green

Green is one of my favourite colours - eye colour, clothing, generally 'being' in (ie: forests, countryside etc) and, as it seems, household bits and bobs.

Over the last few weeks we've slowly accumilated hitherto missing kitchen items and soft furnishings to make the flat a more functioning home, including a toaster and frying pan. Green seemed like a reoccurring theme so I did what any blogger would do, I collected together a selection of our old and new green-coloured things and took a picture and, I have to admit, this was a pretty satisfying thing to do (I'm a big fan of Things Organised Neatly)!

Some of my new favourites include the nessie ladle (a house warming gift from my sis) and the Wild and Wolf phone. I realised after I'd put everything back that I actually have more green notebooks (I have many many notebooks) and books for that matter but meh, this was only meant to give an idea the amount of green going on. FYI, it's a fair amount.

Do you find yourself gravitating to certain colours in your home?

a photo an hour (ish) #5

I've not managed to do one of these successfully (ie remembered to take more than three pics at hourly intervals) for a year and a half! But, this Saturday, the day Mitch and I moved into our flat, I did! Here's how it played out...

6:30 - got up to brush my teeth. I'd actually been awake from about 5am (feeling anxious and excited about the move) but had hoped to fall asleep again, no such luck.

7:30 - last look at the view from our bedroom (I'm actually going to miss this).

8:30 - loading the van. It was a bit of a tight squeeze in the end!

9:30 - setting off (my parents car was pretty full too :/ )

There's no pic for 10:30 as we were in the midst of moving all our stuff from the van to our 3rd floor flat - SO glad there's a lift!

11:30 - move complete! (I have no idea how we've come to have so much stuff.)

12:30 - a well deserved cup of tea and cream cheese + salmon bagel in The Pelican with our friends who came to help.

13:30 - chilling out on the mattress in our bedroom.

There's no picture for 14:30 as that "chilling out" became a snooze.

15:30 - a walk in Burgess Park with some friends who happened to be in the area.

16:30 - the walk ended up being a stroll to Borough Market.

There's no picture for 17:30 as I was busy stuffing my little face in a pub by the riverside not far from Borough Market.

18:30 - all the bikes at London Bridge station. We got the train back home, I couldn't face the walk.

I forgot to take a picture at 19:30, thanks to some slug drama. We'd brought a few of our plants with us with the intention to keep them going. Unfortunately a load of mini slugs had come along for the ride. After some Wikipedia reading I was pretty freaked out (slugs are hermaphrodites and lay 30 eggs at a time just three days after mating!). Having experienced what it's like to have mice I didn't want to risk having slugs in our brand new flat so, we ditched the plants. I realise this sounds like an overreaction as slugs are essentially harmless but they're a bit a nemesis for gardeners - the little ones we found had already demolished one of our fledgling chilli plants :( It's not all bad though, we've got more seeds for herbs and chillies, plus we also saved the tops of our tomato plants so hopefully they'll sprout some roots and we can plant them again.

20:30 - we started unpacking the boxes, this was one of the first things to be extracted - small steps.

21:30 - Catching up on Serial S2 before bed.

It was one hell of a long day but amazing none the less. I still don't think it's really sunk in yet that this is our home, we probably need to unpack a few more boxes! 

all christmassy

Unlike my miserable December last year, this month's festive build up has been perfecto for a number of reasons: 

1. I actually got to go to my work christmas party this year (I was even on the committee that organised it)! We had a staff bake off (my team constructed a 'christmas dinner' cake - my contribution was the plate using this recipe), staff awards AND a dressing up competition. The theme was 'the Christmas spirit' so I went as bottle of Port (pretty much sums up my Xmas spirit).

2. Team Christmas lunch - an epic three hour lunch (complete with secret santa swaps, crackers, festive pass the parcel) followed by mulled wine in the pub.

3. Mini Christmas up in Norfolk with my granddad because we won't see him for actual Christmas. Both my sister and I wore Christmas jumpers and I instantly felt about a thousand times more festive. I've never really been into the whole jumper thing but I'm certainly getting warm to the idea (sorry)!

4. People were handing out mistletoe at Waterloo station one morning. Completely unexpected (and a little random) but lovely all the same.

