MrsB

The plans for our renovation have arrived from the architect. There were several options for all the floors and we were easily able to pick out the ones that we like, with some details to be modified yet. …

I took photos of buckets today.

Thankfully not the kind that my poor husband has been using due to his labyrinthitis related nausea :)

He is getting slowly better, by the way, but he still cannot walk further than to the bathroom and back. His new anti-nausea medication means though that he can finally keep food down. Every night we go to bed with a hope that the next day is better than the one ending…

So back to the buckets [...]

Although I can sew and knit and crochet and cross stitch, I am not very crafty these days. A few months ago though I got an idea to make an “artwork” for our living room using Australian postcards. After a bit of toing and froing and false starts, it’s finally finished.

I think it’s not bad for a first attempt. It’s not as neat as I would have liked because the postcards all varied in size by a mm or two, and because by the time I got it back from framers I saw some edges where the glue had come unstuck. [...]

I’ve always wanted a shelf for photos and other pretty stuff above my bed and we’ve finally made it happen.

So far we haven’t really decorated this place much, other than hang photos on the already existing picture hooks, because we will “one day” renovate. I couldn’t stare at the bare walls in our room any longer though and am very pleased with the photo shelves from IKEA.

My mother hates that I’m paying someone to clean my house. But she hates cleaning… and I hate cleaning… so yes, I am paying someone to scrub my bathtub and my stove once a week.

All three adults living in our house do enough tidying, cooking, ironing, laundry, dishwashing and cupboard organising – I don’t see how we could squeeze in all the dusting and mopping and scrubbing as well.

I think my mother doesn’t actually have as much of a problem with the money as she does with the quality of the cleaning. I have to say that I’m glad that someone goes through my house with a mop once a week and I’m not bothered too much when a corner is left untouched. [...]

The boys have moved in together, nana no longer has to share a room with Oskar and sleep in the bunk bed.

On Friday afternoon we said good-bye to the blue skies of Australia and started the marathon journey back to London. The boys did really well and I was even able to watch a movie. No wait, I watched THREE movies.  Unbelievable, really, I can’t remember the last time that happened. Now it’s good to be [...]

Girl’s Gone Child wrote today about having a backyard for the first time since having kids and how awesome that was. Our backyard isn’t anywhere near hers in  size (we don’t live in America where everything is BIG :), nor do we have that awesome umbrella, but we love it regardless and couldn’t image living [...]

The bank valuation came back the other day and it’s only £9000 lower than the price we agreed to pay for the house.  We were afraid that it would be a lot lower considering the state of play in the real estate market at the moment, but we’re happy with the figure. Next steps: The [...]

The week with the in-laws was seriously good. Oskar clung to them every second he had – that kid loves it when someone plays with him 24/7. It felt like a holiday for me :)  I didn’t have to take him to school in the morning and often didn’t have to pick him up in [...]

After two exhausting weeks of to-ing and fro-ing, us changing our minds every 2 seconds, the estate agent spinning stories and the owners rejecting every offer we made – we have finally done a deal today :)  The final figure is £1000 below our initial ceiling for this property, but it’s a bit more than [...]

Last night James got an email from the real estate agency that is selling the house we want: ” …. there’s a spanner in the works…. something that’s occurred in the last 24 hours….” True to being the cool and calm negotiator that James is, he didn’t call them :)  He said that all they [...]

Location: Wimbledon, north of South Park Gardens, on the “other side of the tracks” (literally). Nice quiet/wide street/neighborhood. Great south facing back yard. Layout inside a bit strange – staircase had been moved from one side of the house to the other and it pertruded into a bedroom upstairs leaving a useable space of maybe [...]

The house we want in South Wimbledon isn’t ours yet. There’s a bit of a price war going on at the moment. It’s exhausting. All we do is house-hunt related these days – James has endless spreadsheets with various calculations and when I close my eyes, all I can see is Google maps with indicators [...]