Brown paper and a pillow case

Believe it or not that's what we were using to stop people seeing in the hall window for the last year (in the absence of any form of curtain). Finally we've splashed out and bought a curtain rail (though we've used a curtain from the spare room). I will now be able to match the pillowcases in pairs again. Hooray!!

The stairs

It's amazing how long it takes to 'get round' to doing things around the house. The previous occupant was in a wheelchair and as a result the stair carpet has always been missing a section due to her stairlift. When we arrived there was a roll of matching carpet left for us in the hall and yet it quickly journeyed to the loft, not to be seen again until this week. I remember thinking that it was a top priority for sorting out and yet we quickly got used to the missing section. All it took was a couple of hours to redo it. Admittedly it's not the neatest job, but it's only temporary until we redecorate the stairs and landing. It does make the house feel much cosier.

Christmas

Is it just me or has Christmas come particularly early this year? I have to admit that Ian and I been singing Christmas songs for at least 2 weeks and the Christmas things we've bought haven't actually made it into storage until December. Still, I was most surprised to see that Otter Nurseries had a wide range of Christmas trees available yesterday. Today we visited Bernaville Nurseries for the first time and they too had Christmas trees (though admittedly theirs were live in pots). Driving to the nursery we saw a house with Christmas decorations up outside - the big inflatable santa variety. Is it the same where you are?

An introduction

I'm very pleased to introduce you to the latest member of our household - Snowball. We got him from Otter Nurseries last week, and he's been in the lounge ever since.

Pickles

Today we pickled some of our beetroots and very pleased we are too.

Halloween

Like my father I'm not fond of trick or treaters, but I do enjoy carving pumpkins for halloween. As a child if we could not afford a pumpkin we would carve a swede (not as easy as a pumpkin, but they still look pretty good). A couple of years ago we got a pumpkin carving set - consisting of some little saws and a tool for scraping out the pumpkins. They're very accurate and easy to use.

Last year Halloween came just after we got William and Ian decided to do a cat pumpkin. This became known as Williamkin and then I liked the name so much that I began to call William Williamkin.


This year we had smileykin (I've never done star-shaped eyes before and after I did he seemed to want a smiley mouth)


and otterkin: