Hall

I have started painting the hall in an effort to minimise the "pinkness" of the wall paper the previous owner had. I have taken some pictures and will up load these shortly. I have gone for a pale pink (as we are stuck with the pink carpet at the moment) to match the chocolate brown. Let me know what you think once I've put the pictures on here.

Em
xx

Flower Power!

I have been enlisted onto the church flower rota and usually do the flowers with another lady. However, tomorrow I am going to be doing them on my own - eek! So to save me being at the church all day, I have done one small arrangement at home today - see pics above. They are purple carnations (shop brought) with the greenery from my garden. I felt I didn't have enough flowers so raided my garden for some Japanese anenamoe (sp?). I hope they look alright. Am a bit of a novice so still finding my feet. I will post pictures of the other flower stands once I have done them (and if they turn out ok!).

Have stuck in another picture of Arwen as she crops up every where and was looking particularly pretty on the cushion on the sofa.

Love to all

xx

Foxy, foxy

Afternoon all!

Keith and I went over to the Isle of Man to see Jane, Alistair and Joe (who was over on holiday too). I shall do another post with some photos of our trip but we had a lovely time and will definitely go back again.

Other random news, Keith and I were sitting watching telly, as you do, and looked out the patio door window to find a fox on the patio. We both rushed over to see it and it darted off down the end of the garden. I did try to take a photo on the mobile but it didn't come out very well. We think the fox is living in next door's garden (as the house is vacant so no-one around to deter it) and their garden is very over grown. We will have to keep our eyes open to see if it comes back.

I'm thinking about decorating the hall some more (although this is probably news to Keith) and would like a new carpet, however, our oven is playing up and now our washing machine is making strange noises so expect we will have to do something about those first!

Love & hugs

E&K
xx

Alium's galore

Well not much really to report. No further decorating although our next project is the bathroom but would need to save some money for that first! Insofar as the garden goes, I planted a while back some Alium bulbs and they have now grown and opened up. I shall add some pictures later one but they look very pretty. We also have some garden/patio furniture so when the sun finally arrives we might be able to sit outside - hooray.

My nephew Joe has been staying on and off as he is now in the army so any weekends he gets off, it is easier for him to kip round ours. On Saturday just gone we had him, Keith's parents and my parents over for some food and a general chit chat. Keith unfortunately had a viral illness and was not at all well - poor thing, but he is a lot better now.

Sofa galore

Hi, sorry it's been a while since the last post. Not too much to report on the work front. We have a nice new sofa and a new picture up in the living room. Bob, our resident cat food stealing moggy seems to have taken up residence. We are hoping to get some garden furniture soon and eventually to sort the bathroom out.

We have food!

Hi all, I know it's been a wee while since I last updated the blog but you know how it is. Ok, so the latest developments in the garden as you can see are food! Raspberries and Tomatoes to be precise. Was getting worried about the fruit as it looked like they were being eaten by something (probably snails as we have an abundance of those knocking around) but low and behold I spotted some appearing and the one I tasted was nice. The toms were re-potted and seem much happier - we have about 14 waiting to ripen so that's all good. Still waiting for the blackberries and the gooseberries but I think there is still time for them.

I've also attached pictures of some "ornaments", one is my spiral hanging copper thing which Keith kindly put up for me and the other is one of three copper bugs/butterflies which are dotted around the garden.

As far as decoration goes in the house, not much has happend although we would like to get the bathroom done next so will up date when that's about to happen.

Cheerio!

So, over the bank holiday weekend last weekend, the Southend Air Show was on, so, needless to say there were a lot of plane flying overhead towards Southend. Although you can hear them coming from a long way off, you don't get to see them until they are right on top of you and believe it or not it was hard to take a decent photo but anyway here are a few that I did take.

On to this weekend, we have finally bought a BBQ (wanting to use it when we actually HAVE some nice weather), so here are some pictures of Keith and Andy (who is staying with us for a couple of days) putting it together and the Naked Chef at the grill attempting to cook. Maybe he might do the cooking more often now we have one? There are also a couple of pics of Arwen (of course) being generally cute.

That's all for the time being! xx

Clematis and other plants

So we have been gardening again. This time we, well, I decided that I wanted to change the plants in the beds by the shed. So we pulled them up and planted some Cosmos and Salvia Red and another plant that I can't remember. We also put in a lovely Clematis "Snow Queen" which we bought. Originally I wanted Alliums in there but they only had two rather dodgy looking ones at the garden centre so may get these from Crocus.co.uk when I am off for a week in 2 weeks time. I also decided to move my Jasmine from one side of the garden to the other, I don't think it is liking where it was so hopefully the change will do it good.

Next thing is to get a BBQ!

Gardening and wall papering

So yesterday Keith's parents came over to help us put up the wall paper in the bedroom and also tidy up the garden.

Keith and his dad got to work in the bedroom and I am really pleased with how it has come out, which is always a bit of a relief with the wallpaper costing £30 a roll you don't want it to be messed up! The only things left to do in the bedroom is to put up some shelves and change the carpet, then I can decide what room to do next!

As far as the garden goes, we had a very large and overgrown shrub which appeared to be dead underneath, so Keith's mum and I have cut this right down. Whether we decide to keep it or take it up, I will need to think (it is on the right hand side of the picture above). When cutting that back we discovered another shrub there and a trellice, so again we cut that back and I have decided to place the jasmine plant there and get that to climb (hopefully).

Unfortunately the little seeds I planted have died as we left them outside, so will start again with some new seeds. I think I may see if I can get a small glass house which I can put them in and keep an eye on them. Maybe on bank holiday Monday I might take a trip to the nursery and see what takes my fancy!

Hi all, thought I would give you a brief up date on how the garden is doing and the decorating generally. Hoping to finish off some of the painting as that has going by the way side slightly. As far as the garden goes, you can see that the fruit plants (gooseberry, raspberry and blackberry) are coming on nicely. The gooseberry seems to be the best so far with more green leave on whereas the blackberry seems the worst with only a couple of new buds, but I am sure we will get there.

You may be wondering why there is a picture of a cat that isn't Arwen. Well, it seems that Arwen is a bit of, well.... a tart, and has two, yes two! boyfriends. There is a big black fluffy one which comes calling but she isn't keen on him and I think he is a bit of a bully so we chase him out of the garden. The other one, who we have affectionally called Bob (as he doesn't have a name tag on his collar), is very friendly and is happy to be stroked and picked up. Arwen is a little wary of him and tollerates him being there. He is very sweet so we don't mind him so much, plus he was happy to pose for a picture.

Clever little herbs

So, finally, we have been out into the garden and potted some plants. We had the help of my who brought along the compost and some lovely primroses and we put them in the pots. We also did the rose, geranium and another plant I've forgotten the name of. I got for my birthday some seeds from Keith's mum so put them in the trays and they are in the shed doing what they need to do. We then headed off to Homebase and bought some more compost, herbs (lemon thyme, coriander, mint and oregano) to plant to go along with the chives I already have and the rosemary which I wanted to put in one of the big pots. I also bought some lavender for the other pot. Whilst there, I spotted some raspberry plants, blackberry and gooseberry plants so bought those too which meant we had to pot them all. See the picutues below, along with some other pictures of flowers that have come out already in the garden. It's all looking very pretty :0)