A Blissful Nights Sleep and a Trip Down Memory Lane

Last night I had the most blissful nights sleep.

I washed all the bedding yesterday, the pillow protectors, mattress protector everything.  They blew in the light breeze we had for some of the day and dried super quickly in the high heat of the midday sun.  So rather than getting out a fresh set from the storage basket I simply put the same duvet cover and pillow cases etc right back on the bed.

The room had been aired all day and damp dusted while the bedding dried, so everything felt fresh and lovely,  Even my towel had been added to the wash although it had only been washed the day before.  So after a cool bath, it was off to my fresh bedroom and my lovely fresh bedding.

Yes it was warm, very warm but the freshness was relaxing and I fell asleep in my customary two minutes and woke bright and early this morning raring to go.

Oh and nothing flew off the washing line, I now have super strong pegs just to be sure :-)

The top picture was borrowed from Google Images, and it reminded me of hanging out my washing when I lived with my first husband and my boys on Ship Street on Barrow Island in Cumbria .....

.... so I just Googled the flats, and this image is one of the ones I found, exactly as I remember the outside of our flat.  

We lived on the third floor, one from the top, oh how I remember bumping Jason's baby buggy up all those steps, then putting on the brake and going back down to fetch my shopping.  But the good thing about living so high up was the speed at which the washing dried, even on a wettish day because of the shape of the flats most things got nearly dry, a good thing as I didn't have a washing machine in those days, it was all done by hand in the bath and wrung out as  tightly as I could, and the washing line was accessed out of the bathroom window which was very handy.

I used to love seeing a row of freshly washed white terry nappies blowing in the breeze, but any bedding hung so low you would block out your lower neighbours view until it dried and you could reel it back in.

For all the hardship of the time we lived there I have lots of good memories to look back on, it was a simple time.

Sue xx

Rushed Through Your Days

Do you ever get the feeling that you are being rushed through your days.  Rushed through your weeks, your months and even more worryingly, rushed through your years.

It is literally three weeks since Christmas, two weeks since the New Year, and the shops have been selling Cadbury's Creme Eggs for a couple of weeks now.  The chocolate eggs are being highlighted everywhere in the press because of the complaints about the 'change in recipe' of the chocolate and the reduction in the number of eggs you get in your 'half dozen' packs.  

Christmas seems a very distant memory.

If we are being encouraged now to buy Easter Eggs aren't we being rushed forward quite considerably.  Surely first we need to be persuaded to buy something tacky and red for Valentines Day ...

.... or extra lemons and pancake mix for Shrove Tuesday.

There is talk already of 'spring cleaning' when we are only just into Winter properly.  The last thing I want to be doing is taking apart my house and cleaning everything, I need the fluff and the dust to keep me warm, so NO I will not be dashing out to buy 'products' to clean my home.  

If the dust bunnies get too fluffy,  a good hoover and a bit of good old soapy water and a recycled cloth will keep them down until it actually is Spring and the sun once again shines in my windows.

We are being rushed forward to the next thing constantly, told that we 'need' to buy this and we need to buy that to make our families happier, ourselves more successful. and our world a more hygienic and better place to be in.

But how much do we 'need' to buy ... I think it's time for a lot of us to take a HUGE step back!!

Time to assess what we need and what we have.  To think long and hard about what we want and why we want it.  I think I can honestly say at this moment in time I do not want anything.  I have enough food in the cupboards to keep us fed for weeks, enough oil in the tank and wood in the log pile for heating the house.  I have enough clothes and shoes to last me a couple of years ... in fact I still feel I have excesses so I am about to have another few days of sorting through things and taking them to the charity shops.

I do not want to buy any creme eggs, nor do I particularly want anything for Valentines Day, a hug and an 'I love you' means so much more than a mass produced card that will no doubt be replicated on many a mantlepieces all over the country.

As for Shrove Tuesday I have flour and eggs and if I feel the urge to join in I could no doubt rustle up a few pancakes ... it seems I would be in good company.

No, I don't want to be rushed through my days ... I want to live my life one day at a time, to enjoy my days not dash through them.  

