Autumn afternoon

Is it the beautiful mid afternoon April light or is it the beautiful girls lighting up our April afternoon?

We ended off a day of theatre-ing, "The Little Mermaid" at the Courtyard Theatre, cafe frequenting, and avoiding the construction mayhem in the bathroom - laundry end of the house with a few hours of relaxing in our Autumn garden.

Before and after

This is the last photo I took of our late 60's vintage bathroom/toilet/laundry (with its minor 80s upgrade) before work got underway today to completely renovate it.

The plan is to remove the wall separating the bathroom and toilet and make it one, open plan room. We will have all new fittings, bigger bath, full length shower, more storage, and fully tiled etc etc.

Work started today. So far we are impressed with the communication and organisational skills of our builder and his attention to detail. The before and after pictures below show what was achieved today - day one.

The laundry is receiving a major overhaul too: new joinery, matching tile work to the bathroom, new sink & taps etc.

This is a lot of progress in just a day resulting from an army of tradesmen descending on the house. The asbestos removal crew looked like the biggest band of reprobates, but they did their job quickly and efficiently and cleaned up beautifully.

I'll keep you posted with progress over the next few weeks. I confess to being somewhat alarmed about doing without a washing machine for that time!!!

Easter Sunday

Maxie was doing a great impersonation of the Easter bunny but was totally mystified as to why Ella wouldn't accept her share of the goodies (apparently she is going through a phase of doing exactly as her Mummy says..and her Mummy said no more chocolate this morning!).


Luckily, Easter gifts of toys were OK. Miffy is a current favourite and, being very cute, is especially apt for Easter! Although Grandpa needed reminding that "her is a girl".

Although the links with Easter were fairly limited the Spider man bike and the Star Wars Lego were also considered acceptable alternatives to more chocolates.

Easter egg hunts were great fun this year as all the kids are into word games, jokes, riddles and rhymes and searching for clues. Ollie can even read clues himself now with minimal help; very advanced for a five year old.

Angus has announce this week that he no longer wishes us to call him Angie!

Easter is always another great excuse for good eating. The kids all enjoyed Granny K.'s gluten free muffins to end off our gourmet breakfast with all the trimmings, including, inevitably, way too much dark chocolate.

Easter Sunday was busy for me. Sophie and Maddy accompanied me to the Hyatt for afternoon tea to celebrate their recent respective birthdays. Rob and I joined them (and the rest of the family) for a birthday dinner later that night along with a bevy (gaggle/giggle) of teenage girls all having an enormous amount of fun experimenting with various eye liners and eating caramel mud cake. Oh to be thirteen again!