Our new home in the UK

I know our family would like a peek into our new home, so here are some pictures.

The guys worked so hard yesterday getting all our stuff here. Andre was fortunate to be able to borrow a delivery van from work which saved us some more money. Good thing we saved some there because we're going to have to go shopping for a fridge today (on a SUNDAY Swiss readers and mom in Germany! I still keep forgetting that we can actually get stuff done on Sundays here and don't have to rush around getting it all on a Saturday.) Oh let me go take a picture so you can see why we need to buy a fridge. 

Not exactly Swiss cleaning standards, is it? The rest of the house was pretty clean though. It was obvious they didn't work as hard at the cleaning as we did when we moved out of our apartment in Switzerland, but it was not too bad. The previous tenants didn't use this freezer and it was left in the garage..

We didn't plan to buy one because most places come with a fridge-freezer. We thought we could scrub it real good with bleach. But the thing is not working. It's just not getting cold at all. And our groceries are being delivered today!! Luckily we do have a small fitted fridge in the kitchen. And luckily we do have very good friends who offered to keep some of our food in their freezer if we need to.

The kitchen is basically done and unpacked. The only thing I'm still missing are the plates. They must still be in some box we haven't gotten to yet.

The lounge... cables everywhere!

TV is set up, we're using Andre's computer monitor at the moment. Lots and lots of TV channels to watch! I'm so used to not having TV so here I am sitting in front of my laptop again!

The spare bedroom (above) which will also be our study when we don't have guests. The desks were the first to be assembled. The guys were still bringing stuff into the house when Andre asked me to get the desks ready for the laptops. Very important. His "command centre" as he calls it.

I won't show you our bedroom yet. (a) Because Andre is still sleeping and I promised he could sleep as long as he wants today after I woke him up at around 6am yesterday morning because I was so excited. And (b) because it's the room that looks the worst at the moment. Clothes everywhere. Too little space. You can use your imagination...

And then lastly our garden.

(The yukka in the pot is on it's way inside.)

I thought we would just have to do some tidying up, but it does seem like we would have to rip everything out. It's all so overgrown and mostly weeds. It would be more work trying to save a few little plants between all those weeds. We'll try and replant what is plantable. I might ask you to identify some and tell me if it's weeds or plants! I'm looking forward to starting the garden. I'm even planning on having a vegetable patch right at the back.

There are some lovely roses we will definitely keep.

And look what else I found!

So that's the house so far. I took these pictures all this morning because we were just too busy yesterday to take any. We went for dinner at the pub last night. We went with our good friends who we stayed with for the past 3 months. It would have felt weird not having dinner with them after having dinner together every night for 3 months! 

We can walk to the pub. It's only about 5 minutes walk from our house. And then on the way home we saw a fox! I still get very excited about the foxes. I've only seen one in Switzerland but it was far from us in a field and we were driving in the car then. 

This one last night was just ahead of us in the road. It stopped and stared at us. Then it walked on, turned the corner and stopped and stared at us again. Then a guy on a bicycle came past and it ran away into the field. We have a forest area up the road so it probably lives there. I kept whispering to Andre, "Take a picture! Take a picture!" But he's not like me about pictures and wouldn't get his phone out..

Ok, now I'm done here. I'd love a cup of Rooibos tea now, but we still have a swiss plug on the kettle...

And this was our first meal in our new home yesterday: picnic lunch in the lounge with KFC left overs from the previous night.

Decorating the baby's room

No, it's not our baby room! Not quite yet!

(Click on the photos to enlarge and see the pictures better.)

My friend and I walked to the shops today and found these wall stickers. You can peel them off the wall  easily again without damaging the paint on the wall.

It was easy and fun to do and made this baby room look so pretty. And now there's lots of new things for her to look at.

Still running!

It's week three of our training program for the Race for Life. There are still another three weeks left before the fun run so we're half way there. In the beginning it was really difficult and I didn't know how I would ever be able to continue with this, but each week it has been easier. And this week I have actually started enjoying it and  don't have to make myself go anymore. I now feel like I need to go for a run when I get out of bed.* 

As I've told you before, the Race for Life is all about raising money for cancer research. My mom and good friend in Switzerland sponsored me. Thanks again to you both!!

Then the other day I received this in the post along with my race number.

It's fun vouchers they've made up to get people to sponsor you.

So I tried them on Andre. I started with this one:

He said, "You know you won't do it properly and I would just have to re-do it. I'm not paying for that."


Then I tried this one:

He laughed, "No thanks, I'll drive my own car!"


How about this then:

He didn't say anything, just gave me a look that said 'I bought you that diamond and now I still have to pay to have my shirts ironed??'


So I was left with only this one to try:

He immediately said, "YES! I'll pay £20 for that one! How much money do you still need? Work out how many days you have to keep quiet for."

I would never be able to last a day without talking!

So that's why we baked and baked and baked all day last week Thursday. Then on Friday my baking friend's husband took all of it with him to work to get us some donations. Before 10am it was all sold out! And we raised a really good amount of money too! You can go see on the side of my blog or here how much I have now raised.



*I must just explain 'getting out of bed'. I get out of bed after Andre's dressed and goes to have his breakfast. That's usually about 15 minutes before he has to leave for work which would be around 7:45am. I make him a sandwich and cut up some fruit in a separate container. Healthy lunch! I have worked out how much he spends a year if he buys lunch somewhere every day and he agreed that I can pack him lunch. But if I don't make the sandwich he won't make one himself and he will buy lunch. And I don't want that so I get myself out of bed. Then I get back into bed and either read, or find something to do on my laptop. Sometimes my eyes will tell me they were not done sleeping yet and then I have to listen and close them for another little while. Then around 9:30 I start feeling a little guilty for still being in bed and that is when I go running. :-)

Baking

Charlene and I spent today all day baking. We just finished in time to start dinner. And we did it with a 7 week old baby in the kitchen!

