Our basement is in total disarray - as in, there are no walls left. Our very nice builder Paul (I'm not just saying that to butter him up; he is genuinely very nice!) spent all day yesterday hacking off the plaster to reveal some very iffy looking brick walls underneath. He's coming back tomorrow to plaster and then on Sunday to finish it up. So. Very. Excited.

Of course, the basement/bedroom won't be finished on Sunday. There are still the stairs to do. And the floor. And the cupboards. And the painting. Only then can the decorating start, though I've already got ideas. Actually just the one idea, since it's a very small space and so it has to stay really simple to keep from being too junky. So far all I've planned is making a curtain for the little window - a single panel of unbleached linen with a light lining. Woo-hoo, huh?

Since I'm putting my brick-and-mortar decorating on hold for the moment, I've been finding alternative outlets for ornamentation, like these lovely wallpapers:

Frankie magazine - an Australian fashion/lifestyle mag with a wispy, ethereal, retro kind of aesthetic. I'm currently rocking the embroidered kitten on my laptop.

Fossil - very retro, sporty/nautical, sort of Team Zissou vibe.

V&A Shop - and just one more reason for Facebookers to "like" the V&A shop - lovely vintage fabric wallpapers.

The Graphics Fairy - Not wallpaper, but another place to find pretty things for your computer. Who wouldn't love an old timey engraving of, say, a long-tailed field mouse?

Springtime

We have so much stuff going on at the moment and in the immediate future, including some actual "work" on the house coming up very soon. In fact, I'm supposed to be clearing out the basement at this very moment - so, of course, I finally feel moved to write a blog post. Funny, huh? I don't actually mind clearing the basement; I have already made very good progress and boxing things up is a lot like playing with my fabric and craft supplies. But blog posts take place upstairs, which means that I can be a) playing on the internet, b) eating chips and salsa, and c) watching Ace of Cakes, all at the same time. Multi-tasking is fun!

I am very excited about impending home improvements. We've been doing bits and pieces in the garden and it's really gratifying to see the change - there's a very good "effect to effort" ratio. I spent £20 at the garden centre up the road and a month later everything is still alive and flowering. Nice! And it's been agreed with the other freeholders to paint the front of the house! I am so happy about this, because lots of other houses along the street are freshly painted while ours...has a plant growing out of the 2nd floor window ledge. I think the new paint will smarten things up, so that the exterior gives a better indication of the cuteness inside.

The biggest project (from our point of view, since painting the house is obviously a pretty big undertaking but not one in which we will have any direct involvement) is getting our basement sorted out. It's damp, so a very nice man named Paul is going to chip off all the plaster, treat the walls with a liquid PVA and then re-plaster with a mixture which includes another damp-proofing agent. Then everything will be painted bright white. Sometime after that, we're going to put down a new floor, possibly a laminate as it turns out that the rubber flooring I wanted is not only difficult to keep clean but also really expensive. Then we're having the stairs re-done - at the moment they're just open steps with no risers - and having cupboards built in underneath. When all that's done, we're going to move our bedroom down there and turn the upstairs bedroom into an actual nursery. Granted, it will be a nursery with a futon in it. I would have hoped that by the age of, well, nearly 40, I'd be living a futon-free life, but sometimes things don't work out the way you imagine. And it'll be somewhere to sleep when we have guests and the rest of the time, a nice place to read stories.

But enough of my unrealised furniture-related ambitions. In addition to the home improvements, we're also just generally busy. I've gone back to work two days a week, while Matthew stays home with Astrid. She is getting very active and very sociable, so we have activities almost every day, which she really likes and which I am finding exhausting. She is growing, hitting lots of developmental milestones, and eats well - I never imagine I would peel and chop so many apples and pears. I don't really mind, though.

Ad Astrid Per Aspera

As I think many expectant parents do, I had a lot of ideas about how things would be with my baby, the birth, the blissful first few days and weeks at home, my speedy recovery and all the fun outings we'd go on. I did a lot of nesting in the run up to my due date, decorating the nursery corner of our room, as seen below:

We put up two picture ledges and I arranged and re-arranged the pictures on them. I hung up little dresses (including the two I made) and put all the neatly folded receiving blankets underneath. I arranged her toys and books on her little white shelf. I bought a kit and started trying to teach myself to knit from a pamphlet.

