A Belated Bonne Annee!

Just noticed that it is a month since I last posted. Where has the time gone? To think we are a 12th of the way to next Christmas! Ugh!

Well we had a lovely trip to Canada to see family, although with all the travel and rushing about my cold did stick around into the New Year. We left Canada on Boxing Day returning to the UK only to find that a week after the snow the carpark where we left our car was still a skating rink. Some nonsense about if they grit they are liable - how ridiculous. Is this what society has come to?

Anyway we then spent a hectic three days in England visiting friends and relatives and getting in some all important shopping, mostly in B & Q and Tesco. I was actually standing in an M&S where they were having a fantastic sale, but with hubby sitting on my shoulder I couldn't enjoy the experience and we left....with nothing!! Him oblivious to the fact that a trip to M&S (to buy stuff) had been an important part of my holiday!

We arrived back in our village late on the evening of 30th to find that someone (our builder) had kindly set the fire for us. We put a match to it and stood back, only to have the room alarmingly fill with smoke. So badly in fact, we had to throw water on it to put it out. It appears our builder had done exactly the same thing a few hours earlier, hoping to warm up the house for us! Apparently in our absence the chimney had become a little blocked so it was off to a chilly bed for us. Not the best welcome home. Up bright and early the next morning with our neighbour (and friend and wonderful dog sitter) round with her chimney cleaning kit to clean it out and hey presto, it was nice a toasty again.

So what have I been doing this last few weeks, well the builder got the ensuite installed and I have painted all the woodwork. We are very pleased with the results. Also finally got around to pointing and rendering the feature wall in the bedroom which meant we could finally return the little scaffold tower to its rightful owner. It is wonderful after 6 weeks to be able to negotiate our bedroom to our ensuite in the middle of the night without having to remember to climb through the scaffold!

A couple of photos of the results......

A couple of other bits of gossip, daughter and son-in-law are expecting baby number 2 in July! Very exciting news, guess where I will be spending my summer hols.

The next less happy news is that hubby's job down in Toulouse is just not working out, he is not happy and so we are looking around, will keep you posted on that one. On the positive side it has put a little bit more urgency into my "to do" list.

With scaffolding ........

and

without scaffolding!