Easter Weekend

Morning all, I hope you all had a lovely Easter weekend with family and friends, ate lots of chocolate and hopefully none were too affected by storm Katie! We had gales and torrential rain all of Saturday daytime and night time and woke up to find the two new fence panels we'd bought had been thrown half way around the garden (they've not been fitted yet and were leaning against the conservatory) Thankfully they are still in one piece and my plants had managed to avoid being squashed.

I did Roast leg of English Lamb on Friday, cooked with rosemary and garlic and some white wine too. It made the tastiest gravy!

Friday however was a beautiful day and we spent most of it outdoors with Jack's parents who had arrived on Thursday evening. Sarah did some gardening for me while I was cooking us a tasty roast Lamb dinner. Jack and Richard managed to lay electrics to the shed and we now have plug sockets and a working light in there which is great. I've also now got a plug socket in the conservatory so we've moved the tortoise's table into there as they will soon be spending the daytime outside and just coming in to sleep at night for the warmer months of the year (before hibernating in the winter). We now have a big space in the dining area of our living/dining room so our small dining table now looks tiny. I hope to get a bigger dining table soon, but it all costs money and we can't do it all at once. We keep an eye out in the local community project centre where you can take old furniture as we've picked up a few bargains from there in the past.

The Torts enjoyed their first proper day outside of this year in their run, lovely sunshine!

Jack's parents headed home on Saturday morning, so Jack and I braved a trip to Wickes in the pouring rain to get a few bits we needed while there was 15% off. They had 15% on top of the deals they already had in place so we then came home and ordered tiles that we'd seen in store that we liked. We've got some big square 'taupe' ceramic floor tiles to do the conservatory floor and we have finally chosen the tiles we want for the splash-back area of the kitchen and have gone with some lovely subway tiles in 'pistachio green'.

Jack had to work on Sunday and Monday so I was on my own and wanted to make the most of the time off of work to get back into the swing of decorating as there's still so much to do in the house. As we now have the kitchen tiles arriving this week and my Dad coming to do the tiling in a few weeks' time, I was conscious that I needed to get on with painting the kitchen in anticipation of the tiling. The kitchen was probably the grubbiest room when we first moved in and the walls were full of huge holes where things had been moved around over the years. We were very lucky that the kitchen was nice and modern though so it's saved us a lot of money in terms of needing to replace it and all the kitchen needed was a thorough clean and spruce up. I spent the last two days scrubbing, filling holes, sanding and then painting! I had to shut Barry in his crate while doing the decorating because he loves his Mummy so much that he wouldn't leave me alone and kept coming into the kitchen to have a scratch and send his hairs flying into the wet paint!! He loves his crate though and by shutting him in he realises he can see me but that he can finally have a snooze.

Clearing, Moving, Cleaning, Filling, Sanding, Painting, Glossing and putting back together again! This is the start...

... And the finished look. We went with 'soft stone' on the walls and then we're being bold and going with a 'pistachio green' tiled splash-back area. I can't wait to get a new oven too - this one is over 12 years old and on its last legs (no working grill, oven can be hit and miss too!), but it's served us well since moving in.

It's back to normal today; a quiet-ish day at work before the next month end arrives and outside of work I've got more decorating jobs to do; I want to make a start on freshening up the two hall cupboards. One sits next to the kitchen and we think we might turn this into a pantry (I do have a lot of kitchen appliances and cookware after all), so it just needs some holes and blemishes filling and sanding, a lick of paint and then shelving putting up. We also then have a much larger cupboard which we hope to turn into a downstairs toilet. We're just waiting to save up a few more pennies before we get builders and plumbers out to work out the feasibility of it all. It could mean digging up floors and a lot of mess so we will see. That cupboard I intend to paint for the meantime so it's tidy. At the moment we just use it to store our bikes, shoes and coats so it really is a very big cupboard and would be perfect to be a WC/Cloakroom.

A quiet week is planned here and then Jack goes on his annual rugby tour with his rugby team. They're off to Edinburgh this year; lots of beer and not as much rugby is involved I think! My brother's girlfriend Jenna is coming to stay for a girly weekend, so that will be nice.

Hope you all have a lovely week!

Em x