Then the due date came. And went. And then two more weeks went by with no sign of baby. The natural water birth at the birthing centre was abandoned for an induced birth in the labour ward. Then that turned into a forceps delivery in an operating theatre. But in the end, we got our baby. I also got stitches in a tender area, but that's not the point.

The point is that Astrid is here. She is lovely and sweet and very pretty and somehow contains all the love, hope, passion, faith, integrity and goodness that can be found in me, in Matthew, and in our families going back into the mists of time. She contains all these things and yet somehow magnifies them back to us. She is small and pink. Her mouth is a perfect rosebud and her head smells like heaven. She is a flower and a star and I love her very much.

Nesting

I've heard a lot about the nesting instinct and, from my own experience, I'd say it's real. In our case, it's taken the form of actual baby preparations like acquiring all the equipment (crib, pushchair, bouncer, carrier, etc), clothes, packing the hospital bag, etc, but also making some home improvements. It's sort of like how having a party can be the impetus for a good house cleaning and, I find sometimes, doing little decorating jobs you haven't got around to, but much more intensive. We have a new front garden gate, which is very similar to the old one but is better because it has a latch, swings open and closed, and isn't made of disintegrating rotten wood that breaks off whenever you touch it. Matthew and his friend Steve painted the shed, which was flaking pretty badly and looked grey, even though closer inspection showed that it was actually painted green. It's now a beautiful sage green that looks so pretty and fresh amid all the plants that I think we're going to have to start calling it the summer house - it just looks too good to be a shed!

Inside, we've rearranged and redecorated the bedroom, which used to be turquoise with red accents. Now it's a colour called "Whisper of Dramatic" - which you can be forgiven for not guessing is actually pale grey with a touch of lavender. Very calm and pretty. To go with the new walls, we've also got new bedding. This set is from Designer's Guild:

(That's not our bedroom - it's the photo from the packaging. Our front garden is looking good, but not that leafy and green.)

Then I went to Ikea the other day to get meatballs and a bedside table. I completely forgot the meatballs, but came back with two new sets of bedding. The first is sort of a Swedish toile and is so light and soft it's like sleeping on a cloud:
The second is a bit more colourful, but still manages to be restful enough to sleep on. Also very soft and luxurious:

We got rid of (i.e. donated to the charity shop down the road, who are probably getting tired of seeing us at this point in our nesting mania) all our other mis-matched or unloved bedding besides these new ones and a paisley duvet set from Monsoon Home. We also got a little chest that sits at the foot of the bed for storing the bedding. Every set has the right number of matching pillow cases and sheets - it's so grown up!

Spring Cleaning

We did most of our heavy-duty spring cleaning in March, in advance of my parents coming to visit. We are having some more houseguests (the DJs for Matthew's brother's wedding) next weekend, so that's a good excuse to do a few more things. Today Matthew painted our new conservatory door* and while, he had a brush in hand, also threw a lick of paint on the kitchen window sill. It is blindingly white and so pretty now!

I spent the day reading in preparation for starting a draft of my dissertation. I would much rather be painting, but had to confine my creative urges to making us an afternoon snack (toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches toasted on the George Foreman grill - yummy and easy to clean!) and changing my desktop wallpaper. I can't afford real Cath Kidston wallpaper, but these make a pretty good substitute...

*The conservatory door had to be replaced after we had an attempted break-in last November. The would-be burglars splintered the door frame but didn't get in. Then they climbed on top of the glass conservatory and kicked in the window to the flat upstairs, which has been empty for over a year, so they went away empty handed. That only made us feel mildly better, though, as it took three months for our insurance to sort out our door being replaced, during which time we got very, very cold!

Happy Easter

We've had a busy spring thus far, with lectures (but, alas, not assignments) ending in March and my parents visiting for 10 very busy days at the beginning of the month. After all that excitement, our Easter weekend has been very low-key. We celebrated by having hot cross buns this morning. They weren't one a penny (or even two a penny), but at 99p for four and half off the 2nd pack, they were still a pretty good deal.

That's a picture of our last one. Matthew is currently chowing down on it, toasted with butter (the bun, not Matthew).

