Welcome To Our New Home!

I thought I would go into a bit more detail about the topics I briefly raised in my previous post before I get going on the meaty issues of the universe, so here is a quick peek into our new rented place.

Our friends arranged for us to move here, mainly because they know Bertie likes gardening and it has a BIG garden. Both front and back. I couldn't get the whole thing into one shot so here is an idea.

This is the lovely big fir (?) tree that greets you when you come up to our gate. Can you see our bungalow peeking out in the background? Thought not. It is a very long walk down that path for a)the postman b)me on a dark night and c)me when JoJo is at the gate and I have to hurry to get him before he tries getting out onto the street!

This is our lovely poplar also at our front gate. We have one at the back of the garden too and they make a beautiful rustling noise in the wind. Well, not any more as they have just lost all their leaves.
I would also add that it is jolly hard to reverse the car in through the gate. You will not be surprised that I leave such matters to my dear husband!Ah, all that walking has finally got you somewhere! Here is our cute little bungalow. You can't see here but it has beautiful stained glass patterns on the window. I love the big bay window in the living room and the one on the left is the kids' room. My first act was to tuck up all the awful net curtains to let the sun in - one day I may actually get round to taking them down!Now we are out the back. This is a wee bit of our garden, let's say about a quarter of it! This is where all that lovely vegetable and berry growing will hopefully happen next spring! The rest of the garden is grass and trees and greenhouse and......our own little summerhouse! Isn't it cool? Or hot rather! The previous tenants seemed to have had electricity, phone line, the works. We have lost ownership of this building to the smaller members of our family, much to their delight!

Update To Come....

Well we have been here there and everywhere since our return from Guadeloupe. Two weeks in France followed by a week with the parents followed by a fortnight in the million pound four storey house of some church friends followed by 10 days in Plaistow (which we discovered is pronounced Plaaaarrrrstow rather than logically rhyming with wait and bait and cait...lyn!) in a two up two down terraced house and now..... we have finally arrived in our new house! We have left the beautiful north London for the pleasant borough of Redbridge in the north east of London. A cute two bedroom bungalow with a yellow door and a HUGE front garden and an even HUGER back garden! Apple trees, pear trees, plum trees, poplars, fir trees, spruces, summer house, sheds galore, greenhouse....we have it all! We are slowly making order out of chaos and setting up home so hopefully I will be back on line in the not too distant future with more news and photos!

From My Balcony Sunday Morning

Who wouldn't be inspired by such sights?

I am not sure if it was just by chance or good planning, but how well designed to have a balcony from which you can see sunrise on the right and sunset on the left!

Our Room

I do love my room here - it is already a vast improvement to go from three children in with us to a mere one (hidden away too!) but on top of that, it is large and airy, has a balcony and there is not a hint of damp! Nor have I seen any cockroaches in months, so my cup overfloweth!

Here is the entrance from the balcony - our third and final little hallway which has become JoJo's area. We have a handy screen to block the light out for him - unfortunately now he is up and around he has a tendency to pull that and the fan over. See the junk area next to his cot, complete with Bertie's golf clubs!

The view of the room from next to JoJo's bed- all that lovely space!The window looks out on to the mountains in the distance and gets fine views of the sun settingThe door leads to the hallway and the rest of the flat, but watch out not to knock your head on that low bit!Our bed with its Most Useless Mosquito Net Ever Designed - 13 gaps for them to fly in through! Now I just use a sheet and keep it for its aesthetic value.And here is possibly the Most Useless Cupboard Design Ever! Lovely how it fits in the corner and it is huge, but with the tiny door in the front you can't actually access all that space! We have just put his sister's stuff in there. This is supposed to be our changing mat but there is always stuff heaped there and now JoJo tends to cause too much damage to the pictures and things anyway.

Next stop (when I have tidied them!) will be the girls' room and finally the bathroom.

Our Living Room - Guest Room

Continuing our house tour, part three sees the original living room that was changed in to a separate bedroom. We use it as our living room (it has a sofa and tv) but there is still a huge bed there showing its other purpose. When guests aren't here (and even when they are!) that doubles up as a table or chair or trampoline or storage area or computer desk... The wardrobe also makes a pretty cool hiding place for the girls - before I caught on to this is was very strange seeing the door slide with no one apparently touching it!

Another one of our funny little halls - leading on to the balcony. I may have mentioned before the obsession with bed mattresses here, each bed having at least two if not more. For want of another place to keep it, we usually store one of our space mattresses here and the girls love jumping off the sofa onto it (often heartstoppingly close to Baby JoJo) and then doing a rolypoly. Bertie also takes his siestas there by the coolness of the open door.

Moving in a bit - the far door leads to the hallway, and opposite is the girls' room with our room on the right. It really is a myriad of doors here and quite fun to run around and pop up in the least expected place.Standing in front of the couch now - this door leads onto the first hallway and the stairs, with the sliding door on the right. This mirror is the only one in the house! Can you see our flying pig at the top of the photo....shocks everyone who comes in, the latest being Papy who thought it was a bat! (Didn't say whether he thought it was real or not....)And the final view - you can see our Birthday Wall where currently LissaLou has her photos up. Soon it will be Baby JoJo's turn!

Our Halls

Last month I started you on a tour of our house with a peek at our kitchen so let's carry on where we left off. Halls may not be all that exciting but they are jolly useful places!

I would just add that most these photos were taken the afternoon before Mum and Evs arrived, when after hours of scrubbing, the place was unusually tidy (gleaming even) - it really isn't generally like that!

