Long Weekends with Good Friends

Thursday our friends Cathy and Kurt arrived from Rochester NY. They are over in the UK for a hoiday and were spending the first four days with us. Kurt's Dad is traveling with them.

Friday the gang visited Beaulieu. http://www.beaulieu.co.uk/ The motor museum kept the boys busy for the morning. We even ALL ended up in a Rally car simulator ... three guys at the front with Cathy & I in the back seat holding on for dear life !!

Saturday we all traveled up to Cannock where Cathy & Kurt had booked an apartment in a Country Club complex. We planned the route to allow us to stop at Hatfield House on the way. http://www.hatfield-house.co.uk/
Not many photos taken as it rained most of the time !!! =(
The house was interesting although you were not able to see much of it. Spent time checking out clothing left by Elizabeth I.

Sunday - more visiting interesting places.
Started at Kenilworth Castle. Arrived to find they had a medieval village event ... so HUNDREDS of visitors. We finally found a parking space. http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/kenilworthcastle/ (photo above)

After lunch heading on to Witley court. This would have been a grand manor house - but it burnt in 1937. The gardens are being restored .. they had a working fountain. (see photo at top of post) .. We drove back to via Ludlow !

Monday we visited two Nation Trust houses. Packwood House and Baddesley Clinton ... Terrible weather all morning. The houses were cool.

:( Then we were off home and leaving the the gang to enjoy the rest of the time in the midlands.

Another busy weekend

We have almost finished the updstairs decorating. Started to move the contents of my room back into their new storage location. This also meant that our bedroom could start to be put to rights.

BUT we still have a large number of boxes hanging around. Need to put some items in the loft.

Rain Rain Go Away ...

Yuk - just climbed on the train this morning before it started to rain ... It has been raining on and off since Saturday morning. DH and I set off for Petersfield to post off all the Ebay sales we had made (rationlising my magazine collection). It was a lovely morning, but as we stepped out of the post office it started to rain =(

Sunday again started off lovely - we walked round the farmers market in t-shirts and I had two loads which dried on the line =) ... Just after lunch I headed down the garden to dig out some of the last years compost to plant up my tomatoes and cucumbers. Just walked into the green house with the first bucket full and the heavens opened !!! Well at least I could get the planting into the grow bags sorted in the dry. Then waited out the down pour. If your wondering why I need compost when I am planting into grow bags ... I use ring cultures to give the plants greaters root depth , plus the ones I use have a watering ring built in - this stops the stems getting rotted off ! I normally only use them for tomatoes but this year trying them with the cucumbers too !

The rest of the weekend has been taken up with finishing off the decorating of my study/the spare bedroom. DH is really not sure about the woodwork colour , it looks great in day light, but turn on the lights and he feels it does not go so much. Solution - putting day light bulbs into the lighting unit ... which is at least a little better than changing the colour three times as with our bedroom =)

Sunday came the worst job - moving an established fish tank. I was worried about this - I mean a larger glass tank of water is heavy !!! We did empty have the water out and could only just lift it ... we were limited on the amount of water we could take out by the size of the fish. BUT it now has a new position =) This left sunday afternoon to strip off the chick border and paint the wall behide where the fish tank had been. I managed the first coat of wall paint by 5pm. DH then cook a roast dinner (while I soaked in the bath with a glass of wine) and then he headed off to give the walls the second coat. The paint we bought is good quality and dries in 4 hours, thus 9pm it was ready for coat two. I mean while had a earily night.

DH has said that after all the effort to make the room look nice , we should also complete it properly. Thus all the pictures I wanted to hang in there will need new frames and the furnature we are keeping will need to be painted white. We have bouhgt a new day-bed which is white - very New England style =)

Not much time left for stitching. Did a little on my quaker sampler - which DH said would look nice in our bedroom =)

Photos of the finished room coming soon =)