End of year round up

Since it's been two months since I last posted I would be very surprised if anyone out there is still checking in with me. It just seems that there has been too much to do in a day and something had to give - namely blogging. This also included reading my regular blog list and so I have to apologise to all my blog friends as well.

So a quick catch up. Finally we finished the dining area so we were able to tick that off the list.

Dining area

Our summer plan was to clear and knock down part of the garage/workshop and create an outside dining area. This building takes up far too much of the garden and has a really ugly collection of roofs. I did manage to do quite a lot of clearing but autumn was upon us before we were really ready to start demolition and we just couldn't face it so we changed tack. With just two bedrooms to do indoors we thought we would complete one before Christmas and the second between the New Year and Easter. Ho hum!

We cleared the room to this stage (meaning everything had to go into the last bedroom which is chaos)

and knocked all the plaster off the chimney wall and then put up our old friend - the insulation.

We decided the best thing in this room was fitted wardrobes and Andrew said I could have half the space! Before he knew it I had the tape measure and graph paper out and had designed bespoke storage for my shoes and handbags (and am still a little nervous that there isn't quite enough room). For reasons I can't quite remember the shelf unit had to be built separately and then fitted over the chimney breast. I helped Andrew put the thing together and was a little baffled when he kept saying that the shelves "had to be this way round". Surely if they were symmetrical it didn't matter? But there had been a few issues along the way and so I decided it would be best if I kept quiet. I even did so when it was up and I realised that the shelves weren't symmetrical. After a couple of hours Andrew asked if I had noticed something, and I confessed that I had. It turns out that he had made one side bigger that the other just for me and my shoes!

However work ground to a halt and this is where we are today with an unusable, half finished room.

Away from the house Andrew discovered a wonderful little cook book. We both like Indian food and realise that when (and it's such a big when at the moment :-( ) we get to France, Indian restaurants will not be quite so plentiful. So many Indian cooks books are way too complicated and seem to want you to use every dish and saucepan the kitchen cupboards hold. 'An Indian housewife's cookbook' by Laxmi Khurara is marvellous. Simple cooking but with the complexity of spices that we love - it's highly recommended.

My favourite - vegetable biryani

So we finally made it to Christmas and spent a lovely, relaxing day - just the two of us and Mortimer, by the end of it I think we all felt like Mr M!

Happy but exhausted!

I hope you all had a happy Christmas and best wishes for the New Year.