The weeks are blurring into each other more and more now, that’s for sure. Here in the UK we’re into week 4 of lock down and some days it’s hard to know what day of the week it is. Overall I’m still feeling mostly happy and incredibly grateful but I had a slight dip mid week. It was one of those days where I hadn’t planned what I was going to do and therefore I just drifted around and didn’t achieve a lot, looked at my phone far too much and generally felt a bit down in the dumps. It’s to be expected I guess. Sometimes I think it’s easier for people working full time as they have less time to reflect and worry about things. But then I know I’m so lucky that I have a bit of work and a lot of time to spend making the house and garden look lovely. Most days I feel like I’m nesting and really want to look after my family lots – baking bread, making cakes, cleaning and gardening (not that they notice those things much I think!) We have managed to only go to the shops once a week so far and it’s really made us think about how often we were going before!

What I’m going through each day is nothing though, I know that, compared to those key workers helping us all and putting themselves in danger of catching Covid-19. I’m very grateful to them. I live on a main road and most days it’s deadly quiet at the moment. Last night at 8pm everyone came out of their houses and clapped key workers as usual and it was as if we weren’t going through this pandemic, it was so uplifting. Any cars that drove through the people standing in the street beeped their horns and an elderly neighbour was outside his house playing music for everyone. I think when this is all over we should have a garden party and invite everyone round so that we can meet them properly (another down side of living on a busy road, you tend to just talk to the people immediately around you and don’t know those living even a few houses away!) I miss our old house where the gardens were close together and the kids used to chat over the fence.

What have I been up to? I have made a few more lampshades which were posted off to their new homes yesterday (see below). I particularly liked the small grey velvet ones on the left. I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately so I dug out some old photos of my family and framed some, hence the funny pic of my brother and I. I’ve also shuffled a lot of my ornaments around to change things up a bit, always good to have a clear out every so often too.

I’m still working through my big to do lists and adding more now that we know we have at least another 3 weeks to get through…

The weather has been amazing so I have been on lots of lovely long, sunny dog walks with Arthur. I stumbled across a beautiful clearing in the woods this week where we were surrounded by a carpet of bluebells. We lingered there for quite a while, I didn’t want to leave!

My gardening list is getting a bit smaller but I still have the not-so-fun jobs to do and now my enormous tin of paint has arrived I can get on with painting the two garden sheds, yippee! 😅 Arghhhh…

I promise I will show you photos of our newly decorated kitchen and my workshop soon. I just have to get around to taking some good shots. Here’s one of the door as a teaser. I decided to make my own door finger plate today, using a strip of the wallpaper we have used in the dining area (Hicks blue paint and Fern wallpaper, both from Little Greene. We kept the original green floral one on the other side of the door which has probably been there forever, I love a bit of history in a house!