Friday's Fave Five - 30/10/20

Thanks to our host Susanne for reminding us to be mindful each week and find five things to be thankful for. You can join in by clicking on the link below:

Living to the the Story  

The picture above is very apt - been sweeping up leaves on and off all week.  None of them from trees we own - there are 2 close to our driveway that, thankfully, seem to have shed all their leaves now but there are also plenty of leaves in the garden from our neighbours' trees.   Winter is definitely coming.

Despite all the leaves and rain every day this week, there are still things to be glad about:

1)  I saw Nathan and his Mummies twice this week.  Technically we should only be meeting people outdoors now but we can provide essential childcare.  Hospital visits of course fall into that category but so do breaks for their mental health in my book.

2)   I finally found a soap dish for our downstairs shower room.  I ordered one from Marks and Spencer first but it was much too big.  On the website the picture is like this - looks pretty standard.

Until you see if with a standard bar of soap in it.  I mean who has soap almost 4 times the normal size to use?  (Yes the dimensions were on the website but not immediately obvious.)  Needless to say I shall be returning it.  I then ordered one with my online food shopping that was perfect in size and a quarter of the price.

3)  No quibble refund policy from Lakeland.  Again I ordered some things online but one of them wasn't quite what I needed.  I contacted them and explained I didn't feel comfortable visiting the store nearest to me to return it as it is in a very busy shopping mall but I was happy to post it back.  The nice woman I spoke to told me not to worry - she would arrange a refund (which I've had) and when things were better and I could visit the store I could just return it then.

Well of course I will return it at some point but I bet there will be a lot of things that never get returned.  Another issue for retailers thanks to Covid.

4)

We finished unpacking boxes!  Well some things are now in different boxes or just in the empty bedroom but all the boxes supplied by the removal company were empty and piled up in our garage.  We contacted the company yesterday and today they came and collected them.  The man was very impressed at how organised we were.  We were just able to open the front of the garage and transfer them to his van.  Job done!

5)  We managed to get the IKEA furniture assembled:

This unit is in Hubby's office/den.  He's been having fun (?) this week filling it up with his things.

 

This bookcase fits perfectly just inside the dining room without taking up too much space and it has all our cookery books in it.

So not much out and about this week - it has rained everyday.  I did get a quick walk around the lake earlier in the week but it is very muddy.  But I do feel we've made progress in the house.  We've also had delivery of a shed and they will be coming to install it in just over a week's time so that will also enable more progress.

I think I'll be having a rest this weekend!  I hope you enjoy the weekend too whatever you're doing.
 

Wednesday's Hodgepodge on Thursday! 29/10/20

Wednesday's Hodgepodge is hosted by Joyce over at "From this side of the Pond".  Pop over there to see who is playing and how to join in.  If you do join in, remember to visit your neighbour on the Linky List.  Have fun.

Well I'm a day late but here goes: 

1. Boo, boo-hoo, make a boo-boo, boo(ze)...pick one and tell us how it relates to life lately. 

Boo-hoo probably.  Restrictions are getting tighter and tighter here in the UK as Covid numbers rise.  Makes it harder to see the kids.  Can't see the ones in Nottingham at all and should only be seeing the others outdoors.  Tricky with all the wet weather we've had and little ones.  We also heard yesterday that one of our eldest son's dogs had died during the night.  Quite unexpected, probably a heart attack or stroke the vet thought but a shock for them.  Joe was only 8 years old.  RIP Joe.

 

Also boo(ze).  Our consumption of wine, red in particularly, has definitely increased!

2. Do you like the color orange? Would we find this color in your home? Your wardrobe? Peach-pumpkin-tangeringe...your favorite shade of the three listed?

It's a colour I can take or leave.  I think I have 1 "orange" top in my wardrobe and I do have orange cushions on my brown sofas but of the 3 shades I'm definitely more in favour of peach.

3. October 28th is National Chocolate Day. What's the last chocolate something you tasted? On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being out of this world delicious, how would you rate it? 

One of these and they are definitely a 10 on the scale.  I try and limit myself to one at a time - but I don't always succeed lol.

4. Life is like a box of chocolates or so says Forrest Gump's mama. Would you agree? Aside from the pandemic fallout tell us one way this saying has played out in your life. 

 

Well we had no idea whether our youngest son and his wife were having a boy or a girl in either of their pregnancies, each one was a surprise.  (Come to that all my children were surprises - no gender reveals from scans in those days!)

5. As October winds down tell us three things you loved about the month we're bidding adieu. 

• We got to meet Grandson #5, Miles, before restrictions made it impossible.  Those precious early cuddles may have to sustain us for a while.
• Getting more settled into our new home.
• Exploring our local surroundings.
  

