We’re buying a Boat!

“You're gonna need a bigger boat. ”

we just love that film.

Last week we met with a very nice young man called Sam Ovens. Sam is a landscape garden designer who also studied at Falmouth University. Most people might think this is a waste of money, too extravagant and really just an after-thought when building a house. But we feel that the setting of a house is just import just as important as the house itself. It's unusual for a landscape designer to have a project like ours, it's almost always second homes and holiday homes so he was really excited - it was for a real family, a young family and it’s where we were going to live the rest of our lives.

For the interiors of our house I will aim to have an eclectic mix of old and new to give the impression that the interiors have evolved over a number of years. This inspiration actually comes from the talented Judy Hutson, who is the lady behind The Pig interiors. So, in order to have such an eclectic and characterful interior the house itself needs to be fairly simple. Simple, but not modern. And most importantly Traditional - this was a word I used a lot during the design process of our house.

Boats… I know very little about boats, the only experience I have really, is in that once a year we charter a boat in Falmouth for my Dads birthday - we go out for the whole day, we learn a few things about sailing, we talk about how invigorating it is to be at sea and own a boat (forgetting the immense upkeep and responsibility of owing a boat actually is of course) we get some lunch, we come home.

So, when I say we would like to buy a boat - it’s not a big boat - it’s a small boat - an old dingy to be exact.

The wedding phrase something old, something new - something borrowed and something blue came into my head a lot, so perhaps the boat is one of our ‘something olds’, but outside. The boat is actually going to be a sandpit. Thanks to Pinterest we loved this idea. Something we could place close to the house and I could watch Ernie from the kitchen window.

We wanted a more formal (and level) lawn where Ernie could kick a football around in front of the house. But we really wanted a sense of nature in our garden with wildflowers a range of textures. Plus something fairly low-maintenance for our very un-green fingers (we will let you know how that works out!)

You would think being in Cornwall, by the sea, that this would be easy - it wasn’t.

But today we found one! Meet… the Mini Orca.

See the transformation of Ernie’s Sandpit Boat here & our Garden Design here.