changes

Seem to be coming out of the darker space that has been a bit consuming of late. With regard to moving here is some news about what we have been up to. Work has been happening on the house! the attic room has been split into two rooms, rather splendid they are too and the occupants, Jem and Sam, seem really pleased to have some personal space back again. All of the downstairs floors and all thirty six stairs and hall and landings have had their floors stripped. Norah and I spent a couple of days removing laminate flooring from the downstairs, and the very manky smelly carpet from the hall and stairs has gone, the floors, back to their original glory look amazing, we are so pleased with them. The garden is looking wonderful, full of flowers, post coming about the garden, it was a lot of work but so worth it. The extra bathroom has gone and a wall has been relocated to make a bedroom for Callum and a study for me, which I am very excited about. I have been missing my books and bits and pieces, it will be so nice to have them out again, I plan on having both rooms decorated and finished in a couple of weeks! We have opened up the fireplace in the back room and bought a fantastic tiled one from ebay, how I love ebay. Installed a shower in the bathroom and removed one from what is now the utility room. Our two rooms downstairs had french doors connecting them, these are now gone and the ceilings are now flat, I am not a fan of artex! We have also had tons of plumbing work done, radiators moved and installed, plus lots of random electrical jobs! Wardrobes are due to be made and fitted in our bedroom next week, hurray no more cardboard boxes and hardly any clothes, and I am really hoping the budget stretches to a new kitchen, Im on the look out for old kitchen cupboards, watching one on ebay, have the plans, just hope I have the means lol! Please excuse my lack of punctuation, my laptop has died and I am using an old Scandanavian one from Adrians work, the keys dont do what the keys say they should do! On a happy note Miss N turned 3! three! I cant believe she has been in my life so long, She is amazing! I will post about her birthday and include some photos soon.

I have realised that I'm not very good at keeping up with blogging because I don't get the same thing from writing happy stuff! The dark stuff that needs to be said carries with it some therapeutic value in the saying. The happy stuff is just there floating on the wave of living, happy but not nearly as good to write about as the crap. Hmmmm, the crap, the trouble with that is that it's my crap and I'm not sure I want to share it anyway. Not sure anyone would be interested but just imagining if someone was and did read it, not really what I want.

it''s the crap inside my head
stops me from going to bed
i lie awake waiting for
sleep to come, me to snore
the crap floating in my brain
just those horrid dreams again
easier just to sit and wait
to stay up very very late
then at last when down I lie
I am asleep before I close my eyes

it's been a month

We have lived here for a month! already! In the last week things have really started happening with the house. We have filled the tiny garden with flowers, by the summer it should be lovely, mostly pink, purple and white blooms. If we can win the war with the plant eating snails then I'm looking forward to seeing how pretty we have made it. Last MOnday Norah and I stripped the walls and lifted the laminate flooring in the front room, since then we have done the same in the back room and taken up all carpet and scraped all stairs (all 36 of them) in the hall and removed the vinyl flooring from the kitchen and had all of the downstairs floors sanded! they look amazing. We have also had some essential electrical work done and the large room at the top of the house has been converted into two rooms; one for Jem and one for Sam. We have been busy and it has seemed at times like the house has morphed into a building site! Obvioulsy to sand floors rooms need to be empty so there has been a lot of furniture moving as well, consequently we haven't been as sociable as we may have liked during the past week. We did however go to forest school last week. Norah loved it, she got to slide down a mud slide, use a hack saw, look for frogs and other insects, peel a stick, toast a marshmellow on a camp fire and then burn the stick and let's not forget her most exciting thing, go on a mini bus! On the return journey she pushed her way to the front of the queue and got herself a seat at the front of the bus, so that she could see where she was going! Very exciting stuff for someone who can usually only see where she has been lol. We met a lot of nice people at the forrest school, all of whom home ed their children. It was nice to be around people for whom home schooling is the norm. for a change.

what have we been up to? continued

Loving wrought iron gates

Celebrating birthdays! Happy Birthday to my gorgeous brand new teenager :)

Eating the loveliest carrot 'happy new home' cake made for us by the lovely Beth

Making the most of our Chill Out space

Collecting Adrian from the lovely station building

and we went to the Herne Bay Classic Car Show (held in our road!) loving my dream vehicle!

what have we been up to? - a post in pictures

Shopping in the beatiful city of Canterbury, still can't believe we are lucky enough to be 'local'

Hanging washing on the line - this picture makes me happy

Sleeping. Lots of sleeping. Maybe it's the sea air?

Being cheeky! Some things haven't changed :)

Making new discoveries ... ice cream comes in flavours! Oh my!

after two weeks ...

Moving to a new area is interesting! Having always lived within the same two square miles, and therefore been very familiar with my surroundings I am finding it fairly amusing (at the moment - that may well change) that I don't know where anything is or where I am going. I have learned a few things, one of them is not to go off exploring without the satnav in the car! Got a bit lost but I can say that Beltinge and Reculver look very nice. I have visited a couple of toddler groups with Norah. Wow, not sure how shy people do it, (perhaps they don't?) not the easiest of places to go when you don't know anyone, even for extrovert me! Have met a nice lady who has a daughter Norah's age and a baby (guess which one Miss Noodle is more interested in?) though which has been good. I think maybe it's a bit hard as not knowing anyone gives me lots of opportunities to just sit and observe, the result of which has been seeing a fair bit of negativity towards other toddlers. The nice bit of this however has been watching Norah interact with new people and discover just how very much more confident she is than I had realised previously. Feels like we are doing something right for us which is nice. I have also discovered that tradesmen here don't exactly hurry up with quotations which is a bit frustrating. We are getting there with the work plans though, making compromises is becoming easier the longer we live here and determine which jobs just HAVE to be done and which are maybe not so important or we can do ourselves. While I know we are really lucky to be able to do the jobs on the house I am realising that my house and how it feels to me are more important than I had previously thought. What is really nice is that this house was chosen by both of us, I imagine that may be the reason that we both felt 'at home' here from the minute we arrived. It's really nice to be right in the town centre. During our trip to the shops and library today we bumped into two ladies from church and spoke to two of our new neighbours! All of them took the time to speak to Norah too, I'm kind of liking the slower pace of life here at the moment. There is a supermarket on the other side of the high street which takes about two minutes to walk to, so nice not to have to use the car so much, and sea front walks are still a big novelty. Looking forward to the warmer weather, although aparantly we are in for the wettest May in 300 years! Better buy a new umbrella!

an afternoon stroll by the sea