Reasons to love life

Property Maintenance Day

That is every Sunday to be honest but tthats what you get for living in an old house.

We have two lists, one for wet weather and one for dry weather. At the end of Sunday we look at what we have completed and anything missed moves to next Sunday.

Wet list (i.e. indoors)
Repairs all of the wooden chairs which are coming apart, with wood glue.
Hang big mirrors in downstairs bathroom
Frame the 'window' which is actually an empty space between kitchen and conservatory.
Varnish all new woodwork
Fill all the little gaps in the doors frames with a mixture of filler and sawdust so that they all disappear :)

Dry List (out in the winter weather!)
Mix concrete and lay base and pavers to a corner of the garden. Its only one line of the list but much heavier work.

Top up list (Any time left at the end of work)
Shed tidy up
Move painting and decorating stuff to indoor storage - so much easier to find!
Start work on loose covers for my sofa.

And I was going to say:
Start moving my desk and pc from my old upstairs office to my new downstairs area but I am wondering whether to leave it where it is and just have a revamp. Then the new area can better contain the other stuff. So maybe this is just a point for discussion!

Back later...and hopefully with productive and inspiring photos!

Weekends rush round

I had a revelation about why I don't like routines. It way to easy to notice how fast time is passing when each week is structured the same. I really notice it since I got into a routine about which days I work where. I am not liking it. I need more breaks from normality. Maybe that why holidays seem to be so long and are so quickly forgotten? Routine is easier but maybe good for some, like my husband who hates change and is basically a large cat (!), but not for me.

This week my laptop died and so Fahed fitted a new hard drive and then it died some more. So my lovely husband bought me a gift using his pocket money, all of his pocket money in fact I would think and for the first time in my life I have a fancy new laptop, and its lovely. As is he. Of course there wont be waste, he is still fixing the old one and it will live at the Crete house for us to use and maybe to fix up some kind of web cam to keep an eye on the place as we suffer a bit when there is a lot of rain.

Every Sunday is house maintenance day. What we do depends on the weather but we have a wet plan and a dry plan. This week we are also spending Monday on our tasks. One day this old house will be finished! One day.

This is my recently completed patchwork quilt, and Merlin the cat choosing to not sit on the cat blanket area, typically.

Autumn Nesting

Oh gosh, I seem to have forgotten I have a blog.

But better news is I have been walking the talk (is that right?). Making my home, not wasting money, eating healthily, all that kind of stuff.

• Still clearing out junk on freecycle and charity shops. Today a couple of very broken things to the dump. I can see the difference now and I very much like my living space.
• Utility DD reduced from £140 to £109 per month- have only been using £70 ish during the summer but this spreads the pain of winter a bit.
• I bought £3.76 of travel insurance from Compare the Market to get a year of half price movies using the Meerkat Movies marketing thing. Fahed will pay for the tickets from his pocket money :)
• Making a sourdour starter. I wouldn't say its going brilliantly but hopefully it will get in the swing soon!
• I topped up my freezer meat supplies from a local farm again. £130 seems to last us about 3 months. We eat a good size portion of meat but only a couple of times a week so overall i think its okay,
• We have taken to roasting a load of veggies on a Sunday and then leftovers are made into soup with anything else which is knocking around. This has done lunch for the whole week this week and there is still a portion int he freezer.
• Despite Fahed skipping of to visit his ailing sister for 3 weeks un paid I have managed to squirrel a little bit of money away this month.
• Used home made stock from bones for my soup.
• Since it has now be introduced that we pay 5p a bag for plastic bags (which i definitely approve of) I have managed woithout purchasing a single one even if i have carried small amounts of shopping loose in my hand or had to pack shopping into my boot without bags. I am slowly learning and did get remember to take bags with me this week. I can be taught!
• Did all my vacuuming and a good bit of tidying on Friday night so that Saturday is so far very stress free.

Not bad I think