Fun on Friday (and Saturday) (and Sunday)

On Friday morning, leaving poor hubby hard at work, Granny, DC & I headed over the border into Devon (it's only 8 miles away, so not too arduous a journey) and on to the little town of Axminster. Although we've driven through and round Axminster many times on our way to and from Lyme Regis, we'd never actually stopped before. The main reason for making an actual stop-over in Axminster was to have a bite to eat in the River Cottage Canteen; hubby and I have eaten at the actual River Cottage and we've been en famille to an open day there as well - both visits were very enjoyable and the food was delicious, so a trip to the canteen was definitely called for.


First though, we had a little wander round the town, all the while trying to keep DC in check as he picked up and examined what seemed to be the entire display outside an ironmongers (ie dustbins, plant pots, sweeping brushes), ran into the newsagent next door for chocolate buttons, rubbed his hands along all the dirty windowsills he could find and generally acted like a two-and-a-half year old... By the time we'd got half way round Granny & I needed a drink; DC was in his element since the cafe we chose had an outside area with a hose and pile of logs for him to play with, and when the drinks arrived he was able to 'help' by adding the milk to my coffee and stirring vigorously.



Finally, we made it to the River Cottage Canteen, where Granny enjoyed a very tasty ham roll and I had the most delicious tomato and pesto soup with courgette and croutons -we ate in the front section of the canteen which serves more of the deli food, rather than at the back where the more substantial fare was on offer. DC had a few sips of soup and then decided he was so tired from playing with the sugar bowl/vase/tomato ketchup pot that he had to lie down. At that point, I popped him in his pram so Granny & I could spend too much money at the deli counter buying pies, pasties, cakes, beer and cider. Below are a cheese, potato and onion pasty and a pork pie; I also bought a butternut squash pie for me and a steak and ale pie for hubby, plus some cakes which got eaten before I had a chance to take a photo!And then it was time to head home - a fun trip was had by all and the food was as good as I'd hoped it would be. YUM.


On the way home from Axminster, DC fell asleep so I was able to leave him in the car with Granny and have a quick whizz round an antiques/junk shop which we've passed several times but have never had chance to visit. I'm really glad I had the chance to have a look round as I think this could become a favourite hunting ground for all sorts of tat that we really don't need. And some that we do, such as this apple rack - hope it's still there the next time we get to call in.




Making the most of a willing babysitter, on Friday evening hubby and I drove up to Bristol to see Duran Duran playing a rehearsal show; I was so pleased to have been able to get tickets for this since it was a small venue with a capacity of just 600. It was only a short show (1hr 15mins) and we arrived about 15mins late unfortunately, but it was still a really great evening and I was able to wriggle my way quite close to the front for a good view of the lovely John Taylor and the posturing/pouting Simon Le Bon (and his little paunch.) It seemed so weird (and slightly 'am I really here?'-ish) to be seeing them "in real life", having been such a fan when I was young, with a bedroom covered in posters and the lyrics to their songs constantly in my head. I was pretty sure John Taylor would spot me in the crowd and realise I was the woman of his dreams, but there was a rather annoying man in front of me who kept waving his arms and blocking John's view at all the vital moments. Oh well, maybe next time...




Although Saturday dawned grey and blustery we decided to be brave and head for the Sturminster Newton Cheese Festival. And I'm so glad we did as we had a fantastic day - there was cheese, cheese and more cheese to sample and purchasethere was cake, chocolate, fudge, coffee, liquers, beer and cider to sample and purchasethere were crafts to admire and purchasethere was music to listen and dance to, there was Punch & Judy to laugh and shout atand there was an old school friend of mine to meet up and chat with. All in all, a rather grand day out!

On Sunday I had to work at the gallery, but when I finished at 4.30pm I whizzed along the coast to meet Granny, hubby & DC at West Bay.It was blowing a gale when we got there, but it wasn't cold so we braved a walk along the harbour and had lots of fun laughing as the wind blew our hair here, there and everywhere.We managed to find a shelter where we were able to sit and enjoy our fish & chips before retiring to the pub for a drink and some ice cream (for DC)

All in all, a very busy and enjoyable weekend.

House Renovations: Internal, Upstairs. Part I

Less than five months after work began and the house is pretty much habitable - we have a kitchen, we have bathrooms, we have running water, we have new doors and windows, we have painted walls and woodwork, we have a boiler and radiators, we have electricity and lights!

The August Bank Holiday weekend marked a whole year since we bought the house, so it's about time we were moving in really!

There are so many photos to share from the upper storeys that I've decided to split them into several (probably four) seperate posts - provisionally 1) bedrooms; 2) hall, stairs, landing; 3) bathrooms 4) offices. So here we go with Part 1- the bedrooms, in no particular order. This is destined to be DC's room - it's at the back of the house overlooking the garden. We removed the built in wardrobes and incorporated the space that they took up into the master bedroom next door; apart from that and a new window/radiator/door/plug sockets/light fitting/wall colour, not much has changed.

This room is the larger of what are destined to be two guest/spare bedrooms. They are both at the front of the house, looking over the front garden (obviously), the pretty Victorian cottages opposite and the church beyond. We removed the sink and built-in 'wardrobe', had extra insulation added to the internal wall, new crittal windows fitted, plus the usual new radiator/plug sockets/light fitting/door/wall colour.

