one down, one to go

Over this Bank Holiday weekend, Ryan has been moving into his apartment. I have been mainly the spectator, my job has been done. I have spent the last few weeks photographing items for the apartment. If I buy them, Ryan insists he doesn’t want or like them. but I have found if I show him an image, he happily pops to the shop and makes the purchase. So it has been great to see lots of my ideas come together in the flat. But I am particularly happy to see the choices Ryan has made on his own, has certainly met my exacting standards admirably.

He is certainly a chip of the old block.

3 days it has taken Chris to put all the complicated furniture together. Thank God for handy Dads ( Granddads ) ( and girlfriends )

 

But this is where you will find the rest of us most of the time, leaving Hubby to it.

Late last night, Hubby’s jobs were coming to an end. Just Ryan’s new 3D TV to sort out. The poor neighbours. He has bought a sound bar (?) It fills the apartment with surround sound (and bass). No one is going to be getting much sleep in this neighbourhood.

A TV like that comes with a LOT of leads. Every one of his  (many ) game consoles are also fed into it.

“ erg ,what about this one Ryan ? ”

Oh, and before you go Dad, could you just put up 3 wardrobes…………

Oh, and a picture…………

unfortunately Ryan is just missing one vital ingredient for the apartment. A BED !!!!!!

It hasn’t arrived yet.

I think it’s a ploy to continue living at ours, to keep his apartment tidy.

And so that he doesn’t have to start a bit of reading.

funny going’s on

 

 

 

We all tucked into our sausages and mash,

and then the men disappeared?

This is where I found them…………

Yep, in bed together !!

With Steve's trousers suspiciously undone?…

Luckily, I know Chris isn’t his type, he prefers brunettes…………..

They were snuggled up watching football on the TV.

Whilst Judith was cosseting them with tea, cake and chocolate. Tasmin and I got the giggles as we were left with the pugs.

and Bobbie decided he couldn’t wait any longer ……..

They then just stood there and looked at it, blaming each other.

But we knew who had done it……….

Your in deep trouble mate…..

catching up with old friends

We used to meet up most Fridays for Chapman's sausages and mash with our best friends. But our friends abandoned us for the sunny, high life in Spain. But I’m glad to say they are back. So sausages and mash it was, around their new pad.

 

 

You would have thought they could have stretched to a bit more than sausages and mash with a pad like that. But when you have to pay six million for a house I suppose money is tight?

 

 

 

 

I dread to think what they would feed us, if they bought this ten million pound house we popped around.

I mean I even had to bring a batch of cupcakes to keep us feed.

Really we met up for me to use my new camera skills. I was at the homes to capture details around the properties, for their imminent sale.

There was one problem though, I spent my time snapping away avoiding any building materials. Always keeping them out of shot. But it turned out, that was exactly what Steve wanted to capture, “a work in progress.”

Luckily he managed to get a few of those shots as he randomly clicked away on his professional camera and lens, with no idea what he was doing and all in automatic. But I was pleased to put one of those professional lenses on my camera and click away in full manual mode. I was rather pleased with the fact that even though the light was dreadful ,almost all of my snaps had pin point sharpness.

This is to give you a small idea what six million will buy you in our neck of the woods.

and ten million pounds

I told Steve it was a shame I had purchased the apartment last week, otherwise I might have been interested.

Hopefully we were good omens for them, as whilst I was shooting away at the gates someone stopped for information. And he got to get a full tour like us. So fingers crossed

Ojon

 

I knew all that Ojon shampoo and conditioner would come in handy.

Teddy is moulting bad, and as I don’t get his coat clipped, he gets a bit smelly and matted.

So Saturday was wash day.

The only problem is, he goes mental the second he gets out of the shower. He rubs himself on anything to dry, including my newly changed bed !!

We then walked down to Ryan's apartment for a “snag” visit and for the saleslady to go through everything in the block and apartment. He starts moving in this Friday. So I was looking forward to our days/weekends being ours again.

No more trips to furniture shops . No more phone calls to the solicitors.

But somehow I ended up buying one of the remaining apartments!!! The show flat… I’ve been in it so many times and never gave it a moments thought that it could be mine.

But when a friend pointed out it could be a good rental investment and then I found out she is considering buying one of the other remaining ones. We acted quickly.

It feels the right thing to do. It could act as a first home for Tasmin in the future and who knows it might make a great retirement pad for us.

So it looks like we are back to the shops again.

Will I never get to watch my Erin Cobb Clean Colour video?

Pass or fail ?

Tasmin took her driving test yesterday……..

