A belated Happy New Year!

I know, I know - I'm nearly a week late with it, but just wanted to wish all my followers a Happy New Year! Hope 2012 is a good one for you!

I've been taking a break from my blog over the festive period, it's been a busy time hosting our first Christmas in our new home, for our extended family. Having visitors is certainly a good motivator to get all those little jobs done around the house that we've been putting off!

This Christmas was also my first attempt at cooking Christmas Dinner, and I cooked it for 14! We managed to squeeze all 14 of us into our little dining room by pretty much emptying it of furniture (apart from the piano) and finding 2 big tables and borrowing some stools. After Christmas day before putting all the furniture back into the dining room, we took the opportunity to take up the old carpet and put some laminate down instead - so much more practical for eating with little people.

Eden is now 25 months, and it was wonderful watching her understanding of Christmas festivities this year. Having Eden around has made Christmas time so fun and magical!

I'm looking forward to the year ahead, in a little over 8 weeks time we'll be meeting our new addition to the family and I'll be a Mummy of Two!

Flowers

Just wanted to post some piccys up of the flowers in our front garden border. Regular readers will know since buying our house 3 months ago we've had a lot of work to do on it - both inside and out. I'm proud we've got to the stage where we can enjoy the end result of our hardwork.

Transformation of the mass of weeds!

The front garden of our new house is really starting to take shape!
When we bought our house nearly 3 months ago, the front garden was an overgrown mass of weeds, with a big mound of earth right in the middle, it remains a mystery what it actually was!

Before shot when we bought the house

The house needed so much work, but we felt we couldn't just leave the front garden the way it was so it was one of the first 'projects' we set our hands to. Within a couple of weeks we'd completely dug over most of the area, removing as many weeds as we could, ordered some turf and had a new lawn which just painted a much nicer impression of the garden, and the house as a whole.

New lawn laid

A couple of weeks ago we covered our borders, which had remained overgrown with weeds, with cardboard boxes from the move in order to supress the weeds. Then just last week, somebody offered 30 bags of topsoil on freecycle. It was in great condition with practically no weeds, and we used 19 bags to cover the cardboard boxes.

Fresh topsoil on the borders from Freecycle

Today, we visited Cypress Nursery near our house to pick up some plants for the borders. I'm a big fan of yellows, oranges and reds and we came away with 5 plants. A gerbera, 2 dahlias, a gazania and a 'coreopsis grandiflora sunray' - not sure what it's 'normal' name is!

After a visit to my parents this evening for dinner, we dug up some self-seeding yellow poppies and penstemons. 

The plants in our side border

Finally, we have 4 roses lining the front boundary border - 2 are from Cypress Nursery, one is from Gardener's World that we went to last week, and one was a gift from my parents-in-law when Eden was born.

The roses lining the front border

All in all, we're very pleased with the transformation of our front garden!   

Smell the roses

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees. 

George Eliot

Wandering around my neighbourhood the other day, I noticed that a lot of gardens around here have roses, they're all in flower at the moment and look so beautiful.

This led to the decision to plant 3 or 4 roses along the currently empty border in our front garden. So this afternoon, we took a trip to a local nursery (a much nicer experience than visiting a garden centre) to pick up some roses.

We've picked a yellow flowering one called 'Peace' and 2 others, one is pink and one is scarlet.

I'll be leaving a space in the border, as in a couple of years time I'd like to have a go at taking a hardwood cutting of my Dad's new 'Eden' rose (our daughter's name is Eden Rose). I've heard that propagating plants in this way is quite difficult, but I'd like to give it a go.  

The Start of a new week

Today I'm very excited that this is the first Monday, and the start of the first full week, living in our new house! Moving house is exciting anyway, but we've been waiting 7 weeks since relocating from Southampton, and a further year before that with our lives semi-on-hold (as much as we tried not to, it was inevitable to an extent).

Being a mostly stay at home Mum, or, 'Operations Manager of the Strickland Household' as I like to think of it, I have lots of plans for daily activities for Eden and I. There's the usual toddler groups to join, and new Mummies to meet in the area. I haven't managed to get along to any yet, with all the work on the house that I've been overseeing these past few weeks. Eden loves being outside and going to the play park, and so I'm looking forward to taking her there regularly when we have a free morning or afternoon. I've joined the local library too, which is another place that Eden and I will be visiting regularly.

