Last weekend - pilgrimage to Bruges

Last Saturday, 1st October, Mum, Honor and I joined a group from our church and from the catholic churches of Canterbury and Herne Bay on a pilgrimage to the beautiful city of Bruges in Belgium. Honor and I had to get up very early, 5.30 am to be on time for the coach which took us on the ferry to Calais, France and on to Bruges. As I said, it was the 1st October and it was, well, very hot! Pushing 30 degrees in fact which made the coach journey a little unpleasant. I didn't think the air conditioning was up to much!
But once off the coach, we had a very relaxing time browsing the many chocolate shops and having a nice, leisurely lunch before gathering at a chapel for Mass.

I bought some nice handmade wooden toys to bring home for Hope and Henry, though everything was very expensive.

This weekend we are doing a lot of clearing out and moving the children's bedrooms around and Hope will soon be going into a room of her own. I'm looking forward to being able to decorate that! So far it has been hard work and the state of Henry's room has had Hubby rather displeased. I'm glad to say that the weather has got seasonally cooler, though a pleasant day has been forecast for tomorrow, so perhaps we'll do something nice then.

A bit more decorating.

Some of our wallpaper needed tidying up a bit.

Here are the walls after Hubby stripped off the old wallpaper.

And here is the new wallpaper. It is very similar to the old one, I know. I saw it in a magazine (I shouldn't keep looking at these magazines!). It's from B&Q. When I got to the shop, I wasn't sure about how it looked on the roll, but I decided to take a chance with it, after all, it's for quite a small area. But once put up I think it looks very pretty.

I repainted the fireplace, too, with my posh paint!

Lazy Blogger Award

If there were such an award, I'd win it. I have a fair bit of blogging, catching up to do. This post is just about our latest kitchen update. Hubby had to get the ceiling repaired after a leak left a big hole. So we decided to add a new cupboard, worktop, sink and these metro tiles that I got with my Tesco Clubcard vouchers. I've hung a couple of hearts made from buttons, too, which I think are very nice. I'd like to say that I made them myself, but I didn't. They are from Obidosh. I've painted the kitchen grey! A bit different for me, but I think it looks nice, broken up with all my paraphernalia!

Happy Birthday to Boo!

On Saturday it was little Hope's second birthday.

She had jelly babies for breakfast!
And we bought her this little tea set.

She enjoyed her party a lot more than she did last year. She revelled in all the attention and ate lots of cake!
Ah. What lovely girls!

The weather here has been quite nice too. I've been growing some seeds on my windowsill and today I planted out a few rows of peas. I start most things off indoors as I don't have much luck with sowing things straight into the ground. However, I have sown some spring onions and radishes straight into the veg patch as they were successful last year.

We have plans to make a simple outdoor kitchen this summer. I am inspired by the Nigel Slater 'Simple Suppers' programme where he is often cooking delicious recipes outdoors at somebody's allotment or veg patch. At the moment I have sown peas, broad beans, runner beans, swiss chard, perpetual spinach, beetroot, salad leaves, spring onions and radishes. Little Hope has helped with a lot of the planting. She has been learning to spoon compost into a container at her Waldorf Steiner toddler group.

We have plans to fix up our indoor kitchen too. I don't know if I mentioned it, but a pipe in the bathroom leaked recently causing damage to the ceiling. So that needs repairing and I think we shall be retiling and putting in new worktops and sink too.

Posh paint.

One of my guilty pleasures is flicking through the pages of Country Living magazine. Nice pictures. Very nice houses, though I think a lot of the owners spend silly money on their things. In one picture I was admiring somebody's tablecloth... until I saw that the fabric was listed as being £156 per metre!!! Perhaps it was a misprint. Surely no-one would spend that amount just to have gravy and ketchup slopped all over it? The other thing about these houses is nobody ever paints with anything other than Farrow and Ball, do they? I roll my eyes every time I see 'walls painted in Farrow and Ball something or other'. Surely B&Q one coat would do the job just as well?
Last week I decided that enough was enough. The wardrobe in the hall was too dark looking and the front door - just too dirty looking and perhaps a coat of light, cream paint would sort it out. Browsing in Homebase, I decided to skip past the value brands and give 'Crown's Period Colour - Parsonage Cream' a try. I have to say I'm quite pleased with the result. It does seem to have a nicer finish than the usual paint I buy and people have commented on how much nicer the hallway looks.

So I have decided that as I don't really like this fire surround, it is too dark for the room, I'm going to paint it. I was going to get another colour from the 'Crown' range but was drawn towards the Farrow and Ball range on the shelf next to them. Is it really worth the extra few quid? I wondered. Well, I'm about to find out!