Bathroom Day 3

Day three in the bathroom has seen most of the walls covered in plasterboard, all the pipework for the bath and shower controls has been done and the rest of the plasterboard cut for the last wall.

I also tidied up the understairs cupboard, I've sorted all the DIY stuff into individual crates according to activity and made it so you can actually get to the back to find stuff!

Blogger is playing up with pictures, so I've just got the 2 today.

Tomorrow we are hoping that the bath will be in and even maybe plumbed so we can have a bath! Today we went swimming and had a shower at the local leisure centre. The plumber has to knock off early tomorrow to go to the dentist so we have booked to see HP!

Some cards with my cricut

I have been having a bit of a play today while the tradesmen were doing their thing.

Apart from everything getting covered in dust I got 2 cards finished.

Bathroom Day 2

Well at the end of day 2 there isn't a lot left in our little bathroom and we have some good things and some bad things.

I'm not sure how much of a relaxing week off this is going to be with tradesmen turning up at 8 every day!

We still have a loo with a bucket flush system with water out of a temporary tap!

We have holes in the ceiling for the new lights and new sockets for the power for all our funky gadgets.

 

The good news was that the floor was nearly as bad as we feared and wasn't rotten. It doesn't need to be replaced and as long as it dries out tonight with the help of a heater then we can just board over the top for the tiles.

Bad news was that most of the plaster came off the wall with the remaining tiles and the plasterer is on holiday! We are going to have fancy waterproof plasterboard which should provide a nice surface for the tiles.

We also had all the rest of the bathroom stuff delivered and all seems ok apart the vanity unit for the sink is the wall unit rather than the floor unit. I've left that up to the fitter and the bathroom shop to sort out a resolution for that problem!

Bathroom Day 1

To try and save a little bit of money on the bathroom installation we were going to take the tiles off ourselves. They did not want to come quietly! This was after we had already had arguments with the doors that we were cutting up to put in the skip.  We discovered that the glass in the old front door was definately not safety glass!

We are going to need a plasterer!

Before Photos

The bathroom is being ripped out this week. These are the before photos...

The shower doesn't work, the hot tab on the sink leaks into the electrical consumer unit in the kitchen, the floor is damp where the bath hasn't ever been sealed properly which is causing black mould to grow by the back door and today I managed to break the flush for the loo!

60th Birthday party

Last weekend was Ollie's dad's 60th Birthday party at Hempstead house in Sittingbourne.

We were in charge of balloons and place cards and I think Paul was quite impressed with them.  The children were very impressed with the balloons inside balloons!

The food was really good as was the wine and a good time was had by all.

Card making class and fireworks

It was mum's birthday on Friday so we booked ourselves into Jenny's Christmas card making with a twist class at Pickleberry Papercrafts for all day Saturday. I must say it was a fab class and we learned loads of new techniques.

After that we went back to mums for the traditional dinner and fireworks. We always have vegetable soup, sausages in rolls and jacket potatoes for dinner. Then Ollie does the firework display. Each year he has managed to make it bigger and better with more and more impressive fireworks. This year was no exception and while we were in Sittingbourne last weekend we stopped off at our firework shop to stock up.

I must say that this year was the best display yet, even the Sainsbury's fireworks were impressive (apart from the dud one that didn't go off) and our rockets were amazing, the boom supersonic and the explosion filling the whole sky.

Scrapbook page

Last weekend I spent some time in my craft room before we went over to Helen and Alan's for poker and curry. And I managed to finish a double page layout!

These are from our camping trips from last year and this year. Last year we went over August bank holiday and the trip was pretty much a disaster from start to finish.  This year we had a much nicer campsite and we managed to get the best pitches in a quiet corner by the woodland. It was quite wet and rained an awful lot but a good time was had overall and we even managed to have a BBQ and eat our dinner outside before it started raining.

