.... and breathe

I am so exited to write this today. Our house has been returned to us and we are getting used to a completely transformed space.  The work is not entirely finished, there are a and there is painting to be done but we have a fully functional kitchen. On Sunday we enjoyed a home cooked roast dinner for the first time.

I spent a good part of Friday morning restoring our living room to its former glory. It is nice to have a space to retreat to. Then I went to work and left the house to the builders. I spent the entire Saturday moving boxes from various locations in the house to the kitchen and tidying things away. I also spent a good few hours cleaning plaster dust  of surfaces, floors and any nook and cranny I could find. There was a lot if it. There still is. It also seems that our stuff has magically multiplied whilst stored away in boxes and it turns out that our new kitchen units are less deep than the old ones, none of our cutlery trays fits in a new drawer. I am glad that we have a utility room with extra storage. Richard focused his energy on the new/old guest bedroom, which is very nearly ready. In the evening we escaped the mess and partied heartily well into the night at our friends house. On Sunday (with a sore head), I returned two wrong stools to Ikea and got he correct ones. I had accidentally picked up the ones that were too high. On the way back, I picked up a Christmas tree. Then we got ready for Alistair's party. Yes, we were brave mad and invited 12 children over to celebrate Alistair's birthday on Sunday. In the end there were seven altogether, including our two youngest so not too bad. We made gingerbread biscuits, played pass the parcel, decorated the biscuits, ate jelly with ice cream and popping candy and attempted to play the mummy game. The kids were not keen on competing against each other but enjoyed wrapping each other in toilet paper all the same. It is surprising how much fun a loo roll can bring. In between 'organised activities' there was a great deal of running around and playing games with balloons. Plenty of space to run!

I have now started working on my sewing room. As it transpires, I am sharing this room with the family computer, which is not really what I wanted but it could be worse. I have bought the cheapest Ikea table combination I could find and assembled it more or less successfully. I managed to insert two drawer bottoms the wrong way but I don't care. I have now plenty of work surface to sew. I still need some shelving to put all my boxes and of course a selection of my favourite pictures.

I have no photos of our new living space yet, but I'll try to take some over the Christmas break. Instead, I am giving you a few highlights of Alistair's party.