At the top of the stairs opposite the kitchen is this random little hallwayleading to the balcony -one of three entrances to it. The upstairs was initially two bedrooms and a living room that you had to go through to get to the stairs but with all the family that keeps coming to stay, they decided another separate room was more useful, so they made various changes and added in this sliding door. Actually, first they added the doorway but the door only came a couple of years later! I was rather relieved to see it when we moved in, as it offers a bit more privacy and security.

This corridor used to be full of lots and lots and lots of junk which appeared to belong to no one in particular. Gradually, we have chucked items (we try to do it discreetly as Bertie's mum is very much a hoarder!) and moved others to hidden recesses downstairs. Now it is a lovely little space to sit and read or relax - very helpful with all the people currently in the house! We can't let Baby JoJo crawl unsupervised here as he heads straight for the stairs.

Through the sliding door to the right is this other hall - from this view the kitchen is at the far end on the right, the door and stairs are on the left and then the blue bit is the bathroom and the nearest door the girl's room. I love maps and we have two here - on the left is a very interesting National Explorer one of the Caribbean........and on the right is this one of Guadeloupe. It is fun to look at it and work out where you have been or are going (or which part of the coast was in the photo Mum took from the plane - working this one out took an hour of staring!).

Morning

I think I have now managed two weeks of early rising (the alarm is set for 5.45am but often Baby JoJo wakes me earlier!) so half way to making it a habit, hurray!

I would very much recommend it to you as it is such a peaceful time and I actually look forward to it every day now. Of course, it is much easier getting up when the sun is (nearly) up rather than on a cold, snowy morning...I do have to take a cup of tea and wrap out to keep me warm in those early hours though!

Here was my balcony this morning (I creep out through this door from the hall so as not to wake anyone!)

Doors to our living room and our bedroom There was a beautiful full moon this morning

View from my chair! Is it the rising sun I wonder...Another early riser - Papy and Mamy are up at 5am - here is Papy getting ready to go to Pika. In fact he was the one who inspired these photos, as he told me to get one of the moon!

My lovely cocotier!

Then the children arrive and it is back to normality....this morning we enjoyed a delicious fruit salad thanks to a visit to the maraichers in Pointe a Pitre yesterday. How many fruits can you spot....

Water melon, guava, banana, passion fruit, pineapple and mango. Topped with our first yoghurt in a fortnight - yum!

Our Kitchen

I have been meaning to give you a little tour around our house to give you an idea of where we spend our days.

Let's start in the kitchen...This is the first room you see when you come up the stairs and it didn't used to exist, it was just a cubby hole. But Bertie's brother Richard completely rebuilt it into what you see now. The glass cupboards were put in by his nephew recently. There is no gas supply in Guadeloupe so every household has a gas cannister - ours is hidden away from little fingers behind the cooker.

Here is my worktop - as part of Mamie's fondness of recycling, it is someone's old desk!In this cupboard is our glassware from Bertie's sister - our wedding present that we finally took ownership of last summer! Glass is not very good for us though - I shan't tell you how many items we've broken between us...Our very useful cupboard, the left shelves of which are reserved for Master JoJo when he visits the kitchen. Out come all the plastic bowls and lids to provide him endless entertainment. Thanks to my kind husband, I have these helpful hooks all the kitchen. Highly recommended when you are low on storage space.

Told you the freezer was small! Right now it is full of chicken stock and shredded coconut waiting to transformed into....something or another!

Bye Bye Flat

In twelve hours time I will be setting off with Mum, the girls and Baby JoJo to Paris, and after one of the hardest days of my recent life (perhaps given birth excepted, though I am not convinced!) everything is pretty much packed up and all the furniture has gone to various homes. I am waiting for Bertie to take me to my parents with one last load of stuff (they are amazing, fitting it all in somewhere!), feeding Baby JoJo, and remembering the last 7 years in this flat.

We moved in when we got married and our first view of the flat was not promising! I am not living here, declared Bertie. However, the balcony won us over and a lick of pumpkin paint did wonders! Since then, this little one-bedroomed flat has seen the arrival of LissaLou, then further squashed by CassCass and just when we thought we couldn't fit anyone else in, along came Baby JoJo! We have loved the balcony in summer, hated the damp in winter. We have been blessed with Waterlow Park, Hampstead Heath, Highgate Woods on our doorstep (well, almost!). Not to mention the bonus of living opposite our hospital! Our neighbours have been great, and Bertie just had an emotional farewell with them, whilst they kindly took half our possessions off our hands! And now we move on to a new home...

I certainly couldn't have done today or even recently without Mum's help - so a huge thank you to her! And Bertie has been greatly assisted by Lloyd, who is also driving with him to France (now we finally have the insurance sorted, phew!).

Freecycle has been great - we have had a steady stream of people coming to get things tonight. They get something for free, and we get someone to move not so easy to move furniture out the house! You should have seen the charming Italians struggling to get our huge fridge freezer down the stairs then into their little VW Golf! I didn't like to take photos... And the only way to get the sofa out in the end was the way it came in - over the balcony! Thanks to Maggie for the suggestion! Happily there was no one underneath...

I am looking forward to spending a bit more time with the kids now. The poor things have been very neglected these last few days, and received much of my wrath every time they tipped over piles or unpacked cases... They have also not had half as much sleep as they ought, so I am looking forward to re-establishing a routine asap! I am hoping we don't suffer too much on the train over tomorrow with three little exhausted ones. Bertie still has to remove the laminate floor tonight then drive to Dover for midday. What a guy!

Thanks to all you who have been praying for us - you know who you are! God has answered and has kept me sane!

Next update should be from la Belle France!