Just because I wasn't writing doesn't mean I was doing stuff, so I plan to sprinkle catch-up photos throughout my upcoming posts. Today I've got a photo of our little Christmas tree. We spent Christmas at Matthew's brother's house this year. He and his partner live in London, only about a 25 minute bus ride away, but we made a 4 day mini-break of it. They are very good cooks and we ate and ate and ate. At one point on Boxing Day, I thought I was going to be physically ill from eating too much goose and cheese. I pulled through, though, and we had a wonderful time.

Since we were "going away" for Christmas, I didn't do much by way of decorating at home. I wasn't planning to have a tree at all, but eventually I just couldn't take it anymore and I got a little artificial tree at Argos for £7.49. It came with ornaments and lights and was insanely cheap, which I like, but the most intriguing thing is the weirdly 1980s theme: the tree is black and the ornaments are all day-glo neon colours. I don't understand it, but I really like it.

Of course, I match my gift-wrapping to the tree, even though we were taking them all to another house for exchanging. I found some very good paper - matte black at Habitat, dark purple with silver stars at Heals, and sequinned disco balls at John Lewis - and finally found a use for a silver jiffy envelope I've been saving for a couple of years. I was very pleased with the results.

The black tree was a lot of fun and got me thinking about some possible Christmas themes. I'm keeping my eyes open and if I can "source" the materials, it's looking like we might have a punk rock Christmas this year!

Summer Time Greenery

It seems that summer was finally really arrived. It’s been sunny and warm not just for a couple of days, followed by cold, grey rain, but for almost two weeks now! It was almost too warm last night for our duvet, but I’m reticent to do anything about it just yet. When it’s really warm, we take the comforter out of the cover and use the cover alone as a light bedspread. Several weeks ago, I mistook a warm spell for actual summertime and took the duvet off the bed. Of course, we froze for a couple of nights before I broke down and admitted to myself that maybe night time temperatures in late May do warrant a big fluffy duvet, even with the additional warmth of a wool blanket, my beloved brown blanket, Matthew and one or two cats.

Anyway, now it’s lovely and hot (not two words that normally go together in Texas, but work well in England) and the garden is lush and green. Our next door neighbour/gardener Rocco is working on the garden to a plan that exists only in his mind – and seems to change week to week, so my gardening has been confined to the conservatory. I don’t want to get in his way. I must say, it’s going pretty well. I have two out-of-control basil plants that I’m trying to pinch and trim into bushier, less awkwardly tall shapes, a bushy basil with mites, the convalescing orchid, three agapanthus plants that were originally a single plant given by our friend Jane as a housewarming present, another plant from Jane (I can’t remember what it’s called but it’s sort of twiggy) and some tomato seedlings. Oh, and a hot pink plastic watering can.

The bushy, mite-y basil is sequestered on top of the CD shelf, with the orchid, which doesn’t have much to lose at this point, and an agapanthus and at a (hopefully) safe distance from the tomato plants. Since this photo, I have divided the tomatoes into three pots – none have died yet! – and the basil has moved to the table.

The orchid isn’t up to much at the moment. I did some research and apparently dark green leaves mean that the plant could use more sunlight. This one couldn’t get more light unless it were under a spotlight, but it still doesn’t look too happy. I think I’m not giving it enough water. Or too much. Hard to say.

This is our new plant table, which provides space for more plants and hides the cat box! We were having a problem with the cat box getting a bit smelly in the warm conservatory. Since the conservatory doubles as our dining room, this meant we were mostly eating at the coffee table. However, covering the box with the table and table cloth has made a huge difference – as has a can of industrial strength air sanitizer. I’ve been looking for a table for some time and even considered getting my dad to build something, then break it down and ship it, but Matthew found a little flat pack table at Argos for about £12.99, we bought and assembled it together, and our lives were significantly improved, all in the space of a single Sunday afternoon.

Oh, and...

We're getting a new washing machine. Yesterday, I had a load of towels going when I heard a loud bang followed by loud thudding. When I got downstairs, I saw water streaming out of the machine. The drum had come off one of the springs that hold it in place. The machine is old and a bit rusty, so we decided to get a newer, better, more energy efficient one. We'd done some research on new washing machines last year before we moved in, so we ordered this year's model of our favorite from John Lewis today and it arrives on Friday. I am absurdly excited about this.

Weirdly, the new machine, with delivery and disposal of the old washer, costs £308. This is exactly how much I earned last week. Huh.