Yes we may be busy, we may have a hundred and one little jobs that needs doing, families that need caring for, animals that need feeding, walking and loving but we can take out of our lives all the extra things that fill up the time, that fill up the space in our heads with their demands.  The shopping for things we don't need, watching adverts that tell us we do need them.  Planning outings to go and buy things and fighting our way round shops full of people doing exactly the same.  

I wish the shops were closed on Sunday as they used to be, to have a day when the only shops open were the newsagents in the morning for your Sunday paper and the little corner shop for that pint of milk or loaf of bread that your forgot to buy.  Life was simpler back then and a day for breathing, relaxing and taking stock was available to all of us.

We all though still have it in us to make life simpler and make life special, if that is what we choose to do, and if you are one of the people that loves the hype, loves the hustle and bustle, loves being pushed along on a conveyor belt of consumerism and loves keeping up with Jones, then I'm sorry this wasn't the post for you was it  ;-)  

We each only get one life,  it's not a rehearsal for another one, a better one, a different one ... this folks is it.  Our lives.  Make your days count and DO NOT let anyone rush you through them ... they are YOURS all yours.

Sue xx

All pictures and images from Google Images 

..... who even knew there was a whole page there full of dust bunnies!!   :-)

Simplicity

 

All this packing and unpacking, moving and shifting has made me think even harder about the things we own.  We worked so hard all through this year and the year before to get rid of things, to sell at car boot sales and online, to move to a more simple way of life and yet still we seem to own so much. So many items have been packed, loaded, driven up the motorway only to be unloaded and unpacked at the other end.  I think doing it in small loads has highlighted to me the sheer amount of stuff we have. 

 

We forgot to bring the dog bowls home with us last weekend, and I wondered what we would put their food in ... for a moment I even very briefly contemplated going and buying two more stainless steel bowls for them.  I needn't have worried, looking around the house when we got home I managed to find two dog bowls within minutes.  We have bowls sat inside and outside the house filled at all times with fresh water for the dogs and cats to drink out of and there were the bowls that used to belong to Sophie, our beloved Border Collie.  So it took me literally two minutes to get two bowls together that can be designated food bowls for the two dogs during the week and stop the need for bringing the others backwards and forwards with us.

 

 

 

We also have enough plates, bowls and cups for us at both ends, I seem to have two very functional kitchens working in tandem with each other.  We truly have everything we need and more.  There are so many less fortunate than us.  We've worked hard for what we have, we both work very hard to earn money and make that money work for us.   And we've managed through sheer hard slog to get together half the value of our home and we plan to pay for it completely in as short a time frame as we possibly can so it is truly ours. To make sure this happens I have decided I will be continuing to downsize our belongings, already at the new house there is a growing collection of things, some not wanted and left by the previous owners and some ours that we have realised simply don't fit in with how we want the house to be, all these will be sold off at the first chance we have and the money raised diverted to paying off the mortgage.

 

In the new year I intend to resurrect my Recipe Book Blog and work my way through my vast collection of books, being much more ruthless this time and only keeping the very useful and much used favourites, the rest will be sold.  I may even be tempted to try to raise £2014 in 2014 the way I did very successfully in 2012.  I find with a definite figure to aim towards you do push yourself that little bit more.

 

But anyway the main thing behind this post was to tumble down in words my desire to get back to simplicity, as I feel in buying things for the new house I had lost sight of it somewhat.  There's been no 'make do and mending', there's been lots of 'we need this so we'll buy it' and that's no bad thing for a short while after all we'd worked hard to save the money to get ready to buy these things and it is the first home we have ever bought together, but soon it has to stop and I guess with a brand new year almost upon us it's a brilliant time to make plans for how you want things to be.

 

How do I want things to be - Simple.

 

Sue xx

 

 

Simple Little Things

 

The simplest things bring a smile to my face, like Lovely Hubby remembering last week when he stayed at a posh hotel before a works conference that I needed a new shower cap.

 

Not for my head in the shower ... now that would be much too normal in this house.

 

I needed it to use in the kitchen when I'm making bread.

 

Popped over the bowl while the bread is having it's first proving they are amazing useful.  Of course I immediately set to and made him a loaf of bread to say thank you.

