Summer Cookery Class

Vanessa is a busy bee this Summer with weddings and parties, but I have managed to persuade her that a "Best of Treetops" cookery class would be perfect in May!

So on Monday 10th May, the class will include some of our favourite recipes from the past 5 years. We will use delicious, seasonal and inspiring ingredients. You will enjoy a lovely lunch of all the food cooked and you will also make something to take home with you.

Starting at 9.30am and finishing at approximately 3pm, the class costs £75, this includes all your ingredients, food, a glass of wine, refreshments throughout the day and the recipes to take home.

Extra Vintage Style Flowers Class

Due to the popularity of our June Vintage-Style Flowers Class, we are doing an extra class on Wednesday 16 June.
9.45am-2pm
£75
All materials and a light lunch included.

Spring - Summer Watercolour Classes

Here are the dates for our Watercolour Classes that restart after the Easter holidays:

Wednesday 28 April: Sunflowers in Provence
Tuesday 4 May: Bluebells
Wednesday 5 May: NEW!!! A Morning Workshop (from 9.30am-1pm - £40)
Thursday 20 May: Waterfalls
Monday 24 & Tuesday 25 May: Watercolour Masterclass
Thursday 24 June: Roses, large and free
Monday 28 June: A Summer Scene

Classes are from 9.30am - approx 3pm, the cost is £65, this includes all your materials, a 2 course lunch with wine, coffee/tea and home made biscuits throughout the day. To book call me on 01635 44850.

Spring Entertaining Cookery

A delicious day today with Vanessa!

We started the day learning how to make bread the Bertinet method way, very sticky, but lots of swinging it around, and bashing it on the granite, very therapeutic! The results were well worth it, everyone was able to take some home, and we enjoyed some with lunch.

We made a lovely asparagus, watercress and potato salad with seared salmon and olive salsa. This was followed by stir fried chicken with a cream pesto, the smell of the fresh basil filled the house.

But the star of today was the most AMAZING orange cake pudding served with a rhubarb, orange and ginger compote, we ate it so quickly I didn't even get time to take a photo! The cake had no butter in it, and was so light and zingy, the rhubarb and orange compote was so fresh with some chopped stem ginger in it and some vanilla pod seeds.

We could have spent the afternoon just sitting at the table bathed in sunshine, drinking coffee, chatting and just complementing Vanessa on a great day! I am definitely making the pudding this weekend.

Simply Venice Watercolour Class

We had a lovely day yesterday painting our Venice scene. It wasn't as simple as the title suggested! There was quite alot of drawing to start with, to get the important skyline of buildings just right, they create a silhouette that can only be Venice.


Keeping in the watery Venice style, it was a painting that had several washes and we needed a good strong paper to take all the water we were brushing on. Claire had brought some Saunders Waterford paper, which is a very good quality 300lb heavyweight paper and perfect for the technique we were using of very loose washes, very typical of Claire's painting style (and also perfect for when she splashed her painting with the wrong paint, and was able to get it out, a thinner paper would have worn out, we all learnt a very useful technique there!)


We also had two new colours today, which were gorgeous, a green called Viridian, and a purple called Manganese Violet, both of which we used for the Gondolas, they were so vibrant, we had to be quite careful when mixing them up not to make them too strong.

It was a very chilled day, the sun shone, and we heard about two proposal stories from Venice!

We are now breaking for the Easter with Watercolour and will be back on Wednesday 28 April for Sunflowers in Provence, a lovely, big sunny painting.

Coffee and Cakes

We had a very successful morning at Treetops, on behalf of Asthma UK. My younger sister is running the marathon for them next month, I can't support her in the running stakes, but I can bake. So bake I did ... til late at night and first thing this morning! There were delicious Chocolate Cakes (Grandma's recipe), my boys' favourite Banana and Choc Chip loaves and lots and lots of Colourful Cupcakes!

The sun was shining (hard to believe at this wet heavy rain moment) and friends and neighbours arrived to drink, eat, chat and enter the raffle for a £50 Gift Voucher towards a class at Treetops.

The grand sum of £200 was raised, thank you everyone. It will definitely give Katy a boost in her final few weeks of preparation.

Artex 10 - Art Exhibtion

A sale of paintings, drawings and prints takes place this weekend at East Woodhay Village Hall, Heath End, Newbury, RG20 0AP. (Southwest of Newbury, A34 Wash Common Junction and A343 via Ball Hill. Further info 01635 253489)

Saturday 13 March 10am to 6pm
Sunday 14 March 11am to 3pm

Entrance £2 to include Exhibition Catalogue, refreshments are available.
All profits go to St Martin's School and St Martin's Church.

Two Treetops Tutors are exhibiting, Claire Warner our watercolour tutor and Jo Andreae, our photogaphy tutor.

Watercolour - Spring Flowers

We had a lovely class today, beautiful sunshine and a table full of pretty Spring Flowers.

After a quick initial sketch Claire showed us how to create a loose and free painting, trying not to get too "botanical" about it. We masked the outline of the white flowers and after our first wash we stopped for some lunch.

The afternoon was spent mixing some darker colours followed by some negative painting, dropping in some dark colours to lift the flowers and to create some shapes.

As you can see, they were all brilliant!


At the end of the afternoon whilst tidying up, I spotted Bambi helping himself to my Spring Flowers!

Spring Cookery - Places available!

There are spaces available on Vanessa's next class, which is Spring Entertaining on Thursday 18 March. The class starts at 9.30am and finishes at approximately 3pm, the cost is £75 and this includes all ingredients, recipes to take home, a 3 course delicious lunch (that you have helped cook!) and also something that you have made to take home with you.

The classes are great fun, full of top tips, ideas of food that can be prepared ahead or frozen, and also amazing presentation ideas.

Book now, as Vanessa won't be teaching during the Summer Term, so this is her last class for a while!