Have you been to www.hejhog.co.uk yet? I would certainly recommend that you visit this lovely site. They sell an interesting and very diverse range of products which are either organic, natural or derived from a sustainable source - something we should all be concerned with.

You could spoil yourself with an impressive range of cosmetics or treat a little one to a beautiful hand made wooden toy.

Flowers go to Shaun at hejhog today for his exceptional customer service!

I love pearls, they don’t have to be be perfect and costly or even white….. I love the imperfections of a freshwater pearl and the size of a baroque, I love the texture of coin pearls and the delicacy of seed pearls, I am a real pearl girl.

So my little heart skipped a beat when my friend Rose arrived with a very long strand of the most beautiful,enormous,white freshwater pearls. The strand needed restringing and it was also very long, we worked out that we could get a 50cm necklace as well as two bracelets out of it.

As these pearls were the star of the show Rose wanted a classic pearl necklace made. I strung them in the traditional way, knotting between each pearl and I used a beautiful gold toggle clasp as a fastening.

Three times a week, come rain (yes, honestly, I have even run in the rain) or shine, I go out for a 3.5 mile run through the fields surrounding our village. Up until now it’s been a very relaxed affair, with no pressure, just a little “me time”.

But recently I realised (with a bit of help from my quite competative husband David) that to take up to 45 minutes to run 3.5 miles is pretty pathetic. So, no more gentle jogging, no more taking time to smell the flowers - it’s serious!

I’ve been working really hard to get my time down to 35 minutes - which is a fairly acceptable 10 minute mile and today I did my best time ever - 33.36!

The latest piece to be added to the site is a beautiful Pearl Necklace, made using the loveliest peacock blue freshwater pearls and tiny silver beads. I have made this necklace in the traditional way of stringing pearls which is on silk thread.

It’s a very time consuming, labour intensive way of stringing, but the necklace will then drape beautifully and because there is a knot between each pearl, should the strand ever break, you will never loose more than 1 pearl.

The pendant is something special…… The most beautiful solid silver flower, hand made in a fair trade co-operative in Thailand. The silver is 99.9% pure fine silver and is truly spectacular.

I like Honeysuckle but I almost prefer the buds to the flowers. Look at the organic and sculptural shapes of these buds that are almost, but not quite open.

Happy Birthday Beth!