Thank you for staying in touch with me and visiting me here while I've been away. I hope to be back blogging again soon ...
♥
This is a bit of a long post, I know, but it's also the last one for a little while because I'm taking a short blog break and I'll explain why later ...
First, I would like to say thank you so much to Diva Designs for my lovely blog award - it's very pretty - thank you! And now ...
I Meant To Do My Work Today
Richard LeGallienne
I meant to do my work today
But a brown bird sang in the apple tree
And a butterfly flitted across the field
And all the leaves were calling me
And the wind went sighing over the land
Tossing the grasses to and fro
And a rainbow held out it's shining hand
So what could I do but laugh and go .....
Jo gave me this poem for my birthday and it sums up how I feel at the moment! Right now, I don't want to be spending so much time on the computer - I want to be outdoors - I want to be in the garden - I want to go for nature walks - I want to be on the beach picking up pebbles, I want to sort my home out and I want to "play" .....
So I'm going to take a little blog break because I've got a lot going on at the moment at home and at work
We are in the middle of what will, hopefully, be the last of our big renovating jobs in the cottage. It's been a long slog but when I look back at what we have achieved it's no wonder we feel like we've been on it forever. Since we moved in we have had a new roof, had the roof insulated, enlarged the loft doorway, boarded out the loft, fitted a new bathroom upstairs and re-enamelled the existing Victorian bath, knocked down a passageway to make a bigger bedroom, had all the electrics re-wired, had all the walls re-plastered, repaired the sash windows, decorated throughout, knocked down the old out house which housed a disgusting outside loo which was akin to something you might find on "I'm a Celebrity ..." (I used to call it "the bushtucker trial" to set foot in there), we have built a new extension with extra downstairs bathroom and a small utility room with fitted glass cupboards and worktop, fitted a new kitchen, exposed the granite inglenook fireplace and fitted a gas stove (the inglenook was hidden behind 1960's pine cladding), a new dining room ceiling and had the whole of the downstairs floor re tiled and that's without mentioning all the outside jobs we've done ....
Can you believe someone would want to hide this
behind a load of grotty 1960's pine cladding?
The jobs we are tackling at the moment are to replace the heavy cast iron bath (because the enamel has come off again), tile the bathroom floor upstairs and redecorate the whole bathroom, build a new fireplace around a Victorian black leaded fireplace in one of the bedrooms, raise the floor level up in our sitting room, which also means replacing the slate tiled hearth, fit three new "old" doors upstairs and get new carpets. I deserve new carpets for what I've had to put up with for the last few years ... we still have a hideous piece of "office carpet" up the stairs left by the previous owners which really is disgusting
On top of this work going on at home, and the knock on extra housework cleaning up after, I'm busy with my own things too:
I've joined the "Textured Surfaces" workshop. I'm still waiting for a delivery of goodies from Ario but as soon as it arrives I want to get started on the samples ! I've downloaded and read through the workshop sheets ... now I'm just hoping the postman is loaded down with stuff tomorrow ... and I've just treated myself to a lovely new sketchbook from Jackie (Dogdaisy) to stick the samples in ...
A little piece Jackie stitched inside the sketchbook
and ... the deadline is looming for finishing off my critter stuffies for the Cloth Paper Scissors challenge ...
and ... I'm blogging here an art quilt I've made with a tropical vegetation, trees, leaves and flowers theme ...
and ... I'm supposed to stitch or make something on a "berry" theme for our bi-monthly Crow Day challenge
and ... still to finish off my holly garland and birdie ornaments from the last Crow Day
and ... we have another Crow Day coming up next week - making little books ...
and ... I'm just putting the finishing touches to a stitched piece for a swap I'm doing with Cathie ...
and ... I need to make more bracelets for the gallery because I've sold almost all the ones I made earlier in the year ...
I want to be among the flowers ...
I enjoy blogging so I will return, as soon as I've caught up with myself, and in the meantime I will still visit your blogs from time to time and keep in touch by email etc. and also you can still follow me here until the end of June if you want to ... I do hope you stay following me because I will be back .....