New floor

Today we fitted the new floor.

First we had to take the old washing machine to the tip and stop off at Helen's to pick up the laminate fitting kit that Alan was lending us.


Whoever said laying laminate is easy obviously has never tried to do our kitchen! Nothing is straight, EVERY single piece had to be cut to size and we had a pattern that had to be lined up! Still including underlay we had it done in 5 hours.

We also put up smart hangers for our tea towels, but I had to sew the ribbon on them to make them easier to hang.


In answer to mum's question, we have finished the painting and the tiles aren't going up that high. The rails were put up for the extra storage so we can put stuff away and have more room!

Some Scrapping

I did some scrapping today!

I had to do it in the lounge as I can hardly get into the spare room for all the DIY stuff! It's probably the last chance I'll get in a while what with the kitchen and the fact that I start my college course next Saturday for my next lot of ACCA exams.

It's a scraplift from a sketch I made from Anso's blog.

More work in the kitchen

This afternoon we put my hanging racks up in the kitchen.


We are hoping to get some clear jars from Ikea that match to put the spices in so they look a bit smarter.
I love having the knives so accessible.

We also got these smart dispensers for the washing up liquid and hand wash from Homebase.


Ps - family - we washed up!

Oh no broken!

Last week we got a free Playstation 3 with Ollie's phone contract. The idea was that it will replace our DVD player as we have the X-Box for gaming. "Fantastic we will be able to watch Blu Rays in HD", I thought. Turns out it's not so simple. Firstly the HDMI socket in the TV is directly underneath the bracket holding it to the wall. So we will have to hack the bracket to plug it in.

We had also thought that if we were faffing with electrics we may as well take the plunge and get Sky HD as they have a half price offer on. However, our TV only has 1 HDMI port. So Ollie sent me off to Richer Sounds to see what cables they recommend and also what boxes that allow you to plug 2 things into 1 box.

The man in Richer was quite blunt - for the money we would spend on all this, we would be better off buying a new TV with 2 HDMI ports.

Well, we thought, if we are buying a new TV we might as well upgrade to Full HD. This was starting to sound expensive! We have some stuff we were going to put on Ebay and were going to have it as a very Christmas present to each other.

Then Ollie uttered the immortal words "Let's wait to buy the TV and stuff until we've raised all the money because if we don't and we buy a TV this week, the washing machine will break next week"

Low and behold, this morning the washing machine broke!!!! So we had to buy a new one today from Sainsbury's electricals. The good news is that it's smaller than the old one so it won't stick out into the kitchen as much and it's silver and the same make as the oven so it will match a lot better.

Our kitchen

This is what the kitchen looked like at the beginning of the weekend. As you can see I have painted the walls so they are the same colour as the dining room.


We moved the fridge along and built another unit so that we could extend the work top. It took some sawing and screwing screws is quite difficult when both the electric screwdriver and the drill needed charging and the hammer drill was far too powerful.


We then had to cut the worktop to size both longways and widthways. That's a lot of cutting! Plus an unbelieveable amount of sawdust. There were more screws to hold it to the units and then I had to glue the end to the bit by the fridge.


Ta da! I now have an extra 66cm of worktop which makes a huge amount of difference. We are having Helen and Alan over for dinner on Friday to test it out!

Ikea do wicker baskets that will fit perfectly (we know - we got some for Gemma last time we went and she didn't collect them until after we had tested them out in our kitchen!)

A big HELLO to my grandad

I've had a request to say a big hello to my grandad who reads my blog so he knows what I'm up to as I don't visit him often enough.

I just wanted to say that I love him very much, and he's welcome to pop in for a cup of tea whenever he likes. Ollie was expecting him last weekend and he never came because he thought we were busy. I am never too busy for my grandad!

Exam passes!

I was up super early this morning as my exam results were released today. Modern technology is brilliant, there was no waiting for the postman, just log into the website and it's there in front of you. I also signed up for the email results service just in case the website crashed but I've not got that yet!

Anyway, I passed both exams. The pass mark is 50% and I got 64% in law and 74% in Performance management. I'm really pleased with this as the performance management exam had the lowest pass rate in the history of the ACCA in the December exam sitting and they had pledged that they were not going to make the exam easier.

We've been super busy in the kitchen this weekend, so I will give a full update with pictures later.

What a storm!

