Cheery's country living adventure

Cheery_Daff

Thanks all, lots of good suggestions there! On this occasion I'm more bothered about having something effective than something natural... although apparently you do need to be slightly careful with terrazzo because of the cement in them - you're not meant to use anything acidic or with bleach in. Most vexing. I think sanding and refinishing might be the way to go but investigations will continue, and I'll follow up on all your suggestions, thank you!

Having a slow morning today. I made blueberry pancakes, and wrote a blog post while watching Escape to the Chateau. I'm meeting a friend later to go round some local open gardens which I'm very much looking forward to. Shame it's not sunny, but at least it's not raining! 

Last day off work today. Need to spend some time restoring order in my study - it's become a complete dumping ground for blankets and washing and stuff being moved from elsewhere, and I've been sewing, so there are bits of fabric and thread everywhere too. Need to tidy up! 

On the plus side I'm only working for two weeks before I'm off for another fortnight

Karmacat

Hurray for more holiday - and hurray for the amazing suggestions from our lovely mse people, that's brilliant.  I have no idea about any of it, sadly     Though I too enjoy a good chateau break at La Motte Husson

Cheery_Daff

Well I have had a lovely last day off work! Friend and I did the local open gardens - well, I think we managed 7 out if about 38 😂 gosh it was exhausting! Next year we're definitely doing the whole weekend. Had a lovely lunch in a little cafe as well, and a nice chat with a couple of the residents at our final garden which was a care home. 

Lots of ideas for our gardens! Top of my list of projects for next year is a wildlife pond, and some kind of trickling water feature, even if it's just a small solar fountain thing. Also some more permanent seating areas (rather than just carting the same seats round the garden to different places) and making a bit more use of garden 'rooms' - sectioning off different areas and making them feel different. 

In the meantime though I've been on my hands and knees again weeding under the fruit bushes. I've made good progress, and got a few more nettle stings 🙄😂 hoping to get it finished doing a bit at a time after work this evening and then scything the rest once I get past the fruit bushes. 

Had a good clean and tidy in my study, put some washing away, and now we've been watching a bit of the Olympics. A good day! 🥰

hb2

Cheery, I do love your tiles and hope you are able to get them cleaned up. 

It's much cooler here too, temps now down to low 20s. Singing went well on Friday and we enjoyed sitting in a friend's garden yesterday afternoon, playing Mah Jong and chatting - it would have been too hot to do that at the beginning of the week.

BTW, yes, it was only my feet in the MRI machine for so long but I was still glad to get out (especially as they had taped my feet to foam blocks to try and stop them vibrating along with the machine).

Cheery_Daff

First day back at work isn't going too badly. My main important task of the day was cancelled while I was off, so it's been a more leisurely start than I'd imagined, which is nice! I did an initial pass through emails in the cafe 😁 Now going through systematically and bunching tasks together - ticking off quite a few things which is good.

I've done some MSE things today too! Retrieved the slow cooker and made green lentil and kale soup using last year's home grown kale from the freezer. There's enough for tomorrow (and maybe the next day) as well. And I've put some aubergines in the oven to soften now so I can make a nice tea with them later.

Finally got round to contacting the AA - they persuaded me to sign up with the promise of refunding the fee I'd paid to have them fit a battery, but I've not received the refund, and it's been over a month now. Just as I'm writing this I've had a horrible feeling that maybe they didn't actually charge the call out fee, just the charge for the battery... but that wasn't clear if so, so I'll let them figure it out and let me know. That'll going the kitchen fund if/when it appears.

Nothing else MSE to report I don't think!

Cheery_Daff

Aubergine Parmigiana (or however you spell it) in the oven - enough for tomorrow's tea too and a nice green salad (well, spinach and cucumber) to go with it. 

Cancelled Amazon Prime - I didn't have it at all and the cheeky devils started charging for it again last month - I read somewhere that the same thing had happened to someone else too Sadly I accidentally ticked the free delivery box on something without realising what had happened so I'd used it. Anyway, it's running til 21st August now and then will stop (well, it best had stop or I'll be quite cross!) Cheeky blighters. 

Swimming this evening - making good use of my £10 gym membership for July. I will renew it, at least for August and probably September too - I'll see how it goes once work starts getting busy again though. I'm enjoying it for now though! 

Cheery_Daff

Morning MSE chums. Not a particularly MSE day as we are off to the vets later for Rusty's check up 🙄 so lots of driving and a vets bill.

However we did just score a four poster bed on Freegle 😮😂😂 Turns out it's from someone we had some garden stuff from a few years ago - once I'd sent the initial message it connected to all the other ones, and they chose us to give it to 😁

Goodness knows what it's like - the pictures are rubbish and it's already dismantled. It's modern and metal, not old and wood and ornate sadly, but we'll be able to hang fairy lights off it at least 😁

In our old house we slept on a mezzanine platform, so when we moved here we didn't have a bed until Mr Cheery built us one from old bits of wood 😂 If this one is exciting then we'll have it in our new bedroom and the handmade one can stay in the guest room. Very exciting! 😂

Karmacat

That *is* exciting, Cheery!  You're a good knitter, you can do socks, I bet you can make some wonderful decorations  

rtandon27

Ooo - a four poster bed - how grand!

Cheery_Daff

Disaster on the bed front - it won't dismantle enough to fit in the car 😮😂 Mr Cheery is so used to being able to fit ANYTHING in our old car, that he just couldn't conceive of something not fitting. The pictures were rubbish but we thought the sides dismantled - turns out they don't, so we'd need something big enough to get the entire rectangle of each side of the four poster in... 🙄

What a palaver. Mr Cheery is investigating whether we can persuade a friend with a van to come over at the weekend. I did suggest hiring one, but he reckons the bed isn't really worth the cost of the hire fee...

Anyway the man was very nice 😂 and is happy for us to take our time and figure it out. I was proper embarrassed but fortunately on this occasion Mr Cheery made all the arrangements so I'm staying out of it!