What's outside your window?

Morning all.

Just popping by to share a card I made for a couple of challenges.

The main spark to this were the challenges at Less is More and The Paper Players.

LIM would like to see what is outside your window and PP is a photo of gorgeous spring cherry blossom.

This got me thinking of what should be in our front yard. We moved into a partly converted barn a few years ago and there are still plenty of unfinished jobs around, especially outside. The old farm yard is a great improvement on what it once was but my cherry trees are yet to make an appearance!

So just to show we have made progress, if a little slowly, here are a couple of then and now photos.

This shows the farm as it was when we first saw it and didn't for one moment think we could afford to buy one of the barns. Anyway as luck would have it, we were offered the opportunity to buy one of the shells and there began a wonderful adventure. Our barn is behind the derelict cowshed on the right. You can't see much of it, except a little bit of brickwork in the middle just to the right of the gate post.

So after a lot of dismantling of sheds this is what we were left with!

Bricked up stable doors, years of cow muck and concrete stanchions. The doorway you can see is now a glazed door into the kitchen diner.

As this was a conversion we even had to submit plans to the council about what plants we wanted and just out of shot behind the original brick wall divide I wanted some cherry trees.

This is the result so far. It is taken from the new window which is the left hand bricked up opening in the above photo. I want the trees just behind the mound of chippings in the corner.

Long gone is the cow muck but our neighbours have turned the other side of the partition wall into Steptoe's yard and the coping stones are loose on the top of the wall. They are in the process of renovating the old farmhouse but are taking an awful long time about it! So I am still waiting for the yard to be finished. There are cobbles from the original yard surface waiting to be reused and a wagon load of granite chips to surface the rest of the yard. The neighbours haven't done much to their half and we end up in a muddy mess when it rains but we are getting there, slow and steady!

So, that was my inspiration. For the cherry blossom I used a Crafters Companion die, cut in white then coloured with Copics. The window is a combination of MFT dies and popped up on pads. The stamped greeting is from a HLS set 'Doodled Flowers', thanks Kylie!

OK, enough, now I would like to join in over at -

      

Edited 26/3 Thanks for the reminder Sarah!