What a storm we had last night. Ollie slept right through it of course! But it kept me awake for ages. I have never heard thunder so loud. It sounded like the house was falling down around my ears.

I did get up to see if our silly cats were ok and if they were inside safe and not scared of the storm. Brian was asleep in his new spot on top of the underlay for the laminate for the kitchen and Abby was on the poof. Both sound asleep and were more bothered by me turning the light on than the storm!

When the thunder and lightning eventually started to move away and I thought I may go back to sleep, it obviously moved into the estuary as we were then invaded by a flock of very noisy seagulls who obviously felt dry land was a better place to be!

So I'm a bit sleepy today!

Other news is that I have a new shiny mobile! And that we had our shopping delivered by Sainsbury's To You last night as our car is poorly in the garage. The car just had an engine coil go which sent the engine management system up the wall and put it in limp home at 1 mile an hour mode! It's all fixed now and Ollie's picking it up tonight.

I am very impressed by Sainsbury's and I think we will be repeating the exercise. All the veg were of a good quality and the dates on the meat were long enough that it won't go out of date before we can eat it.

Happy Birthday Ethan, Brian and Abby

Ethan, Brian and Abby were all 2 today!

Ethan had a party for his grown up friends tonight and one for his little friends tomorrow. In the rush to get home from work get changed and round to Helen and Alan's I forgot the camera! Still we have arranged a swap with Helen and Pip as Helen doesn't have any photos of his first birthday so watch this space!

We had a great time playing in the garden, although at one point I wasn't allowed to get up off the floor! And I did end up with several bruises!

After the little man had gone to bed we played Empire, where you all have to think of a person/cartoon character/etc etc and then the referee reads them all out and you have to guess which person playing was which name. I wasn't too bad at that, although I did have trouble remembering all of the names!!!

Very Busy

The rest of our holiday just flew by!

I drove all the way to Birmingham on my own to meet Ollie after his course for work. Having heard the end of a news report of an overturned lorry on the M25 southbound, I went North and got caught up in a huge queue of people trying to get onto the M1. I had already decided I would not face the M1 road works and would go on the M40. I was very glad I did as Ollie called me when I'd got to Warwick to say that the M6 was closed between the M1 and Birmingham so goodness knows where I would have gone! The sat nav was very useful and managed to find Ollie ok. Unfortunately I had only written down the postcode of the Travelodge we were staying in as the full instuctions page and map wouldn't load on their website. The satnav was locked in the car at the time and so I didn't check it was ok before I left and our 3 year old map couldn't find the postcode.

Luckily with some nifty phone internet searching Ollie got the address and we found it ok. What we hadn't realised when we booked that it was right underneath the flight path for Birmingham airpost (and I mean see the bottom of the plane wheels out and everything right underneath!)

Still the windows were double glazed and when shut you couldn't really hear the planes. That night we went to Solihull for Nandos and the cinema to see the Happening (it was rubbish!). We did have a walk around Solihull which was quite nice and had some upmarket shops (and ridiculous house prices). By the time we got back to the hotel I had a really bad headache from all the driving and fell straight into bed!

The next day we stopped off for a Sainsbury's breakfast (which sat nav found with no problems!) and Cadbury world. We had got the tickets with our Tesco vouchers but when you take into consideration the petrol to get there and back and a Travelodge I don't think it was worth the £156! We got a free Curly Wirly, a pack of buttons, a dairy milk and a pot of molten chocolate and that was pretty much it. The only interesting part was seeing the dairy milk being wrapped and boxed.

So Monday I started my new job. Everyone is really nice and it seems to be quite laid back and relaxed here. I do think I'm going to like it! Tonight is their summer party which I am going to so I should get to meet some more people. This morning we went outside to see the unveiling of the new Lloyd's memorial for the 2 World Wars which was good and quite moving, but my view was blocked by a gang of Beefeaters which silly fuzzy hats!

Eniskillen Northern Ireland

After the garden Ollie's dad wanted to go and look at ride on lawn mowers as his seeded lawn is just abut ready to be mowed. As he is loosing so much money on the exchange rates to Euro and things tend to be more expensive in Ireland it made sense to make the trip to Northern Ireland where he could buy in pounds.

We were dropped off at the shopping center so I could go in Next to spend my vouchers as I had been most disgusted to find they had closed the duty free one at Gatwick while they do a big refurb.

