Christmas!

I've *finally* decorated, and its so sparkly!






now just the rest of the house to tidy!

Cold and snow and ICE

I don't like to whinge about 6inches of snow and a touch of shiver because in a lot of the world that's *nothing*. Round here its starting to become the norm as well, and I actually like snow. I love the delightful crunch of stepping into it, and being the first person to walk in it makes me laugh inside. It's my own personal moonwalk.
Right now though I am not happy about the 8inch high sheet of ice on the *inside* of my bedroom window, or that the bath water wouldn't drain until I poured extra hot down because the pipes were freezing up.
I'm going to make porridge and tea. Warmth!

cold and snow and ICE!

Kitchen!

There are worksurfaces, there are cupboards, there are doors, on the cupboards...

there are still little bits of things to finish off, but since I've got things in the cupboards and I cooked a whole meal in there this evening to my mind it.is.done!

I will organise some before and after pics for you all to have a look at, hopefully in the next few days.

Next it will be the living room, which we've just emptied so the plasterer can work in there tomorrow.

In other news, work keeps getting in the way of my quest to acquire christmas spirit. I'm working on a solution. As a collegue said recently, it's too late to marry a rich man. Thankfully I married one who is rich is every essential area so loadsa money is an extra that we dont miss.

time for snuggly warm bed, in my new slippers that were my bonus bran tub work christmas buffet gift. No pics, but my toes are toasty atm :)

Shiver!

Andy and I have been away since yesterday, staying at my aunt and uncle's house. In a burst of eco-consiousness I turned the heating onto standby, so it would only kick in if the pipes were going to freeze. I set it so it would come back on properly at about 10am today to make the house warm for when we got back. Or so I thought I did.





It turns out that I haven't quite mastered the timer system on the (fairly) new boiler yet and the heating didnt come on before we came back. The radiators had just been on though when we arrived home, because the temperature *inside* our house had fallen to less than 10 degrees.





After three hours of full blast heating the general temperature is up to 16 degrees...I've lit lots of candles, so at least it *looks* warm!





We were visiting my aunt and uncle to catch up with them, which we try to do at least every couple of months. They had also offered to do us a photoshoot, as they are photographers (amongst many talents and business ventures). They have a lovely warm house, including a studio at the back of the living room and we spent an enjoyable few hours pretending to be models.





Strike a pose, it's the beautiful people!

and would you like to see my wedding dress?

We had a really lovely time, were made to feel relaxed and helped to enjoy ourselves as neither of us are keen about having our pictures taken generally. There are loads of beautiful pictures that look amazingly pretty and capture little glimpses of our personalities. I know that Trish and Bill are happy to do informal photoshoots during evenings and weekends, so if any of you are interested let me know and I can put you in touch to talk to them about details and charges.

Trish and Bill are going to come for christmas at our house as well now. So it will be the two of us, my parents, their dog, Trish and Bill and their two dogs. Six people, three dogs, half renovated house.

I'm actually quite excited about it. I may be crazy but a whole house full of family, hectic movement, warm lovely food and fairy lights seems a great idea to me.

Now I need to go and work with Andy to make it happen!