A Garden, A House and the Life Between

So what’s new I hear you ask? Well since I last posted we’ve finished our kitchen/dining room renovation and we’re finishing our living room and hallway decoration as we speak. Once finished this will mean all of our key jobs to get done this year will be complete woohoo. In the house anyway. We still have to finish the veg garden but we will come to that in a moment.

Thing is, I can’t show you the finished result yet as we want a few friends to see the changes first hand before we share photos online, so that will have to wait for maybe another month or so. But so far we’ve had emotion, 2-3 comments on how it should be in a magazine, and just a lot of general staring and enjoying the results.

So what can I show you? Well anyone who’s got an old house with an old garden will know the undertaking it can be when it’s been left a long time. We have a lovely paved area at the back of the house that backs onto the field where the pregnant cows are and we love spending time back there. But between the cracks of the paving slabs, many a weed does grow. I’ve lost so many hours removing the weeds and then trying to find ways of ensuring the weeds don’t come back.ut they do. So this time I’ve bought some tubs of mortar and I am applying that to each crack, once the weeds have been deeply dug up, to try and end this cat and mouse game once and for all.

Now I’m no bricklayer or landscape gardener so I’ve simply put down the mortar in a simplistic way to cover each crack knowing that the rough edges will disappear over time, footfall and Cumbrian weather. But I must say, I like it a lot. It’s not finished; I still have more to do but it looks great already and since doing it, we’ve had some rain and wind and it’s still in there, with no weeds!!

Here’s a little peek at how it looks so far:

We’ve been here over 2.5 years now and the first year we missed the Penrith Agricultural show, last year we went with a friend but it was chucking it down with rain, so this year we aimed to go just the 2 of us and we ordered the weather. And boy did we receive our order. It was a little windy but the sun came out, some cloud to keep it cooler, but it was fab. It’s such a lovely event to see all the effort put into the animals by the young farmers, the stalls of local business we wish to support, and meeting people from the community and surrounding areas. (Doesn’t hurt that it has a beer tent either lol).

A couple of pictures of some of the gorgeous farm animals:

And a view of our lovely walk from the house to the Penrith Show and it aint half bad:

And for now, we continue the work on our home and have already started welcoming friends to stay on a weekend again, which we couldn’t do while the house was upside down mid reno. Last weekend was our lovely friends from NI, this weekend isn’t a visitor wknd but then one of my besties comes up the following wknd and another bestie with hubby and gorgeous son the wknd after.

And that will be August done but by the time that’s finished, I will then be able to share pictures of our before and after reno and decorating.

So with that said, I bid you farewell for now and will see you next time.