I've missed my messy play activity times that I like doing with Eden at home and will be starting them up again this week with plenty of new ideas floating around of things we can do together. I think time at home is going to be really fun for us now that we're giving Eden a free-run of every room in the house. She can help me clean for a start! In our old house we couldn't let her run around upstairs or down, partly as it wasn't safe, and partly because we had constant house viewings and we just wouldn't have been able to contain the destruction she makes in every room!

I've really missed my slow cooker (!) and have been super organised this morning and planned our meals for the week ahead. We have a slight adjustment to Eden's daily routine in that we're planning to sit down together for our evening meals when Luke gets back from work at 6pm, rather than me giving Eden her own meal at 5ish everyday.

When Eden naps everyday over lunch I intend to use the time to build up my freelance business as a Dietitian/Sports Nutritionist. My work is really important to me and I want to dedicate more time to it now that we've relocated and settled.

And finally, I have the garden to work on - it'll be much easier for me to potter out there once the lawn's laid and Eden can play outside.

So lots of plans of things I want to do. I'm so thankful that we have our lovely new house and I'm looking forward to settling in and living life here.

And we're in!

7 weeks after picking up the keys, we moved into our new home yesterday. It's lovely to finally be in after waiting so long - not just the 7 weeks since we've moved up, but the 15 months since we put our house on the market. I've been pottering around tidying up and Eden's sleeping well and going to sleep easily here. Hopefully this weekend we can finish putting the new kitchen cabinets in place, although we have to wait a week until we can get the new work surface cut and placed. We had a celebratory takeaway curry last night, and until the kitchen's in, it'll be easy meals everyday! I love our new home though, and it's so enjoyable making it our own.

Bit of a slow week

This past week we haven't done a lot on the house ourselves as we've just been waiting to get the central heating and double glazing sorted, which has been slow and frustrating at times! We've also had a carpenter in to replace the bottom 3 stairs that had split and were a bit dodgy underfoot. Luke's begun to put together the kitchen units, although we can't fix them in the kitchen until the gas people have finished. There's also been some minor adjustments needed to the electricity fittings we had placed a few weeks ago to meet standards.

This morning we ordered the remaining carpets, booked to be fitted this Wednesday. But before then we have the carpenter coming back to replace some of the floorboards broken from the gas work that had been done.

So all in all quite a frustrating week. On the plus side, Eden's played really well, and napped in the day, in her new bedroom. I've continued to dig the border in the back garden in anticipation for some more plants and vegetables. I kind of want it to be perennial plants along there but think we're going to have to make space for the tomatoes that I've grown from seed and will need planting out soon.

We're slowly getting there and we're hopefully on the home straight now.

6 week update

The end is in sight!

We have central heating and double glazing going in this week. The kitchen is arriving today and the carpet fitting is booked for next Wednesday!

Not long now....

Eden's finished bedroom

She loves it!

This weekend's work

We've decorated the living room this weekend. Originally I just wanted to get the window wall decorated because that's where the new radiator is going, but as it didn't take us long we thought we'd do the whole room.

It works well setting little goals to complete in a certain time period - it keeps us focussed on tasks and is all the more satisfying when we complete those goals. It was great to have completed the living room today!

4 weeks on...

We moved in 4 weeks ago today. The time's gone quickly, still lots to do but we're making a bit more progress everyday towards finishing all the work on the house.

Back Garden

We've had a really busy day working on the house (the weather is great at the moment which helps alot with motivation!) As well as finishing painting Eden's room, we pressed on with working on the back garden. First job for Luke was to attack the weeds and overgrown grass with the strimmer, we could then get a better view of what we were dealing with. This afternoon we had some generous help from my Dad, Grandad and sister, Jess, who all helped with raking up the strimmed debris and piling up the rubble. Finally, Luke has made a start at paving the bottom of the garden (previously a stinging nettle garden) in preparation for rebuilding our shed.

Over the weeks since we've moved, I've been watching the pattern of the sun through the day. The morning sun shines strongly into our dining room, and on the back of our house and the front section of the back garden. Through the day the sunlight travels round to the front of the house, but because of the way the house is angled, the evening sunlight hits the back of the back garden. I think we'll plan to have decking next to the house for morning sunlight, and a paved patio area near the shed for the evening sunlight.

Eden's Room

Every room in our house needs decorating, but we have an 'order' in which we need to do things - the installations of double glazing and central heating dictate the order to an extent. However, Eden's room is already double glazed, and the wall that will have the radiator on is easily accessible, so we have decided that her room is a good place to start with the decorating. The previous occupiers had decorated the entire room blue, including the window sill and skirting boards. So during the week we did a quick undercoat of white to tone-down the blue before painting over it.

