Worktops; how you miss them when they're not here.

All the worktops are in. We choose the plainest black granite available.

It has natural black inclusions when you look closely but none of the gold glints that are in most granites.

One section of the bench had a large (ish) chip at the back but the tiler has assured me that once the wall tiles go on it will not be visible.

Now the bench tops are in I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. It is only just a glowing spot in the distance but it is there :)

Let the Christmas Cheer Begin!

While Mr Bee has been away I have had to fill my time as best I could. Nothing like a spot of Christmas decorating to lift the spirits. I have told Mr Bee that he shouldn't complain as last year I put the decorations up the day before Halloween.

I have these four boxes of decorations, two trees (one six foot and one eight foot), a large wooden advent calender and various other odds and sodds in cupboards around the house.

I am doing a Christmas photo shoot in a few weeks so I need to make sure everything is just right.

Plenty of time to tweek; that's my excuse and I am sticking to it :)

Birthday Blooms

It was my birthday this week and look what arrived at my door.

Thanks Mum, they are just beautiful. The lilies smell divine and fill the lounge with their scent.

On the night of my birthday my Dad called for a chat. I had just hung up the phone when my sister, in Australia, called. It was some ungodly hour in the morning there and I could hear my niece and nephew watching morning cartoons in the background. We talked for nearly two hours.

I miss home so much sometimes.

A Morning Tea Surprise

Each Wednesday morning a group of my friends get together for a cup of something, a nibble of cake and a good old natter. It is two hours were all the worries of work and home can be put aside and we can just be people, not Mums or employees, just friends having a chat.

Today when I turned up for morning tea I had a wonderful surprise. The ladies had made it a special birthday morning tea for both myself and another friend who shares the same birthday as me. I was given a piece of the cake to take home so all the Bumble Bee'rs had some as well. I had to cut it into slices very, very carefully to ensure that they all had a piece of the rose.

There were gifts and cake and a wonderful feeling of being special. Mr Bee is away for twelve days in Singapore and Hong Kong 'selling' Guernsey to the Asian business market so I suggested that we wait and have a belated birthday lunch with the children when he arrived home.

As a result it didn't really feel like my birthday but thanks to my wonderful friends it does now.

Thankyou 'Wednesday Club' for all your kindness and friendship.

XXX

The casts are off and Hop-A-Long is off and running!

It is what is left of the 'cast shoes' B1 has worn for the last six weeks. I have been stapling and sticky taping them together each day in the hope they would just get him through; which they did, fortunately.

The stinky casts are gone and have been turned into slightly less stinky night splints. B1 will have to wear the night splints for approximately twelve months. We have an appointment to see a specialist who will measure him up for permanent ones so we only need to suffer the stinkiness for another few weeks.

I have been considering Febreezing his feet but I think will will hold off on that idea..........for now :)

When Elephants Attack!

Take one bookcase in the shape of a doll's house. Add three children who woke up cranky and in very silly moods. Make it 8.10am, five minutes before we leave for the school run.

Take one large Schleich elephant. Propel said elephant, at speed, down the slope of the doll house bookcase. Place youngest child's head directly under the speeding elephant. Add screaming and lots of it. Add blood, even more of it, covering both B3's hands, her shirt and her jumper. Fortunately she couldn't see the back of her head or there would have been alot more screaming.

Why do head wounds bleed so much? I know it is to do with blood flow and blood pressure but honestly. By the time I had put pressure on the wound and calmed B3 down (and myself, as no-one like to see their child bleeding, even a little, and this was not a little) the cut had stopped bleeding so I had a chance to inspect the damage. I was imagining a gaping wound but in actual fact it was less than one centimeter long and did not require any stitches.

Imagine telling the hospital that this is what happens when ELEPHANTS ATTACK!

B3 is fine. We cleaned her up and all she was worrying about was going to school to tell her friends all about it. She marched into class holding a tissue with a few spots of blood on it to show everyone. I think I'll go and have a nice cup of chamomile tea now.

Storage how we adore you.

Please excuse the mess, we are currently using the top of the cooker and a small sheet of plywood for a bench until the granite ones arrive in three weeks. You can see in this photo that we have blocked up the hatch. Alot of homes in the UK and Guernsey have hatches from the kitchen to the lounge/dining room. Our kitchen has had two extensions in its life so now it is lovely, large and light, but this wasn't always the case. Once upon a time the previous owners would have had their dining table in the lounge area and passed the meals through the hatch to save carrying them through the house. As we have a kitchen large enough to accommodate a table the only use the hatch gets is when I open it to tell the kids to stop fighting or to turn the TV down.

Mr Bee is so excited about having a pantry! We have had all our groceries stored in various cupboards in the kitchen, but now we have a double door pantry that is large enough I am going to have trouble filling it.

The tiler starts on the kitchen floor on Tuesday and the walls will be tiled once the bench tops have been done. We have been quite lucky really as it has only been four weeks of disruption so far and it will probably be another four weeks until we have a cooker and a sink that work. All I keep focusing on is that all the work will be finished in time for Christmas. Everything has to look nice for Santa after all :)