What We Are Doing With Our Car Boot Earnings This Year.

At first we couldn't make up our minds what to do with our earnings from this years car boot sales,  what to do with over £700 requires careful consideration, then over a coffee and a slice of cake we hit on the perfect thing.  Two Winters ago we had a lot of water ingress into the house, last year it was sorted out and the exterior painted and we've been waiting ever since for things to dry out so we could sort out the internal damage

All above this window was originally a sodden mess, now at last it is dry, so Alan's first job was to patch things up, then we carried on and redecorated the whole room, which is pretty easy to do when your colour scheme is white ceilings, white walls and white woodwork.

Of course we needed a flash of colour on the chimney breast to keep things cheerful and that's where our two rolls of bargain wallpaper came in.  We thought a brick effect would look good and as we are going for a slightly 'older' look for the room it fitted in nicely.

Tomorrow a carpet will be fitted, we have had enough of the laminate flooring that was here when we bought the house.  The dogs are skidding round the living room for the last time today and hopefully by tomorrow we will have a cosy warm carpeted floor with no need for rugs that slide around to try and keep things warm underfoot.

And then next week the final piece of our living room makeover will be delivered, a brand new sofa and chair to add a real flash of colour to the room ..... and no it's NOT green  ;-)

The good thing is we have lots of the paint left over to redecorate our bedroom which is directly above the living room and suffered even worse damage above the window.  But that can wait a little while.

Our car boot sale money has done us very well ... paints, wallpaper, curtains, a new lightshade and almost all the cost of the carpet, the sofa is our Christmas present to each other.

While I was busy cleaning the floor ready for the carpet fitting, I spied our regular little peeping chicken at the door ....  

... Suky spotted her too and went over for a closer look  :-)

Sue xx

Books, Books, Books and More Books .....

Mission accomplished !! 

One completely empty bookcase ready to be moved out of the living room ready for it being redecorated, and the even better knowledge that there are no books to go back onto it once we have finished the room.

Seemingly back in February 2015 we had 619 books in our entire collection, as documented and pictured over three blog posts starting HERE.  If you want to read all three posts just click on 'Newer Post' at the bottom of each day.

After sorting through and tidying up each bookcase ...

... and each ledge ...

... and shelf downstairs, I worked my round the upstairs rooms.

Mostly fiction in the spare bedroom,

... an astonishing amount of books in my bedside cabinet.

Including one on top that I nearly forgot!!

Some more on Alan's side of the bed.

There were even a few lurking behind the computer screen.

And to the left of the desk in the office, another selection of Alan's books.

I drew a little plan so I could write the number of books on each shelf down in case I lost count, and as you can see in the end there was a grand total of 569.  So a lower number than two and a half years ago, but still a large number of books considering how many we have sold over the car boot season.  I guess there have been a few new ones in and lots of old ones out but luckily more out than in  :-)

So my plan over the Winter months is to hopefully read lots and jettison even more books ready for selling next year, and if possible whittle down the collection to a nice round 500 .... or even lower.

Hands up who else is a bookaholic  :-)

Sue xx

Sue's Breakfast Mix and Car Boot Results

Whenever I have bananas and yoghurts in the house this is my breakfast of choice.

A big dollop of yoghurt, usually about a third of this large pot, a sliced up banana, a good handful of frozen homegrown Blueberries straight from the freezer and a teaspoon or two of everything from these jars.  The other morning as I was in and out of cupboards adding my teaspoon of this, teaspoon of that I thought to myself ... well no actually I said it out loud ... why the bloody hell do I do this several times a week and why don't I store all these jars in one cupboard which would have been the first logical step.

Then I thought ... time to put this right now. 

So instead of just putting the teaspoon of seeds on my breakfast I also put six times the amount of each seed into a jar and then gave it a good mix up.

I will obviously have to give it a stir each time before I use it as things like the little Chia seeds will gravitate to the bottom, but it's a million times better than opening and closing cupboards finding what I need so early in the morning.

The only thing I decided not to add to the jar were the flaked almonds, as they would go off much sooner than the other more dried seeds, and there weren't that many left in their jar.  When they run out I will revert to grating a couple of Brazil nuts over my breakfast instead..

I even labelled the jar 'Sue's Breakfast Mix.

One nice thing though, while I was doing my squirrel impression the other morning and gathering in my seeds and nuts, Alan said 'you remind me so much of your Dad when he came to visit us at the farm' ... he used to do something very similar every day with his bowl of cereal and whatever various 'sprinkles'  he could find  :-)

In other completely non-breakfast news, we worked out our final car boot takings after our final car boot sale of the year last week and these are the grand totals for 2017.

