Champagne Lifestyle on a Lemonade Budget - 2021

liberty_lily

Champagne moments here...

Despite the less than perfect weather on Saturday we made good progress with the building work over the weekend, removing all the old blocks to one side of the existing extension frontage as well as the badly built 'wall' above the window. It's now temporarily boarded till we can get on with the next stage which involves more stone removal, followed by taking out the doors and windows.

I can't wait to get the huge wall of glass in place, but imagine that won't be happening for a few weeks as DH will need a long weekend for us to tackle it 😉

While it rained on Saturday we began working on plasterboarding the kitchen chimney breast and I've ordered wallpaper samples in readiness for when it's plastered 🙂

Also treated the outbuilding to a couple of hurricane lanterns (£10 each, marked down from £25 each) in Homesense 😀

Beautiful blue skies today, so I've been catching up with the gardening...

Rodgersia


Rosa Mundi 

sugarbaby125

Phoebe those are  beautiful flowers 

sheilavw

Well done to your Son Katkin, very well done

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments:

On Tuesday I went to the music appreciation session at Blackfriars Settlement. It was a very well attended session and all of the participants were able to choose a song of their choice. Some people chose to introduce their song and explain why it had special meaning for them. Some of us, got up to dance whenever we felt like it. I left the group feeling very relaxed and happy. 

On Wednesday I went to the mental health and wellbeing discussion group at Blackfriars Settlement. It was a lively, interesting discussion and once again I came away feeling very uplifted. 

Wednesday2000

katkin said:

My son, after dropping out of uni returned after a bit of growing up and work experience, has just graduated with a First Class Honours degree in Computing Science. I'm bursting with pride! He's dyslexic so the academic side wasn't easy for him but he is apparently very, very good at programming. He now has a guaranteed place for 2 year as an intern with a "major bank" with time allowed for working abroad.

Congratulations!

Wednesday2000

I have had a couple of nice days out this week. I went to see two films with my husband, Jurassic World and the new Top Gun film. Both were very enjoyable! Tom Cruise looks insanely good for his age in that film. He is almost 60 years old!

We also ate out at two restaurants and visited a local park and went to the beach.:)

liberty_lily

Great champagne moments 😊

Yesterday mine was getting our empty pots planted up (although it was so hot I had to keep popping inside to cool down - aka watch a bit of tennis!) using a mix of things previously moved from elsewhere in the garden and inexpensive, colourful perennials from B&M/a local independent nursery. Total spend on plants  - less than £60 😁

The pots themselves have been collected over the years - some we've had since the early noughties (the partially glimpsed giant urn in the first pic is one of a pair - ebay finds in 2015 for just £50!), whilst the bust was a carboot buy about 15 years ago and the metal jug was a gift from a neighbour shortly after we moved here in 2018 😉

Here's pics of a few....

sugarbaby125

Phoebe, your urns  bust are fitting receptacles for your gorgeous flowers    The bust is great.   You and your husband must work incredibly hard in your garden to have it looking so great. Your hard work is amply rewarded 

liberty_lily

sugarbaby125 said:

Phoebe, your urns  bust are fitting receptacles for your gorgeous flowers    The bust is great.   You and your husband must work incredibly hard in your garden to have it looking so great. Your hard work is amply rewarded 

Thank you so much, Sugarbaby ☺️ It's a full time job really, especially as we started with a blank canvas (albeit one smothered in rampant weeds and bounded by huge trees/overgrown laurels)...so it's a good thing I have plenty of time on my hands 🙂

My DH does all the 'grunt' work so I'm indebted to him as there's lots I couldn't tackle on my own (and there's loads of areas we've not touched yet that I don't share here, lol 😂).

It's actually very challenging because of how different the conditions are here compared to where we were used to living in the south of England 🙄

sugarbaby125

My Champagne moments today:

Yesterday I had the monthly 4 hour Saturday session with Ola for Neighbourhood Voices from 11am to 4pm with a 1 hour lunch break from 1pm to 2pm. It was a really interesting session. We had to write out 7 duologues to start the session off. Ola gave us the 1st line, then we just had to get writing. Then we had to choose one of the seven to continue writing until it became a scene from a play. 

We did work in small groups about 2 plays that were chosen for us to peruse in our lunch hour. The small group work was very enlightening and interesting.    

I was feeling extremely exhausted but somehow, I managed to make intelligent conversation about the 2 plays and not nod off to sleep.    

In the evening I went to a free concert by The Pegasus Opera Company in Brixton Library and it was such a fantastic concert. All of the soloists and the community choir were insanely talented.