Tour about town...

Well holidays feel officially over now... Sarah has gone and the house is back to normal alcohol consumtion rules (4 days on 3 days off if not better) and the wheels of house de-cluttering are steadily ticking over. Mum has been clearing wardrobes a bit and I have been putting all the books we dont need on Amazon Marketplace... that thing is addictive! I also put a bunch of DVDs on and two of them sold within a couple of hours... amazing. Who knew that a ToyStory2 DVD was worth 10.99 + p+p ??? Not me! "East is East" was another classic but that was a bargain at 3.99 + p+p... Oh and the day before my Belkin router sold for 29.99 + p+p ... hehe... i only bought it for 17.99 from ebay... dont tell anyone?

So another part of this new post holiday lifestyle is to get back and do some exercise so we went out for a good hour and a bit walk today... Took the camera for a few intersting snaps...




Not high on my list of prospective career choices... you dont want to hear... "hey Ernie... are you sure you remembered to turn this thing off?"

The leaves in Worsley woods are just starting to turn and fall ....


These pictures are of one of the houses down in the Chatsworth Road 'dip'. Up until Saturday this site had a half built house, but today it seems that the demolition man came and tore it down... I hope Jeremy Beadle is lurking in the bushes to come and surprise the owner... otherwise we have no idea why they have canned this project and gone back to the drawing board... a costly exercise no doubt! More local detective work is required on this... watch this space...

Quick trip...

Of course we had to fit in a quick trip down to the house in Wales and on the way we popped in to see Grandma. She took us out for a lovely lunch and then a brisk walk along the prom at Rhos in the afternoon sun. Yes afternoon sun in OCTOBER!


After that we packed the kids up in the car and headed off down to No.6 just in time for one of these... a lovely sunset...


Accompanied by a few of these... Brilliant!

Lady Sarah's New Room

Here is Sarah relaxing in her newly decorated boudoir.


Sarah doing her best "Grandma legs" pose...


"Whats in here...?"


"Lots of room to hang all my stuff..."


"And a lovely table to do all my ladies business at... thanks Tim!!!"

Oslo Visitors

Who are all this lot coming to pinch my toys?


Sarah does an 'Egil' and takes a well earned microsleep on the baby mat taking up valuable playing room... Maud is not amused...



Sarah wakes up from her slumbers and is given a stern talking to by Maud...

Busy Little Bean

Maud is already getting to grips with organising her busy social life using her first real mobile phone... she mainly uses texting as most people cant really understand her baby blabber yet...


Chewing the phone is just as much fun though...

Oslo Pictures

Aunty Sarah works wonders with little Maud to keep her entertained...






Maud gets a bit bored in the end and decides to have a chin wag with some of her girlfriends from babyclub instead... silly Sarah.

Ta Dah! #1

After one month of hard labour, lots of head scratching, plenty of swearing, one impromptu water feature, four trips to IKEA, a gazzillion trips to Homebase, about four trips to B&Q, 15 litres of paint, 12 rolls of wallpaper, 6 paintbrushes, 4 rollers, and a few gallons of sweat and tears, here are the results of the new renovations done to the North wing. Hope you enjoy!

Ta Dah! #2

Here are the results of reno number 2, the room now called Sarah's room. As you can see it is a full refit from top to bottom, only the brown doors remain (although not for much longer!). Hopefully the new hamster bedding will be suitable for all new guests to this suite in our newly refurbished north wing.

Presents arrived...

Special delivery from nice Mr Postman today for Matty.

3 Days to go...

Only 3 and a bit days to our departure for Oslo so all stops are officailly out to get all current decorating projects completed. The weather is at least helpful as you don't exactly want to be outside. There are no inspiring web cams for Manchester so you will have to do with the view out of the window.



I swear that when I see it on the screen it looks OK but when I download it the little gremlins in my camera have made it all fuzzy... i think it is a great excuse to buy a new camera with a bigger screen so I can see my terrible camera shaker pictures. You get the idea anyway... lots of bits... build a chest of drawers... Im pretty quick with IKEA stuff now.



As you can see, this wardrobe frame is a bit big... it only just fits in the room to assemble... I was hoping that it would be able to be put upright OK, the instructions in the manual said it needed 244cm clearance and I had 242 so I thought id give it a go... they surely give you a bit of fudge on the measurement...


Needless to say... it didnt. Swear word and lots of huffing and puffing trying to manouver this beast of a wardrobe without scuffing the wallpaper... ugg.. so ... do a bit of dismantling of my hard work and carry out the in situ two person assembly instructions. Not having a spare hand or second to take a picture of me and mum trying to carry out the steps above is unfortunate but from the diagrams you can tell that mum balancing up a ladder holding a heavy piece of wood at arms length is not the easiest thing to orchestrate. I feel like there should be little speech bubbles that you can add in the swear words yourself later...

End result... well you can get a merged picture of it but the room is a bit small to get the whole thing in one shot....

More pictures tomorrow in the final few days of fluffing and jujjing of both rooms so that they are ready for the big reveals! Bet you cant wait eh? Watch this space!!!

Decorating update

Great, room #2 has carpet now so just a bit of furniture to go in and some bedding and were all done with the decorating before our trip to Oslo! Hurrah! More pictures will follows as the bits get built and put into the room. Not sure how the bed is going to get through the door yet as it is a bit of a funny angle... cant mess up the walls either! Ugg




These are the mystery flowers that were delivered with the card only saying "Thanks". Very odd dont you think? Nice flowers though.

Ants Wedding (Take II)

You might remember from my previous post that I am prone to camera shake, or more importantly having my camera set on the wrong settings at the wrong time. Consequently my photos of Ant's wedding were crap and I had to wait for my friend Heidi to send me her pictures.

One of the four bridesmaids. This one is his sister Julia pictured with his Dad Karan




Caroline, me, Anna and Heidi


Ant and Anna


Karan and Janet



Mr and Mrs Horn