News from L&F

Well, blame this one on us.  Isobel’s great whinge has long been that we don’t get proper frost here in the bottom left hand corner of Lincolnshire.  Rain, broiling sun, but never really deep, snapping frost. So imagine how unsympathetic we...

Well, ladies and gents.  A very happy new year to you all, and welcome back to the world of L&F.  What a time we had of it at the end of 2024: the Aga had a hissy fit, and we...

(Given the time of year, you know the rest.)  Well ladies and gentlemen, we all survived my birthday and the clearing up and now we’re into Christmas.  The last of the L&F packages are packaged and despatched, and I’m off...

Well, the day is almost here.  Tomorrow, dear Reader, is my birthday.  Not just any old birthday – a BIG one.  Huge.  Ends in a zero and starts with a 6, and if one more person tells me ‘it’s just...

Storm Darragh, ladies and gentlemen.  As I write this, safe in rural Lincolnshire on the eastern side of this fair land, I still hear the wind tearing it up outside and the rain rattling onto the windows.  For those on...

Who knew?!  You ARE interested in how it all began!  Well, you asked for it ….. “Children properly managed” my mother always said, “can be made to pay.”  As I’m one of five spanning twelve years, I should have realised...

Tomorrow, as I’m sure you all know, is Stir up Sunday, the day when families traditionally gather to ‘stir up’ the Christmas pud.  Here, we’re starting to wish we hadn’t spent so long lovingly establishing  the family traditions over the...

Last weekend we had a wonderful two days selling in Fakenham, at the Norfolk Artisans Christmas Fair.  It was fabulous to be back in the mix and out in the crisp (that’s a euphemism if ever there was one) East...

Sad though we are to see the back of Halloween and therefore all things pumpkin, we’re SO EXCITED that it’s now properly November and that the run-up to the L&F Christmas can begin! Our renewed and refreshed website is laden...

‘Why’ we are sometimes asked ‘Lincolnshire?’  Well apart from being a bit rude about a beautiful and largely timeless part of the country, that’s a very good question, and we’re asked it – or a variation on the theme –...

So now that we’ve all gone entirely state-side, and we have learned to embrace our American friends’ version of Halloween with all it’s spookiness and sugar, what to do with the innerds of the pumpkins you’ve assiduously carved?  Simple.  Rinse,...

I’ve been in trouble this week.  My last blog exceeded our self-set limit by almost 100 words.  (Isn’t that the problem with Christmas though?  Excess.)  So, back to the briefer everyday story of rural folk.  It has been a very...

Yet more excitement at L&F HQ this week as our Christmas stock arrives, in a flurry of deliveries, phone calls and (whisper it) real paper paperwork. Callie the L&F pooch has been on hyper-alert, warning us of incoming traffic, racing...

Here at L&F HQ we are, we hope, in the throes of placing our final orders of 2024.  It’s always a tricky call to make – brutally, we don’t want to be left with seasonal stock that might in theory...

Have you seen our new Vases?  Oh my life.  We’re pairing them with the bang on trendy faux foliage that seems to be all the rage – and we do see why.  We had a great time finding these lovelies...

THANK YOU, to everyone who sundanced last week!  What a cracking afternoon we had: the sun may not have been dangerously hot, but it didn’t pour – which, this year, is a definite win.  Businesses sold stock, people ate and...

The leaves are falling at L&F HQ, and nothing makes us feel more autumnal.  Except perhaps our divine little felt pumpkins, which we’re doing again this year in homage to our own homegrown offerings: if you could only see the...

Don’t anyone mention it, but the weather tomorrow is kind of important to us.  We don’t ask much – we don’t want grilling heat and glorious blue and gold, nice though those would be.  We’d just like no rain please,...

No, not to Christmas – to the inaugural Late Summer Fair, here at L&F HQ.  The excitement is definitely building as we prepare to host 15 stalls of local businesses in a final flurry of buying and selling before we...

Well, it has been an epically wet month in Argyll.  We and the land are truly and biblically, spectacularly sodden – from where we are, right on the edge of a sea loch, you see the next belt of rain...

The eagle eyed among you will have spotted that we have just had the second of our August birthdays.  Mr I is … well, a year older than he was around now last year – and he put a very...