It's like a holiday, but better

My mum arrived on Tuesday the previous week, the renovations finished on Friday and this week felt like a very chilled out holiday. Last few days I felt more relaxed than during most of the holidays I had since I became a mother – it is so nice to know that I have an option of sitting on the couch all day doing nothing. I suspect if I choose that option I would be bored in the space of 10 minutes, so with all the extra free time available to me I’m trying to finish few crochet and knitting projects and make a Waldorf-style doll for my daughter for the birth of the baby. To me having time to make things is even more precious and more energizing than having time to laze about.

I don’t seem to be able to resist the urge of making toys despite knowing that I’ll get frustrated by fiddly sewing bits. At the moment my daughter doesn’t even play with the dolls, but maybe it will change when there is a baby in the house, otherwise I'll have to play with that doll myself.

To practice making heads I finally got around to replacing a head for the doll I made two years ago. The original head had two newbie mistakes: the neck wasn’t thick enough resulting in ugly folds on the face and the head was also too long. This one has a proper neck, but is still slightly too long.

I did few more practice heads before making the big one for the 16 inch doll and now I have to make the decision on which body pattern to use from the ones in the Maricristin Sealey's book "Making Waldorf Dolls".

These are the two of the best heads together with the big one.

P.S. The photos of the new new bathrooms can be found on Flickr, but I think only the people, who saw the original bathrooms in the last few weeks, will appreciate the improvements to their full extent. I regret not taking the pre-renovation photos, though at the time it felt embarrassing to photograph something so ugly and falling apart.

Bathrooms

The bathroom renovations are going to start tomorrow. Not the best timing, but we can’t put it off any longer as we can only use the sink in the main bathroom – everything else is leaking/broken/about to disintegrate. The builder thinks that both bathrooms will be done by mid March. Fingers-crossed that there aren’t going to be any unexpected delays.

On Thursday it dawned on me that planning to wash baby cloths during the bathroom renovations is probably not such a brilliant idea and not wanting to leave it until the last minute I did silly number of laundry loads during the weekend. On the upside we all have plenty of clean cloths, bedding, etc and now I know that we don’t need to buy any baby cloths for at least first three months. Now I just need to figure out what we do need to buy. We aren’t exactly in denial that there are only seven weeks left until the due date, but somehow too busy with everything else to spend a lot of time thinking and preparing ourselves for labour/newborn. Maybe it is just how it is with the second (and subsequent) kids.

My mum is coming in two weeks time and before we put up the inflatable bed for her I decided to use the only big enough available floor space to block the shawl I finished knitting on the 1st of September (!). While blocking it I remembered why I procrastinated for so long – it is huge and there was hardly enough space and not enough pins to do the blocking properly. However, it is so soft and warm and the colours of Rowan Kidsilk Spray are lovely. I didn’t get around to taking any photos of it after blocking (weekend was gloomy and grey), but today I couldn’t resist snapping a quick shot of my own little matchstick girl or maybe babushka in training – love her miserable facial expression specially put on for the photo.

Lighter, cleaner, better

I think I discovered a cure for my bookoholism – painting a bookshelf was very time consuming and an oil-based paint gave me mild headaches and left me feeling slightly nauseous. But the pleasure of putting all our books up in the nice single rows somehow dulls the memory of the hours spent painting. The sight of the white bookshelf and the multi-colourfull & multi-sized books makes me smile. I am one of those people, who gets the desire to stroke the books when I pass by them.

We are acting like the downstairs renovations are finished, but there are still few little things to get done, like painting the skirting behind the refrigerator and making curtains.

I’ve uploaded some photos of the ground floor prior to renovations to Flickr, in case you want to see the changes for yourself.

Painting

Everynight after we put Katya to bed, we paint. Two coats of primer/undercoat and two coats of final paint on the ceiling, the walls, the skirting, the bookshelves. There is also sanding, masking and vacuum cleaning. So far only the ceiling in one room is completely done, as we can do only one coat per night. Therefore we'll have to continue next week and maybe the week after. But this weekend we are off to Birmingham for Festival of Quilts. It will be wonderful not to breath in the paint fumes for at least one night.

Short weekend

We were supposed to be preparing the downstairs walls for painting; but the sun was shining outside, the skies were blue and since rainless weekend summer days are rare in England we decided to spend the day outside. (there seems to be plenty of sunny spring & autumn workdays) After looking through my big bag of travel brochures and changing my mind few times I settled on going to the Hall Place & Gardens.

It was lovely to look around the House and to walk in the Gardens. Of course as always I took too many photos of the flowers.

In the evening we did prep the walls and will probably attempt to paint them over the next few evenings as my poor husband has to work tomorrow. And painting the walls with no one else around to distract a toddler is just asking for trouble.

Two weeks later

As of today we have a working fridge! And an oven (though I didn't try using it yet, there are too many controls - may have to read the manual)

After two weeks of odd food, Katya finally asked for peas. She loves frozen peas and good luck to anyone, who offers to heat them up - warm peas trigger bouts of loud screaming. After explaining my inability to produce frozen peas, we went in search of a place that has peas on their menu. No luck (to my horror I found out months ago that the local pub serves tinned peas with their fish & chips! yuck). But fortunately the local veggie shop had some fresh garden peas and they were met with enthusiastic approval.


Now I wonder how long it will be between Katya realizing that the fridge is working and asking for the frozen peas.

Renovations started

The builders (or Bodie Builder as Katya calls them, though she means to say Bob The Builder) started today. Bye-bye old kitchen! Bye-bye the wall, Bye-bye ugly carpet and ceiling. Bye fridge (I miss you already)!

1. Today: Morning, 2. Today: Late afternoon

Question to self: Why didn't we try all the various colours on the bit of the wall that was destined to be removed? (and we still have no idea what colour we will paint the walls)

Changes in the garden

On Saturday we physically exerted ourselves by walking around beautiful countryside. The next two days of the long weekend we worked in the garden. Today my whole body hurts, but at least there is some progress to be seen outside.