Pass ?????

or fail ?????

She thought she had passed, but maybe there were some clues in what happened during the test. The driving examiner asked her to repark somewhere “safely”, maybe the corner of a junction wasn’t such a good place. Plus, he on reflex put his hand out to the dashboard to save himself at one point. He also asked her repeatedly to go at her “normal"speed when he was about to ask her to do a manoeuvre. She was confused 20mph WAS her normal speed!

I’m afraid when she was recounting her test later, we all laughed so much at her expense, that Hubby nearly shocked to death.

 

Oh well. we looked on the bright side.

At least I won’t have to buy her a car anytime soon.

How did that happen?

from this

to this

I actually keep forgetting how old I am .

I always think I am older than I am.

Must be the old age dementia…………

The grass survived

Just……………

We had been warned that last year about 100 people bought tickets for the towns charity garden openings. 100 people seemed like a lot to be walking around my garden, but we thought whatever, why not.

Now, I am a nosey person by nature and you couldn’t get anyone nosier than my husband. He believes everyone should have a plaque outside their homes saying what they do as a job and how much they earn, so you could tell if you could afford their house or how they got it. So I had no problem with people nosing around my garden and peeking in the windows.

Well, it was with some surprise ( or maybe not ) that after our walk around the gardens, all the gardens we loved had been in the same families since at least 1957. The families in them had never lived anywhere else since they had married. Now, these weren’t small properties, they are some of the most unique, large old properties our town has. These properties are well out of the reach of “ normal” people. I mean one of the gardens alone employs a full time gardener! I think this sort of thing will never happen again. Properties are so expensive nowadays and these properties would all be in excess of a million pounds if they went up for sale now. What first time buyer could buy that now and live in it for 50 years +.

My garden had some serious competition, and it was definitely one of the smaller ones. Our house now stands on only a quarter of the land it started with. Each owner has taken a portion of the grounds and built a house to live in. So our garden is a bit compromised now in proportion to the house. But I think our garden offered some of the most colourful planting out of all the houses we visited.  Plus add to it the fact that we have only been in the house for 3 years and in that time we have replanted the majority of the plants.

It was a long, tiring 3 hours and we walked miles. The first garden we couldn’t wait to see, is just over the road from me. It had by far the most impressive grounds. It had 2 lakes, a river and 5.5 acres. It even had a peacock on the lawn!

People would be visiting mine after this one!!!!!!

But at least one of the others on my road, owned by our local MP was so bad we didn’t think it should have been open. It was a complete, dilapidated mess. Plus a building site as well.

We returned to our house to make our door man a cup of tea and we got a fit of the giggles when we saw a lady with a Zimmer frame trying to get up our gravel drive. There were already some people in the garden. Very weird…..

I think we were the only people who weren’t in their gardens to talk to people. But we really wanted to look around the gardens, so we were disappointed we didn’t get to speak to people and what they thought of all our hard work. But maybe next year?

We went to formal gardens, cottage gardens, ones with orchards and grass tennis courts, but all three of us agreed on our favourite garden. the fact that it was in one of the largest houses in our town didn’t actually matter to us. The second you walked in to it you felt at home. It had such a lovely feel about it. It wasn’t the best planted or manicured. But it was old and established and had everything you could want in a garden.

It was again an old family house that the owners had been there over 50 years. There family run one of the oldest businesses in the Town, along with our butchers. Who had a very impressive formal garden. That must have a gardener or two.

 

we almost run out of time, as we didn’t use the mini bus service provided. We had to return home and jump in the car, so as not to miss one of the secret houses in our Town. The man had lived at the spot for his entire 80+ years. It’s down a track hidden away on a busy road. But you enter over an acre and a half of tranquil paradise. He had orchards a walnut grove, a vegetable garden and many other gardens around the house they built, stood in the middle.

 

It was a lovely day and I look forward to next years. Teddy was an angel and didn’t bark once.

He just watched everyone out of the windows.

We saw the organiser of the event on our way around and apparently they believe they had sold over 260 tickets.

260 people traipsing through my garden!!!!!!! No wonder the grass is looking a bit tired.

It must be May

You know it’s May when you see a group of bearded men wearing hats adorned with flowers.

What makes a man prance around with bells on his feet, twirling some hankies?

You just know that they are more than likely to work in local Government or be an accountant and only drink real ale out of tankards.

Why is it that they are always so stereotypical ?

Luckily I can’t see Hubby becoming one anytime soon. He hasn’t got the hair for it….!!

I suppose it could be worse.

Hubby could have been dressed as a woman.

not a pretty sight..