Sunday Roast

It hasn't took Tjitske long to find out Ade loves his food and you can't beat a good Sunday roast.

Tjitske makes good use of her great kitchen to put together our roast chicken dinner tonight and for pudding a nice piece of dutch apple cake mmmmmmmm very tasty.

Lots to do this week as decorating is nearly done but its all the little jobs that take the most time.

Cock a doodle doo!!!

When we first got together and started talking it soon became obvious to both of us how many things we have in common and one such thing was the desire to keep a few chickens, both for the fun factor and the supply of fresh eggs. Everybody we have spoken to about chickens have expressed their interest in chickens and how they would also like to keep some but haven't got the space or the time, well fair not  we will happily let you adopt a chicken once we have the hen house and run ready over the next few weeks.

The hen house arrived and yesterday we put it together its a Cocoon 1000 and we were both impressed by the quality and how easy it was to put together.

The list of adoptees for the chickens now stands at 3 with Florence, Linda and Amelia already signed up who's next.

Within a few minutes the hut was finished and now we need to build a run and make it fox proof before we can get a few chucks.

We have been feeding the birds in the garden the last few weeks and now we are starting to get some regular visitors 

With the weather a bit milder but very wet we have moved a few more fish over, today a few more made the short trip across to their new home 

Once again many thanks to Andy for all his help and well done on getting a job mate.

Welcome To Your New Home

The pond has had a few weeks to settle down and the filters a chance to mature so its now time to move a few fish over into their new home.

First were a few goldfish, forget small garden centre fish, these are several years old deep bodied and a rich orange colour as you can see they are also quite large.

Once they had settled in and shown no ill effects then we moved some of the smaller carp over

The last fish to be moved for now was a very beautiful albino grass carp, which made several escape attempts on its journey 

We plan to give these a few weeks now to settle in and once we are happy they and the pond are ok we will move the rest, watch out for that over the next few weeks, including our 4 barbel which will certainly present a problem or two when we move them.

Plans for this week include painting the garage and the finished results of the paint scheme in the lounge.

Don't forget to comment so we know you have visited our Blog

Ade & T

whats next

We started on the living room.
We needed 4 test colours before we had the right one, no hoping that it IS the right colour.

I liked the apricot colour but it was not appreciate, too much orange!!
Wait and see what it is going to be :-)

Whats for Supper Tjits

Tjitske is very happy with her kitchen, every visitor to the house is very jealous of all the space we have to cook and eat our food, its a great place to just sit down for a coffee and read the paper.

This morning as Ade had been working hard he was allowed 5 minutes off for a sandwich and coffee.

Come on Ade Times up back to the paintbrush and no stopping until tea time.

Florence loves to visit Grandad and Oma T and we love it too, she always brings a smile to our face and has kept us going while times have been tough. Ade took her for her first bike ride around the garden she seemed to enjoy it.

Timber

While the weather is good we are doing some work outside.

Ade and Ginger are fighting with some trees and rubbish in the garden

We have had to trim some trees that were too close to the house, but the good thing is we can use the logs as fuel for our woodburner next winter.

The garden had lots of rubbish that needed clearing, but you can't beat a good bonfire in the garden and Ginger is a pyromaniac so a small fire is never a problem.

At times Ade had to negotiate with Ginger as he was trying to burn next winters fuel supply

With a little help from our friends,

I found a lovely table in the shed, Ade didn't think it was a nice table, it was dirty under dust and cobweb's, but after a few hours work it is a beauty.


Ginger cleaned the worst muck off , after I gave it a wax polish Kirsty and I then painted the chairs.

Whilst Kirsty was Busy with the chairs her better half Andy was busy with the decorating, Andy has worked really hard and done a great job starting in the kitchen and working his way around No20 with sandpaper and brush in hand.

Both of us owe Andy and Kirsty a real big THANK YOU for all the help they have given us over the last few weeks, Thanks you 2 we really appreciate it.

 KK XX PMSL

Who's For Coffee

For the best results we need plenty of coffee so we had to start with the kitchen, Tjitske was pretty good with the paint roller and with a little help from Ginger soon had a coat or two of paint on the ceiling without getting too much on herself.

Grandad and Florence offered lots of encouragement and made sure that the coffee tasted good.

A big thanks to Ginger for all his help over the last few weeks its been really appreciated mate.

At Last we Can Move In

What is it about walking into a house and knowing its the right place as soon as you walk through the door, well thats what happened to us when we first looked at No20 we both knew straight away it was our dream home.

But due to the way in which we handle property purchases in the U.K. dreaming about a property and actually moving in can be a lengthy and worrying process, it took over 4 months from our first viewing to moving in even though the house was unoccupied and we had the full help and support of the seller and asked our lawyer to hurry things along!!!!!, our first plan was to be in before christmas but it took over 6 weeks longer to achieve our goal.

One of the things that we loved about No20 was the Koi pond in the garden, not only did we need a new home for ourselves but Ade's fish collection also needed a new home.

Luckily the previous owner of No20  gave us a set of keys and the chance to do some work before we moved in. The first job was to get the pond sorted and ready for its new inhabitants, the cold winter had taken its toll on the pipework and filtration system of the pond so we needed to clean it out and repair some of the pipework before we could give the pond a chance to mature for the arrival of the fish.

With thick ice on the pond and sub zero air temperature the last thing we wanted to do was paddle about in freezing cold water but we had to if we were going to complete the task on time.

A few hours hard and cold work soon had the whole pond looking much cleaner and ready for the lengthy process of refilling the 4500 gallons(20000 litres). 

All clean and ready to go and in a few weeks we can introduce the fish into their new homes

Please feel free to follow our Blog and post comments on what you see, we will update from now on on a regular basis as we turn No20 into our home.