Not too shabby at all, over £900 cash that we wouldn't normally have had   :-)

Our plan for next year now that we have got rid of most of the housey clutter, is to move towards selling more of our homegrown and homemade stuff.  So along with one table of 'car boot stuff'  there will be another table with eggs, plants and vegetables and once the workshop is completely up and running which hopefully it will be over this Winter, more handmade small pieces of furniture, bowls and bits and pieces made of wood.

It will be interesting to compare this years total with next years.

Sue xx

A Very Dry Bank Holiday, with No Thanks to the NFU

We woke up on Friday morning to a steady current of water flowing from underneath the house.

It had obviously been flowing for sometime as outside it was draining away in all directions.

Luckily the heaviest flow was making for the drains we had installed and the soakaway system we have under the driveway.

This picture just does not show the force at which it was bubbling away from under the house.

Luckily the only damage inside the house was the flooded under stairs cupboard where the stop-cock is and the water inlet to the house.  The cupboard was quickly emptied and the sodden, dripping carpet slung over the washing line to drip the day away.

We called Welsh Water who had a couple of guys with us within the hour, all they could do was to give us the number of a local contact and turn our water off at the mains.  They left us with four bottles of drinking water and drove off.  We tried ringing the contact but all we got was an answerphone over and over ... obviously with it being the Bank Holiday weekend he just didn't want any more work to do.  So we called our insurance company for advice. 

Now we've been with the NFU for the last eight years, we insure our house with them, it's contents, the cars with them, the trailers and the tractor and we have never had to call them for help before.  Thinking of the adverts on a television when a nice chap comes rushing to your assistance we naively thought they would have the answers to our predicament.  Now although the folk on the other end of the line were very polite the only thing they could arrange was a plumber/water specialist to come out on Wednesday of next week.  WHAT!!  They expect us to last SIX days without a water supply or toilet facilities.  After discussing things between ourselves and trying the water boards contact number again, with no success, we rang them back and said this just wasn't good enough. So they kindly decided this wasn't a routine call out but an emergency one and upgraded the repair date to TUESDAY!!

So two people, two dogs, one cat, twenty chickens and four sheep ..... and no working water supply!!

So this weekend we have rigged up a system where we turn the water on at the mains, meaning a trip into the main road for both of us, with Alan getting on his hands and knees to turn the supply on and me standing behind to warn him of oncoming traffic, then we quickly do as much as we can before the water starts filling up the foundations of the house again.  Fill the trough and every available vessel in the polytunnel, fill the sheep's three buckets, fill the chicken drinkers, fill the kettle, water bottles, jugs and large pans in the kitchen, do one load of washing in the machine and run a bath.  Then we repeat our journey onto the now even busier main road and turn off the supply.  With lots of dashing around we've got this down to an exhausting 35 minute routine.

Coming in we each have a relaxing dunk in the bath and then leave the water in for toilet flushing during the course of the day.  One thing's for sure we'll not take our water supply for granted again, and I will be pushing for Alan to connect the pump to our underground tank for future outdoor watering use.  But in typical male fashion it seems shelves in the workshop are still of higher priority than me being able to water vegetables with free Welsh rainwater.

There was however, one light in this dark and waterless tunnel ... we had to empty the under stairs cupboard in a rush. I was astonished at the amount of clutter in there.  Things just get added and added to a little seen space don't they, without a realisation of how much stuff you put there.

So I decided to continue with yesterdays mini Challenge and pick out things to add to the car boot box.  We had one bag and two big boxes of Christmas decorations for a start, so I decided that one box was more enough for us and whittled away at things.  Counting them into groups of ten again as it somehow focuses the mind.

It didn't take long to rationalise things.

Thirty things gone in the blink of an eye.

Hoover attachments that I have never even used, excess wrapping paper that never will get used, a total of 37 items found in 10 minutes.

And instead of waiting to put what was left back under the stairs when everything has dried out, I put all the Christmas stuff into the lower cupboard in the living room ... because there was lots of room in there after last weeks sorting marathon.

So now there is a lot less stuff stashed behind the sofa waiting to go back into the cupboard, and it's not bugging me quite so much and at least something good came out of this watery mess.

I hope your Bank Holiday weekend is going well ..... at least the weather is dry here and we had a very successful car boot sale yesterday, coming home with no less than nine empty boxes and £108 for the car boot kitty.

There is one more car boot sale in our favourite venue this year, so I will be having one last push to fill up some of those empty boxes with things we no longer need or use, just to see what I can make our total car boot sale takings up to for this year.

