Month: March 2018

Slowly getting back to normal

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Well, it’s taken some work, but I have now cleared enough space in the living room that Geth and I are currently able to have a normal-ish evening (for us).

What this looks like:

  1. Geth has enough space on the living room floor to play boardgames, so he’s dug out the Star Wars: Imperial Assault collection.  It’s keeping him very quiet, so I foresee many blissfully peaceful evenings from now on!
  2. I’m playing my recordings of BBC Four’s ’80s Top of the Pops repeats on the TV.  The open-plan setup of the downstairs makes this really sociable, and I’m quite excited about the eventual way we will have everything set up – with Geth playing solo boardgames on the table in the dining area, and me watching music stuff on the TV, yet still being able to chat to each other.
  3. I finally have access to the hearth as I’ve cleared all the stuff in front of it, so I’ve lit a scented candle, which I’ve been wanting to do for weeks.  Small luxuries and all.  The next step is to get the fire actually working!

The aim is to have enough space cleared by the end of the week that I can measure the space in the dining area accurately enough that I know what the Kallax boardgame storage is going to encompass, so I can get the big Ikea order placed.  Exciting!

Return of the 50ft Shoe Monster

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I’d almost forgotten about my extensive shoe collection (89 pairs 91 pairs!  I forgot about the two new pairs I bought last week).  It was the first thing I packed back in January, so it’s been hidden in boxes for some time, and the shoes are only now making their reappearance.

The thing is, they won’t have anywhere to live until I build some custom shoe shelves in the dressing room, so until then, they’re just going to have to snake around the upstairs rooms, maliciously tripping people up.

Shoes in bags
They looked so innocent when I was packing them away.

I’m definitely going to get rid of most of them some of them a few, but I need to build my shelves first to see what will fit.

Greatest Loser 2018

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In the midst of all the house chaos, it was a nice surprise at Slimming World yesterday morning when I won our group’s Greatest Loser 2018 award!  Apparently I’ve lost more weight than anyone else in our group.  I got a certificate, a sash and some lovely flowers:

Vase of roses
The roses I was given. I bought the vase specially, ’cause I reckoned that now we’re grown-up homeowners, we should probably stop displaying fresh flowers in a pint glass.

I’m really happy to have recognition like this – it’s been hard work, but I have lost a lot of weight (3st 12lbs so far!) over the last year and a bit, and now I’m so close to target I can almost taste it.  I think it must taste like the 100-syn bag of jam doughnuts that I will be devouring on the day I reach that magic number, before angelically returning to my healthy fruit and veg.  Well, I’ve got to have something food-related to look forward to!

My possibly temporary ornament shelf

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No phone box tonight, ’cause I did promise some house pictures.  This is a start:

Ornament shelf
All of our ornaments (well, all the ones I’ve come across in the unpacking so far) sitting on an Ikea Billy shelf, which may or may not live there long-term.

Once we have access to the hearth (it’s currently hidden behind various shelving units and a hoover), I really should start using all my candles and incense and various other home fragrance stuff.  Having it on these shelves instead of stashed away in boxes will hopefully remind me that it’s there to be used.

Yet another busy day spent home improving

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I am that lucky girl who has the world’s best dad.

Today, between three of us (mostly Dad doing the work, with me playing assistant and Geth doing the heavy lifting) we got the master bedroom walls finalised, the other two bedrooms painted white, and the bed assembled.  This last bit was more difficult than expected, as the bed had lost a few fixings during its time in the last house (I thought I’d found them all while I was dissembling the thing in a rush on the morning of moving day, but we were missing a few); however, Dad found fixes for everything, and we now have a working bed that we’ll be able to sleep on again from tomorrow night.

The other two rooms, meanwhile, look so much better for a fresh coat of white paint, and I’m really looking forward to getting them set up with furniture and contents.  The unexplained smell that was hanging around upstairs has also disappeared since the paint went up, which is great, and the whole area just feels so much more welcoming and homely now.

Tomorrow’s job will be getting the furniture upstairs sorted.  I may even get round to sorting out some photos so you can see what I’m talking about!

