just another morning here

Has anyone else noticed that when we do things here, we tend to make very quick decisions then have to work like crazy to get them sorted out?! Actually, also as usual, we’ve been thinking about this particular decision for a while but just not said or done anything about it.

So, Steve finally decided what sort of piano he’d like to get, after reading a bit around it. According to our piano teacher, the Clavinova (weighted keys and piano action no less!) that we have upstairs is not going to be good enough to take the kids through the higher grades. I’ve been wanting a real piano for ages but it took for Anna to get to that stage before Steve would even think about it!

Anyway, after coming to a conclusion we sent a quick email to our friends at Bonners Music, just to check that we weren’t about to make a huge blunder. We had a prompt email back verifying that we’d made a good choice and also offering us one of that exact model which they’d just had back in part exchange! No brainer there then – Steve said yes almost immediately.

So it’s all happening rather faster than I’d imagined, with a piano potentially arriving very soon! It’s going in our back room downstairs, which really needs decorating anyway, so it was stupid to wait. We called our friendly household maintenance person who said he could come in two days! RIGHT! (best Basil Fawlty voice) RIGHT!

So we had to clear the room in rather manic fashion, after work and fitted around the usual music lessons, food shopping, etc. The dresser from that room has had to be fitted into the conservatory, in a space where Steve always said it would fit (I disagreed). I’m not sure who was right if he’s only made it fit by taking off skirting boards and hacking a corner out of the end of the windowsill! But it’s there now, and won’t move until we do! Everything else has been stacked in the conservatory while the room is decorated. Not entirely sure where the rest of the furniture will fit in the room afterwards, but we’ll work that out later. Games and books have been squirreled away in an orderly fashion

So today and tomorrow the room will be decorated. Carpet after that (carpet fitters willing), and then we’ll be ready and waiting. Really can’t wait, I’ve wanted a piano of my own for EVER. Not that it will be my own, as I know who will hog it, but still, despite not asking for any Christmas presents at all, it’s about the best Christmas present I could have asked for. All the kids will benefit from it, and I will dust it regularly in a loving manner, and moan at people who leave music lying around on it!

Other things I would like to blog about if I had time but I probably won’t get around to it:

3 day training course that I’ve just completed on Person Centred Reviews – lots of interesting and useful tools, nice to have a break from school, good to go through lots of the thinking processes involved.

Less manic preparation involving Josiah doing a couple of nights boarding at school – he wants to board at Christmas (I think because he suspects that the school Father Christmas may be more generous than the one at home!), which we think is a good idea for him, but then he chickened out as he didn’t have a clue what it would be like, so we’re facilitating him being able to make an informed decision – his first night boarding is tomorrow!

Steve and his wretched car (injectors). Actually perhaps I’d rather not blog about that!

Wonderful children who adapt beautifully when we throw extra things like this into the mix!!

I maintain that moving house every year or so during the first ten years of our marriage did wonders to keep our clutter accumulation tendencies under control; since we’ve lived in one house for the past 5 years (5! how did that happen?!), we’ve held on to a lot more stuff than we would otherwise have done I’m sure!

Anyway, this summer has been a de-cluttering one, in many ways all the worst bits of moving without the shiny new house to be excited about, but never mind! Four out of the five of us have moved bedrooms, and the music room moved as well, so we had a lot of sorting out to do. I didn’t want to take photos of ‘before’, as it’s just embarrassing but suffice to say that both our bedrooms had much too much junk and mess in them!

The first job: sell or otherwise get rid of all furniture that we really didn’t use, need, or that we need to change. This included Misty the lovely rocking horse (handmade by Steve’s grandad, owned by Steve’s parents, on loan to us, really too small for our kids now and takes up a lot of space), our exercise bike (severely underused other than for hanging clothes on), the girls’ high sleepers (they won’t fit in the top room, and the girls want something they can lounge on more easily anyway). Also a couple of old chests of drawers that were car boot sale purchases when we were first married!

Misty has gone back to live with Steve’s parents, that way the cousins will get some use out of her and she can have some TLC from Russ when she needs it.

Sold the exercise bike and the bunk beds in the local paper, which was good. Took me blummin’ ages to wash all the wretched stickers off the beds (what is it with kids and stickers?) but it was worth the effort to get a bit of money back for them. Spent the first day of my holidays taking them apart along with the buyer, and then helping him take them over to their house – nice to see them go to a good home, some other small children will be as pleased with them as ours were 5 years ago.

Secondly: the girls and their stuff moved up to our room, to share with us while we cleared the first floor rooms in turn to be decorated. As if my sex life wasn’t dire enough already, I finally get to the holidays and a chance to not be so knackered, and have two pre-teen girls sharing my room. Bad planning or what?!!