I didn't find anything in Next but I did get 2 tops and a magazine in Asda!!!

As we went back to meet Paul and Anna the heavens opened again and we ended up getting soaked.

That night was a trip out to a traditional Irish pub. I had the lamb shank which came with mash with spring onions in it and vegetables complete with traditional Irish red cabbage. Unfortunately I didn't get a Guinness as we I had agreed to have wine and I thought it might be rude to ask for Guinness as well!!

Ollie had steak with Garlic butter which was absolutely gorgeous. My lamb was very good. Huge (you could feed a family of 4 with it!) but I'm not sure it was as good as the one we had at the George at Newnham.

Anna and I had rhubarb crumble and the guys had Toblerone cheesecake both of which were very nice.

After that and coffees it was home to bed as it had been a very long day out in the car. The one problem with Ireland was that it didn't seem to get dark! Well it did at about 11:30pm (when there were no clouds) and it was light well before we were ready to wake up!

A little bit of rain

Tuesday Anna has a course at the Organic garden. Her and a group of ladies are in charge of growing some veg and learning all about organic gardening at the same time.

So Ollie's dad took us out to see some of the sights and then meet up with Anna afterwards.


We went via a pretty village and we did visit a few lookout points but it was raining too hard to get out the car. We had another picnic lunch in the car but again it was raining too much to get out!
Luckily when we met up with Anna it stopped raining for a bit and we were able to explore the gardens

Ahoy there

Monday we had a day out on the boat. It was brilliant. We went through a lock and I even got a turn at driving!
We had a chicken sandwich picnic with a glass of wine in the middle of a loch.


Ollie's dad did have a little bit of trouble parking at the end and we almost crashed into the boat moored in the spacce next to his!

We had a really yummy lamb casserole that Anna cooked that night. I enjoyed it very much although I did feel that all the sheep were looking in the window saying hey you lot just ate Bob!

Ollie's dad had a golf lesson that night, so we sat with Anna and watched a few episodes of Kurb your Enthusiasm which is made by the same bloke that invented Seinfeld. It was funny in parts but I don't think we'll be rushing out to buy it.

Ireland day 1

Sunday we flew out to Ireland to visit Ollie's dad and Anna.

As we got there late we didn't really do much apart from have a sandwich and catch up with the news and have a tour of their house. It's really lovely but they still have a few bits to finish. The views from our bedroom were the best in the house and they have a field of sheep at the end of their back garden.

Flowers from my garden

After my exams I took a few photos of the flowers growing in my garden among the many many weeds!

Last day

Today was my last day at work. We spent all afternoon in the pub as the management were all away on a team building thing!

I got a nice card, a monkey, a panda and some Next vouchers. More than I was expecting seeing as they only had 4 days notice to arrange it.

I also got a helium balloon. I tied it to my bag while I was talking to someone and the next thing I know Raj had managed to release it from the tie and it was now stuck in the high vault ceiling! He did feel so bad about it though that he went and bought me a new one!!!

New job!

I've got a new job.

It's basically the same job as I'm doing now, but with a new company. I'm hoping to start from the end of next month.

What with study leave and holiday I only have 4 days left of my old job.

Helen's Froggies!

We were looking after Helen's animals last week and I couldn't resist taking some photos! They are so small and cute.

Unfortunately when we went over for dinner last night the top of the tank had been breached and it seems that since they've been home their cats have got a taste for frogs!

Ta Da!

We finally have one half of the kitchen worktops finished. We installed the sink on Saturday and apart from some slight issues it all works perfectly. I'm really happy with how it looks. Just need to finish the rest of it now!

Helen and Alan came over for a picnic in our garden on Sunday. It was nice as we haven't seen them in a while. Ethan had great fun playing with the croquet set. I have to wish them congratulations as Helen had her 12 week scan on Monday and they are expecting their second child at the end of November. They have now gone off to Greece so we are in charge of watering the flowers, and feeding the cats and the rabbit and the Guinea Pig and the froggies!

I am writing this on the train on my new sparkling Asus eee PC. It's a tiny diddy laptop that runs on Linux. It can be installed with windows but it's quicker without and I don't really need it. It runs all windows files and programmes and it works on our windows network at home. It has more RAM than our main PC!!! I watched hustle on it this morning it was very good! It also has a SD card reader so I can put the pictures from my camera on my blog without needing to find the card reader.

Grrrrr! Or some other frustrated noise!

