Wednesday 13 April 2011

Halfway!

The window fitters have been here the last two days, and will be here for two more. We now have three new windows in upstairs, they will be doing the two in the living room tomorrow and Friday they will be boxing in and finishing off.

Now when I say halfway - i mean halfway through this stage of the job. When it's finished it will be halfway through getting the windows replaced on the house. There are several more but I'm afraid we need to save some pennies to get those done.

This afternoon I have unpicked the old curtains that i hurriedly put together for Lemmy's two rooms when we first moved in and have been stitching calico round the edges to make them bigger/better. The sewing machine has been liberated from it box and it has made me realise that I really do need to find a space to set up a permanent sewing corner. It seems such a hassle to clear a space on a table, run an extension cable and then have to put it all away again - so I just don't get it out unless there is a job that I MUST do.
I have to admit I really don't have much of an idea what I'm doing with this machine. I'm honestly just making it up as a I go along. I'm not sure i'll ever realise my dream of making my own clothes!

Monday 11 April 2011

Sunshine!

What a glorious weekend we have had! It's been so warm that even I ditched the jeans in favour of a short skirt and summery vest. We have spent the whole weekend in the garden. There's still quite a lot to do here with the garden, but i'm determined to do it at a reasonable pace and let it develop rather than wade in and change things for the sake of it. I didn't mean to do it but this weekend we cleared eveything that was growing under the pear tree. Much of this garden had been neglected in the couple of years before we bought the house and so much of it has to be stripped right back if i'm ever going to make it truly beautiful
In front of the pear tree is an area that we cleared of pampas grass last year and made a little seating area with a fire pit. We've had old carpet down the side of this to keep the weeds down while we waited for inspiration. Saturday afternoon we decided it would be good to pave it, so we had somewhere to site the barbeque. Sunday afternoon Oz did it! We have an old table next to it that was given to us by a friend, and we sanded the top of it the other week and gave it a coat of emulsion. Next we're going to decorate it as a family and after a coat of varnish it will be done.
Lots of other jobs were done too, tidying up the bed full of garlic, checking the seeds in the greenhouse.

After lunch on Saturday we decided to head up the road to Sibsey Trader Mill and after climbing right to the top had a lovely cup of tea and slice of cake outside in the sunshine. They had a few plats for sale so i bought three saxifrage, an aquilegia and a twisted willow. It was also the first outing this year for Ethel our VW campervan. We were going to sell her, but have decided to keep her just a little while longer and so have ordered a hammock bed to go in the front so Lemmy can sleep in there with us rather than having to fight to put the huge awning up everytime we camp out.