Home & Garden | The Womens Room

Home & GardenJune 26, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Herbilicious!

By Amanda

it’s all about herbs this week with guest food blogger Jo Orr At this time of year herbs are at their lush best, so I thought I’d share a couple of recipes that put herbs front and centre- a Tabbouleh… Read More

Home & GardenJune 22, 2015

New Magazine Crush: Cherry Bombe

By Amanda

We are indebted to our roving food and craft reporter Julia Little for bringing the fabulous Cherry Bombe magazine to our attention. Who said magazines were dying? There’s been a rush of fabulous ones to the bookshelves over the last… Read More

Home & GardenJune 19, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Summer greens

By Jane

We are deep into June now, so the ‘greenness’ of both nature and produce is reaching its acme. From the acid green of a moped of frisee lettuce, to the fresh green of broad beans and peas, all the way… Read More

Home & GardenJune 18, 2015

Urban gardening, Tokyo style

By Amanda

One of the best things when visiting Japan for me is admiring the urban gardens. Tokyo is very ‘space challenged’ with apartments, shops and restaurants often much smaller in footprint than we are used to in Europe or America. But… Read More

Home & Garden, UncategorizedJune 12, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Food for a summers day

By Jane

The cucumber is an oft neglected vegetable, tossed thoughtlessly into salads, and not regarded as being up to much taste-wise. Bland is the general consensus. Yet, with the merest love and attention it can be elevated to something rather lovely… Read More

Home & Garden, Out & About, UncategorizedJune 9, 2015

Simple Pleasures: Summer Gardens

By Jane

Sitting in the garden is one of summer’s greatest pleasures, whether you have a giant football pitch or a small postage stamp, opening the back door and drinking your first cup of tea in the sunshine is the very best… Read More

Home & GardenJune 5, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Elderflower season

By Jane

The elder tree can appear somewhat scraggy and nondescript except for one period of the year during which it erupts in a bounty of frothy, heady blossom and makes you glad that you have it in your garden after all.… Read More

Home & GardenMay 29, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Food Tales from Scotland

By Amanda

More from our guest food blogger Jo Orr and this weeks she’s in roaming and foraging in Scotland I have travelled 500 miles north to spend the Half Term school holiday with my parents and varied guests in their rambling,… Read More

Home & GardenMay 22, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Food for indecisive weather

By Amanda

The weather this week has been rather Scottish- sudden, torrential downpours followed by blinding sunshine, succeeded ten minutes later by a violent hail storm, then more sunshine producing a gorgeous watery rainbow, its colours blurring at the edges. Then more… Read More

Home & GardenMay 15, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Green Peas and Alphonso Mangoes

By Amanda

Our guest food blogger Jo Orr is tempting us with verdant spring peas and sunshine-tinged Alphonso mangoes this week, I for one LOVE Alphonso mangoes, whose season is brief, so get your skates on…. I brought back a heaving bagful… Read More

Home & GardenMay 8, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: elevating basics with, ahem, Champagne

By Amanda

We’re back with guest food blogger Jo Orr who this week is suggesting elevating basics for a bit of a treat by adding Champagne and, um, Viper’s Bugloss, it’s not often you hear that mentioned in a recipe…. This week… Read More

Home & GardenMay 1, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Warm Salad and a Frozen Coffee

By Amanda

Given the cold winds of this week I thought I’d bring you a warm salad. Something that makes use of the lovely Spring veggies that keep on coming despite the plummeting temperatures (it was snowing in Glasgow on Monday!), but… Read More

Home & GardenApril 30, 2015

Adventures Before Dementia, Gardener’s World

By Amanda

We’re back in France with Bebe, and this week we’ve moved to the garden… Anyone who like me has spent years living in the city without any outside space bigger than the window-sill will know what it feels like to… Read More

Home & GardenApril 24, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Recipes For A Picnic Lunch

By Amanda

Call us optimists, but this run of sunshine has made us dream of outdoor eating, Jo Orr’s blogpost today is all about potential picnic food. As always, you can follow Jo on her own scrummy blog The skies have been… Read More

Home & GardenApril 17, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: Spring Tarts!

By Amanda

Once the magnolia and cherries have bloomed, and the candy-striped apple blossoms are peeking through, I know that the first bunches of tender, pencil-thin asparagus are on their way. Their short season (usually just six weeks) and expense lends this… Read More

Health & Happiness, Home & GardenApril 15, 2015

Adventures before Dementia #2: Vive la Différence!

