Kitchen update

We've finally finished painting the kitchen cupboards - they look really good now with all the doors back on.

Just the tiling and the skirting to paint now.

Exam Passes

I got the results for the exams I took in December. I passed both getting 87% for Tax and 71% for the financial reporting paper.

So I was quite chuffed about that as it means that I'm exactly half way there with 7 exams to go. It's also inspired me to take 3 exams in June so I will be very busy studying for the next few months.

We're all going on a summer holiday!

On Friday night Ollie was looking on the Internet to see if the England team had been announced when he happened to mention that the tickets for the under 21 game in Spain were only £20. So I asked how much the tickets were for the under 21 Euro finals were because its during our summer holiday from work.

As they were only cheap we've booked up to see England v Germany, Serbia v Sweeden, we have tickets to both Semi-finals so we can choose which one we want to see and tickets to the final. So our summer holiday is going to be 9 days in Sweden! It's somewhere we've both wanted to go and we'll have lots of time in between the football to explore and hopefully the weather will be nice enough to go to the beach. We're also going to have a trip to Copenhagen as it's a short hop across a bridge.

I'm really excited about it and although we have flights and the football tickets I'm now hunting through the internet for some accomodation and car hire.

Patrick's Birthday

Last night we went out in London for Patrick's birthday with a few of Ollie's Uni mates.

We had a bit of tube trouble with no central line meaning it took an hour to get from Victoria to High Street kensington. We had a quick drink in the bar where most of them have been watching the rugby all afternoon. Then we went over to the restaurant - Sticky Fingers.

It's owned by Bill Wyman and there's definately a reason why it's called Sticky Fingers. I had chicken wings smothered in BBQ sauce to start and Ollie had a half a rack of ribs. Luckily they provided handy wipes!

For main we had burgers, mine with sour cream, salsa, guacamole, bacon and cheese and Ollie had a sticky stack burger with everything you could imagine!!!!

Finally we finished off with a chocolate milkshake for me and sticky toffee pudding for Ollie. I think that I may have put the 3 1/2 pounds back on that I lost last week in one night!

We fell into bed at gone midnight only to be disturbed a few minutes later by the ginger cat from down the road which had snuck into our spare room!

Snowed in

Well we weren't exactly snowed in but there were no trains running past Gillingham.

However, by the wonders of modern technology we were both able to dial in from home and do a full day's work.

Bowling

Last Friday we had a long weekend off work for Ollie's birthday and on Friday afternoon we went bowling with Helen, Alan, Ethan and Niamh. Although Niamh was asleep the whole time and didn't actually bowl!

We all scored strikes, including Ethan and there were some fairly respectable scores. Ethan really enjoyed himself

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OL!

Here's a big happy birthday to my fantastic husband.

Hope you have a good birthday babe. Love you xxx

A very grumpy Kelly

I'm very grumpy today.

Last night, not only did I have to work late but someone stole my hat, gloves and scarf off the train! I wouldn't mind but I had knitted the hat and gloves myself and had only finished the hat on Saturday.

It may have been partly my fault as I left them on the upper shelf and then we moved seats slightly down the train and when we went to get off they were gone!

So I'll have to start the knitting all over again and put up with being cold. I might have a full set by the time it's summer!!!

Happy Birthday Nanna

HAPPY BIRTHDAY Nanna

Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to you
Happy Birthday to Nanny
Happy Birthday to you

Hope you have a great day and I'll speak to you later.

Hello Niamh

And yes, that is my soft focus filter!

Congratulations to the Sharman's

Helen finally gave birth at 5:45 this morning to baby Niamh Eleanor Sharman who weighed 8lbs 1. Mother and baby are doing very well and I'll get some photos as soon as I meet her.

She was only a week overdue this time and I know Helen especially will be pleased to finally have her here.

I took Ethan to his swimming lesson yesterday as Helen wasn't able to in her over pregnant state and she didn't want him to miss out. We both has loads of fun in the water and ended up both very very worn out!

It's CHRISTMAS!!!

Christmas has come to our house. We thought as we were off work and needed to put some stuff in the attic we would put the decorations up early this year.

New Light

When we went to do our Christmas shopping last week we popped into Ikea as we needed a new light for the living room.

The old one didn't really go and the halogen bulbs didn't last very long and were very expensive. So we have replaced it with this which takes energy saving bulbs.

I started knitting Billy a jumper in January. I finished it a couple of weeks ago. There are a few errors in it and the sleeves are far too long, but he is happy with it, especially as it has now turned cold and is snowing this morning.


Although now he does want a blue jumper to go with his trousers! And a woolly hat!

Granddad's birthday

We invited everyone over for dinner for Granddad's birthday.

I was just mopping the floor when Laura and Wayne turned up in a panic because they thought they were late but they were in fact an hour early because they had forgotten to turn the clocks back!

I think everyone enjoyed their roast lamb and birthday cake.

Halloween Party

Every year Carole and Ian have a fancy dress party for Halloween. Each year our costumes have mainly consisted of whatever we could find in the bargain bin in Sainsbury's. But as this year was Ian's 60^th we thought we'd better make a bit more of an effort.

I was a fallen fairy and Ollie was death / Uncle Fester. The extra effort by Ollie of having his head shaved and being smothered in white face paint was worth it as he won best costume. Ollie, Marc, Gem and me also won the wrap a team mate in toilet paper game and our team won the balloon under the chin game too.

The pinata proved to be a bit tricky this year, we had one that you bash instead of the one that you pull the strings until it falls apart. It took about 10 minutes of heavy bashing with a Halloween axe before it caitulated. Although once it had there were enough sweeties in it to last until next Halloween, even with 4 kiddies eating them!

We let off some fireworks and had some sparklers once we had all found some gloves to wear.

Meet Zak

Congratulations to Gemma, Marc, Sebastian, Harvey and Dylan to the new addition of their family.

Gemma gave birth last week to Zak, we went to visit them in the hospital.

Holiday - Thursday

Thursday morning we dragged ourselves out of bed really early and went to play tennis.

It was a close fought game, with me coming back from 3 games to nil to win the game 7 games to 5! Ollie did manage to loose a tennis ball in the first 10 minutes by hitting it over the top of the fence and past the kiddies play area! He blamed his racquet saying it was too violent and he was hardly hitting the ball hard!

After that we had booked the Fan Descender. This was basically where you stepped off a platform 9 metres high attached to a rope and a mini fan attached to the other end of the rope to stop you breaking your leg when you fall.

After a quick lunch we were back at the activity center for climbing. They had a very high wall which was a lot tougher than either of us thought it was going to be.


After all that we definitely deserved to have a pancake in the pancake house. Ollie had a traditional one with lemon and ice cream and I had a chocolate pancake with chocolate ice cream and a flake!

Thursday night we had booked a table in the gastro pub. The food was wonderful, but the service was absolutely shocking. The waitress had no excuse as she's been there for more than 6 months, but she brought us the wrong colour wine after we had waited for ages!

Holiday - pictures

Wednesday afternoon I went out to take some photos of the forest.

Holiday - Wednesday

It was not so rainy on the Wednesday of our holiday. We did the Zip line first thing in the morning. For this we were all harnessed up and then we had to climb high up in the trees and walk across a tightrope and a rope bridge. Then you are tied to the zip line and have to walk off the platform. I didn't think it was as high as I expected it to be, but it was still lots of fun.

We did archery in the afternoon. I wasn't brilliant, but I managed to get most of my arrows in the target and even 1 in the yellow!

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!!!