Holiday Tuesday - My Birthday

Tuesday was my birthday. I got loads of cards and Ollie got me a Spurs shirt, Cruel Intentions on Blu Ray and the book of Treasure Island.

We had a squirrel that came to visit us every day and drank the water off our patio furniture. He also jumped up and down on our roof all night above our bed and kept us awake.


In the Morning I went horse riding. Although I got the laziest horse ever, I really enjoyed myself.

Unfortunately my belly dancing class was cancelled. But we did have the Seriel Mud treatment in the afternoon after lunch at the pancake house. We were a bit sceptical about the savory pancakes but my new potato, spring onion, garlic and mayo pancake was very yummy, if a bit filling. Ollie also enjoyed his bacon and cheese with maple syrup.

The mud treatment was quite good. You got your own private steam room with bowls of mud in - one type for your body and another type for your face. You have to put the mud on, wait 10 minutes, turn the steam on and then wait another 15 minutes before washing it off. Ollie and I did use some of our spare mud to have a mud fight! I don't think we quite lasted the whole 15 minutes in the steam as it was very hot. But it did make our skin nice and soft.

That evening we went to the quiz. We didn't do very well, we only got 19 out of 30.

Holiday! Monday

We left here about 9 o'clock on Monday morning heading off to Nottingham Center Parcs.

After one stop on the way there we arrived about 12.30. We picked up our bikes and headed over to our hut. It was ok; quite cosy.

Monday afternoon was spent in the spa. It's like a Turkish bath place, sauna and spas with a pool. Very relaxing after a long drive. We then went to the Swimming Pool. It was exactly the same as it was when I went last time!

We had a take away curry from the Center Parcs take-away shop.

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!