Then we were left with more sorting out and getting rid of junk. Days and days of sorting out and getting rid of things – not even junk so much as things I’d kept thinking ‘we might need this’, and now wondering if we will need it. Of course now that I’ve got rid of it, we will! Stopped after three days when both the recycling bin and the other bin were full, and took some of the best of the lot down to the car boot sale. Made enough money to pay the fee and then the kids split the rest three ways (it was mainly their stuff after all!) so they were happy.

After that the first room to be decorated was clear.

Decorating started the week after holiday club, cunningly aligned with Josiah’s week at Laser Camp. I’d planned it that way, imagining that I would be doing the work, but in the end we had some help from our friendly decorator, phew. Neither Steve nor I are any good at it, or even like it, so we always think it’s worth paying someone who is!
Phil seemed happy to have the girls’ chatter and ‘help’ alongside, which was even better! They really enjoyed working with him. I used the time to do more sorting out in various places, and when we got bored of helping/sorting out, we did nice things like shopping and geocaching!

The new music room was decorated first, so we moved all the music stuff into it quickly in an evening to make space for the next room to be done. Actually really happy with the way we’ve arranged the music room, it’s far more useful than it used to be.

The front bedroom that had been the music room, is now our room. Imaginatively we chose ‘ivory’ for the walls with white paintwork … more excited about the new handles on the wardrobe and chest of drawers, how sad is that?!

In addition to all this there was the saga of the fridge. One night we woke to find that all the power was off in the house, and had been for a couple of hours. In the morning we managed to narrow the problem down to the fridge, which kept blowing the trip switch after variable amounts of time. It had had a relatively reasonable life so we decided not to bother calling out an expensive engineer and instead replace it with one with a bigger freezer, which we needed anyway. Of course after we’d bought the new one, the old one started working perfectly again Ah well, at least it meant we could sell that too, and get some money back. But then when we sold it it reverted to former fuse-blowing behaviour – argh! It is going to the recycling centre TODAY!

The decorator finished on Friday, and handily my sister & brother-in-law were around, so they gave us a hand moving our bed down the awkward spiral staircase (our mattress is a bit wrecked though!), we had dinner together, then they watched a film the children while we put together the girls’ new beds.

Then came yet more sorting out – putting our things away neatly in our room and then sorting the girls’ upstairs room out so that all stuff has a home, then there are no excuses – allowance is going to be linked to room inspections (for them *and* us) every weekend, we think! Haven’t taken photos of ‘after’ either, yet – I may do in due course …

Very pleased with the end results and I really hope that the new arrangements will work well all round (tough luck if they don’t!). Just a few finishing touches to go, like putting pictures back up on the walls, etc. We have plans for the next phase of work too … although I have to save rather a lot for it first, but it’s good to have a goal!

Josiah’s violin exam is out of the way He was very happy with himself, although apparently Steve had to apologise to the examiner for his appearance! He’d picked Joe up from school after lunch and playtime, and honestly, his t-shirt was filthy! I am convinced that child rolls around in mud at playtime, and I’ve lost count of how many pairs of school trousers he’s been through the knees of this year, at least 6 I think! Anyway, just waiting for results now – Joe’s desperate to beat Anna’s best exam score so far (130); we’ll see!

Anna’s out at rehearsals for the Panto Society’s Summer Show every night this week, so that’s keeping her busy, and Abbie’s having to knuckle down to get a school project done. Having shed plenty of tears over aborted lapbook attempts at the weekend she is planning to change her presentation style to something less written and more oral, thank goodness. Freestyle lapbooking obviously wasn’t her thing; despite enjoying the art side of it, her handwriting isn’t really neat enough … I’m sure the revised oral presentation with added video/slideshow clips will be much better (and save me a fortune in printer ink!).

Meanwhile we are starting a Grand Sort Out prior to decorating the upstairs rooms this summer. The girls are moving upstairs, we’re moving down, and the music room is moving across so that it’s not above the main lounge. A very good opportunity for some de-cluttering, although it’s going to make a right old mess along the way!

A very dubious entry into the home improvement category, this one. I’m not quite sure what came over me today but I was in a shop near the garage just wasting time browsing while waiting for our accountant to arrive, and I found something that I thought would be perfect to replace that vase of flowers in the fireplace.

Showed it to Steve as a joke, I thought he would laugh and tell me it was ridiculous (it is), but instead he bought it!!! It is the most stupid thing I think I have ever bought. But the kids love it, and hey, it’s fun, and it’s *almost* Christmas