How to make an old garden bench look like new

We were lucky to have two lovely big garden benches left at the house we just bought. I love nice garden furniture and these would have cost quite a bit to buy. Now all they cost us was a tin of wood stain and some hard work sanding them down.

We started on the first one yesterday. It was a bank holiday here and fantastic to have a Monday off. It took us most of the afternoon and we were well tired and dirty when we were finally done with it. Well we only got to put on the first coat of wood stain yesterday as it needs four hours to dry in between each coat. I applied the second coat this morning and will do the last coat when I'm done here. 

I love painting, I find it relaxing. Except when painting with my husband! I'm not a perfectionist at all. I wouldn't exactly call him one either but he does like to do things properly, neatly and well. We decided I am a back painter and he is a front painter. That means I get to paint the back of the bench while he painted the front. I did get some coaching on how to paint well in order to get me qualified as a front painter so I can finish the bench on my own today. Let's hope Andre approves of my work when he gets home later!

Here are some before, during and after pictures.

The bench before

The beautiful "new" bench.

Apple Pie

So here's yesterday's apple pie:

It turned out really great. I've had quite a few slices!

The first batch of apples I cooked for a bit too long and they became baby food. I'll find something to use them in. Maybe muffins later today.

I did another batch and watched them more closely. It took only a few minutes for them to be ready. I've put how I did it on my recipe blog here.

It felt good to create something using what's in our garden!

The apple and cider sorbet is in the freezer. Will taste it this evening and let you know how that turned out.

It's an apple day today

Today I'm going to cook these apples. We have a big apple tree in our garden and it is loaded with apples. They don't taste very good and Andre doesn't trust anything from out garden in his fruit salad but that's not going to stop me. I will turn them into good tasting apple creations. I think they're cooking apples and not eating apples. I want to try out some new recipes to see what can be done with apples. And I'm going to start with apple pie. I know, not such a creative start and actually I've made this one before, but I really feel like some apple pie. With cream. And I've only ever used tinned apples so cooking my own apples beforehand will be the new part.

Every day apples fall from our tree. We don't pick them up very often. We just let them be. The cat likes to sniff the apples in the evenings. This morning I came downstairs and I looked out the window and the apples on the lawn were all lying in a very neat pile. 

See the apples all in a neat pile there?

Have a closer look.
Well trained apples. They fall like that.
They know their place in this garden.

Andre was downstairs a while before me. I asked him if he collected all the apples like that. He said no. It was quite windy and there's some tornado type thing happening across the ocean. I thought maybe we had a teeny little tornado of our own which whirled the apples all together like that.

Right away I realised that's just silly. It can't be. I was still puzzled though.

Me: Andre, it was you wasn't it?

Andre: (busy on his computer) No.

Me: It couldn't have been that cat... (Thinking to myself. Luckily not out loud.)

Me: It must have been you.

Andre: No, I haven't been out there yet.

Me: mmm. It was you.

It was him. It took me a minute or two to work through all the options.

Now I must also tell you, and Andre's mom will know what I'm talking about now, the weekend we moved in here we had a couple of weird "gates being left open" moments. In the end it was just one of us thinking the other closed the gate while that person didn't and then it being discovered open the next morning. It happened twice with the gate, once was the Sky installation guy's fault (yes we had some blue sky installed above our house) and another time with the shed door too. So this too came back to me when I saw the apples like that. I thought maybe there was a spooky gate something which now also rakes up our apples.

Anyway. Excuse me. I have to go pick me some apples now.

I'm not crazy. Really.

A day at the beach

Swanage
(click on pictures to enlarge)

Two posts ago I promised to tell you what we did on the Sunday after the move. I've been waiting for Andre to edit some of the photos he took there and he finally finished a few last night and told me I may now help myself to his genius photography work! I will head down to his study after my craft class today to choose some. I only have about 15 minutes before I have to leave for my class. After some really really full classes this holiday we should have a few less today which I'm kind of looking forward to for a change so I can also sit down and enjoy the crafts with the kids and their moms. Let's see if I can also remember to take some photos. (*update: I forgot about the camera in my bag while crafting, but we made mobiles and they turned out awesome. I might recreate one at home to show you later.)

Anyway, the Sunday after the move, that was two weekends ago, we decided to drive down to Swanage. Some friends were spending the weekend there diving. We couldn't join them for the weekend as we were too eager to move into our new home, but we did enjoy a day away from unpacking to go to the beach.

If the map below appears correctly in my blog, A is where we now live. B is Swanage and C is Corfe Castle which we stopped at on our way home and which I'll show you next time. We actually took a ferry across on the way there so didn't drive all around as the maps shows.

View Larger Map

You can see the short distance the ferry goes.

Our turn to drive onto the ferry

Nice day for a bike ride
-those were a lot of bikers from France.

Public transport on top of public transport!

Lots of people were out cycling
-special area for cyclists and pedestrians on the ferry

It was a lovely sunny day there as you can see. The ferry ride was interesting as it's not something I've done here before. It was a lot shorter than I imagined. You can clearly see the short distance in the photo and the ferry is actually pulled across by chains. We were able to get out of the car and take a quick walk to the front of the ferry before having to get back into the car to drive off the other side.

At Swanage we spent some time with the divers, watching them go in for a dive under the pier. Then a walk along the pier which is quite big. It's beautifully kept as you can see and has these plaques which you can buy and have inscribed with your own message. You can spend a lot of time reading them!

Swanage

Swanage pier

See how long the pier is

We walked back through the town and stopped for chips. Soon after that another stop for ice cream which we had on the beach.