We made these adorable mini cupcakes. The entire cupcake is edible. The bottom is chocolate, then it has a cake ball inside with more chocolate over the top as the icing. We also made proper big cupcakes for the guys. We thought these mini ones might be a bit on the small side for them.

Baby Girl got some chocolate on her chin when we tried to put her dummy in her mouth with chocolate fingers!

We were all really tired after all this baking.

It was exhausting work.

Castle Combe- "The prettiest village in England"

So says this website and it's definitely the prettiest I've seen so far. I'm sure there are many other pretty villages but I haven't really seen that many...

This little village in the south of the Cotswolds has also been used in some films and it looks like something out of a fairy tale.

Luckily our friends knew about the Manor House Hotel, otherwise we would have driven right past this beautiful place. It was built in the 14th century and has 48 rooms.

We went there for lunch,

then walked around their gardens which are so pretty we had our own little photo shoot there!! Imagine having a wedding here.... Andre said no, we're not getting married again..

They said we could leave our car in their parking lot while we walked around the village. The village is very small, really just one street. It has a population of about 350.

We saw many people walking up the hill as we first drove into the village on our way to the Manor House Hotel. So after lunch we wanted to go see where they were going. We walked and walked but saw no signs along the road giving clues to what might be the attraction that everyone was going to see. Eventually Sonya asked someone passing by where everyone is going to up the hill. He said they are going to the parking lot!!

So we walked back down. At least we got to walk off the lunch we had and were then able to go back to the hotel for cream tea. That means tea and scones here in England. The most delicious scones I have ever ever tasted.

Before the afternoon tea the guys also managed to find another geocache on the way. It had a travel bug in which we took out to go put in another cache somewhere else.

I'm busy uploading these pictures of our day at Castle Combe to facebook now, and I can't believe how many pictures we took of such a small village! I won't be able to put half of it on my blog so you'll have to go see on facebook if you want to see the rest. :-)

These shoes were made for running!

My friend, Charlene, and I have decided to do the 5km Race for Life. It will be my very first time taking part in something like this and actually running! I've done a Big Walk before, but never done much running so this will be a good challenge for me.

A year ago in Switzerland I went running. I went twice and then I gave up! My knee was hurting but I was also running in the wrong shoes.

So on Saturday Charlene and I both went to buy new trainers. The assistant in the shop looked at our feet, made us do squats, balance on one leg and run around the shop barefoot. Then he told me my feet are neutral and went to fetch me about five different pairs of trainers to try.

There weren't any pink ones... There were some purply ones, but in the end these Nikes with the red bits were the most comfortable.

So this morning we went for our first run. It went much better than I expected. We were out for about half an hour doing four 5 min runs at a time with some walking in between to catch our breath. Tomorrow is a rest day. Maybe we'll just do a walk. And then we're running again on Wednesday.

The Race for Life raises money for cancer research. We have each decided to try and raise £100. If you would like to sponsor me and help support cancer research, click on the link below to go to my fundraising page. You can also click here or on the widget at the top left of my blog page.

We're running on the 18th of July. I will let you know how the training is going and put pictures up after the event. We've now got 6 weeks of training to do!

A Mexican Monday

Monday was a bank holiday. We were ready for a lazy day at home.


A month ago we planned to celebrate Cinco de Mayo by having a whole Mexican day. Cinco de Mayo means "5th of May" in Spanish and you can get some history about it here. We weren't really interested in the history, only in eating Mexican food. But the 5th of May was in the middle of the week and in the middle of the week that Andre and I were looking at houses. So we totally missed the 5th!

We decided then to wait for a sunny weekend and have our Mexican day then. But the sunny day never came so on Monday we decided we've waited long enough for the sun, we'll just have to do without. (By the way, the sun is shining now since yesterday and will be doing so all through the weekend too.)

So for lunch we tried a new recipe, a Mexican layer dip. It was amazing. We had it with nachos chips. I got the recipe from The Pioneer Woman, but you can also read about it and see my photos on my other blog.

Then for dinner we made chicken and pineapple quesadillas with kiwi daiquiris.

Sunday pub lunch

After a nice Sunday drive we found this pub called The Anchor in Wisley along the River Wey. It's a beautiful setting right on the water. The food was good (I had steak and ale pie) and the desserts were great too! They had a selection of 6 mini desserts which you could order individually or have all 6 for a slightly reduced price. We got all six (shared it between the four of us so it's not as bad as it sounds!) and were so excited when it arrived that I never took a picture!

After lunch we went for a walk outside and watched the boats coming through the lock. It was my first time actually seeing how this works. On the one side of the lock the water level is higher than on the other side. So if the boat is at the top, it opens the lock gates and enters the lock, closing the gates behind the boat. Then someone opens the sluice gates to let the water out and lower the boat to the level of the water at the bottom. When it is at the right level the gates will open and the boat goes on it's way. It works the other way round too of course. You can open the sluice gates at the top to fill the lock when you need to go up. A bit like an elevator for boats! Click here for an illustration of how this works. It's a cute site where you can click to go up or down the river and it shows you with pictures what happens.

Letting water in from the top to fill the lock up.

And then letting water out to lower the boat.

The guys helped opening and closing the gates for the boats for a while.

It was a lovely end to the Sunday and it felt even better knowing there was one more day left of the weekend! A little more on what we did yesterday for the Bank Holiday later.