I really dislike fridge magnets.


I put up with years of the children having brightly coloured letters which they picked off the fridge door and left on the floor to be trodden on in bare feet, not good........


When we moved here the fridge was in a cupboard, hurray no magnetic surfaces, no more endless bits of paper stuck to/falling off the fridge.


When that fridge broke we replaced it with a free standing one.  And I told the children a big fat fib.

life



is



very



very



green

I forgot to let you look out of the windows when you stopped by for a visit, so here is the view from the front room and my studio (oh how I love how that sounds!)



the road snaking down the hill past many many roof tops, before the landscape opens out to fields, and there in the distance a hint of water. depending on the day/time/sky/ it ranges from a brilliant blue, to the dullest of greys. mostly greys if I'm honest but it still makes my heart beat just a little faster when I see it.



this is today. ok, so who has stolen the sea? I still have roof tops to look at, the huge yellow salt bin (oh what fun, that means the road is going to be an ice rink come winter), but the sliver of sea which constitutes our view is gone.......



equally alarming is the view if I look the other way, in between the houses at the end of the street is a field, and beyond that about a mile or so away is the main road, once which travels the length of the country onwards to Scotland, or heading south it goes right past where we moved from. it is my escape route back to all that is familiar. I am very concerned it is not there......

something that is still there though is the hill. in order to get these views we live up a hill. I know it's still there because I walk up and down it several times a day. Yesterday it felt a lot further and steeper because I had signed up for a vegetable bag scheme at school. the idea is that you get a seasonal bag of local veg/fruit, and because it gets taken to school with lots of other orders you don't pay delivery. which is where the theory falls apart - ie it doesn't get delivered home.

and it's heavy
very heavy



but I'm really excited to find out what's in it, and I have another bag with me to transfer some of it into to make the carrying just a little easier



oh the excitement to open it all up, and discover wonderful treats, and to plan dinner around what's inside, (and what needs eating up first..........)



just one thing though, anyone know what this is?

hello there, welcome to the new house, come in, are you ready for a cup of tea and a look round?



I spent yesterday cleaning and tidying, all ready for your visit, so here goes for some before and after scenes.



first and the most important room of the house, the kitchen, not looking it's best, but the teapot is out and in use already.

thanks for all your lovely comments, it's great to be back! and I feel like I've moved in properly now, with all of you here with me.
the actual moving was relatively stress free, ok so the men made a huge fuss about the number of boxes, and some of the garden things, but it all got here, and I sat with the teapot on my knee in our car so there would be no delays on arrival - a girl has to get her priorities right.

boxes unpacked so far: 96...............
boxes still to unpack, some of which may never make it: - about 40
children who managed to escape from the box despite my best attempts with the tape: 1



number of times we lost Freddie in the first week: too many to count. we had to keep the cats locked in at first, so they didn't run away and get lost......... poor Freddie was so stressed that he found a new hiding place everyday, and Miss K kept wandering around wailing that he must have got out. inside cupboards, under beds, and in his cat box kept us looking for a while, but this hiding place was the sure fire winner, who would expect the cat to sleep in the sink..............



bookcases we've had to buy so far: 1
bookcases we still need: 3+
other things we need: spare bed, cupboards for the extra kitchen stuff that is still in boxes, new desk for Miss K who has had a growth spurt and can't get her legs under her old one....., new shower head - I trashed the one that was here within days - oops....
things that we have bought instead: wetsuits for the children, and body boards. oh how they love the sea.

reasons we have done hardly any unpacking, tidying, or sorting out (much to the dismay of my mother...........): the beach, the beach, the beach, some castles and some gorgeous gardens.... oh and the beach...



things we have learnt to take to the beach: flasks of hot cocoa to revive frozen children, containers of water to rinse off sand before the battle of trying to remove wetsuits from frozen children............ and this weekends revelation - deckchairs, a whole new world of comfort! very stripey and stylish they are too, but I'm not doing well with photos lately, need to try a lot harder - not being online has rather de-activated my photograph everything mentality, need to get my head back online too!

I did manage to photograph these dahlias, complete with raindrops, it certainly rained a lot at first, I began to think we might have moved to the rain forest, without the forest bit....






I was hoping to show you some lovely house photos, we have several of the before photos - boxes everywhere, but I haven't quite taken the "after" photos", mostly because it's not tidy enough, but I will soon I promise, and I'll be back with a photo of the view, and also the "gardening" we've done so far...... - it's quite destructive, and will take a while, but somewhere soon there will be photos of a greenhouse to show you - excited? I am.......

hello there, feels like a long time since I've posted. I'd love to tell you all about the amazing house we're going to buy, but we haven't found it yet............. we've seens LOTS of not at all suitable houses, including some real horrors, and one utterly amazing and totally gorgeous absolutely impractical grade 2 listed house with NO garden - can't have that then, but it was lovely.......

at the moment we're trying to decide if we're brave enough to make an offer on a too small very ugly old bungalow, and knock the inside to bits, and add an extension on at the back, and then sit and look at the lovely big garden.

meanwhile there has been quite a lot of cake, some chocolate and the odd bottle of wine...... and I wonder why I keep getting the houses muddled up...

hopefully there'll be a decision soon, or we'll have to start looking for somewhere to rent.

back soon x

OK, so digging up and trashing the garden seemed like a great idea last weekend. This weekend we spent MANY hours digging up the roots of the two big shrubs, which were very firmly attached to the border, and really didn't want to move.... but eventually out they did come, leaving two enormous holes and a pile of earth the size of a small mountain, and a garden full of debris and mess......

meanwhile the house is a bombsite because it's half term, and we seem to have done quite a lot of entertaining and feeding of my sister's 3 children, who are here from London, so just imagine the piles of washing up, and the mountains of toys everywhere - no photos - too scary....

so now you have envisaged the total havoc that is my home, imagine my delight when on Monday the estate agents ran at 5pm, and said "we've got some people who'd like to view your house ----- tomorrow....."

