Nearly Ready...

A gift has been bought for Cute Cousin. Phew.

The house is decorated...




There's food and drink...



And Santa should know where to come...

So. What's left to do? Just wrapping up a few presents. And finish socks for Nearest and Dearest. Really, just stitching them up. The thing is, in order to do that, I need to learn Kitchener stitch. Hmmm...

The Gift of Time

Today Foxy and I were supposed to be going to a picnic in London. I was looking forward to it, but when it started pissing down with rain, as well as thundering, it did feel like I was being given the gift of time.

I have all this mess to sort out:


Onto our lovely new shelves:



Luckily, Foxy is very happy to play in his pen as long as I am in the living room too. I will be posting after shots later this evening -- at least that's the plan.

Tuesday evening

A few weeks ago when I blogged, I promised that I would be back living a lovelier life, or some such thing. This evening I am doing just that.

I am sitting at the kitchen table, drinking wine, eating crisps, & blogging:


My kitchen, which I will photograph one day if the sun ever shines again, contains this yummy drawer:


The living room now has a corner fenced off for Foxy:


Luckily, he actually seems to like it there. He is quite self-sufficient, working on his many projects.

My current knitting project of a couple of cushion covers is also coming along slowly but surely:

Life is indeed lovely. I feel very lucky indeed.

10 weeks & counting...

Yesterday I was at the end of my tether (again). Then I calculated and realized that we have had a workman of some description in the house for 10 weeks. I kinda forced the decorator to finish the kitchen yesterday. He did, and was out the door at 11 pm. Huge, huge, sigh of relief, and much praise for Foxy who did not stir until 7:08. He was back in bed at 9:15, and now almost everything is back in the kitchen. Yes, I was supposed to be working, but it felt much more important to be rid of the kitch-room.

Did I mention what the hurry is? My big sister & kids are coming to stay this afternoon! Hurrah! They don't know yet that they will be roped into getting the kitchen table back in situ, which involves contortion through windows.

Kitch-room

This week saw the start of work on our new kitchen. For now we have a kitch-room in the area of the living room where Foxy usually plays. It's tragic, really:



Then, while looking through my regular blogs this morning, I saw these beautiful shelves. For a moment I thought perhaps I had made a mistake; maybe we should have some open shelving. Don't worry, I soon remembered that I am too lazy to maintain that look.

It is incredibly cheering seeing the kitchen coming along. This is just a fraction of the storage we will have, behind closed doors:

And this is the truely decadent bit of whimsy we have included:

Yes, it's a wine fridge. Who do we think we are?!?

The boys fitting it all are great. Very considerate, leaving us with sink and washing machine throughout. Bless their cotton socks. With any luck, it will all be done in about 2 weeks time!