Christmas!

Ok - I know it's not technically Christmas, but for Ochre And Ocre we had a an early celebration yesterday. With help from the glamorous Rachel Spivey and her trusty assistant Linda, along with Julia Mitchell, we transformed the private dining room at Ettington Park Hotel into a stylish Christmas scene.

Firstly I should mention the Hotel - 'cos it was gorgeous! Ettington Park Hotel felt like you were stepping back into time to a more glamorous age - the rooms were all beautifully decorated, with high ceilings, wooden panelling, and fine paintings adorned the walls. Sumptuous drapes on the windows, beautiful antiques and fresh flowers everywhere. You felt as if one should be partaking of afternoon tea. Unlike many establishments of this type the staff could not be more helpful and friendly. They were very courteous, smiled and said hello, and you felt like it was a place you could really relax.
We were using one of the private dining rooms for the shoot, a beautiful panelled room with stained glass windows and painted inscriptions. It was perfect for a Christmas shoot.
As Julia had said when preparing the flowers it is very hard trying to get into the Christmas spirit when it's hot and muggy outside. Another problem is finding flowers that would be in season in December. But the flowers looked fantastic - and smelt divine. Not just because of the flowers, but she had used mint and Rosemary in the arrangements, which mingled with the smell of the warm beeswax candles, the smells were certainly evocative of Christmas. Look out for lots of tips from Julia in our Autumn newsletters.

We had a tight window in which to take the pictures, sandwiched between the breakfast and dinner shift, but with a lot of hard work, no lunch, (sorry guys!), and concentration we pulled off two completely different looks in a few hours.

The photographers Rachel and Linda

 Attached our a few pics of the shoot in progress, the "proper" pictures you will have to wait until the Autumn when they will be on the Ochre And Ocre website.

Julia Mitchel at work

Lights, camera action..

Photoshoots and Brochures

The sunshine may have disappeared - although hopefully only temporarily, but I am still finding it hard to settle down and start and finish one thing, there are so many things happening in the world of Ochre and Ocre at the moment.

The shoot went well with Rachel Spivey last week for our Christmas brochure, and the lovely Lindsey Joyce is putting the finishing touches to the artwork. Lindsey seems to be so multi talented - not only coping with Isabella and Madelaine, (her children not our designs!), but she also seems to work all hours on different graphic design projects. I can't wait to see the finished brochure - a whole 20 pages!! It feels almost like we are launching all over again.

Last night I trekked across to the depths of Northamptonshire - to a very pretty little village called Walgrave, to give a talk to the local WI. It was my first proper talk, so I was quite apprehensive, but the ladies were all very welcoming and soon put me at ease. They seemed to find the Ochre story interesting, and had quite a few questions at the end.It was interesting when I asked for a show of hands to gauge how many people shopped online to see that only a few put their hands up. Hopefully the new brochure will help to expand us into a whole new our customer base.
Next week we are teaming up with Rachel again, this time for a full on Christmas sparkly glamour shoot! (No models but loads of gorgeous table linen!). We are very fortunate that the lovely people at Ettington Park Hotel have allowed us the use of their beautiful chapel. I am really excited as this time we will also have the support of another talented lady - Julia Mitchell. Julia does some really beautiful flower arrangements and will be helping to dress two very different Christmas looks. I met Julia through WIRE, and she has a very similar background career wise to me. It's lovely seeing people taking the risks, and doing a complete career change especially when it works as well as Julia's.
Later on in the year you will be able to see more of Julia's work, and she will also be sharing some of her tips for dressing the perfect dinner table.

Road Blocks

I never know quite what I'm going to come across when I set off for my daily trip to the Post Office. It is only a mile away - but in that mile all kinds of hazards and obstacles seem to pop up.
This morning a rather cute Highland calf took an age to cross over the road - I couldn't resist taking a snap of him on my phone. This was after sitting there for 5 minutes for the flock of sheep to walk slowly up the road!

Yesterday I was following a car across the common, and they couldn't get the sheep to move out of their way - I must have looked like the local nutter as I jumped out of my car behind them and shooed the sheep off the road.
Apparently it is worse in the winter as the cattle hang around on the road when it is icy as they like to lick the salt!
We are busy working on finalising our Autumn brochure at the moment - with help by the multi skilled Lindsey Joyce who also designed our Isabella print. Isabella herself is currently on our homepage looking very fetching in her apron!
When we originally started nearly 2 years ago now - we only ever intended to be online - but we keep getting requests for a brochure, and hopefully it will enable us to reach a new part of the market. 

We have had some really good press coverage of late - our Isabella apron is in this months Country Living on the Emporium pages, and in the August edition of Period House you can see our Isabella fabric.