6.  Insert your own random thought here. 

Well despite the sadness mentioned above, and the current restrictions, we are actually doing ok.  We have much to be thankful for.

 

Friday's Fave Five - 23/10/20

Thanks to our host Susanne for reminding us to be mindful each week and find five things to be thankful for. You can join in by clicking on the link below:

Living to the the Story  

1)  Refund from the gas supplier - we had overpaid on our old house and a cheque arrived in the post this week.  Hopefully this house will be cheaper to heat but time will tell.

2) A visit with Grandsons Rory & Vinny - we had them and their Mummy and Daddy here for Sunday lunch last week - they hadn't seen the house.  Rory loved running around the circuit of living room to dining room to kitchen to hall and....repeat!  We had to close some doors lol.

3) People who work with the homeless and those in need - there is a couple from our old area that collect unwanted clothing etc for a homeless project and help out with a food bank.  We had some stuff to get rid of and we thought it might be too far for him to come but he was collecting other stuff nearby so he came to us on Monday and took some clothes and some food.  The amount of people relying on charity and food banks is increasing all the time.

4) A visit with Grandson Nathan - his Mummies had a hospital appointment so we looked after him on Tuesday.  We played a lot of hide and seek and we also joined in with Cosmic Yoga for kids.  Well we tried.  I didn't think I was being particularly energetic, mainly using my arms and upper body and not jumping up and down but my Fitbit recorded it as a 15 minute aerobic session lol.  I'll take that!

He's getting so grown up looking!

5) A good use for social media - our dishwasher has developed a fault that requires expert intervention so I searched within our local Facebook groups and found several recommendations for the same repair guy.  He's coming on Monday. 

Today I'm also thankful that we managed to get the things from IKEA we've been waiting for which means tomorrow we can (hopefully) get the units etc assembled and make some progress on tackling the last boxes we have to unpack.

It's the little things.....

Speaking of which can't leave out Grandson Miles:

 

Or big brother Noah:

Have a good weekend all.

 

Progressing

Today has been a tiring but productive day.  Good to see progress!

I was up fairly early to take delivery of our online shop.  We spent yesterday evening planning our meals etc so hopefully we now have everything we need for the next week.

After that I got some  washing done and then I tackled the garden.

This is the view looking out of the kitchen or dining room window.  You can see I've got the bird feeder set up now and our bench is now where it will enjoy some sunshine .

This is looking back at the house.

And this is looking down the side of the house to the other section of garden.

I spent time tidying the paved area at the end today and cutting back the lavender that is in the raised beds in the corner.

Looking much better!  And one thing I like about this London borough - we have a brown waste bin for garden and food waste.  They only collect fortnightly but so much easier than having to book it as we did in the old house.

These pictures show the chaos that still remains in the studio.  I've now got the exercise bike from my daughter but there are also ordinary bikes in there and gardening equipment.

It's a mess but it will be good when it's sorted and it does look out onto the garden.  We've ordered a shed but it will probably be a few weeks before it's delivered and installed.

Once the shed is up we can move stuff out from here and the garage, then the ordinary bikes will be able to go into the garage and we'll be a little bit more organised.

Another couple of things I've achieved have been sorting out the alarm system and one of our TV sets.  

We had the alarm system checked and it's all working fine.  We can even alarm parts of the house during the night which is reassuring.  I don't feel unsafe in the house but the layout is more vulnerable than our old house so the alarm is definitely a plus.  I even managed to program one of the keyfobs into the system today.  We discovered one of the fobs wasn't working and assumed it was the battery.  I changed the battery but it still didn't work.  It looked fairly new compared to the other fobs so I checked and found the system only had 3 fobs set up but I was able to set the 4th fob up without setting off the alarm!  Progress.

As for the TV, well that was a bit embarrassing.  It was working fine in the old house but seemed dead here.  We changed the fuse in the plug.  We located the remote.  We found the alternative buttons on the side of the TV but nothing seemed to work.  After speaking to a repair shop and planning to get it looked at I decided to do one last check for any other buttons!  Just as well I did.  There was a small on/off switch hidden away that had obviously got into the off position during the move.  I'd have felt really stupid if we'd dragged it all the way to a repair shop for that lol.

Social media and the internet can be a pain at times but it can also be useful.  Thanks to a recommendation from a local group I've also got a repair guy coming to look at our dishwasher which has gone wrong.  I did try and check for any obvious problems with it but according to the instruction manual the light that's flashing indicates a problem that needs to be fixed by an expert.  That I am not!