters, so we will hopefully see this land on our door step sometime this week.

All in all it was a most satisfying afternoon and we came away with a couple of beautiful books too which I will no doubt be showing you over time. The absolute cherry on the top was meeting Janie's new puppy on the way home. Her name is Purdy and she is too sweet for words and has that lovely new puppy smell. He she is...

I hope you are all enjoying the changing seasons. Talking of change it's May day tomorrow and that just happens to be my day of birth too all those 43 years ago. I'm loving that its a Spring time day full of new life and a new year to look forward to.

Wishing you all a week full of new life and joys

xox

Penny