 

The kitchen supplies are slowly running down here, the storecupboard and the wall cupboards at last have lots of space, true a little bit of it has gone to the new house, but most of it has been eaten.  After weekends of non stop decorating the last thing I have time for here is shopping so we have literally been living out of the cupboards and the freezers and yes, there is lots of room in the freezers too. 

 

 In fact so much room I can once again imagine LH getting fed up with me, bumping me off after a stressful day at work and storing my body in the deep dark recesses of the chest freezer.  I think I have been watching one too many CSI's  and Criminal Minds, thank goodness there's a Bake Off programme tonight, lovely Mary and Paul showing us how it should be done  :-)

 

Sue xx

Our Forever Home

 

Decorating our way through the house, might be a long and slow process but it means we are getting to know the very ins and outs of the house.  Noticing it's foibles and little nooks and crannies, the way the old original skirting boards are matched up with new more modern copies. Seeing original woodwork that has never seen paint (and never will) waiting behind cupboard doors to be discovered, the same wood that was put into place in 1920 when the house was built. There's not much of the original house, but what there is will be treasured.   As I paint my mind wanders and plans emerge where once there may have been only the vaguest hints of ideas.

 

The Spare Bedroom above is complete except for the curtains and light shade which we will bring from home this coming weekend ...

 

... the bathroom is complete except for the cupboard door, which was still drying when this picture was taken just before we left on Sunday afternoon. 

 

This cupboard is the 'pop' of green for this room, every room will have one somewhere, it is a slight variation on my favourite shade of green, we had the paint mixed after taking in one of the cushions, which match the new curtains.  We have enough paint to highlight the whole of the house in one way or another.  You will have to play 'spot the green' as I reveal each room!!

 

 

The upstairs toilet is completely finished except for a net curtain which really is needed for this window, although the view is breath-taking so will the view into the room be from the main road as someone goes to sit on the toilet :-)   

 

It was truly the fiddliest room in the whole house to paint, it is so tiny hence the corner toilet.  The pop of green for the moment is the greenery outside, as that is to be masked from view by the net I will have to introduce it somewhere else.

 

The ceiling in the office is now painted and when we get back there I will start on the walls.  They are all needing at least two coats to hide the deep cream colour that is currently on them, but it is worth it as the finish looks wonderful once the second coat is on and it is so much easier to paint when there is nothing in the rooms.

 

 

Lovely Hubby has now laid the tiles that the Aga will sit on and they have almost two weeks to set solid before it is being installed.  Yay, I can't wait.  It's like the house is waiting for it's heart to be delivered, we have brought it life and love and the Aga will bring it warmth and a beating heart.  Yes .... I'm a soppy thing when it comes to Aga love :-)

 

Why the previous owners tiled around the kitchen units we'll never know, you'd think it would be so much easier to tile the whole floor and then sit the cupboards on top, especially considering they laid the floor and fitted the kitchen after the extension was built.

 

The wall behind where the Aga will sit is also being tiled and these tiles will continue around the kitchen, three high on this wall and filling the gap between the base and wall units on the other side.  We chose a simple 'Subway' tile in plain white to keep the look simple and fresh.  Although a patterned or green tile might have looked really good with this simple creamy coloured kitchen and the cream coloured Aga, what if our tastes changed and we lived to regret it.  Far better to keep the fixtures and fittings plain and simple and add the wackier and more colourful touches in things we can change for little cost in the future.

 

Well that's it ...  a weekends work, summed up in six photos. 

 

We have this week at home and then we will have two weeks at the new house to really get stuck in to the  jobs that need doing.  It's all the big jobs, the expensive ones that will be happening over the next fortnight.  The new oil fired Combi boiler is being fitted, the new larger log burner is being installed and the old one removed, the carpets are being cleaned and my wonderful re-conditioned Aga will be delivered and installed during our second week there after the kitchen units are re-arranged slightly during the first week.

 

It's lovely to watch the house accepting and rolling with our plans, slowly and surely it is turning into our place, the one we have dreamt about and planned together.  The one we have scrimped and saved for over the last couple of years, the one we will live in and grow old together in. 

 

Our Forever Home.

 

Sue xx