5. I made Christmas biscuits which I've not done for quite a few years. Icing them was a lot of fun :)

6. Mulled wine and lots of it - drunk at various social meet ups throughout the month.

Today is my last day in the office until 2016 and then I have 11 whole days off!

It's Christmas at home in good old south west London this year, and Mitch and I are doing the cooking (or rather Mitch is and I'm assisting). But before that, it's dinner at a friends' tonight, a mini Christmas in Essex tomorrow with Mitch's family and then annual christmas eve drinks with friends in the evening. Excited doesn't even come close to how I'm feeling!

I wish you all fabulous Christmases with good food, good wine and excellent company :D

moving back home: 18 months on

Last week marked 1 and a half years since we moved in with my parents. In a lot of ways it's gone pretty quickly, but then I think about all the things that have happened in that time - getting married, changing jobs, all the holidays we've been on, and suddenly it feels like we've been here forever. 18 months is a particularly significant milestone as that was how long we gave ourselves to save up and buy somewhere. No, it hasn't happened just yet but I think we're on the right track.

It's been tough, for everyone, especially the last 5 months since the new kitchen was fitted. The kitchen, as predicted, has been the root of 90% of conflicts - the fridge especially (out of date things, "who ate my...", lack of space), which is kind of funny when I think about it, everything comes down to food in my family :) Also, I know I should be thankful that the majority of conflicts are only about the kitchen and nothing more serious! Of course there have been a couple of big arguments about things other than food but I'd like to think I have a healthy, frank-talking relationship with my parents, mitch and I wouldn't have been able to move in otherwise.

There's been a number of benefits to moving home, money saving being the most obvious one, but also a decent shower, the occasional and much appreciated dinner cooked by mum, access and use of a beautiful garden (we all have my dad to thank for that), two gardens in fact if you count my nan's (aka our allotment) too. I also really appreciate the time I get to spend with my parents and sister - small time I call it. A 20 minute chat here, the four of us congregating in the kitchen and having a silly conversation, hanging out in my sister's bedroom for an hour talking about books, watching the bake off with mum, having 'life advice' and 'future plan' chats with dad, making pancakes for breakfast for everyone one random Saturday. It's quite nice being in a full house again.

However, the busyness is also a downside because some days it'd be nice if it was quiet and I didn't have to queue to use the washing machine, or be accused of eating all the hummus or chided for leaving my knitting lying around or nagged for not opening my post. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to having my own space again. To be able to leave something somewhere and find it there again when I need it. To be able to live out of more than one room! To not revert to my teenage-self and have a strop more often than I'd care to admit! Le sigh.

I am, and will forever be, massively grateful to my parents for taking us in but I'm so so ready to go, sette into somewhere that's mine (or 45% mine) and start to make my 'nesting' pinterest board a reality. Yeah, I'll miss aspects of the madhouse and I suppose in some small ways they'll miss us too but I know it'll be better for everyone once we're gone (my mum can have her drawing studio back for a start!). And hopefully, with any luck (fingers, toes and eyes crossed) we won't have too long to wait...

what Sundays are made for

1 // Sleeping in till late

2 // Crocheting whilst Mitch plays computer games

3 // Christmas present making (aka potato printing)

4 // Spending quality time with my sister (aka watching The Guardians of the Galaxy)

5 // Keeping myself sustained (aka eating mince pies with brandy butter)

6 // Cuddles with Moriarty

And not a job application form or cover letter in sight.

garden progress

Last month, Mitch and I started working on a neglected bit of my nan's garden with the aim to turn it into a vegetable patch. We've been going every weekend (apart from when we went to Falmouth) and it's really starting to take shape.

Before:

And after - sans the beast of a hedge which was obscuring the rest of the garden and house:

Before:

After, a LOT of digging:

I'd thought that clearing the brambles was hard but digging up roots, turning the earth and raking was waaaay more knackering. Thanks to the last few weekends I've come to associate Saturdays with aching limbs! Hopefully it'll all be worth it though.

Some of the bricks dug up from the earth.

We actually planted something this weekend, not anything we can eat mind you, but some stuff (mustard seeds) that'll be good for the soil. Fingers crossed they'll sprout!

home turf

What with neither of us working last Tuesday, Mitch and I went to give blood and, whilst waiting for it to open we did a little exploring around Twickenham riverside. I say exploring but, seeing as I've lived in the area for most of my life, it was more to show Mitch around.

