What is a New Year exactly...?

 

 

 

The Mayans made the mistake of once saying that there was going to be a transition, a period of change and rebirth.  Cue around four thousand years later, common sense goes out the window and people start taking everything a little too literally.

 

We had our first house guests for this week, my sister and her husband came to see the house for a few days and we took an excursion into Windsor and to Virginia Water Lake.  Apparently some of the lake scenes from Harry Potter were shot here because the Scottish option was deemed unsuitable due to midgies. Pesky midgies.

 

As for New Year's eve we will be spending it painting the study turquoise.

And there goes another Xmas...

 

I don't mind too much that Xmas was done and dusted so quickly, we still have a week of wearing pyjamas till noon and drinking at inappropriate times of day.

 

 

We were quite productive in this festive time too, we managed to get the daybed set up for the guest bedroom so my visitors won't have to camp in the garden.  I definitely recommend it to anyone who wants a guest bed but doesn't want furniture that takes up an entire room.  It's a neat single bed/sofa by day but you can pull it out into a double when needed - good ol' Ikea.

 

Day bed by day...

 

We also gave Ikea's supply of candles a good thrashing,  we've used a load of them to fill the fireplace in the living room.  I prised up the laminate flooring that had been glued down to the hearth and could see under all the tile glue and concrete that there are some lovely original terracotta tiles.  They'll need some tlc but I hope we can restore them.

 

 

 

 

And Xmas isn't complete without lethal quantities of yummy cheese, courtesy of a friend who put out a cracking spread for a girly catch-up with our newly mummified friend and her gorgeous daughter.

 

Smelly spreads

 

 

 

An Xmas in pictures...

 

Happy Xmas everyone, hope you're having a lovely day what ever you're doing.

 

We took a wander into Amersham Old Town the other day, turns out that's where they keep all the nice pubs...

 



The Elephant and Castle -
much nicer than it's South London namesake



 

Chocolate Roulade for Xmas

 

Why are duck's eggs blue...?

The bedroom is now pretty much done, I spent all of Friday painting the walls duck egg blue and the wood-clad wall received a well derserved white gloss to cover the magnolia. 

Blue bedroom

  

Achica.com - where is
my lampshade??

Now all we need is some nice blinds or curtains for the windows, and I'm still waiting for my birdcage lampshade to turn up in the post...

 

Chris tried to install the chimney balloon - turned out to be far more trouble than it was worth!  I think the one we ordered was too big, despite checking the measurements, because no matter what Chris did or how sooty he got, the balloon was having absolutely none of it.

 

 

Half an hour and £30 later it fell back down.  So instead Chris ripped a sheet of card off a discarded box and shoved it up the chimney.  And after all this the cat hasn't looked at it once. I feel like the cat is mocking us sometimes.

 

Like eating an elephant...

Little by little, the house is starting to feel inhabitable.  I've been painting the bedroom a duck-egg blue, and as you can see the cat has been lending a hand.  My dad said that making a house a home is like eating an elephant, you have to do it little by little.  I hope he isn't speaking from experience.  And where on earth did he get that metaphor from anyway...?

We did buy a bottle of prosecco the day we went to collect the keys, but the moving-in process was so traumatic we didn't open it until the Sunday night.  So rather than our usual tradition of a bottle of bubbly & takeaway dinner on our first night in a new home, we cracked it open on the Sunday to celebrate finishing up at the rented flat.  Now for the long slog of trying to get our deposit money back from a psycho landlord.  This will warrent much more than a bottle of Tesco Finest Prosecco.

 

Prosecco in a wine glass - because who knows
what fricking box the champagne glasses are in...

 

 

 

 

The politics of Xmas trees

Mum and Dad sent me a picture of their glorious Xmas tree:

So we sent back a picture of ours:

In other news, my local Starbucks have renamed me.  I was once Miss Grande White Mocha.  Now I am called Miss Lives in Zone 9.  Oh the shame I feel at nearly reaching double digits, as far as Londoners are concerned anything outside the M25 is past the world's end.  Beyond the Shire heading out towards Mordor. If the Earth was flat I would have dropped off the edge of it. 

So long as I can still get my grande white mocha from beyond the edges of time and space I don't mind too much.

Day 2; aka I don't know where any of my stuff is anymore

Friday was the official move day, and the day I almost sat on the floor in my new living room and refused to budge any futher.  We've moved home 3 times in the last 3 years but this by far was the most stressful.  Chris did all of the heavy lifting and van driving by himself, and I'm not sure how he managed it.  He's pretty awesome until he gets hungry and 'hulks-out'.

