“I must have Flowers , always & always.”

Just like Claude Monet, I also must have flowers, always & always. and whilst I am pretty late to the party on this, Freddie’s Flowers are here to help in my endeavour to fill my home with blooms!

 

For those of you who don’t know, Freddie’s is, for want of a better word, a subscription service, without the commitment of a subscription.  They offer flowers, delivered to your door, every week. Similar to letter box flowers, although they are MUCH too big to get through the post box!

On their website they state

“Each week, by bicycle or by van, we’ll bring you a big box of beautiful fresh flowers. Don’t worry – if you’re not home, we’ll leave them in a safe place.”

Each box comes beautifully packaged, with 2 packets of flower food (which are biodegradable!), a little sheet about the flowers in the box and a “how to guide” for arranging your bunch.

 

When I first signed up (which, full disclosure, was a freebie from a friend) I got this incredible bunch within a week (in my area it is order by midday Tuesday for delivery on the Thursday).

 

I then headed to the calendar and paused my deliveries immediately. Mainly because it was about to be my birthday and I knew I would get at least 1 bunch of flowers for that!! I have had it paused ever since as my 1st bunch from Freddie’s lasted 3 weeks, then my Birthday bunch lasted for another 2.5 weeks!

 

You can pause your deliveries for as long as you want, as often as you want which is great if, like me, you don’t always have ££ to spend on fancy blooms! As long as you restart your order before your cut off date if you want flowers then you are all good!

The team over at Freddie’s put together beautiful, seasonal bunches of flowers each week, varying the colours and type of flower you get.  They are “cut to order” which apparently means they last longer than those you get in supermarket.

Each bunch is £25 but if you can get a recommendation code your 1st bunch is FREE! And, when you sign up, you get 4 codes per month to give out to friends/family/people who read your blog, which gives you 50% off your next bunch!

I initially thought I was going to want the blooms to be a surprise but as they aren’t cheap, I tend to check each week what they are in the “what’s in the box” section of the website before I change my calendar!

My second bunch have arrived and they have PEONIES!!  I knew what they were going to be and man they are stunning! I will pop some pics of them on my twitter & insta feed when they bloom!

Questing in Quarantine

We all know that the current quarantine/lockdown situation SUCKS.

Well, it particularly sucks when you have excellent plans for a birthday that have to be cancelled.  It sucks even more when the birthday in question is your first one as a couple. That is what happened to us.  First Lee’s birthday in April, followed by mine 10 days later in early May.

Instead of letting Covid-19 make Lee’s birthday a washout, spent watching Netflix on the sofa in our PJ’s, I decided to use my event planner skills to my advantage.  The idea actually came to me in the office, during a discussion on a use for old tea bags…any guesses?

If you guessed “making treasure maps” 10 points to your Hogwarts house! (If you didn’t, please let me know what your uses of old tea bags are in the comments.)

I was inspired by this to create a treasure hunt, in and around our little flat.  When I posted this on my twitter, a few people got in touch to say they would love to know how I did it. So here you go, a blog post, with a “how to” and some ideas for clues, so you can create your own “quarantine quest”.  It would also work once lockdown is lifted and we are allowed to venture further afield! I once did one round Cheltenham for my friend.

In preparation for the treasure hunt I wrote a list of places that I could hide clues.  These included:

• The car
• The freezer
• In a Harry Potter book
• Under the mattress
• In the shoe cabinet

You get the idea…all over the place.

When I had a good list of hiding places, it was time to think of clues.  I wanted to mix things up here, not just have the traditional rhyming riddles, but to have things that were a bit more cryptic and would take Lee a while to work out (I needed to fill most of the day, or we would resort to watching Netflix in our PJ’s!) This took some time, I roped in the help of friends and the internet to come up with some of the more complicated ones, I even used a crossword generator!

 

To make the clues I used some patterned card I had left over from when I made my mum a ‘365 days of happiness jar’, but you could use plain card, or even paper in a pinch, but I would say to use envelopes if you are going down that route, as it makes it a little harder to be mistaken for rubbish (one of ours almost was!)

I went with multiple sizes for my clues as that is what I had available and I think it added to the home made feel I was after, but you do you!

Once I had decided on where the clues should be hidden, and worked out what my clues will be, (including the start and end ones) I had to decide if I wanted to hide gifts with each one or have a huge pile of gifts at the end.  I picked the latter, and made sure to hide the gifts the night before, in a place where he would never look, just so I didn’t spoil the surprise.

Now came the trickiest part – deciding which order to hide the clues in; and making sure they all led to the right place!!

I wrote out a list, and then on the back of each clue, in really small writing, wrote a number which indicated where that clue should sit.  For example, I wanted Lee to have to go all over the house and outside (much to his annoyance as he was in his PJ’s doing this) so clue number 1 was handed to him, which led to clue 2 sat on the bench outside, which led to clue 3 in the wine rack, etc etc.  This bit is so important, or you will completely lose track of where you are and end up leading people to the wrong place!  Honestly, apart from him potentially finding the presents early, this was the most stressful part of this whole event!

When you have hidden everything, make sure you keep hold of your first clue to give to them when you are ready to start the hunt, or you will have just hidden a whole bunch of clues for nothing! I very nearly forgot to create a first clue, which would have been really stupid.

I honestly had so much fun preparing this hunt, and Lee said he really enjoyed looking for clues and trying to work them out. And then he got to open a load of gifts too so it was like a double treat!

You can easily adapt this for any age group, as you can see, I used tricky wording, emoji’s leading to films, I had a substitution cipher and a word search as well.  All of which made the treasure hunt last longer and be more interesting for the 32 year old participant! But you could use picture clues, or simple codes, even easy riddles, depending on the age of your clue hunters!

I hope you found some inspiration and tips on how to do your own treasure hunt.  Please let me know how you got on in the comments or on Twitter!