Mundane March

You can correctly assume from the title of this month's entry that March hasn't been very exciting. Not that each month should be exciting, but I'd like to think that I do something at least eventful each month that keeps my readers interested so that I don't resort to reporting about how much broccoli I have consumed the past week (not enough, if you were wondering). This lack of activity is probably also why I am really stretching this entry to the last possible time to post... I've been hoping to give you some substance.

As I sit here thinking of what to say, I have had some events this month, so I guess I am spoiled in that exciting events do happen to me, maybe just not this month. Let's see...

Work has been extraordinarily busy (still in Reading). Something that is fabulous about the UK and employment law is the holiday entitlement. Forget your basic two weeks, Canada... the UK has four weeks of basic entitlement. I've had more days off than I have known what to do with this year. Down side is that they don't pay it out to you if you don't use it; really, it's use it or lose it.

The weather has been quite mild, and another thing that is lovely about the spring in England is that there are daffodils that pop up everywhere. The harsh winter (stop laughing) is apparently good for them, and bad for our yuccas. Yes, I have started to learn a little bit about our garden. We had two yuccas, which look(ed) sort of like palm trees on the base with spiky fronds on the top, that haven't survived the winter. From what I hear from some of you in Canada, you are also barely surviving the everlasting winter. Again, not really sorry that I am here in the mild and not still wearing my snow boots.

Apart from mowing grass and cutting back all of the dead shrubs, there hasn't been much progress with our house this month. I last left you with a half painted hall/stairs/ landing and we have since finished. Seven litres and three coats of Labrador Sands 3 later, I have managed to paint every nook and cranny in this area. This did take a certain amount of bravery (balancing on top of the banister above the stairs) and restraint. I do suggest using a standard paint colour, not a foofie one off of the cards if you intend to use more than one large can of paint. Reason being, we bough the 5-L can of the foofie paint and mixed it with another 2.5-L can when the 5-L was half-way finished as recommended by the paint specialists in Homebase (Rona). Unfortunately, the new mixed paint was about one shade lighter than the first coat-and-a-half. Then after the whole lot was painted with a second coat, I had a few touch-ups to do... thinking that since both paints had already been mixed, I was in the clear to splotch it on where needed. Nope. The next day that's exactly what I had- lighter-still splotches. After a very tedious third coat, it all looks lovely. Well, the hall/stairs/landing look lovely. The kitchen is still a disaster.

Newly assembled Ikea furniture.

Craig and I did manage to get away this month to see a band, which was a welcome treat. Elbow is a band from Manchester; the best way to describe them is probably nu-yuppie-rock. They are pretty mellow (some say depressing, but we disagree when you actually listen to the lyrics), lyrical, and use other instruments than your standard guitar, base, keyboard, and drums. The best thing about them is Guy Garvey, the lead singer, who has an absolutely amazing voice. We were worried to see the band at the arena they were at because the acoustics are generally quite terrible and some of the sound from the band was lost in the room, but Guy's voice was impressively strong and worth every penny hearing it live. The gig was entertaining and classy; they were wearing suits, there was a large LED chandelier, mirror ball, and they were generally entertaining. They mainly played songs from their newest album, Build a Rocket Boys, which is not our favorite, but a grower, and Guy made everyone feel welcome and comfortable while they played. If you do want to listen to their stuff, I recommend you start with Cast of Thousands. http://www.elbow.co.uk/

On that note, I shall leave you. Next month will be more exciting; and I actually mean exciting as I will hope to have some news about our kitchen. Also, we are going to Snowden over Easter with a group of friends to climb the 'mountain'. I am not really sure how mountain-y this mountain really is, but I have already made a race of it and told everyone that I will be the winner, even though that's not meant to be the point.

I hope that winter finds you well, sorry ;) Kristyn

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Once again, apologies for the tardy post... but when you see the pictures of my NEW HOUSE you will understand why I haven't had much energy to punch out a blog entry. So yes, before I tell you all about my new house, I'd like to summarise this past year...

It's been wonderful! My big plan was to post an entry on my one year anniversary of being away (December 17th) and go through everything that I have achieved.