By Amanda

Second guest post from our lovely correspondent Bebe today, (did you read the first post?) with a bit more of the story on life in her new French village and how she got there. Over to you Bebe… So our… Read More

Home & GardenApril 10, 2015

Guest Food Blogger Jo Orr: The first signs of spring

By Amanda

After last weekend’s feasting I wanted to bring you a couple of light, fresh dishes that you may even be able to eat in the garden if this warm sunshine continues. There were rusty orange crabs sitting like kings on… Read More

Home & GardenApril 7, 2015

TWR visits ceramicist Jo Davda at Brickett Davda

By Amanda

Last week Julia Little, our roving reporter on all things craft related, went down to visit hot ceramicist-of-the-moment Jo Brickett Davda. You know all those gorgeous shots of food on beautifully simple plates in all your stylish cookery books? Well,… Read More

Home & GardenApril 3, 2015

Guest food Blogger Jo Orr: Easter celebrations

By Amanda

Easter, whether you are religious or not, is a festival of Spring, a celebration of renewal: of the first fresh shoots, the sap rising and the greening of the land. I adore this season of vibrant change, when your garden… Read More

Home & GardenMarch 27, 2015

Guest food blogger Jo Orr: a seasonal spring lunch

By Amanda

The second in our series of posts from food blogger Jo Clare Orr, now excuse me but I’ve just got to dash out for some cauliflower and rhubarb…. The Spring Equinox may officially be behind us but the sky is… Read More

Home & GardenMarch 20, 2015

Introducing our new weekly food blogger, Jo Orr

By Amanda

We’re excited to introduce our guest cookery blogger on TWR today, Jo Orr, who will be blogging on the Friday slot for a while, tempting us with her signature seasonal recipes. Over to you Jo… My name is Jo Clare… Read More

Home & GardenMarch 9, 2015

We love: Pillow Post from the Secret Linen Store and Plooms

By Amanda

This is a lovely thing from one of our favourite bedlinen companies, The Secret Linen Store, and Plooms, a fountain pen company started by Sally Page. It has made me wish my children were young again… Harriet and Molly of… Read More

Home & Garden, UncategorizedMarch 5, 2015

Flowers for Mothers Day

By Jane

My love of flowers has been passed on by my mum who has always been a keen flower arranger. I always have various bunch of different coloured blooms all over my house (in more haphazard bunches than my mum) and… Read More

Home & GardenMarch 4, 2015

Readers Kitchens: Abigail Ahern

By Amanda

I know! No Readers Kitchens articles for ages and then two in less than a week! I was fortunate enough to meet hot interior guru Abigail Ahern last week, when she kindly let me poke about her beautifully stylish kitchen… Read More

Home & GardenFebruary 26, 2015

Readers kitchens: Helen from South East London

By Amanda

It’s been a while since we’ve had a Readers Kitchens feature, but when I recently saw Helen’s kitchen, so beautifully restored by her and her partner (and a brilliant carpenter apparently) I begged her to let us put it up.… Read More

Home & GardenFebruary 2, 2015

Wolf Hall lighting – lets get those candles burning

By Amanda

Anyone else obsessed with the way Wolf Hall is lit? All that lighting and snuffing out of candles adds to the drama and makes everyone and everything look so darn gorgeous. Huge effort has gone into making not just the… Read More

Home & GardenJanuary 19, 2015

The day Todd Selby came to visit

By Amanda

I promise this is the last post for a while on MAD and his Selfridges Bright Old Tthings project, but I couldn’t NOT tell you about the day Todd Selby (of The Selby blog) came to take photos of the… Read More

Home & GardenJanuary 7, 2015

Eat Your Books, a Q&A with co-founder Jane Kelly

By Amanda

I put Eat Your Books up on Monday as a Things We Love feature. Shortly after, co founder Jane Kelly made contact and she sounded so fabulous I felt we needed to know more, so we did a quick email… Read More

Home & GardenDecember 19, 2014

Last minute Christmas Shopping for the desperate

By Amanda

For those of you who haven’t quite managed to get all your presents bought, wrapped-to-Martha-standards and placed artfully around the bottom of your beautifully decorated tree, we feel your pain. If the thought of heading onto the high street and… Read More

Home & GardenDecember 18, 2014

Alternative Christmas planning: in praise of ‘box set clothing’

By Amanda

Obvs, I’m looking forward to Christmas, of course I am. Nothing pleases me more than having to buy, wrap, hide and then place secretly around the Christmas tree, perfectly pitched presents for my loved ones (yes I still do the… Read More