We had a very frustrating weekend. We had the electrician man around to fit the new electric hob on Saturday while I was at my revision course. The hob got fitted ok, but when he was running the new cable he found that the people who did our house before had nailed the floorboard down and stuck the nail through a live plug socket cable. It was very lucky that we did not use that socket as they had also left all the sawdust from hollowing out the beam to run the cable which would have caught fire from the sparks from the wire and caused a fire under our bed! So that is all fixed now and all the other electrics checked and safe!

Sunday we went to fit the sink but the Ikea waste fittings didn't quite fit our existing pipes and Homebase didn't sell a converter (by this point it was also 3:40 so a mad dash to B&Q was out of the question) so we had to file the pipe to fit! Then the flexi pipes that came with the tap didn't have thread on the screw so we couldn't fit that either! They are sending out a replacement part which is good, but we are without a sink for a bit longer. Of course that means that minimal washing up has been done in the bathroom sink for the past 10 days so I am running out of pans! Plus bacause the waste hasn't been fitted we haven't got a washing machine so we're running out of clean clothes too!

Then I got the summer duvet out the attic to find it was all wet because we have a leak in our roof! We have some broken tiles I think because it goes chink when I poke the felt. We had a bloke out last night who said it was a few broken tiles under the flashing round the chimney. The flashing and the top tile also hadn't been fitted quite properly so the flashing is leaking and then the water is running through the broken tiles. The price he gave was a lot more reasonable than we expected but we have a second bloke coming round at the weekend to have a look. The good news is that all the rest of the tiles look to be in good condition and we don't need a new roof!

On the plus side though my revision course was really good.

Congratulations to Gemma and Marc

Ollie's sister Gemma had her 20 week scan yesterday and found out that everything is fine and they are expecting their 4th boy!

Progress

We have been so very busy this weekend.

Friday night we headed off to Ikea (again!) as I finished work early for the bank holiday weekend. Only to be told that the person who does the custom made worktops had left at half 8! (It was about 9:15 by this time as we had been round Lakeside and had Wagamamas for dinner.) So we called the manager to complain and he agreed that it wasn’t our fault that the staff weren’t available and said that he would take the details and get someone to put it through in the morning and he would do it free of charge. I’m not sure if we will get it free, but at least it’s now ordered as there is currently a 4-6 week waiting time.

Saturday morning I cracked on with the second coat of paint on the kitchen cupboards and then headed upstairs to demolish my wardrobe and install the second hanging rail instead of having drawers. I did have to improvise a bit as it wasn’t really designed for the wardrobes we have but it still works and now my clothes are all put away and hung up instead of being screwed up everywhere. I’ve also had a big clear out and thrown a lot of old stuff away and put some on ebay. Please have a look and buy something here! The new oven was delivered and as it has a plug we could just swap it straight over with the old one.

Sunday morning we were up early as Nan and Granddad popped in on their way to their holidays. They said 10 and arrived at 9:15! Luckily we were up and about but hadn’t actually got round to getting dressed. Then we put the door back on the cupboard and made dad a cake as we were going to a BBQ for his birthday Sunday evening. Ollie had been given cake mix and food colouring from work on Friday so we tested it out. This was the result…

We were going for orange for the icing but I slipped with the pink! I think dad appreciated it, even if mum had already made a chocolate birthday cake and fruit salad and Laura had brought Jelly! We must learn to communicate better…

It was also a good test for my new oven. I must say it is excellent! It’s amazing what a difference having an oven with a working thermostat makes! It also has a timer so I can put it to come on to cook dinner so it is ready for when we get home. We did have to wait for 20 minutes in the queue for the tip to get rid of the old one. I have also arranged for the new hob to be fitted next Saturday.

The BBQ was really good. The first one of the year so far, hopefully many more to come afterwards!

Monday was all hands on deck to get the kitchen ready for the new hob to be fitted. It meant stripping out the old worktop and appliances and getting the new worktop ready. This is what the kitchen looked at the beginning of the day…

And this is what it looked like at 7:30 in the evening!

It was really hard work. And considering we only had a millimetre margin of error on the hole for the hob I think we’ve done really well. We’ve had to bash a hole in the wall to make it straight (it will be tiled so you won’t notice). Unfortunately the sink waste from Ikea was missing all the accessories so we’ve got to go back on Wednesday to exchange it. Plus I’ve had to buy a tap off Ebay as everywhere was sold out of the tap we wanted. So we’re without a sink and a hob for a week, but I’m sure we’ll cope!

