Spring has sprung

When we bought this house Alex, in his ignorance bless him, wanted to pave over the garden. But I kicked up a fuss and I'm glad that I did!

I was really looking forward to having my own garden and he has warmed to it and helps by mowing the lawn. He also started to get enthusiastic about the idea of growing veg and that's what we're starting to do now. It's lovely, now that the weather is definately more spring-like. Last week I kicked it all off by weeding. I do like a good old weed, muddy hands and the satisfaction of seeing a nice clear patch of earth is my favourite part, followed closely by the smell of it all. mmmmm.

Yesterday we ended up in Homebase. We'd had a few months off the place, but after we moved in it felt like we were there every week for months! Our house is a bit like a Homebase advert, actually, they could pay us to host an ad I'm sure. We'd have to omit the coffee table and wardrobes because they're from MFI, and there's a couple of things from Ikea. But the rest is all Homebase! We went in there for a few plants and ended up with three trolleys full yesterday! I've got a soil testing kit, and I felt rather like I was in the series CSI; I had a pipette and mixed the sample with a solution and then I had to read off the results! Our soil is PH neutral so in theory anything should grow... we'll see.

We were both really pleased to see daffodils springing up at the far end. When we moved in to this house the area around the trees was starved of all goodness and the topsoil was almost gone. So when we dug up the lawn at the front we dumped the turf on this patch around the trees and forked it in as best we could. I dropped some bulbs in and, hey presto, a row of beautiful daffs appeared. Alex's mum and nan gave us some snowdrop bulbs and I've stuck them there too - we'll see what happens!

Back in October when we started the kitchen we had planned to do the floor in the hallway as well. The old lino was torn and worn out and kept tripping me up as it wasn't fitted properly! But flooring can be expensive so we concentrated on the kitchen. Then Homebase cam to the rescue! There's this stuff we used for the kitchen that has worked a treat, and basically it's the same stuff we're using in the hall. Instead of tiles these are shapen like wooden strips and they seem really easy to apply, you just peel off the backs and stick them down! So at 2.30pm Alex decided he was going to get the floor done, and he very nearly finished it, ther's just a bit of edging left to do. Doesn't it look lovely? It really makes the hall feel brighter too. We've painted the walls a light shade of lilac; the paint has a satin sheen to it so that it reflects the light as well.

It's funny how much stuff you accumulate. I din't think we had that much in the hall until we had to move it all into the living room, Here's what the living room looks like now:
!!!
So after our mega-motivated saturday we went to my church with our mate Leon to listen to a concert. The quartet played a piece by Mozart and then some Dvorak, then Anna joined to make it a quintet and they played some Schubert. I have to say Schubert went on a bit! But the one by Dvorak was great, really moody, and layered, and Russian. And we raised £600 for St Basil's, a charity which re-homes the homeless. Our friend Kate works for them and they do great work, so while we were shifting about in the uncomfortable pews for 2 and a half hours we could take some comfort in knowing it was all for a good cause!