Tetris and other block puzzles

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You know those games (physical or digital) where you have to get a ball from one end of the board/screen to the other by moving blocks around so you can slowly work the ball through the path?  I’m terrible at them.  It always takes me ages.

That’s how I’ve felt about working on the new house for most of the last week.

The current project is to get everything into its correct room, if not its correct place.  What this means is I’m just constantly moving boxes around, trying to clear paths for other things to be moved through, filling one room and then another in an attempt just to have some tiny space to manoeuvre stuff.  It’s really tiring, and I feel like I’m going round in circles.

A big part of the problem is that there’s so much stuff that doesn’t have a place yet.  We’re going to be building new wall shelves out of our old Ikea Billy bookshelves to house the DVDs, videogames and some of the books, and I’ve designed a wall of Ikea Kallax units for the boardgame collection.  As such, until these units are in place, our books, DVDs, videogames and boardgames have to stay in boxes, and there’s a lot of them.

I know, logically, I am making headway.  I’ve spent today making rows of all the boxes that go in different areas, so once Geth gets home tonight and helps me with a couple of heavy lifting jobs, I’ll be able to fill the study with all the Stuff That Goes In The Study (as opposed to the all-kinds-of-everything totally random stuff that was in there before) and use that as a dumping ground to help me sort out other rooms.  After that, over the next couple of days, I can move my magazine Kallax upstairs, then move all the boardgame boxes to the space where their Kallax storage is going to live, and that will mean there’s a bit more breathing room around the piles of boxes of books and DVDs that are currently having to stay in the living room.

The whole thing really is doing wonders for my hoarding habit though.  I can’t wait to start sorting through things properly and getting rid of stuff.

One step at a time.  It’s just frustrating when there are so many steps.

2018 Ciders #12: M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Elderflower Infusion

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Once upon a time, a long time ago, I drank some ciders!  I should probably get back to logging those now…

M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Elderflower Infusion
M&S Devon Farmhouse Cider with Elderflower Infusion.

This was another one of my birthday ciders that I drank the night we moved into the new house.  Again, my memories of it are a bit blurry, though I do remember that it’s not as good as Thistly Cross Elderflower.  Mind you, very few ciders are as good as Thistly Cross Elderflower, so I think this one probably holds up as a nice elderflower taste.  Maybe I’ll try it again some day when I’m a bit more with it!

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.)