GTA Widow!

GTA IV was released yesterday. Ollie had some work to do in store before heading off to London so he took the opportunity to purchase his copy while he was there. He was not the first person to buy one at 5 past 7 either!

I’m not quite a GTA widow yet. Last night was obviously the second leg of the Champions League Semi-Final between Man U and Barcelona. So we watched that and then put the game on. I must admit, from the little I have seen it does look very good; much better than the last one. And as you get 5 gamer credits just for watching all the credits I may even have a go!

Before Photos

Last Saturday we were in Ikea at 6:15am for their big birthday sale to get the bits we needed for our new kitchen. Minus the taps because they were out of stock and one of our worktops as that has to be custom ordered and the queue was already 3 hours long.

So we have started sanding and painting the existing units already but I thought I'd post some before photos.
Last night we were over at Helen and Alan's for Alan's birthday celebrations. We played Mario cart on the Wii, which I was useless at. We also played shffleboard and Darts which I thought were quite good.

Today we had Ol and Gemma over for lunch who are Ollie's friends from Uni. It was really nice to catch up over a rather large roast dinner!

Tagged

Mum has tagged me in an attempt to make me post! I have loads of updates to do and I took a load of photos and then lost the camera so I couldn't put them up here. Ollie has now found the camera and I will get round to putting some photos up, but in the meantime these are my answers...

1. If a movie was being made of your life who would you like to be cast to play yourself? And why?
Obviously someone pretty, and funny, and intelligent! Kiera Nightly springs to mind – but only because she’s had practice at dressing up as a pirate. I did that a lot when I was a kid!

2. You are spending a whole month on a desert island for charity and you have to choose your favourite celebrity to spend the first two weeks with & your least favourite celebrity to spend the second two weeks with, who would they be & why?
Johnny Depp for the first two weeks although Ollie will probably veto that so I guess I would chose Vince Vaughn because I think he is really funny too. My worst celebrity would be Bjork. I can’t stand her.

3. What are your three favourite crafting products?
My craft knife. I love cutting my own titles, so that is really important to me. I’m liking my embossing paste and also the Sparkly dust stuff that we got at Ally Pally
4. If you could invent something to do anything what do you think it would be?
If I knew the answer to that I would already be a millionaire and would have someone else write your blog for me. It might get updated a bit more often then!

5. What are the last three books that you read?
At the moment I’m re-reading the 6 wives of Henry VIII by Antonia Fraser, before that I read The Boleyn Inheritance and The Constant Princess by Phillipa Gregory. I’m liking my historical books at the moment!

6. Qvc or create and craft?
The only time I watch either is when there really is nothing on telly, we’ve done the flick through the music channels and then it’s onto the shopping channels to laugh at all the tat they are trying to sell!

7. Docrafts or Dovecraft or DCWV?
No idea.

8. What is your claim to fame?
I don’t really have one. Mum mentioned that Dad used to be Shaun Williamson’s boss and I got to talk to him when I saw him at the cricket once.

Ok, I tag Julie, who I have randomly picked off UK Scrappers!

A busy busy bank holiday break

What a busy weekend.

Our major project for this weekend was to paint all the woodwork in the lounge and the dining room. Friday we primed, Saturday we undercoated and Sunday we did the first coat of gloss. Now it looks so good - like it's almost finished! We need to do another coat of gloss next weekend and I'll post some photos then. Then all we will have left to do is put the paintings and the mirror up and paint the radiators and the lounge will be done. We still need to sort the cupboard door out in the dining room and paint the woodwork up the stairs and on the landing.

I also planted out some more vege seeds and Ollie mowed the lawn on Friday before it spent the rest of the weekend snowing! It didn't lay but it was very cold and wet. The cats had dug up the courgettes that I had planted the previous Sunday so I wasn't very pleased about that!

Other than that we went to Prezzo for dinner on Friday night with Ollie's dad, Anna, Gemma and Marc. It was a very nice meal although it will be sad that we won't get to see Ol's dad as much now as he has moved to Ireland.

Saturday we went to Helen and Alan's for a poker night. I lost, which was a shame, but it was a good night, even if we didn't get home until the early hours.