He's already been over to Eel Pie island so I thought York House gardens along the riverside was a good place to start. Fun fact: when I was younger I used to think that it was a good place to get married, right on the grass in front of the statues and fountain. Incidentally, the statues are meant to represent the sea nymphs from Greek mythology. After the gardens we had just enough time to look around teeny tiny Twickenham museum which I'd never been to before (for shame).

I tend to find that new people visiting an area you know very well can help you rediscover it. Truth be told I'm still a bit grumpy about leaving Brixton but my home turf really does have its plus points, the proximation to the river being one of them. It's also got some lovely pubs, particularly The White Swan which I'd completely forgotten about until some friends were over from Peckham. So yes, thank you visitors, where I live isn't in the bustling centre (I get enough of that during the week) but it's got merits of its own which I won't be taking for granted anymore :)

a bit of green space to call our own

My maternal grandmother is 90 and lives just a 10 minutes walk away from my parents' house (aka, my current dwelling). She has a gigantic garden which, now that she's older, she rarely, if ever, uses it. The garden itself is divided into two sections: the lawn and flower beds (closest to the house) and, what was once my grandad's vegetable patch at the back. Although my nan has a gardener who cuts the lawn occassionally, the back part of the garden has pretty much been abandoned and, helped by the fact that there's a big tall dense hedge separating these two sections, left to grow wild.

A couple of weekends ago Mitch and I had an idea that, with my nan's permission of course, we could clear away the jungle of thorns and weeds and restore the old veg patch. Perhaps, we could even have a go at growing stuff again...

My nan said yes. So, last weekend we began.

This is what it looked like. Most of the brambles were around knee-to-waist height, some were up to my shoulder! We started to cut the hedge back too as it's crazily overgrown. Whilst clearing up, we found tonnes of weird insects (an orange neon woodlouse-type bug!) and terrifyingly large spiders. Largely thanks to Mitch making a start single-handedly on Saturday, by Sunday we'd cleared most of the plot, including a v.stubborn, seen-better-days, pampas grass plant. Here's how it's looking at the moment.

We're hoping to work on it once a week and I'm aiming to track our progress. If it's a success, it might be fun to look back on. Watch this space!

Sunshine in Suburbia

It's been a whole week since we officially left Brixton and thanks to the (mostly) sunny weather and warm temperatures, we've got off to a rather good start in our attic residence.

I've discovered a number of up-sides to living in Suburbia - most notably the abundance of magnolia and cherry blossom trees. It's also been quite fun re-discovering my local parks, the majority of which I haven't been to for 12 years or so. Time has treated them all rather well. Yes, they're not as great as Brockwell Park, but there are 3 to choose from and all are about 15 minute walk away. Also nice, is the quiet. Don't get me wrong, I love the bustle of Brixton but, even with the odd plane going overhead and the distant rumble of the trains, I can actually hear bird song now. Something I don't think I ever heard over the sirens, buses, traffic, our neighbours' music and people just generally shouting at each other in Brixton. Who would have thought that being able to have your window open and not go deaf would be such revelation! And, talking of revelations, because my parents have a house, they also have a substantially sized (and well-taken care of) garden! Where I can hang my washing out to dry! Seriously, it may read like sarcasm but drying my laundry in the fresh air is SUCH a luxury. I even re-construted our shoe-rack in the garden because it really is the nicest place to be. Of course, there's more than a couple of down-sides to suburbia: everything shuts early and practically nothing is open at all on sunday, we now live far away from most of my friends, travelling after the last train is seriously long - to name a few. But hey, I don't want to be too much of a negative nancy on here so let's just say I'm attempting to adapt to all the new challenges suburb living presents. On a positive note, you'll be happy to hear that Moriarty has settled in well and is the recipient of not two, but five people's attention and affection, not to mention all the extra play-time and food he's getting :)

What with being ill on Monday and Tuesday and dinner dates + late nights on Wednesday and Thursday, I feel like this week has gone unbelievably quickly but I'm not complaining. Happy gloriously sunny Friday to you!