The Buttercup Cafe at Elderflower Fields Festival 2012

What a weekend! What a festival! We’re back from the first Elderflower Fields Festival on Bentley estate, near Lewes. We feel like we’ve been on holiday. We may be exhausted but we had a wonderful time. It was magical.

The Buttercup’s woodland cafe at Elderflower Fields 2012

The sun shone and everyone danced and made merry all weekend. This was a truly family friendly festival and it was lovely to see so many of our friends and customers in our woodland cafe. Our Buttercup festival cafe was hidden in the woods beside the acoustic tent. We had plenty of shade, a spectacular view over Sussex fields and great music. We brought our hula hoops (of course!) and served cake, tea, real coffee, ice-cold freshly squeezed juice and smoothies. Kids played while parents lolled on the straw bales under our shady sails.

The Buttercup Cafe in festival mood

Our mini sweet shop was a big hit with the face painted festival kids. And all hail our friends at the brilliant Rye Bay Coffee Company for helping us to set up a proper coffee machine in the woods.

We loved dancing under the glitter ball in the Vinyl Thursday yurt and giggled at the woodland silent disco dancers. We saw our Peter give a fantastic performance on the main stage with Ska Toons, our Zoe Brownrigg was wonderful in the acoustic tent and so exciting to see our Jasper returned from his travels and appearing on the main stage with The Ouse Valley Three.

Magical

We’d also like to say a big thank you to Nigel and his lovely team who organised Elderflower fields Festival – always calm, helpful and charming throughout the whole festival. It was lovely to work with you.

We brought our crochet with us of course!

The Buttercup team deserve a special mention too for their hard work, smiles and stamina – keeping going all weekend on very little sleep! Well done Claire, Megan, Simon, Camilla, Amanda, Harvey and Geoff.

Festival Claire

Cool Camilla

Super Simon and Marvellous Megan

Amazing Amanda

We’re off for a much needed nap now. Can’t wait for more festival fun next year. And if you didn’t make it this year, make sure you buy tickets for 2013!

The Buttercup Cafe in festival mood

The Buttercup’s woodland cafe at Elderflower Fields 2012

Twilight

Vinyl Thursday disco yurt

Zoe Brownrigg on the acoustic stage at Elderflower Fields 2012

Cool Camilla

Amazing Amanda

Bentley woods

The Buttercup by night at Elderflower Fields

Acoustic Tent

We brought our crochet with us of course!

Festival Claire

Super Simon and Marvellous Megan

Magical

So what is under The Buttercup trap door?

A whole new world hidden under The Buttercup trap doors

All has been revealed! As many of our lovely customers know, we’ve been busy working on opening up a new space with more tables here at The Buttercup Cafe. Well, at last, we have opened the trap door and our new downstairs room is open.

In the unlikely event of a rainy day during the summer (!) or when the outdoor courtyard tables are full, we now have two cosy sofas and plenty more tables downstairs. We’ll be adding more delights to the new space in coming weeks, making it into a Buttercup kind of a place with colour, fairy lights, favourite books, a crochet blanket or two, vintage finds and great artwork.

The new room is available to rent for private dinner parties in the evenings and for special events and meetings. We’ve already hosted a banquet for 28 people, a birthday dinner party, a clothes sale and a children’s baking party. Do pop in to the cafe and ask Claire if you’d like to know more.

The old brick stairs – take any book home & leave a small charity donation

Look who we found living in The Buttercup basement – all looking for new homes!

Watch this space!

Downstairs at The Buttercup Cafe

A knitted garden

Knitted flowers on sale in The Buttercup Cafe – raising money for Emmaus Brighton

Here in The Buttercup Cafe, we’re partial to a bit of knitting and crochet. So we were delighted when an artist came through the cafe doors with armfuls of knitted flowers. She goes by the name of Crafty Old Crow and she knits and sells these flowers to raise money for the homeless charity Emmaus in Brighton. You can see her brilliant flowers on the tables here in the cafe at the moment.

Her knitted work is included in the Amazing Knitted Garden which is on display on Saturdays during Brighton Fringe 2012 at Emmaus on Drove Road in Portslade. There’s a lovely review and photos of the knitted garden on the Strebergarten blog.

Knitted lavender by Crafty Old Crow

Some of the flowers cost just £4. Please do pop into the cafe and buy one to support this fantastic charity and community of homeless people.

www.craftyoldcrow.co.uk

The Buttercup Cafe in all its glory…

We were so excited when local artist Lyndsey Smith sent us a link to her brilliant blog which featured her latest watercolour painting – and it’s of us!

Buttercup Brunch - A painting by Lyndsey Smith

Lyndsey has created a beautiful painting of our sunny Buttercup yard in all its glory. We love the detail; the fruit & veg boxes in the doorway, the higgeldy piggeldy plants and flower pots. You can see how Lyndsey created the final artwork by looking back at her blog posts over the last month. You can see the painting come to life. We’re delighted, flattered and very impressed.

