Well Halloween is almost here and so is the end of October and I cannot believe that there are only two months left of 2017!   The weekend flew by in a whirl of events and parties! (Warning Picture Heavy Post!)

Friday during the day I managed to get my house jobs done and some work too and Friday evening we went to a good friends, their Grandson’s 18th Birthday celebrations.  They have the farm across the valley from our home and they had a huge bonfire, fireworks and food.  It was a lovely evening although it started to get very cold, especially sitting on the hay bales!

The Bonfire

A selection of the fireworks

Saturday we managed to get some other jobs done and in the evening DH was out providing commentary and assistance to a local village who run their own Talent Contest each year.  Youngest was out too, so I had the enviable job of a basket full of ironing!!!

Sunday was this one’s Birthday and it had a “0” in so he was ignoring that fact, he didn’t mind the Birthday just not the number!!!!  Anyway we, Eldest, Youngest, Girlfriend and I took him out for Sunday Lunch!

This is Callow Hall near Ashbourne and I can vouch that they do an excellent Sunday lunch! 

We had drinks in the sitting room before lunch and had coffee here afterwards and it was a lovely day, very relaxing.  The above is the view from the front of the hall from the sitting room.  The weather was lovely and sunny although it dropped very cold in the evening. 

We got home at 5.00pm having left the house at 12.00pm and DH had a wonderful day.  He is also going out next Sunday too for another Lunch which Eldest and Girlfriend had bought him for his birthday. 

Saturday night we gained an hour back, although I usually think it is great this year I don’t seem to have felt the benefit!  I am going through another period of waking every night at about 3.00am or 4.00am so am constantly tired by the end of the day, which is silly when you think about it as you would think I would then sleep through but it does not!  Hey ho.

Finally, Treacle last night when I was getting ready for bed!  This was “you’ve been out all day and so I am not letting you into bed”!!!!  As you can see she is stretched almost the width of the bed!!  Needless to say I did move her, with some shoving and pushing so I could get in.  When DH came to bed she just moved!!!  Always the same, wheneve Daddy speaks !!!!!

I hope you all had a wonderful Weekend.

Hugs, Susie xx

Some very old posts ago I talked about our house which when we moved in was only eighteen years old but had a myriad of problems one of which was the lounge, now our sitting room, which was painted Sainsbury orange (for those of you who don’t know Sainsbury, it is a popular supermarket in the UK and their colours are BRIGHT orange!).  When we moved in the builders moved in with us and we moved walls around and took single glazed doors out and had all new windows etc in, you get the picture.

However as we started each job we found lots and lots of hidden problems like walls not sitting on joists, second hand heating system despite the previous owners having the house built new!  One of the main problems was that the bath was leaking into the kitchen as it was old.  When the builder took the old bathroom out he found that they had put the wrong floor in so we had a completely new bathroom put in.  However because of the height of the room and to get a shower in the bath had to be lowered which has now, after sixteen years, started to leak again, into the kitchen!!!!  So we now have to get that fixed and then the ceiling fixed where it has leaked!!!  I love my house but I can also hate it at times!!!!

I have done lots of errands today which is great but nothing else has got done (!) which is always the case.  Tomorrow is house jobs day and catch up on all the work I should have done today!  Compromise, compromise!!!!

Treacle has had a quiet day as I have been out and so has Youngest, which is a good thing as he is full of cold at the moment (!) It is a shame as it is his week off from College but isn’t it always the same when you are on holiday you are ill.  Hopefully he will get it over and done with so that at Christmas when he is off for three weeks he is fine.  I just hope he doesn’t decide to pass it on to me!

#TBT Picture today is the three of them in front of St Thomas’s Tower at The Tower of London from October 2005, obviously twelve years ago.  Youngest is six and Eldest is ten.  We had a lovely week in London during that Half Term and we went everywhere; the Science Museum, the London Eye, Houses of Parliament, Trafalgar Square, went to see “We Will Rock You” at the theatre, St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abby.  We were very tired at the end of it but it was great fun.

We have been to London quite a few times with the Boys over the years to stay and done different things each time, especially as they got older and their interests changed. 

I hope you are having a Terrific Thursday.

Hugs, Susie xx

Tower Bridge

Happy Friday everyone!!!  Yes we have survived another week and it has been hectic as always.  I have managed to get the Birthday cake made which is needed at the end of November (its a rich fruit cake) and I, wait for it, have made our Christmas Cake!!!!!  Over the weekend I am going to make the Christmas puddings too, so I am definitely ahead of the game this year. 

