Life, love and little things - September

I mentioned in my Meal Planning Monday post this week that I can't believe it's Autumn already, yet there's a distinct chill in the air, my trusty Saltwaters have been swapped for Converse and soup has been made for lunches. Add to this a batch of coughs and colds all around and it's undeniably time to dive in to scarves, sweaters and stews. 

Last month on the other hand was glorious - sunny days drifting into warm evenings, apples starting to tumble from our trees, sunhats, sandals and salads all around. 

These pictures all come from my Instagram where I regularly pop up little insights into our days, be they messy play, baking or simply coffee and lego... 

I've spent a fair amount of time in the kitchen this month, apple butter, variations on banana bread and some egg free oaty bars as well as preserving tomatoes and green beans from our garden. 

Harry and I have spent a lot of time in the garden, playing in his teepee, splashing in the paddling pool and thoroughly watering the veg patch - well, the bits he can reach! 

I've also started trying to pretty the house up a bit - we're on an inevitable road towards having to renovate and decorate our spare room. It's only a matter of time before we need to move Harry into a big boy bed, and we're facing a mammoth task involving replacing carpets, a window, building a cupboard, painting louvre doors (I loathe this with a passion) and stripping the paper before repainting. I think mammoth may be an understatement. To get me in the mood for home improvements I reorganised our much hated fireplace to try to disguise the loathed crazy paved facade. 

My crochet blanket I talked about here is proceeding, albeit slowly. The glorious sunshine did not encourage sitting with a blanket on your knees! I'm hoping to have it finished for Christmas - my target of a stripe a day may be halted by my plans for *whispers* Christmas crafting which I need to get started on fairly promptly. I'm about a third of the way through my blanket though so getting there. 

Our house... a work in progress (picture heavy)

Well, we've been in here for over 3 months now and I think we've got the spiders on the run at last. At no point did we intend to buy or undertake 'a project' but somewhere in our heart of hearts we must have known the amount of work that needed doing. For us this is to be a family home so it's absolutely worth the effort.

I thought I'd start by showing you some of the pictures of the house when we moved in, and then I can update as we go along. Obviously the kitchen is going to be my main point of interest, but in the grand scheme of things I'm afraid that's a way down the line. Mainly because I'm desperate to knock through and unless our premium bonds come up that's a bit of a pipe dream for the time being.

It's safe to say that the house was languishing slightly, and that the shabby decor was hiding a few frights for us. That said, we're meeting it head on - the green anaglypta from the lounge/ diner has gone, and we're stripping the eleventy million layers of lining paper (yes, really). The 7 different variations of floral paper from the bedroom have been reduced to the one that lines the wardrobes. And we have quotes for the scary chocolate brown bathroom to be returned to an easier to stomach white.

For me the hardest part of all of this is living in chaos, for lots of reasons I just function better in clear, tidy environments and even though I know this is temporary it kind of fogs my brain and means I find small things stressful (such as not being able to find the laptop charger). Even though I know there must be an end in sight I do kind of want to go and hide in bed for a bit.

Anyway, that's enough words - have some pictures

Lounge Dining room - this is before and then after we started stripping.

Our sunshine yellow kitchen, with vintage Hygena units.

Truly, the most 'special' room in our home. The brown bathroom of doom (est 1972). I don't care what Kirstie Allsop says, no one in their right mind is going to want to buy that! 

Our office, the pastel cloudy wallpaper is just a bit trippy

Our bedroom, complete with vintage Liberty print curtains - in a design called 'Penelope' oddly enough.

The spare bedroom, we don't think the stripes will give me a seizure but I haven't taken to twirling in there just in case. 

And our very own patch of undergrowth. I mean garden. Which with help from M's parents we're steadily clearing. 

I'll update as we go - in between steaming wallpaper and scrubbing floors.

Thirteenth hour Penelope: Emergency cake decorating

So, we have a team meeting tomorrow and I promised cake. Christmas cake, which I made a couple of weeks back. All good. Until, of course, I fell down a flight of stairs on Tuesday and utterly wrecked my shoulder. So tonight, dosed up on co-dydramol, diazepam and ibuprofen I realised I needed to marzipan and ice said cake. Cue much (metaphorical owing to shoulder pain) flailing and panic. M came to the rescue like the knight in a focus he is, and did an emergency supermarket run. It's now 11pm and said cake is marzipanned, iced and (hastily) decorated.

My only worry now? What if it tastes awful?!