Sunday we went out to the Bear in Faversham with Nigel, Sara, Paul, Hannah, Ian, Tom, Ashleigh, and their friend Harvey. It was quieter than we had expected in there and we had the whole front bar to ourselves for most of the time. We left when they moved onto the Sun, although we did bump into Peter Ehman and Sam in there!

Yesterday we went out to Grove Ferry with Mum, Dad, Laura, Wayne, Nan and Granddad for lunch. Laura and Wayne are thinking of hiring it for their wedding reception. It was a nice place and will be lovelly on the river front in July (if it's not like last year!!!) but we will have to hire a room I think as it took us ages to get there and home again.

We have 6 over for dinner tonight so I made lasagne last night so I wouldn't have to rush today. I'm hoping to be let home early today as lots of people haven't made it in because of the train problems in Essex.

Ideal Home show

Saturday we went to the Ideal Home Show. We got our tickets in advance as they were offering £3 discount and a free show guide which also entitled you to a free goodie bag. Thinking we would beat the crowds queuing to get tickets we got there just after 10am. There was NO queue to buy tickets and the queue for the pre-paid ticket entry went around the block! Still it didn’t take us too long to get in and we headed straight off to the kitchen department to see if they had any foodie free samples! The first exhibition that caught our eye was a guy with a health grill – endorsed by the British Heart Foundation. Basically the bottom round the edge fills with water and then there is a curved hot plate over the top and you put the whole thing on your hob. The water keeps the food moist and you can put other flavourings in if you wish. Then all the fat runs out and into the water around the edge. The samples were really nice and the first 50 people also got one to put in the oven for roasts free. The bottom of this bit can also be used as a lid to convert the hob one into a steamer. So we took the plunge and bought one. I’ve used it a couple of times already and I think it’s brilliant. My lamb chops have never been so moist and tender. I also did a ‘healthy’ fry up and there was no greasy food smell at all. The water seems to absorb all the smells as well.

The only other thing we got were replacements for our paint rollers. We have the ones that you put paint inside and we think that they are fab – the only problem was that we got another make at the Kent home show last year and the foam outside was more like fleece fabric, which doesn’t wash as easily and has bobbled really badly. As we are planning on doing the outside of the house with them we think this will pretty much finish them off. Plus we got the edge roller as well.

Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday was mine and Ollie's first wedding anniversary. I can't believe that it has been a whole year already! I'm also very very glad that the weather on our special day was nothing like it was yesterday! I got soaked getting to work and my boot leaked! I had just dried out and warmed up when it was time to go home.

We went to The Olive Tree in Rainham on Saturday. It was fantastic. In reminiscence of our honeymoon we had bruschetta to start (Ollie's with mushrooms and mine with tomatoes) and Calzone for main course. It was the best calzone we've had in England, but it still wasn't as good as a true Roman one. It was a bit strange as it was actually served with a tomato sauce by the side and it had bolognaise inside! Still it was very yummy. The service was good on the whole and Ollie's chocolate brownie was lovelly.

Mum and Nan and Grandad also popped in on Saturday to drop off a card, some flowers and my gooseberry bushes. We also went to see the new gym which has opened up down the road. Even though it is very nice and new and does offer a better range of classes that I could actually go to, there's nothing that makes the extra money every month worth it and we figure that seeing as most people they were showing around were talking about transferring from Swallows then it may be a bit quieter to stick where we are!

Gemma popped over on Sunday to drop off a card and some more flowers. She had the exciting news that she is expecting her fourth baby! She had her 12 week scan last week and all is fine. We have arranged to go out with Ollie's dad and Anna at Easter as they will be moving to Ireland permanently on Easter Sunday.

So with all the excitement we didn't actually get any DIY done and I doubt that we will get much done this weekend as we are going to the Ideal Home Show on Saturday and it's Marc's birthday so I expect we will be popping to Whitstable on Sunday.

A potentially bad day turns out ok!

Wednesday I had my third exam in the morning - which I passed! I was very relieved as it was a really boring module that I hadn't really got into. Then in the afternoon I had the dentist. After waiting in the waiting room for 45 minutes, I spent 2 minutes with the dentist for him to say yes all looks fine - floss more!

Sunday I had cooked roast dinner for all the family for mother's day. It was really nice and the pork turned out much better than expected.