Sue xx

A One Day Challenge - Updated and Complete

I'm having a 'spur of the moment' One Day Challenge  :-)

We're hoping to do a Car Boot Sale on Saturday weather permitting, so my Challenge to myself today is to declutter from the house ten items every hour on the hour until 5pm tonight. 

By the end of this mini declutter-athon there should be seventy more items to add to my car boot sale boxes, more space in the house ... and hopefully at the end of the sale on Saturday more cash in my purse.

I will take a photo of every hourly ten and try and get back on here to upload .... just to keep myself on track. 

I better go now it's almost 12 noon and time for my second ten of the day.

12 noon

1pm

2pm

3pm

4pm

Yep. I finished early ..... 5pm's little collection.

Has anybody else, when decluttering, had an overwhelming urge just to get rid of everything.  Sorting through my wardrobe I just wanted to lift the lot out and price it up .... and start from scratch with a minimal collection.

I'm fighting the urge .... I'll go and put the kettle on instead  ;-)

Sue xx

Sorting the Clutter in the Kitchen

I think it was Sally that asked to see a photo of the kitchen after I had put everything back after the electrician had been the other week. So while I was in there the other day I took a few shots for posterity.

Most things went back on the now cleaned and re-oiled shelves ... they are after all in very regular use and I do like to have my bits and bobs around me.  Also all the jars of dried food had to go back because as well as looking nice they give me inspiration at teatime when, after a day in the polytunnel or out on the Veggie Patch, I come into the kitchen and stand looking blankly into space wondering what on earth to have for tea to go with the harvested veggies ... I should get back to menu planning!!

 My worktops will never be as clear as those you see in magazines because I like to have the brewing up stuff to hand ... we drink enough tea and coffee during the day to make this very necessary!!

Everything you see out is in daily if not hourly use ...  and yes sometimes that does include the toaster  ;-)

Taking a step back this is how the kitchen looks now everything is back in place.

But behind the closed doors an even more in depth sorting, decluttering and cleaning is going on, just one cupboard at a time whenever the inspiration strikes ... or while the kettle boils and the toast pops up   :-)

Sue xx

Bare Surfaces ..... and Sorting Out

Sorry for the lack of posts, it's been a busy few days since Alan came home full time. 

We've had an electrician in to replace all the lights in this half of the kitchen we've had problems with them ever since we bought this house, but now it's all sorted and the new low energy spotlights that are in place will use even less power from the solar panels and battery back up system ... and the kitchen and bathroom are both ten times brighter.

On top of all this this week we have had internet issues, it turned out our router had died a quiet and dignified death and has now, after much faffing about, been replaced with a younger fitter model ... and just like that we are back in internet action.

I took photos while everything was out of the kitchen and bathroom to inspire me to keep decluttering.  It was so calming  to have empty shelves and surfaces. 

We cleared it all out early in the day as the electrician was coming at teatime to do the job, so it meant I got to enjoy the clear space and simplicity for a good few hours.  It didn't take him very long to do, so while everything was out we had a good spring clean and then finished off by re-oiling the shelves and worktops with Danish Oil, and then as we were going out for all of the following day we left everywhere bare for the oil to be properly absorbed.

I didn't want to put everything back the next evening I was just enjoying the delicious sparseness so much .....

... but stepping into the living room and seeing the windowsill in there made it a rather foregone conclusion that things really did have to go back to their rightful places  ;-)

I've been busy sorting through my rather large book collection yesterday and today and this post was just a little break between shelves now that the computer is back in action,  but now I suppose it's time to get back to work .... I'm finding it very cathartic all this sorting.

Sue xx

Mice with a Sweet Tooth ... and Saving Every Penny

Alan is partial to a box of these every now and then, this flavour and the others that you can get these Wheaties in ....

... and so it would seem are the mice that I have been catching in the net tunnel in our humane mousetrap.  It turns out this cereal is a favourite all around  ;-)

Nothing goes to waste here, and although I don't often buy boxes of cereal, when I do I use every bit of what I have paid for.  The cereal was obviously eaten, by Alan and the mice, the waxy paper inner bag was used to wrap the sandwiches we took to the car boot sale with us (it stops you spending the profits you make if you take a flask and sandwiches ... although this time Alan was totally captivated by a huge cream scone for £1.50).  So that left the cardboard, well that was easy ...four shopping list blanks and some little bits and pieces to pop into the fire-lighting basket next to the log burner.

While I was in waste not want not mode I cut up a just washed yogurt pot to make some plant labels to use in the plants that I sell at the car boot sales for 50p each.  After all if I have gotten everything for the plants I'm selling for nothing or just pennies then I am making much more profit on each one I sell and that's the name of the game from now on.

Sue xx