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Sunday 28 February 2016

Spring is coming

I love spring. Everything starts to come back to life, including myself.  Winter is lovely when you are sitting in front of a lovely warm fire, drinking mulled wine and taking life easy, but there is no replacement for getting out in the fresh air and making busy.

I found myself in a bit of blue mood this winter and I couldn't work out why, but maybe it was just winter and the fact that I was becoming a bit stagnant.  All hail the spring!

All of our plans are starting to take shape. The tiles have been bought for the kitchen, dining area and snug. A cast iron inset for the fireplace, purchased. There is a lot being organised also; the external insulation, render and painting, a basketball court (or a half one) for Himself and we have been busying ourselves inside tidying, clearing and making use of some dead space. There is now an actual workshop in one of the rooms downstairs with wood storage on one wall, carefully crafted by Himself and a work bench built. This is a huge win.  He is also in the process of flooring and doing the walls in what will be his makeshift modelling room, until the attic is ready for him. All of these things are in addition to what we expected this winter.

I have been busy in the garden, when the sun has been shining.  The vegetable garden is now ready, except for a quick weeding exercise, to plant out when that time comes. The seeds have been planted and are sitting under the glass covered raised beds and in the little greenhouses in the hope that we will not get a heavy frost and in anticipation of an early crop - we already have a lot of beetroot and aubergine seedlings showing! We will of course plant some more out at the suggested times.

The chickens have supplied us with eggs all winter. I have been having to Google recipes that use a lot of eggs at times and we have even gifted some recently to friends. At the moment, we collect four or five a day. Goodness knows how many we will get in summer if they are meant to slow down over winter!

What else has been going on? The puppies are still adorable and we are now trying to train them not to sleep in our bed at night. They are simply too warm when winter is over and it would be unbearably hot once we hit the heights of summer. Rambo is very content, if missing the workmen around. Sassy is loving her new home out on the balcony, even with less space. She seems much happier and is looking a whole heap better also.

As for us, well we have really enjoyed spending our first winter here and it has gone very smoothly indeed. In fact, in a couple of weeks, I will have been here a whole year without a break. Big celebration time. I feel like the time has flown by and I have loved it. We continue to make plans and it is all very exciting indeed, so stay tuned for what comes next.

I will try to write more often when the work begins again and the plans begin to become reality.

Be good.

A x


Friday 5 February 2016

Winter thoughts

I am sitting beside the fire in the living room currently; it is 13.17. I have wasted pretty much all morning sitting in front of Facebook and Twitter, spent a little time reading and playing with the puppies and it suddenly occurred to me that I have no hobbies to speak of. I take photos of course, but that has been taking a back seat really and I have nothing to do in my spare time that I really enjoy. I like to write, hence this blog, but I am not sure I am particularly good at it. I dabbled in a little bit of writing previously but nobody has ever told me it was any good, so I didn't bother with anything more. In fact, I don't suppose I am very good at much in the way of creative stuff. The Mr has many interests and it makes me think that I should try some things out, especially for when the renovations are finished; what on earth will I do with my time?

This has actually been quite a devastating realisation for me today. I rarely get bored as such, but I am now aware that I can while away a LOT of hours by doing absolutely nothing in particular. I need to remedy this.  I am just not quite sure how or with what. The other side of this coin is that I have the attention span of a goldfish and I am also prone to the "cannot be bothered" attitude, so this challenge is growing as I type.

I have always wanted to draw, paint and/or write, to be artistic and at all of these things I fail miserably. I am pretty talentless, it seems.

Probably best I get back to my book then. Perhaps I will pick up some pointers....