Other than that there is not a lot to report. Ollie and I went to Beefeater on Wednesday evening to celebrate my exam pass, and we decided to give our local Beefeater one last chance to impress us as the last few times the food hasn't been great. We waited 10 minutes before we were even seen at the little podium thing. Then the waitress forgot to put our side dish through and we didn't get it until we had nearly finished our mains. Our chips weren't cooked - they were hard in the middle! Plus our side of garlic bread was literally one thin slice of brown bread that had been soaked in garlic for about 24 hours and then had about an inch of cheese on the top which hadn't melted properly where it was so thick. The onion rings and the mushrooms were burnt! So we were so annoyed at this point that I never even got my chocolate brownie sundae that was the sole reason that we went! So I'm now off to the feedback website and we certainly won't be back to that one!

Update

Last week we had Virgin Broadband installed which is fab! It’s super super fast. The only problem being is that our wireless modem isn’t compatible so we have had to buy a new one. At the moment that means we can only get the internet via the laptop plugged into the wall. Don’t you just love advanced technology!

Paul came over on Saturday to give our fruit trees a good pruning. They hadn’t been done in years and really needed some seeing to. The whole area looks so much better now. There’s so much more light down the bottom of the garden – and that’s without any leaves! It took him pretty much all day to do and then he and Ollie did about 4 or 5 trips to the tip to get rid of all the debris.

Laura and Wayne got back from India on Sunday with her shiny engagement ring. There’s a picture on mum’s blog. It looks gorgeous.

We’ve done a fair bit of DIY in the last couple of weeks. The trim round the laminate is finished in the dining room and half done in the lounge. We finally got half of the skirting and decorative moulding round the fireplace last week as well. It’s almost ready for the painting! Not a job I’m looking forward to I must admit as there’s so much of it to do!

Our paintings came. I’m really pleased with them. The 2 for the dining room are in their frames (which also need painting) and after much struggling and some trimming I managed to take the mirror out of the frame to put the last picture in instead (we couldn’t find a regular picture frame the right size!) We’ve also found some more that we like for the bedroom and spare room upstairs.

I’ll try and get some photos uploaded at some point.

Hot water - finally!

The boiler repair man came back on Saturday morning with several more bits to repair what could possibly be broken. Carrying on his theme of we'll replace the cheaper parts first to keep repair costs down he replaced the diaphram on the diverter valve and fitted the new filling loop as we didn't have one and low and behold hot water! So we now have functioning hot water and heating that comes on with the timer. Bliss!

We also managed to get all the trim for the laminate fitted in the dining room and some in the lounge. Our pictures are also out for delivery today (obviously no one is going to be there!) So the DIY is coming along nicely.

Mum and dad came over for dinner last night. It was really nice, but I managed to burn my hand on a hot pan and it's quite sore today.

Ollie collected his new glasses from Maidstone so we decided to go to Sainsbury's in Maidstone. What a complete tip! It was the most awful Sainsbury's we've shopped in. Half of the stuff we wanted we couldn't get.

No hot water!

I wrote this yesterday, but forgot to upload it! Doh!

On Saturday our boiler decided to pack up! It’s not paying attention when you turn on the hot tap so it won’t heat up any water. Luckily the central heating is fine as it has been bitterly cold. So we picked an advert for a boiler repair man out of yellow pages and arranged an appointment for yesterday morning. 9am the appointment was for and as Grandad has a bad bout of man ‘flu it was down to dad to sit in and wait for us. After several phone calls, some he’ll be there very soon and we’re really sorry about the delay, they finally called at 4:30 to say that they won’t be coming.

We were so angry! Poor dad had sat there all day without the heating on in case it messed up what they were going to do.

I’ve called a different company and they are going to come out tonight when we get in from work – she seemed like a very nice lady and I’m hoping that it’s something simple that they can fix without anyone else needing to sit in tomorrow!

It's behind you!

Last night we went to the Playhouse Panto with mum, dad, nan and grandad. I thought it was excellent, although I did agree with Ollie that the story line was a little week. Seeing as it was Sleeping Beauty she was only asleep for 2 minutes.

Dr Lee and the evil henchmen were back this year and although last years performance was excellent they do make the show.

It had everything you could possibly want from a panto; it's behind you, oh no it isn't, DJ Otzi, a Take That song, I would roll a thousand miles, always look on the bright side of life as well as many awful jokes! I must say it was also the first pregnant Sleeping Beauty I have ever seen!