Girl In The Pretty Dress

Christmas is possibly my favourite time of year. For me it all kicks off around mid-November with a visit to the Chatsworth Christmas Markets. We all pile into a car (including the dogs) and take the scenic route into the Peak District.  If you love period dramas as much as I do you'll probably recognise the house ...  It's perhaps most famous for playing 'Pemberley' in the film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice (starring Keira Knightley) We always start our day out either touring the house or exploring the estate. The house is themed differently each Christmas and this year's theme is Great Expectations .  However, on the day we visited the weather was too glorious to spend the morning indoors so we ventured out onto the estate... Where we attempted to tire this little rascal out... We climbed up the hill through the ever changing Autumn colours until we reached the folly... Where we stopped for a while to enjoy t...

A couple of weeks ago we were blessed with a rare springtime blast of sunshine and warmth (you all know by now how much I love the sunshine!) so I decided to take myself off for the day to Lyme Park . I've visited it in the past but I was about 5 at the time and purely there to see Santa - and understandably I wasn't so fussed for the gardens or the house. Lyme Park is pretty recognisable as it's been used in dozens of films and TV programmes in the past (A rather soggy Colin Firth famously climbed out of the lake here, when he was playing Mr Darcy in the BBC's adaptation of 'Pride and Prejudice') and luckily it's not too far from where I live. The house and grounds used to belong to an old aristocratic family but after the second world war it was sold to the National Trust - who now manage and maintain it. The National Trust is a charity I am very proud to support as they do a lot of work maintaining hundreds of sites of historic importance. I was so i...