i can imagine.-The Jury is still out on whether i get these new foster pets yet.
My eldest daughter was suposed to be here by now - but there has been a disaster with passports and visas -and the seeds i bought are still in the packets as i just cant catch up with anything - although the later they come now, the better from a keeping warm point of view because my chimney has mysteriousely got blocked ( iam convinced now the carbon thingy monitor was not working and the reason i am so tired these days is fumes not old age and burning candles at both ends (although that would also create fumes) ) - so no heating. (theyre coming from south africa so anything below 25 is too cold) but this delay has of course given me more time to get the house ready and that has created an over ambitiousness that has got me in a mess, as in bomb site looking mess. -I finally finshed decorating the living room including painting the ceiling which i had not intended to do but had too once the walls were lighter as it looked a delightful shade of sulphur yellow - then the chimney -smoke blowing back into the room meant i had to do it again. ( that stove has been there for 7 years and never done this before it was waiting for me to paint the ceiling)
The kids room was definitely ready for a refresh so last weekend i figured half a day would do it - (given they do 60 minute make over in 60 minutes i thought half a day was realistic fool that i am )
They have a three year old little girl the others are all grandsons and age range 4 to 14 - so how do you decorate a room for such a mixed group - having pondered it for a while I decided i would decide once i had shifted the furniture round and resurected the cot bed
- too much thinking not enough action i told myself.
Its down to accessorising the paintwork will do, i told myself -
Then i pulled the wardrobe out and only then remembered i hadnt pulled it out last time i painted, still it wouldnt take long to touch up a corner - i told myself
and trotted off to get paint but it was the wrong colour and i only had silk left in the (almost) right colour - which i cant paint on the outside walls as it stops them "breathing" -
By now i had of course painted over the patch with the wrong colour thinking it would dry the right colour - it didnt and there wasnt enough left to do the whole wall - so i made the patched shape into a tree - which looked odd on its own - so i painted another tree - several in fact - so there,s my theme - sorted - but hand painting trees takes longer than i thought, especially if you are quite enjoying being creative with an entire room wall as your canvas - oh the freedom -
so now the older kids part will have birch trees with silhouted bird shapes and a couple of silhouetted deer (yet to be stuck on the wall) and the cot bed side will have a more childish (girly: sorry Paul) colourful owl decals that i bought on a whim yonks ago and never got round to using - in between the top branches of all these trees and on the ceiling will be luminous stars (1,000 of them yet to be stuck on - i,m thinking of having a kids party - here you are kids a once in a lifetime opportunity to put stickers everywhere jump up and down step ladders and not get told off
) and the bedding and curtains will be white with stars as well.
Sunday afternoon and i have got to the point i can put the cot bed together - so where are the bolts why arent they with it - being the organised person i am i have a drawer for such things and i even keep them in separate bags if theyre a set and her was a toymaster bag of likely looking bolts (how clever of me to store bolts for a cot in a child related bag) then i tried to figure it out, but it would not fit together in any combination.
At this point the eldest grandson has turned up and is wielding my drill and suggesting he just drills new holes and we cobble it with screws - ( tempting) but luckilly i refused to go along with that idea, and we went down to re-think it (you tube) -which didnt help - then he had a genius idea and we wondered how appealing the idea of an indoor beach tent and air bed would be to a 3 year old girl (in keeping with the forest theme) I went back upstairs to see if the tent would fit the space. and on the way up remembered in a rare moment of clarity, when i took the cot bed apart i put the bolts in the top drawer of my dressing table, opened it and there they were a set of bolts all neatly lined up - ( heaven knows what the other ones are off) -ten minutes later it was done - ( although i do still quite like the tent idea, certainly for the younger two, possibly three (but older than her) boys maybe four given it was the eldest ones idea - a campsite even. The cot bed is too small for them and probably for her too by the next time they are over)
so having lost so much time last weeend , in theory this weekend i am going to
paint the porch door,
sort the spare room for the adults (i really hope i dont find any unpainted bits)
sort the bathroom put up a new shower curtain,change the back kitchen/ utility room into an office as he will need to work while theyre here,
move everything around in the "proper kitchen/ dining room to make room for the stuff formerly in the above room and create a play area,
Hide all the bits of spare furniture and other junk behind a curtain in my room (curtain pole yet to be put up curtains yet to be sourced ) -
Find out if the battery strimmer will charge and if it does, cut all the grass
tidy up the garden generally,
move and re-plant a dozen rasberry canes,
forget the protected seedling stages and plant pea and bean seeds straight into raised beds (yet to be weeded) and cover them in jam jars which will hopefully keep mice and pigeons out and protect from frost
- and they call this weekend a bank HOLIDAY.