Check:
Move to England with hubby

Find jobs before March (both successful and found jobs in January)

Find a job in Sensory Science... for a market leader, at that

Join the Camping and Caravanning Club

Visit Camping and Caravanning Club sites

Complete a half marathon

Find a house

Buy a house

Bonus items for this year were:

Dad coming to visit

Trip to the south of France (although we were rained in half way through)

Camping in Dorset and doing the coastal walks and fossil finding

Cider Festival in Ross-on-Wye with the girlies

Faye and Dean Healy's wedding (triple bonus points for superb black and white coordination and for their portable photo booth... p.s. I am currently typing with one hand as my other hand is conveniently tied behind my back by the new Mrs. Healy)

Matt and Nicky Mills' wedding (fancy dress= bonus bonus points)

Seeing my friends every week

Picking up some sort of strange accent... for those of you that have spoken to me on the phone, I do apologise... I pick up the swing of the accent of the people I'm around easily. Many fellow Canadians have pointed this out to me and if I engage in enough conversation (about an hour or more) then I snap back into my regular accent of over accentuating my A's. Unfortunately I don't sound posh; it seems to be some mix of Brum-accent and Canadian which often ends up sounding soft Irish to other UK nationals.

Goals for 2011:

Finish up our house (hopefully by the spring)

Keep on camping

Work nearer to home

Complete two half marathons

Get home to Canada

Host Christmas invited (let me know if you are coming so I can prepare accordingly)

Complete blog entries on time ;)

Now, for our house...

After much searching (somewhere around 40 viewings), we found a house that we liked. First impression was that it was bigger than any of the previous houses that we viewed. It's on a good street (in a cul-de-sac), a 10 minute walk from the train station, with a big garden (possibly for chickens), has a field behind it (with no scope for development in the future), two big bedrooms and one small, a big sitting room that has a patio door that opens to our garden, dining room facing the front with bits of red glass in the windows, big enough kitchen, and two loos. This latter point is important to me. Many of the houses in England only have one, and when you have grown up your entire life with the option of two toilets, it is not very nice when there is only one.

We both decided that it was somewhere that we could see ourselves living for more than a few years and decided to put an offer in with the estate agent. After a bit of battling, our offer was accepted and everything went ahead. Things work very differently here; from the date that our offer was accepted, it took three months before we actually had the keys. We had pre-arranged our mortgage, so that wasn't the issue... it was all of the legal mumbo-jumbo that goes on to check that there aren't any issues with the property in regards to how it was built, who the previous owners were, etc. It all turned out okay in the end and we received the keys on the 20th of December. Merry Christmas to us!

Since the 20th we have been busy ripping things down every single day. each room needs redecorating as the previous owners had lived in that house for at least 60 years from what we can tell from the land titles, and probably only decorated it twice in that time. Have a look for yourself:

Your/ guest bedroom

Sitting room with the previous owner's furniture.

Our garden/ back yard with a patio and back decking (wine garden)

Our fireplace after Craig took it out= future home of our log burner

Kitchen with wood panelling. This now looks like a DIY disaster. All of the wooden panelling and tiles have been ripped out.

Our bedroom, post decorating.

Bathroom upstairs. This will be the very last thing that we tackle.

In the past 11 days we have taken all of the wallpaper off the walls (except for in YOUR guest bedroom) and our office. We have ripped out the fireplace to install a log burner and Craig and his mates have started ripping off the wood panelling in the kitchen which has exposed some dodgy-DIY building work. We know that we need a new boiler and to upgrade our central heating system (boiler heats the hot water in the pipes which flow to the radiators throughout the house). We have some electrical sockets that need to be looked at and our fuse board is ancient (fuse wires). We have since decorated our bedroom and should have the dining room decorated by the end of the weekend. Apart from those major jobs, we will keep on getting on with the decorating because it is the cheapest and easiest thing to do. All that said, our abode won't be taking guest room bookings now until March, but seriously, we welcome any of our friends (and friends of friends) to come and stay with us if you fancy a trip to the Isles (http://www.canadianaffair.com/).

I hope that you, too have had a wonderful year. Merry belated Christmas and Happy New Year!