We decided to drive back the longer route and avoid the ferry. As it was such a nice day there were so many people out and the queue waiting for the ferry that afternoon would have been very long. Good thing too as we happened to drive through and discover Corfe Castle. Beautiful place. I'll show you later when Andre get's around to doing more editing (or allows me to scratch around in his photo library and edit them myself!)


You can see a few of Andre's more artistic photos on this website 500px. There's one of Swanage pier and one of a mural in Swanage which is amazing. 

Canal walk video

Andre's mom and I went for a walk along the canal near our house one morning last week before getting back to unpacking, cleaning and gardening.



Click here to see it on vimeo.

The Move

Andre's mom came to visit us this month. The timing worked out perfect as she got to see both our previous house we rented as well as the new one we bought now. Unfortunately for her this also meant she helped us pack, move and unpack! It was a huge help though to have an extra pair of hands to pack and carry boxes.

We started packing the Wednesday before the move. Packed the bedroom, study and lounge in a couple of hours. Friday morning we packed the kitchen which took quite a bit longer than I imagined. Andre moved all the boxes to the garage and around 11am we went to fetch the van we rented for the move.

We used blueboxrentals.com which ended up being through Northgate Vehicle Hire. We got the best quote from them and were very happy with their service. They even gave us an upgrade to a slightly bigger van which was helpful. Can definitely recommend them if you're looking to rent a van.

On our way home with the van the estate agents called to say the money has been cleared and we can pick up the keys. First went straight home, loaded the van and car with as much as we could and then came to get the keys and start unloading.

We did another load with the van on Friday and one last load on Saturday morning before returning the van. Andre enjoyed driving this van so much he wants to buy one for himself!

We were exhausted by 8.30pm Friday, and so went out for a curry once we had everything unloaded and our beds made for the night in the new house.

Next morning I woke up early, excited to start unpacking our things. Another day of hard work on Saturday. Andre's mom even started doing some gardening.

The neighbourhood cat who is very at home in our garden.

Picking plums

Cooking in our new kitchen

Sunday we took a break to do some sight seeing. More on that in the next post. Have to go teach my craft class now!

The House Hunt

Around April we started looking at houses. We weren't in a rush to find a house but I really got into the process of looking at properties, always worrying that if I do not go see an available house we might miss THE one. Although it was hard work looking, organising viewings and driving around all the time, I enjoyed seeing so many houses. In less than two months we saw 49 properties. Quite a few of which we quickly walked out of again, some which we considered, but none we felt absolutely sure about.

I was starting to think that we won't find the perfect house and shouldn't expect to find the perfect one, until over the bank holiday weekend in May we did. From the moment we walked into the house we both just looked at each other and smiled and knew. This was it.

We viewed the house for the first time on the Saturday morning. The owners told us outright that they had already refused a lower offer and that there is another couple very interested in the house. We had a few more to see that Saturday morning, but when we got home we phoned the agents and asked if we could come by again for a second viewing. The owners agreed to let us see the house again on the Sunday morning. We were still sure that this was the one for us. 

With that Monday being a bank holiday we had to wait an extra day to put our offer in. I called the agents first thing Tuesday morning. They later called back to say the other couple has also put an offer in. We were very nervous waiting to hear back from them. I really didn't want to have to go back to searching again, knowing how long it took us to find what we liked.

About an hour later we got the call to say the sellers accepted our offer!

We kept it quiet all this time as the sellers can still change their minds about selling at any time. Only once the contracts were exchanged did we really allow ourselves to celebrate. 

The whole process from offer being accepted to exchange of contracts took 9 weeks. With a lot of hassling the bank and the agents to make sure things got done. Our solicitors, Barnetts, were amazing. They got everything done right away as it needed to be done. Great communication with us, letting us know what's going on. We never had to contact them to make sure things are getting done. We'll definitely be using them again if we need to. Which hopefully won't be any time soon though. The only hold up we had was with the bank who seemed to take a month long vacation at one stage. It took a lot of phoning and in the end speaking to bank managers to get them to wake up and send the relevant documents to the solicitors.

Then we were lucky that the sellers were happy to move out within a week of exchanging contracts and we moved in right away. 

More about the move in the next post.

Packing started yesterday

It's been over a year already and time to move again! 

Seriously. This time we're staying in one place for a long time!!

Marlow & Maliks

Andre's mom arrived here early on Sunday morning. After spending the day at home relaxing and catching up, we went out to dinner in Marlow. We first had a walk around the town and along the river Thames. The weather has been behaving remarkably well all week.

Andre took some great photos along the river. 

After our walk we went for our favourite meal out: curry at Maliks!

Mommy-in-law is here!

Andre's mom is here!!! It's been two and a half years since we last saw her. Way too long! We picked her up from the airport very early this morning. Talked talked talked. Had breakfast. Talked some more. Had cake. (Andre's birthday cake) And then everyone went for a nap to catch up on some sleep. And are still sleeping except for me!

Thank you to the SA family for all the lovely gifts!! Will still speak to you all later! And thank you Pauline, my blog reader in Cape Town, we received your hugs! :-)

We'll maybe go for a walk later if the rain stops and then out for curry later tonight for dinner.

Have more news and photos to share later!

Creative Kids fishy crafts

It's school holiday here are the moment and my craft classes are nice and busy with lots of kids coming to enjoy some crafts during the holiday time. Our theme for the holiday is Sea Creatures. Here's what we did today:

We used plastic water bottles to create these fish.

Some of the kids in todays class with their "Bottle Fish"

On Monday we also painted some underwater scenes
which turned out great.

You can see more of what we've been doing on the Creative Kids blog. www.creativekidsuk.co.uk