In the living room the fireplace has had to be blocked up with boxes to prevent the cretin of a cat from taking another sooty exchursion.  I've ordered something called a chimney balloon, which was designed to retain heating and prevent debris from falling down open chimneys, so I'm hoping that it can thawrt the antics of spidercats too.  I like finding alternative uses for things.  Like when I pick out a nice bottle of pinot blush for the weekend, and the label harps on about summery notes that compliment italian food - I presume it will compliment a Domino's pizza just as well.  Improvising is the way forward.

The front reception room resembles a fly-tipping zone of boxes, bags and brown tape.  It's all a bit of a flammable trip hazard. 

The bedroom only has the bed in it until I can paint the walls and move everything else in.

And my will to live is in a corner somewhere hugging its knees, rocking back and forth while humming a tune about being lost at sea.

In perkier news, the very first thing I ever bought for our new home was a vintage style brass railway clock.  I got it a few weeks ago when the exchange was imminent and I was feeling all positive about moving house - and it's now proudly displayed from the living room chimney. 

The time will be correct twice a day until I can find what blasted box the batteries got put in.

clock on one side,
thermometer on the other

Also on Friday we got our new sofa delivered, reduced from £550 to £350 - although the sales guy tried to make up the loss by flogging 'essential' additional products like red herring insurance and slidey feet to help Chris vacuum under it easier.  What the fool doesn't know is that that we don't vacuum under the sofa, we just send the cat under there with double-sided sticky tape attached to his paws and see what he comes out with.



comfy sofa with designer cushion from TK Maxx



I don't know where any of my stuff is, so I might join the cat up the chimney if I can't find my favourite slipperboots very soon...

Day 1; aka Fifty Shades of Green

guava green and the brick fireplace

 

On Thursday 13th Dec we got the call at around 10:30am to say that the completion was done and the keys were ready to be picked up - quite frankly it's the fastest our Solicitor has ever worked throughout this process.

 

the first lick of paint...

 

So the first thing we did when we arrived was get to work painting the living room a light guava green that was expertly picked from B&Q the night before.  It does clash with the bright red carpet, but that'll be getting pulled up asap!

The first thing the cat did when we got him home was climb up the wide victorian chimney before Chris had to scurry up after him.

The previous owners left us a lovely note to say they hope we'll be happy here - maybe they know something we don't...
 

red carpet - not bff with green walls

When we got to the house we already had some lovely house-warming and xmas cards from some lovely friends waiting for us, which was a welcome sight for something as stressful as moving home.  My besty Fiona knows how much I love my cookbooks and how much I love all things Canada (particularly Vancouver, where she now lives), so her xmas present for me was one chock full of Canadian recipies - it has been my first cookbook to take up residence on my dedicated shelf in the kitchen!

I'm dreaming of a twine christmas...

Oh dear it's that time of year again.  Luckily all my xmas shopping was done on the 20th November, there's nothing like a looming house move to pressure-cook your organisation skills.

  

 Red and twine is this year's wrapping theme, not that I put too much effort into this aspect.  The end result will be the same regardless, the ribbons are inherited by the cats. They aren't too picky about their ribbon requirements as far as I'm aware, if they are they haven't yet vocalised their demands.




 
On my xmas shopping trip I overheard a wrapping design exchange between a couple.
Bloke: "what about this one?"
Wife: "no, I did pink and white last year"
Bloke: "why does that matter?"
Wife: "you wouldn't understand".

No dear wife, the poor bloke most certainly doesn't understand, their brains just aren't wired to care about these things.  It's enough to make you wonder that if a person can't care about annual wrapping themes then just what is worth caring about anymore. 

Without carefully thought out, annually evolving, interior design inspired gift wrap, this country will quickly go to the dogs. 

 

 

 

 

I'm practising my hand-stamping skills ready for the wedding in September, where I will be manually stamping the names of all 80-odd guests onto personalised place settings.

 

 

 

I was going to stamp 'this gift will self-destruct if squeezed, squished, rattled or man-handled' but I'd need a bigger gift tag.  

 

 

 

The Before Pictures

The house before I get my hands on it...

 

The galley kitchen

The garden
(where Chris will spent most of his time)
 

The living room

The living room & stairs



The master bedroom



The 2nd bedroom




Front reception room
(currently used as a dining room...
but will soon become my DIY room!)

 

 

Our first home - number 192

So I've started this blog so that people who are interested can follow our first attempt at a house 'renovation'.  I use the 'r' word very loosely as it's all pretty much cosmetic, not difficult structural work.

We exchanged on our first home on the 21st November, just 8 weeks after our offer was accepted, and our completion date is the 13th December so we'll be settled in time for Xmas.

The first job I have assigned myself for the Thursday 13th once I get the keys will be to give the place a quick clean and I'm going to attempt to prime and paint the walls of the living room and dining room - I have many people who doubt this can be achieved in one day so we'll see.  Maybe my eyes are bigger than my decorating belly...