Round Up

It's been a few days since I blogged so I thought a bit of a round up was in order. The builders started work on the renovations last Thursday so there's loads of dust, mess and noise to deal with. The roofer came on Saturday to move the velux windows - thank goodness the weather was nice and dry while there were holes in the roof! I don't usually get up early on Saturday mornings so their 8am start was a bit of a shock to the system! Today the electricians are here doing the first fix aswell asregular "buildymen" and I think they've all brought their big noisy toys out to play, maybe they are having a contest - at times it surely sounds that way! ("it'll be nice when it's finished, it'll be nice when it's finished, it'll be nice when it's finished")

My dad's big brother; my lovely Uncle John died last week, and I'm feeling very sad at the moment. Although we didn't have much to do with them when we were growing up because we lived so far apart, I grew very fond of him in later years. He was especially interested in the research I did for our family history and was a great source of information and stories, if I mentioned anything about the family he'd go ferreting about in his papers - and in his memory, then ring me up to tell me what he'd found. I think he got a lot of pleasure from helping me with this and the shared interest certainly made us closer - for which I'm very grateful. Funeral is tomorrow, I think it's going to be a very tough day.

This is the sympathy card I made to send to my cousins, it's very simple and a variation of one I made a couple of months back.

Having a house full of builders has been a good excuse to hide in the study with the doors firmly shut - it doesn't stop all the dust and dirt but it helps a bit, and of course it means I can lock myself away and try and get some crafting done. I've a lot to do this week and the days are already getting booked up so I only hope I can get through the list. I've done my pages for one of the cjs I've got on the go atm, need to think what to do for the other one now. We have another special dare coming up for the DCM on Friday - you'll need to ait and see for that though.
I've done my LE card for Tuesday already as I'll need to be organised tomorrow.

My first cards for Leo's fab Crafty Templates website are done and one of them is shown on the Crafty Templates Blog along with fab cards from Mat and Louise using more of Leo's wonderful templates - they were all Christmas ones this time and we had lovely Daisy Bucket Winter Wishes papers to use, plus lots of matching ribbons from Ribbon Oasis. Here are the cards I've made so far, though the templates are so much fun that I think I'll be making some more cards with them (just as soon as I get some "play" time). What is really exciting about the templates is that there's often a choice as to whether you can use them for a shaped card or to make your own version as a topper type thingie (tech term!) You know, I'm sure there was something else I had to show, but I can't think what it might have been so maybe I just imagined it! maybe I was going to show some "before" photos of the building work...
Here we are on the landing, our bedroom is down that passage to the left - we're having the bedroom door moved so that most of the hallway is inside our room rather than outside it. The photo on the right shows that they've already knocked out a bit of wall, moved the door and built in the framework for where the new door will be.

Please note - we did not choose the ghastly vomit inducing yellow paint!

The door you can see on the right of the 2nd photo leads into the bathroom. Which looked like this till last week:

It's a huge room so we're having it split into two to make an en suite and a main bathroom. The new dividing wall will run from just right of the door on the first pic to the outside wall. The beam bit in the photo is the old external wall so makes life a bit tricky - we're going to take as much of that away as possible and make archways in both new rooms to camoflage it a bit. The new bigger bathroom will be where the bath/loo/shower are in the photo - there will be 2 sinks where the bath is, a new loo and corner shower in the same places as now, the new bath will go along the new dividing wall.
In our en suite, the shower will be huge - it'll fill that space between the new wall (by the door) and the all where that great big mirror and sinks are at the moment. The loo and basin will be in the bit you can't see in these photos.
Please note - nor did we choose the ghastly wall tiles either

This is the bedroom - the purple bit in the corner we discovered behind the old built in cupboard - the door to the ensuite will be here, the cupboard will form part of the new room - the loo and sink will be in that section. We've had to move the velux window into the new room as they wouldn't let us have another rooflight. The 2nd pic is the room taken from the old cupboard. The door is the one that's moving along the hall, there will be an archway in it's place and our lovely new fitted wardrobes will go along that wall.

I will bore you with more photos another time, but that's all for now!