And this is the smaller of the two bedrooms at the front of the house, destined to be a guest/spare/play room. We removed the built in wardrobes and incorporated they space they took up into the new bathroom; we also removed the built-in bookcase; again, new crittal windowns plus door/radiator/light fitting/plug sockets/wall colour.Last, but not least, the master bedroom, with ensuite. This was formed by adding an extension to the rear of the house [part of the two storey extension that also formed the kitchen], and knocking through the old airing cupboard (brown door to the right of the picture below), bathroom and separate wc. The doorway into what was the wc is now the doorway into the master bedroom, overlooking the back garden. Doorway through to ensuite, with built-in wardrobes either sidePhew, finally done - it's taken me four days to sort the photos for this post - Blogger is hard work sometimes!

The Start of Our Apple Empire

The seven apple trees (six cookers, one eater) in our back garden are absolutely laden with fruit; one tree was so over-laden in fact that one of its boughs had split and was half hanging off. Clearly it was time to take action, so on Sunday afternoon we trooped round there with a trug and a few bags and started picking. Unfortunately, DC got bored quite quickly and then had a bit of a hissy fit when Hubby wouldn't let him play with the saw that was needed to remove the broken bough. So that brought our apple picking to a swift end. Still, we had filled the trug and one large carrier bag and left hundreds of apples on the trees to soak up the afternoon sun (that was Sunday, today they'll be soaking up the pouring rain and making the most of this delightful "summer" weather). Then it was time to head to the pub for the weekly Sunday afternoon entertainment which, this week, was belly dancing, accompanied by lamb kofta and veggie kebabs cooked over the fire pit. Hubby got chatting to the chef there about apples and on Monday took a large trug along to the pub and agreed to swap them for some beer and a portion of their fantastic triple-cooked fat chips - result!

Then this morning I called in at our village shop with several kilos of apples and they are now on sale there;not only that, but a request has been made for Hubby to take a sample of his apple chutney along and they may start offering that for sale as well. I foresee a happy and prosperous retirement (and many trips to the local hostelry) all funded by apples...

Pinterest

Of course someone who feels they don't have enough time to do any/all of the things they need to/want to/must do should definitely join Pinterest. Or at least they should sign up for the waiting list to join Pinterest, because they can spend the time that they are waiting to become a fully-fledged member browsing other people's pin boards rather than getting on with all those other things they need to/want to/must do.

Of course if the car had started like it was supposed to and I wasn't waiting for the AA to come and jump start it (flat battery in car that is only 4 months old - great), then I wouldn't have sat back down at my computer to do some more work and my brain wouldn't have started flitting about and taken me to look at a couple of blogs in between actual work and then I wouldn't have clicked on a link and I wouldn't have decided that I really needed to find out about this Pinterest thing that everyone is talking about.

So now I have a whole new thing to add to the list of brazillions of things to do.

Brazillions of Things

Do you ever have one of those days/weeks/months/years when you have so many things that you need or want or have to do that you just don't know where to start? And the trouble is that no matter which 'thing' you start on you know you don't have time to finish it in one sitting so you can't decide which of the many things you should start, but not finish, and by the time you've thought about all of the things that you can't finish, even more time has gone by and there's less time in which not to finish even one of the brazillion things that you need/want/must do.

I'm having one of those days/weeks/months/years at the moment. So, instead of getting on with all of those things I'll just write a little blog post moaning about not having time to do any of them. That's better.

Other People's Children

We all know that other people's children are not particularly interesting, and are even less interesting if you don't have children yourself and therefore can't appreciate the intense feelings of love, despair, happiness, tiredness, joy, sadness, etc, etc, that having a child/children can bring. Therefore, you have my permission to skip this post as it is all about my little boy. I'm writing this post because I want to be able to remember these two little incidents that made me laugh.

The background to both of these stories is the same - darling child (aka DC) loves, loves, loves cleaning, mopping, wiping, brushing and generally tidying up. Strange but true, and I'm sure he'll grow out of it at about the same time as he could become quite proficient (and therefore helpful) at it.

Incident no. 1: I had just had a shower and washed my hair when DC came trotting into the bedroom. He exclaimed over my wet hair 'aaah, uh oh, ayeee' and went running off in the direction of the kitchen; moments later he was back with a tea towel and ordered me to sit on the floor so that he could use said tea towel to help pat my hair dry. Bless.

Incident no. 2: DC had been playing in his paddling pool in the garden and thus was trouser and nappy-less. Once he got bored with that he came into the house; after about an hour I was beginning to think it was probably time to get a nappy back on him in order to avoid any little accidents. At about the same time I heard an 'Uh-oh' and round the corner came DC. He took hold of my hand, walked me into the hallway and pointed to a little puddle on the (thankfully wooden) floor. 'Uh-oh' I agreed, as did hubby. DC quickly ran off in the direction of the kitchen at the same time as hubby dashed into the bathroom to fetch some loo roll and begin the mopping up process. By the time DC was back clutching the tea towel we knew he'd gone to fetch, the puddle was gone and all was right in the world. Except DC didn't agree, he was almost distraught that there was no puddle for him to mop up and there were tears. Once he recovered from crying (after just a few seconds, I might add) he realised what he needed to do. So he stood there in the hallway screwing up his little face and trying with all his might to squeeze out another wee. Luckily for us all he managed was a couple of little parps, which made us all laugh and made DC forget what it was he was upset about. And off he went to find some toys to play with.
And that is the end of this little post about my darling boy and his funny little ways.