End of Autumn

Most of the colourful leaves have now fallen off the trees, but here's one last picture of autumn before winter starts.

Click on the picture to enlarge it.

The kids are now also finished with the autumn crafts and we started winter crafts this week and then  Christmas crafts next week already. The Christmas and autumn crafts are my favourites.

More of Elvis

Here's a little video of our night out on Saturday with Elvis at Peppone's. As always you can view it bigger and better on vimeo and I would recommend it as it's really small here on the blog. Here's the link: Elvis video.



Elvis at Peppone's Restaurant from Anneliese Mostert on Vimeo.

Partying with Elvis at Peppone's Restaurant

Last night we went to Peppone's restaurant. I wrote about this great Italian restaurant in Farnham here before. Last night though Elvis was there to perform.

This guy did a great job at impersonating Elvis and sang some great songs. It was again another really fun evening. Below are just a few photos. More on my facebook page.

Quad biking & archery party

A couple of weekends ago we were invited to share in our friends' son's 11th birthday party. I baked the cake which we brought along on the day. The kids started off with an hour of quad biking followed by an hour of archery. 

After all the activities they were ready for snacks and cake.

The cake I made to look like the archery target.

And some chocolate and vanilla swirl cupcakes.

Chocolate cake as requested by the birthday boy.

What a fun party idea for boys. And the three girls who were invited did just as well as great!

Bonfire Night

The weekend is over and I haven't had a chance to finish last weekend's news. Suddenly reminding me of being in grade one and writing about your weekend news!

So after our night in Bournemouth last Friday, we drove back home on Saturday and I got straight to baking a birthday cake for a little friend turning 11. It was for his party last Sunday. More on that later. Then Saturday evening we went over to friends for bonfire night. Great company, lovely snacks ;-) and awesome awesome fireworks! I love fireworks and we missed bonfire night last year because it was just way too cold to go out last year this time. This year has been milder and it was quite nice out. It was a great evening spent with the best friends.

Yay for our new curtains!

Third blog post this morning and it's not even 10am! You might think someone has hacked my blogger account but it's really me. I just have a lot of random things to tell you today if you care to listen. Or read.

So we've been in the new house now for. Umm. Hold on let me check. 13 weeks today! Or exactly 3 months actually.

We have this lovely big window in our lounge which was just desperate for curtains. It lets in so much sunlight in the afternoons which is lovely but it also lets in the neighbours and the dark at night. Not that the neighbours have really been in our house but you know, they can see us because they too have very large curtainless windows. You see, the windows are too big for ready made curtains so you have to have some made. But before you can have them made you have to decide on fabric and that was the really challenging part for me.

I've never before had to choose curtains. Have I told you this here before? It feels like I've said this before. Anyway. After almost three months we (read I because I think Andre was pretty happy with anything by this time) finally decided on the fabric we found with mom and Jürgen two months ago. I just had to make sure.

We placed the order and was told it will take 2-4 weeks. I think that was about 2 or 3 weeks ago so this week I finally got to go pick them up. I was so worried that I won't like it but I do like it. It's lovely and pretty and cosy and just perfect in our living room now.

Oh you wanted to see a picture? Sorry here it is!

Open

 See what I mean, the neighbours either don't have curtains or just don't bother to close them. See their open windows across the street?

and closed.

It looks even prettier in real life :-)


Ok I'm off to gym now. I need to wash my hair and the showers at the gym are fantastic.

When will it snow this winter?

I have so much to blog about and winter weather wasn't quite on my mind yet. Then I just read this blog post on The Pioneer Woman's blog. And I was a bit jealous. They have snow already! I love snow in winter and now each year I worry that we won't have snow because it's not really meant to be very snowy here on this island we're currently on. We were lucky last year to have had some that stayed until Christmas.

This was the first snowy morning last year on 30 November. That's two and a half weeks from now. It's still quite warm out and by warm I mean 10C most days. I'm wondering every day when it's going to drop to single digits.

So I'm wishing for snow again this winter! Just keep the runways clear on 16 December please. We need to go somewhere on that day.

The blogs I read

While you're reading my blog posts I'm reading others. I'm sitting in bed still this morning catching up on some reading and just read this one on Ameringlish about their wedding dance. It made me think of our wedding dance and I went and searched the post I did before on our first aniversary. I posted our wedding dance video there and just watched it again now. It was such a great day.

Here it is again if you like watching these sort of things. If it bores you, I might write something else later today! The first bit of the video is not very good quality so you're welcome to forward that bit..

Cottonwood Boutique Hotel, Bournemouth

A while back we bought a Groupon deal for a night's stay at the Cottonwood Boutique Hotel in Bournemouth and we finally got to go this past weekend. It was lovely to get away and the hotel was great.

To get the negatives about it out the way: the water pressure was almost non-existant in the bathroom but that was it. I loved everything else about it especially the decor. We took lots of pictures of it as you can see below. There were just so much to look at, so many little things and so many things put together which I would NEVER have thought would go together. I guess it will be different having to live in a room like this every day. 

Bar area - look at all that pink!

Note the different patterned pink wallpaper together!

Still part of the bar area.

There were many different funky chairs like
this one!

I would have loved to show you pictures of the restaurant too but didn't want to be too much of a crazy tourist. They had wallpaper on the walls AND the ceiling. And it was bright pink flowers. Lots of flowers. It was so much fun to look at. It makes you smile.

Speaking of breakfast, the breakfast was lovely too. I even had a boiled egg and I never eat egg. Andre of course had the full English breakfast.

Our bedroom- I would never be brave enough to buy
wallpaper like that!

I liked how the wallpaper reflected back in the mirrors
on the opposite wall. 

It's quite an old building with a very
old lift.

For dinner the Friday night we walked into town. The hotel is right on the beachfront and you just follow the road along the beach all the way into Bournemouth. It's about a 15 minute walk to the centre. Luckily it was a nice evening to be out. With warm jackets on of course.

View from our room. That's the sea. Almost as grey as the sky!

Walk into town along the beachfront.

Bournemouth pier

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant and then went back to the hotel for cocktails.

The library (that's wallpaper against the wall).

I loved all the interesting furniture. Lots of old bits that don't match but still looked great together. 

Wardrobe make over complete!

After almost two weeks the wardrobe is now done! Andre helped me put it all back together again last night and I spent this morning putting everything back in its place. I think the white looks much better for this room.

First, here's the wardrobe when it started out its life with us in Switzerland.

The one single section is now lying on its back in the lounge as a big chest.



This was the wardrobe when it arrived at our second house in the UK. Andre's probably hoping to not have to build it ever again. He's taken it apart and put it back together again so many times.

And here it is again now after its make over.

If you missed the whole process you can find it here, here and here.

Autumn apples

The apples are now really falling off our tree! I brought in a big bag full after emptying a whole tub of damaged apples into the green bin. They're really nice and big and red now.

And there are still plenty to come down!

I have an apple crumble in the oven for tonight's dessert.

Wardrobe update: almost there!

Today I started on the last bit of painting. The door. I've sanded, painted the primer and the first coat on the front section of the door. Tomorrow I'll do the second coat and Friday the primer and first coat on the back. Which means it will only be next week before I can have everything back to normal.

Starting work this morning on the door.

Can't wait to get all this stuff out the hallway and to pack all my clothes back in the drawers which is currently in crates and bags next to our bed.

End of work today:
first coat on one side of the door.