Great excitement at Coombe Leigh

We are all very excited here at Coombe Leigh. We are going to have a photoshoot here at the house with a proper professional photographer. (Not just me with my little digital camera!). Jack is coming to take some lifestyle shots for DevonBears publicity so we are all running around trying to make everywhere look beautiful.

Of course Amy feels she is already beautiful and when the words "camera" and "photograph" were mentioned she immediately started posing madly. She was made worse by the coincidental visit of Kelly, our lovely grooming lady, who came to give her and Ben their regular beauty session. Here's Kelly hard at work ..

Amy feels that she should be the centre of attention, so keeps edging closer and closer to Kelly ..

Meanwhile Ben is surreptiously chewing through the lead Kelly has used to attach him to the railings!

Afterwards they were quite worn out. I didn't have the heart to tell them that we weren't actually planning to include them in the photographs. I expect Amy at least will manage to push her way into one or two of the pictures ... and where she leads Ben usually follows!

As you can see, the grass has been cut ready for the shoot, and look at that lovely edging - shame it's not straight!! Never mind, perhaps wonky will become the new trendy after our uber-cool photographs demonstrate this new look?! (That's the studio/workroom on the left in this picture and the handrail leads to the steps to the courtyard. Our house is built into the side of a hill, so the garden is actually above the house).

While all this activity was taking place, I was in the gazebo painting - Christmas cards!! Surreal or what? But my summer's going to be so busy I thought it was best to start early rather than risk running out of time as they'll need to be at the printers by the end of August.

Here's the first (still rather rough) version of card one for the set of dog cards. More will follow..