In our old house, Eden's nursery was my favourite room because the colours in it were so vibrant and happy. So we decided to paint her new room the same colours too. We started painting yesterday, with a coat of yellow on the window wall. Today we finished, with 2 orange side walls and a deep red on the wall adjacent to the door. The colours are all bold. It may not be to everybody's taste, but it's Eden's room - and the bright, happy colours reflect her fun personality.

So with the walls finished we now need to think about putting the carpet in. We took a visit to a local carpet store this morning, had a good chat with staff there and should hopefully have a carpet in by this time next week.

I'll post a 'finished' photo up next week, but in the meantime, here's some photos of Eden's nursery in our old house, the colours of which we've tried to recreate.

Front Garden looking great

Today our new lawn was delivered for the front garden. It's looking fantastic! Luke laid it in his lunch break (he was working from home as we also have the electrician in today to some wiring). The front garden now looks so different to the overgrown lumpy mass of weeds that it was previously!

Before:

Ready for the turf:

After:

Gardening

It's been such a warm sunny day today, so we decided to press on with the front garden - getting rid of the weeds and levelling the ground. Without seeing any photos this may sound an easy task. However, as well as the usual dips and troughs that you would expect from an overgrown garden that hasn't been looked after, there was one huge mound right in the middle of the non-existent 'lawn'.

Luke set to work with the clippers (we didn't want to strim and spread dandelions and weeds into next door's garden), followed by turning over all the soil, the results are rather satisfying in terms of flattening the ground. It took all day, but actually this was quicker than what we were expecting it to take us.

While he was doing this, I potted up some Busy Lizzies, arranged our pot plants from our previous house outside under the living room window, and made a start at clearing the back garden. I read in a gardening book that when dealing with any overgrown garden it is always best to start at the back door and work your way out. Well this is what I did today, and I'm proud that I got as far as clearing the little slabbed patio area immediately outside the back door. This involved getting rid of the previous owners rubbish and rubble, removing weeds from the cracks between the slabs and cutting away at the endless branches of bramble (actually they weren't endless as I managed to clear them all from this section of the garden). Plus I did a bit of rearranging of our garden equipment to make it tidier.

All in all a productive day in the garden - we filled up a wheeley bin, a composter and a dustbin just with garden cuttings and weeds! Before and after photos to follow.....

Day 15: Starting work on the kitchen

Well officially we started yesterday, as Luke started taking the kitchen units out while I began glossing in the hall. Today however, we have under-coated 2 of the kitchen walls - we would have carried on as it only took us an hour but we ran out of paint!

Before:

After undercoating:

House Project

Ok, so I know it's been nearly a year since I last wrote an entry for this blog, but since entering the world of Mummy-land I've felt most of my blog posts are more relevant to Eden and so have been updating her own blog for a while instead, for her to read when she's older (although do feel free to read too if you're interested - here.)

Last Wednesday, after many ups and downs, high points and low points (right to the very end) we finally picked up the keys to our new house. It has been a long year waiting since we first put our house on the market.

Our new house is in a perfect location for us, being right next to the countryside and with allotments opposite the house. It does need a lot of work though, an ideal opportunity to keep a blog of our progress, as it happens over the next few weeks and months.

Having picked the keys up on Wednesday, Thursday was spent giving the kitchen, bathroom, windows, and whatever other space we could reach that wasn't taken up with boxes and furniture, a thorough clean. My Mum's friend Marion did a fantastic job cleaning the bathroom, which was filthy, and I was pleasantly surprised at the sparkling bath and wash basin that was revealed underneath the layer of grime! Luke finished the job of making the bathroom useable by fixing the loo seat. All that needs doing in there now (in time) will be painting/possibly tiling the walls and sealing the roof, one of the minor jobs to do in comparison to some of the others on our list.

Next thing we did last week was make the dining room toddler-safe. It's the only room in the house that has a carpet down, and will now act as our safe haven to put Eden in while we potter on jobs. She seems to quite like the room, it has all her toys in, and a lovely big window overlooking the back garden. If she stands on a Quality Street tin she can just about see outside over the window sill!

Our first major work was completed yesterday by Luke, he did a wonderful job boarding the loft, and we now have a huge space to fill for storage!

That's about all so far. This week is taken up by obtaining quotes for the next jobs on the to-do list - central heating, a new boiler and double glazing.