I've had a busy few days, and I'm back in work tomorrow. I don't want to go, I just want to relax. So 'meh'.
On Tuesday my parents came up and we got the last bit of the decking and garden done. For over a year my parents have been coming up and putting in hours of hard graft building the deck, putting on the railing, clearing the grass off the garden, cutting down the privet, and putting in a lot of plants. I've been there doing it too, but I have to admit my parents have worked far harder than I have. I don't know how many days it's taken in total, but it was a lot. It's been worth it though.
(This isn't the finished one, it's just to give you an idea, it's too dark to take pictures now. I'll update with a proper picture soon. I sometime wish that this picture was a true representation... there are 2 of me.)
Wednesday I decided to paint the bathroom. It was quite a dark blue colour, I loved the colour, but the window is so small, and the neighbours privet is really tall (look at the picture above) meaning we needed a light colour to brighten it up. It's also a problem because we have no windows on the landing and it's really dingy.
I got back from buying the paint to find that the Law of Sod had kicked in, and the neighbours were busy in the garden cutting the privet down. It was about 14ft tall, it's now down to ground level and our house is so much lighter. If only it was still summer, I'd have a sunny garden all day instead of just 1 hour in the morning and 2 at tea time. *sigh*
But I'd bought the paint so decided to carry on.
Except for the glossing, which will have to wait till Sunday, it's all finished...The only problem is, I'm not sure I like the colour. It's a pale blue, but not pale enough, I was wanting something a bit greyer, it's a bit icey. Porl thought I was joking when I told him... I wish I was.
So lesson learnt ALWAYS get tester pots. I'll either learn to live with it, or I'll be buying some tester pots in the next few weeks.
The other thing which happened on Tuesday is that my Dad gave me his camera (for the record, I do know I'm spoilt rotten.) He'd left it here accidentally a few weeks ago, so I'd played with it until the batteries died. It's far better than mine for many reasons, but the most important one for me is that it takes a lithium battery which stayed charged for ages, weeks if you don't use it. My old one took standard AA batteries which didn't last very long when you were using it, and still drained the power when it was turned off. Every time I wanted to take a photo of anything I'd have to go hunting for new batteries. Too much hassle for me, and the reason that most of these blog entries are dull and pictureless. Hopefully things will change now.
Lastly, thanks to my new camera, I have finally got around to taking photos of my charity shop finds from the past couple of weeks. I wish I'd taken part in the $99 thrift challenge
My first lot was from my new favourite shop Emmaus. This was my second visit there, to pick up the things I found on my first trip but could pay for because of a power cut. I skipped the furniture this time (well maybe a brief look) and spent over an hour going through all the books and bric-a-brac.
I got these books,
From the top down "Pope: Poems & Prose", "The Origin of Species", "The Divine Comedy", "The Faerie Queen", "An Inspector Calls", "Little Women" & "Course in General Linguistics".
What I love most is that a lot of these books are quite old editions. I hate new hardback books which are over sized, but I love old hardbacks which are easy to hold, and often have titbits of information about their previous owners.
I also got these great embroidery folders. It looks like a monthly subscription thing. 1 file has all the techniques and a lot of patterns for every time of embroidery you could imagine. The other file is transfers. Lots of transfers. There are 24 parts, each one made up of 2 A2 sheets of paper. I've been getting ideas for embroidery for a while but my drawing skills aren't what they were and new transfers are cheap. I'm a happy bunny.
I picked up some silver leaf shaped decorating transfers too. I won't be decorating with them, they're good for making cards.
All this lot, books, embroidery stuff, and transfers cost me the grand sum of £3.50! I love Emmaus.
Then on Thursday I was on a course in Hyde so during my lunch hour I found these materials.
I love the bumble bee fabric. Infact I bought some a few weeks ago in a different colourway which had been made up into covers for patio chairs.
Not very useful as they are, originally I thought of cutting them into patches. Now I have a big piece too I'll have to get my brain working.
No comments:
Post a Comment