I resorted to mild panic, running about like a headless chicken, and demanding chocolate (Lynn has assured me on several occasions that chocolate is the cure for all problems).

so the garden got a very quick makeover, all plans to dig out all the remaining roots and rocks abandoned in favour of a flatten it out, and sort it later approach




the house got a hoover and a very quick tidy, but E saved the day - his contribution when I asked him to make his bed was to create this adorable scene of domestic bliss - how can anyone resist living here now!



so they came, they left, I'm not holding my breath, but I am holding a pile of books, because whilst J is working at home today, which is seriously hindering my time on the computer, it did mean I was able to get in the attic, and rescue a stash of books!

so what happens when you give two young children a pressure washer?

do they soak each other?



no - they write their names!

I'm beginning to get withdrawal symptoms for my sewing machine, with the weekend away, and lots of other stuff going on I feel like I haven't sewn anything for weeks, it's not that long really but it feels a lifetime.


the only thing I got done last week was some quilting samples for the wallhanging I'm making, and after lots of attempts, I'm finally getting some control over the tension on the back......... not prefect, but much better.




all the rest of my time seems to have been spent doing HOURS of decluttering, so we can get the house valued. Yesterday a friend came round to help me "house doctor" she was a real slave driver, but the results are impressive, I have a HUGE pile of stuff to go to a car boot sale on Sunday (with same friend - she's making me go, I'm scared of car boot sales!) three VERY tidy bedrooms, and a sparkly bathroom. I just wish she was coming today to do downstairs, because I'm much more tempted by the garden today.........


she wanted to take before and after photos, but I was too ashamed, especially of Miss K's room, why do 9 year old girls have to keep every little bit of string/ribbon/paper/plastic fish/old crayon that ever existed, and store them in endless little boxes that they squirrel away as if they are precious treasures? lots of stuff has gone in the loft too, I hope the ceiling doesn't fall through....


Miss K has gone off on her school trip, the house is very strange without her, another friend lent us a DVD of ratatouille for E to watch last night in case he missed her, which was very sweet. I'm glad the weather is nice for her, but I bet she still gets really muddy!

shiny new tiles



cupboard doors



somewhere for the important kitchen equipment



no more cobwebs or dodgy wallpaper

out with the old






in with the new!

kitchen update, we have some cupboards!



and some cobwebs!



never seen in that corner before, interesting wallpaper!

the builders are coming today to rip off the remaining tiles and plaster the kitchen.

there's a light at the end of the tunnel with the kitchen saga.

it's a pretty dim light, but I'm hopeful.

in theory someone is coming next friday to plaster the walls, and then the following week (half term no less but I didn't dare say no in case they then didn't come till April) they'll rip out the few remaining cupboards and put the new ones in.

and the new cooker, which we haven't chosen yet...

and the tiles - as above.....


so then we'll have a lovely kitchen, without lumps of plaster falling off the walls, and piles of plates on the floor etc etc.


but...............

last year J got a new job, it's a great job, it's a permanent contract - hard to come by in his field of work at the moment, and a promotion.

and it's 100 miles away.

so every day he leaves the house at 6.15am and comes home at 7.30pm completely exhausted, last week he worked out that every month he travels the equivalent of from Yorkshire to Chicago, and the travel costs are quite high.

so it would make sense to move nearer..............

also on the plus side we could move to somewhere with a better secondary school (11-18 years), the local one here is not great, and maybe get a house with a bigger garden, for vegetables, and even chickens.

on the negative side, all my friends and family live near here, E doesn't understand at all - he's only 7, Miss K is very positive in general about the idea of moving (probably wants a house with a bigger bedroom!) but I think when she realises that we'll be a long way from Grandma and Grandpa, and her cousin, and she'll have to go to a new school where she doesn't know anyone one she might change her mind, and last time we moved house was so stressfull I can't bear to think about it, but there was at least one sobbing in the bank incident - not pretty....

I know lots of families deal with long commutes, and for anyone living in London, or other big cities it can take hours to travel even short distances, and lots of people move to be nearer work in fact when we first got married we moved 3000 miles to a new job (but we didn't have the children to consider then), but I'm finding it really hard to get my head round this.

at least when we didn't have a kitchen we couldn't even consider selling the house..

another morning of wellies and brollies on the way to school, I used the ladybird on the way home but don't tell Miss K.
she was wearing her wellies as you can't get into her classroom at the moment without wading through a large flood in the playground so she was ok getting to school, but I had to lift E over several puddles that he probably will jump over on the way home, but on the way there I wasn't prepared to take the risk.....



splash splash splash!



I spent several hours on Saturday carving out a corner of my own for my sewing machine, it usually lives on the kitchen table, which means lots of moving everything all the time, and with this awful weather is actually pretty dark in the kitchen. I have a little space in the corner of the conservatory, which is taken over entirely by children, toys, and cats, but this bit is mine now.



I like the contradiction between the old table, and the new machine, - what do you think?

another good reason for moving out of the kitchen is that it STILL looks like this.....
I had a long "chat" with the insurance this morning, as they have still failed to hurry things up, even after J wrote a very polite but firm letter to the chief executive...
and we're still no further on, and they still don't know what the delay is, and there is still dispute about the money, and pretty soon I'll be heading to the doctors for some valium.



good news is that a good friend is coming to stay tonight for a few days, so I've got out of some meetings I was supposed to go to, and we're going to drink tea, and eat cake, and maybe go in search of retail therapy.

and soon there will be some exciting news (well I'm excited - and nervous actually).