Buttercup Brunch - First drawing by Lyndsey Smith

 

Buttercup Brunch - A work in progress by Lyndsey Smith

Do have a look at Lyndsey’s other paintings of shops, people and places around Lewes on her lovely website www.lyndseysmith.co.uk

The Buttercup Cafe is coming to Elderflower Fields

Forget Woodstock. Forget The Summer of Love. Get your tickets to Elderflower Fields where The Buttercup Cafe will be creating an oasis of calm and charm for all the happy campers and festival-goers. Elderflower Fields is a lovely new festival for all the family happening just outside Lewes on 25th to 27th May 2012.

The Buttercup Cafe will be appearing at Elderflower Fields 2012

We’re creating an outdoor cafe serving delicious teas, our homemade cakes, fresh lemonade and our best coffee. When we haven’t got our pinnies on we’re planning to try out the woodland healing huts, do our best dancing to our favourite Ska Toons, watching our Jasper play with the brilliant Ouse Valley Three and embarrass ourselves at the outdoor family zumba class. Now all we need is a bit of sunshine! Hope to see you all there.

The Buttercup Hamper Delivery Service

The Rolling Downs shepherd huts

The sun is shining and the Sussex countryside is covered with every shade of green. The evenings are lighter, the sunsets are stunning and we want to be eating and cooking outside again.

We’re delighted to announce that we’re now delivering hampers to The Rolling Downs shepherd huts. These are two very special, beautifully built, luxury huts which families can stay in. They’re in a secluded corner on the Bentley estate, not far from Lewes. Families staying in the huts have their own kitchen and a fire pit for cooking outdoor feasts.

We deliver delicious local supplies direct to the huts. Everything from local eggs, Mr Richards’ Lewes made sausages, our lovely coffee, fresh Sussex fruit & veg, loaves of Real Patisserie bread, our Buttercup cakes and more. We can even deliver dinner, freshly made to order from The Buttercup kitchen. It’s a magical place to stay and we’re delighted to be offering our hamper delivery service.

Do pop in or call us if you’d like lunch or dinner delivered to your home – or a Buttercup hamper or special picnic made just for you.

The Buttercup Cafe's fresh fruit & veg: you can order locally sourced fresh food direct from us.

The Lilliput Bazaar comes to The Buttercup

We’re back from our Easter holidays; dodging the April showers and delighted to be back in the kitchen here at The Buttercup Cafe.

We wanted to let you know about a lovely children’s clothing bazaar happening here at The Buttercup on Friday 27th April and Saturday 28th April from 10am to 5 pm. It’s being organised by local mothers and it’s called The Lilliput Bazaar.  They’re selling second-hand children’s clothes (age 3 – 11) It’s not too late if you want to sell some clothes at their sale too. For more details just email thelilliputbazaar@gmail.com. Come along and find some lovely clothes for your kids and stop off in at the cafe for a treat too. See you there!

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone! We’ve taken a short holiday. The cafe is closed from Friday 6th April to Monday 9th April. We’ll be open as normal on Tuesday 10th at 10am with delicious freshly baked treats waiting for you…

Our walls

The Buttercup Cafe’s walls are covered with an ever-changing collection of paintings, photos and artworks created by Lewes artists and makers. Some of whom are our lovely customers, some work here and some just walk through the door with a bundle of canvases under their arm.

Our latest pictures on display in the cafe are by Mark Ellender. They’re bold and bright, eye-catching and odd (in a good way!). We like them, hope you do too…

'Monsters, damsel and icicles' Acrylic on canvas, £250, Mark Ellender

Coming out of hibernation

The Buttercup Yard

This week of warm sunshine has left us all feeling glorious. We’re so lucky to work in a beautiful Sussex town and most importantly in a cafe where we get to be outside (well, when we’re not busy creating fresh delights in our kitchen). We have lots of tables for customers outside in our yard. Like 99% of the population this weather has made us start thinking about our flowers, plants and gardening plans for the summer. So this post is a collection of ideas we rather like.

beautiful strawberry pots as featured on www.countrylivinged.com

1) Strawberry pots – as featured on the lovely Country Living blog this week.

2) Alys Fowler‘s collection of articles in The Guardian are brilliant and very useful – covering everything from growing peas to marigolds.

Wiggly Wiggler's British grown flower posy

2) Wiggly Wigglers – we love their beautiful British grown flower posies in jam jars.

3) Leadbetter & Good – we couldn’t resist buying some of their latest bunting. Brilliant bold colours and fabrics for summer. Their shop is new to Cliffe High Street in Lewes.

4) Fennel & Fern – The most stylish gardening blog.

5) Garden Organic – The national charity for organic growing have great information on edible flowers. And as any of our regular customers will know, we love using edible flowers in The Buttercup kitchen.