Paint!

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Still working in the house, still excited and impatient to get everything sorted!

My mum and dad arrived today and so my dad and I were able to start working on the bedroom walls.  The master bedroom came with a giant wardrobe that I didn’t see us being able to move (although my dad has worked out how to split it into parts for moving in future), so I’d decided that we would just take down the existing shelves, Polyfilla the imperfections and touch up the magnolia paint in there for the time being.  Eventually I want to wallpaper that room, but that’s a long-term project.

Tomorrow we’re going to paint the other two rooms white (non-magnolia rooms!  I’m so excited!) and assemble the bed.  Every day is feeling like an important step at the moment.

Our new house…

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…is gradually, very gradually, starting to feel like home.  Sort of.

I spent most of today dismantling the old Ikea Billy bookshelves that we don’t have space for anymore.  The plan is to make new ones out of them, but I’ll get my dad’s advice on that when he’s visiting later this week.  I also put one Billy up in the living room as temporary shelving next to the TV.  If I like the way it looks long-term it may get a reprieve.  It’s currently holding all our ornaments, which sounds frivolous but actually has the useful function of giving us some time to work out which ones we like looking at enough to keep.

Boxes are also getting unpacked a bit quicker than expected.  This is mainly because twice a day I realise that I need something, but don’t know which exact box it’s in, so I have to go through a few before I find the thing.  There’s not really anywhere for the stuff to go yet, but I am finding a lot of temporary solutions.

This week should be a real breakthrough, as once my parents have visited, we will have the walls painted upstairs, meaning that we can get the furniture finalised up there, meaning that I can get all our clothes and accessories put away.  Well, in my case, about 40% of them.  Dear God, I have far too many clothes.  The amount I’ve pulled out of boxes this week has been enough to send anyone screaming into the night.  The main reason I’m so impatient to get to my target weight is that I can’t wait for the giant trying-everything-on-and-then-getting-rid-of-most-of-it session that I’m not allowed to have until then.  You never know what might suddenly look awesome at target, so I’m not allowed to chuck anything out till then, no matter how old and scraggy it is.

(I realised yesterday that one of my current-rotation bras is about twenty years old, judging by the style of the M&S label.  Somehow, I don’t think it will survive the cull.)

Never moving again…

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…well, at least until we have to leave Newcastle, if/when that ever happens.

The last week has been completely insane, with everything that could get complicated getting complicated.  The snow just hasn’t let up all week, meaning that various workmen have had trouble getting to us and we’ve had to reorganise things.  A particularly dopey delivery driver tried to deliver my new Pandora charm (a treat to myself for getting the move done) to the wrong address, meaning I had to go trekking out in the snow to try and find the tiny corner shop two miles away where UPS leave undelivered parcels.

Meanwhile, our phone, TV and internet, which was scheduled to be reconnected today, now can’t be, because the previous residents never bothered to inform their phone company that they were leaving the property, and so BT are having to do complicated legal stuff before they can get us connected (and didn’t bother to inform us of this prior to Geth calling them up today).  As a result, we’re now having to buy a temporary internet hub for the house to last us for the 10 days it apparently could take for this to get sorted out.

In more positive news, the carpet cleaning guy was at least able to show up on Wednesday, so our upstairs carpets are now clean, and we’ll hopefully be able to get the walls painted next week with help from my dad and his knowledge of house paint.  After that, I can get the furniture finalised in the upstairs bedrooms and finally start getting stuff unpacked.  It will all be okay – I just need to stick to the steps of my plan.

Also, I really hope this snow disappears soon, preferably until next winter.

2018 Ciders #11: M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider Medium Dry

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As the last week has been so insane with the move, I’ve been drinking a bit more cider than I really should.  This was another of my birthday ciders, which I had on Saturday night after a few glasses of prosecco.

M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider Medium Dry
M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider Medium Dry.

I was a little out of it (moving day had been a long day and the prosecco went straight to my head), but I do remember it having a vaguely similar taste to Breton cider, which is no bad thing.