Some more cards and a rant

I've been doing more cards this afternoon and as I've finished my presentation for my research project and Ollie has gone to the cinema I thought I'd post the ones where the glue has dried...

That's not a rougue gold star, it's actually a holographic one that's caught the light differently!

I'm now sitting here extremely annoyed as I know I have stuff missing from my craft cupboard that I am sure I had before we moved. Well before I swapped my stuff from the B&Q tool chest to the papermania tote to be precise. Number one item missing is my coluzzle mat. I know I had it just before I started packing up for the house move. I've not got my Cuttlebug yet (and will then have to save for dies) and Mum gave me all her coluzzle templates when she got her Cricut. Cutting them with a regular craft mat is not really giving the same result and it's driving me mad!Also MIA is my brand new unopened packet of wet and dry foam. I suspect they are in cahoots together as I used to keep them in the same place.

On the plus side I've found I have 2 circle coluzzle templates and 2 square ones, so I have backup if I loose either of those!

In other news, we've finally chosen all of our bathroom bits and bobs and have booked the plumber and the electrician. The order to the bathroom shop has been made and I'm in the process of ordering the bits off ebay that I found cheaper. I'm still not quite understanding dual fuel towel rail elements and need to speak to the plumber and electrician before I take the plunge and buy those.

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Christmas Cards

I have started my Christmas cards with my new goodies from Ally Pally and the inspiration that we got. I have lots more in progress that I've started the toppers for.

And some birthday cards from my fab new Iris folding book

A baker I am not

For my birthday I got a food processor and a book on making novelty cakes. I also got a giant cupcake silicon mold. Eager to try them out I spent this afternoon in the kitchen. I have also volunteered to make something for the Macmillan charity coffee morning on Friday so I needed to practice.

The actual sponge didn't turn out too badly - but co-op didn't have any ready made icing and didn't have any liquid glucose either. So I did the best I could with what I had but the icing was a bit too crumbly and just kept getting stuck to my work surface. Plus I hadn't cut the sponge quite flat on the bottom so the top half kept sliding off the bottom where the jam had got runny.

Anyway, here is Doris the dragon...

And my giant cupcake, which I don't think I trimmed quite enough so it looks more like a toadstool.

Oxford

Mum and Dad had today off work and I had said they were welcome to visit us to celebrate my birthday. My initial thoughts were just to go out for lunch, but Mum suggested that we went out somewhere for the day.

After much debate, rejected ideas from either side we finally agreed to go to Oxford. After sitting in M25 traffic we got to Oxford at about 11 only to find the first park and ride was full so we had to go around the ring round to the next one.

We had time to climb the stairs up the church tower before lunch so Dad, Ollie and I set off while mum wondered around the church (She doesn't do towers, heights or stairs!) The view from the top was very good and Ollie pointed out all of the main sights and you could catch a glance into his college's quad.

Brasenose college

We had already decided on Pizza Hut buffet for lunch so headed there after a brief look in the University shop where I was very tempted by a college hoodie, but thought it a bit cheeky as I went to the University of London!

After lunch we spent a good couple of hours looking round the natural history museum. Mum had never been to a natural history museum before, preferring to frequent the Science Museum whenever we headed into London. I did learn that Tuna are about 50 times bigger than I had previously thought. I now understand how the people who fish for the tins that I buy that say "caught one by one by pole and line in the Maldives" actually earn any profit! (I had thought several fish make one tin rather than 1 fish making lots of tins!)

I also didn't realise that Tortoises spine bones are attached to their shells. We also saw some Samurai swords which were very cool!

Then it was time for the main attraction, G & D ice cream! They make it on the premises and it's the best ice cream I've ever had (and that includes Italian ice cream in Italy!). They also do hot chocolate fudge sauce and it really is divine. I did get laughed at for ordering tea with my ice cream but I thought it was quite a good combination!

After a quick look around the shops it was time to head back to the car to sit in M25 traffic again on the way home.

Radcliffe Camera