Fresh air for the bathroom

Like most bathrooms, ours gets pretty steamy. And you have to wait for 30 minutes after a shower to be able to do your make up in the mirror; Jon particularly finds this very frustrating. So he set about trying to alter the little ventilating window in the bathroom to get a bit more air circulation.

Fuschia

A bit ago I worked with some super American Interns at the Museum I work at. They were lovely and when they left they gave me a lovely fuschia, how nice is that! Anyway it took me a while to put it in the garden and all the lovely flowers fell off. I assumed I had killed it. But I planted it anyway, just in case

Nice seed pods huh

Then when we came back from holiday this had happened. The plant was COVERED in huge buds and flowers. Lovely.

Salad sandwich

With all our bounty from the garden we have been eating super salads ever since we got home. Here is a tasty salad sandwich we made. Yum!

Holiday inspiration

This is a bit of a different post for us. We haven't done anything in the house for two weeks (apart from our garden magically growing on its own) but we haven't stopped thinking about the house. We've been to Fuengirola, Ronda, Málaga and Madrid finding some inspiration. 

Tiles at the Alcazaba in Málaga

A little alcove with an arch, maybe for candles? Or marmite jars?

More arches

and some nice plaster work

a little channel of water ran through all the gardens at the Alcazaba

Brackets at Palacio de Velázquez in Madrid. Not necessarily going to copy this art work in my house but I like the shapes and they would make great shadows on the wall.

Concrete staircase in Madrid's Caixa Forum. Obviously too massive for our little house but so lovely.

Admittedly it's not all necessary practical for the House of Love, we don't want to create a Moorish pastiche in a Victorian 2 up 2 down but it's nice to dream. And if it all goes wrong in Blighty we might run away to a finca in Spain.

Welcome to the jungle

Sorry for the lack of posts recently but we've been on holiday! And while it was super sunny and lovely in Spain it turns out it was perfect garden weather here (lots of rain). So much so that we have returned to a bit of a jungle. Along with the milk, bread and biscuits awaiting us thanks to the amazing Laura H-M, all our monster salad meant we didn't even have to go shopping for our first meal home.

We were a bit busy before our holidays so we've got a bit of a backlog. Look out for some pre-holiday jobs coming soon.

Touching up.

Avid readers might remember our kitchen light fitting. It replaced a browning fluorescent tube. We got some proper men in to put it up. They did the electrics and said that I would need to do "the decs". In spite of my nodding agreement, they realised I didn't understand what they were talking about, and explained that they meant "decorative work" - meaning polyfilla and painting over and "making good". I said, yeah, fine, of course. And then I didn't do it for, like, 9 months.

 In my defense, I did start it. I did polyfilla the big hole maybe 6 months ago. And then let it dry really really well.

So then I just dabbed paint around the crap looking bits. 

 Whilst up there, getting paint in my armpit, I also painted the little bits exposed after removing the trim from the kitchen units.

And then they looked like that. It's amazing. You can't even tell that that's not the original light fitting.

Gratuitous flower post

I can't help myself. I have to show you all the pretty flowers blooming in the garden.

And the rhubarb because it is going to be so tasty!