I have gone through our Christmas card list for friends and family and the business and sorted them out so I know how many cards I will need.  I will be sending DH up into the attic over the weekend to find the Christmas wrapping and see what I have left from last year in case we need any more of that. 

It’s been like this all day today here and Treacle has not been very keen to be outside.  We have another storm coming but I think the south are going to get it again more than us.  However they are forecasting that we might have a bad winter this year with lots of snow but I always take these predictions with a pinch of salt, like the BBQ summer we are supposed to have, which never happens!!  However it is definitely getting colder.

Next week Youngest is on holiday from college for a week as it is Half Term, which has come round fast!  Then it will be seven weeks before he is off for the Christmas break!!!  Oh boy when you say it like that it is not long!!!!

The weekend we have the second of the Championship evenings on Saturday and DH and Youngest are having their hair cut and hopefully Sunday we will be able to get the final jobs done in the garden.  We are hoping to trim the trees but can’t do that yet so that will be the final, final job!  After this the weekends start to become very busy with something happening every weekend, some I am looking forward to and some I am not but hey ho and then the headlong rush to Christmas.  I just have to remember to stop and smell the Autumn when it is this busy.

I hope you all have a wonderful Autumn Weekend.

Hugs, Susie x

Treacle having a siesta!

As we are coming up to Bonfire Night on November 5th I thought the TBT picture should be the Boys with sparklers!!!  This is from 2005 so Eldest was Ten and Youngest was Six!!

Talking about Clearing Out the things you don’t need created quite a few comments, a lot of which were don’t throw out anything really important which I would never do.  I think what all the experts were saying is just get rid of the rubbish.  My own experience with my Grandmother’s house is quite funny in some ways but not when DH and I were in the middle of it.

My Grandmother used to pay her bills in cash (she was born in 1904 so they always dealt in cash) so she would get the bill in the mail, she would then take it to whoever it was from and pay it in cash and then put the bill back in the evelope she had received it in, the receipt and sometimes the change!  So when she passed we had hundreds and hundreds of envelopes with bills and receipts and even some money, long out of circulation, in!  Of course we had to go through every one to make sure that there was not something important in it and it took us weeks.  DH went to the tip with two trailer loads of just paper.  I think that this is the sort of thing which needs to be sorted and not left.

However I did find something very interesting; I found the family bible.  It’s a big old thing with big brass catches on and in fact I must get it out and get a picture of it.  Anyway it was obviously given to my Grandparents as a wedding gift and it had their wedding details in.  Eventually we found all the family papers and I was going through them and I found my Grandparents marriage certificate which had their wedding date as 29th May 1929 but in the bible it said 29th May 1928!  Which meant that my Grandmother was already expecting my Mom when they married!!!!!!!!   I never knew and I don’t know whether my mother knew as she had already passed!!!  DH and I corrected it and also added our marriage to the bible.  Just shows you all those family secrets finally see the light of day!!!!

DH’s Dad moved from the family home to a sheltered accommodation and when he did we did have a big clear out then so when he passed the job was no where near as bad as with my Grandma! 

With out business we have to keep our records for seven years so each year they get put into clip boxes and as we put one in we take the oldest out and shred it all, so at least we are keeping on top of that.  The Boys have Keepsake boxes which have things in from all the years they were growing up.  They are all filed and labled and in the attic  although we have sorted some of their things our, with their help.  I kept every single book from all of their Primary and Senior school years so we whittled it down to just a few they wanted to really keep and have shredded the rest. 

There is a lot of stuff in the attic which I know I can get rid of but as I said the other day it needs a nice weather day to do it so I am planning it as part of the Spring Cleaning.  It will probably involve the whole house looking a tip for a few days whilst everything comes out but I think it will be a good job done. 

I used to collect Bookmarks, you know I love books, and I did have them displayed in frames down the stairs at our old home.  Originally I got them from places I visited which was great and then other people started to buy me them which was lovely but it was really for me to remember where I had been.  Eventually I stopped and when we moved I did not want to put them up, so they are all now stored in the attic still in their frames.  So I think I will take them out and put them in a scrap book, a lot smaller to store and get rid of the old frames.  Again something I can do, of course I am sure when I am gone and the Boys are having to deal with it, it will go in the donate pile but hey ho I liked them at the time and that’s the important thing.

So on that philosophical note I bid you a Thrilling Thursday.

Hugs, Susie xx