Swimming!

What started out as an attempt to teach Olivia about pouring liquids into containers turned into a fun afternoon of swimming. She's still small enough to fit in a wash basin :).

This is our back yard, the smallest we have had yet, and a postage stamp to our last one.

She spent a lot of time just lounging like this. We are going to buy a wading pool this weekend!

Home Tour

So here it is the promised post with pictures of my house!! There are things that are very normal for a British house in our home and there are things that are not for example it's pretty open feeling even though it's not really all that large it's laid out so that there are windows on both sides of the living room and kitchen which help to give light all day and let them feel larger.

So onto the tour....

This first picture is the entry and our downstairs cloak room (half bath). To the right there is a small room that is either a study or small bed room, it's my sewing room but due to lack of furniture its a mess so I'm not showing that room today, sorry.

This is looking into our lounge (living room)/dinning room from the entry. We use this area for living room/play room/office, and we will have a dining table there in front of the fireplace once we find one, the one we had didn't fit.

Here is looking at it from the other side by the fire place.

Here is my kitchen this is the side that has all the cooking stuff. The stove is 21" wide by the way. All of my baking stuff fits in it except for on pampered chef pizza stone that I just bought last year :(

This is my kitchen from the other side, basically a view of my laundry area, allot of people have a hard time with the *small* washers here. I must have been given a larger one by the base because I don't have an issue with it, I can't wash blankets like my king sized washer in the states but it gets my clothes clean and that's what matters.

Here is the breakfast bar and drink station. The cabinet with the lock on it is the snack cabinet and it's the only one I have to keep locked or Olivia will tend to pour cereal all over LOL.

Here is the upstairs cloakroom and bathroom. The cloakroom has a toilet and sink, the bathroom has a bathtub and sink.

This is Olivia's Room.

This is the guest room, this is the only room in the house that is completely decorated (with the exception of needing a bed frame) mainly because Justin couldn't take most of his military stuff to work at this office so we had a surplus of things that just really did not fit in the rest of the house. If you ask him this is his room LOL, it's where he comes to get away and play his video games.

This is the hallway entering into the wing of the house we use for the Master suite. One of the minor drawbacks to this house is that it doesn't have a proper master bedroom and the bathroom with the shower and such is next to the two smallest bedrooms which are coming up. We decided to cope with it by using the whole section of the house as one large room cut into different sections. What you can see here is the dressing area, which is a very nice feature to have since you can't plug anything in in a bathroom here, there are no electric outlets in them (sometimes there is one for electric shavers). I think it was a law thought up by a man who was tired of all his wife's stuff on the bathroom vanity LOL. Anyway in this area is a vanity, a very small built in closet (one of three the other two are in Olivia and the guest rooms) a dresser and a built in cupboard with shelves (linen closet).

This is the big bathroom in the house. It's called a family bath. to the right and back a little is a large shower. The floors are radiant heat and we found out the radiant heat can be uncomfortable if turned up too high and you have wet feet :)

This is the fourth and smallest bedroom, right now it's kinda a catch all room-like my sewing room but neater. It has a wardrobe for my hangup clothes because the other closet is not big enough. We would like to make this a full on dressing room and/or use it as a nursery if/when we have another little one.

And this is the bedroom, nothing fancy literally a bed in a room. Not much room for anything else. We were hoping to be able to get a king bed when we moved so that our guest could have a queen bed to sleep on but there is no way that a king bed is going to fit in this room so if you come visit I will promise to make you a comfortable as possible.

And that's our house. Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Bibs

One is in my shop now, more to come. I made a couple for Olivia and thought they were too cute not to share. Enjoy!

Under the Sink

Retro Housewife has issued a challenge to show her what is under our sinks, or what we use for cleaning for those of us who do not keep cleaning supplies under the sink so here it is. Since we have moved and I had to start from the beginning I have made an effort to go as simple as possible with my supplies I have:

Seventh Generation: dish soap, dishwasher detergent, and all purpose cleaner

baking soda

vinegar

Charlies Soap

shout

Febreez allergen reducer

borax

sea salt

liquid starch

and I need to buy rubbing alcohol

That it I use a combination of these to make various cleaning products like window washer, floor cleaner, shower spray, and scouring powder.

To take the challenge head on over to Retro Housewife and follow the instructions.

Incase she is ever a tomboy

This last weekend we went to the Fourth of July celebration at the Air Force Base here. They had a carnival and all the fun stuff you do at a summer fair including the games. Of all the stuffed animals that could have been won by her Daddy Olivia just had to have this

They came in this small size, medium, and very large. She wanted the large one but loves this one just the same. All I could think of is...Whats that saying...Ignoring the pink elephant in the room.

Sorry I don't have pictures from the carnival, I left the camera in the van. Don't worry though there were no important first like carnival rides, or ice cream cones and we did not stay long enough to see the fireworks as we forgot to bring warm clothing and got too cold.

What I have been doing

The last couple of weeks have been up and down. I'm pretty sure I got everything I ordered a the beginning/middle of June so if I can make myself sit down down and do them I should have some projects going and done this month. Then on the other hand July is one of the nicest months of the year here in England and if it's not raining I sure would rather be out taking walks with Olivia or playing in the garden. Speaking of which we have a greenhouse and I have taken to growing things in there and it's not going half bad, if I can keep it up I think I can grow a good portion of produce right in our back yard.

I have completed one project. Part of my big shopping spree was an order of diaper kits from Diaperkits.com I spent an entire weekend and a little bit putting together a dozen all in one diapers but the results were great and the order was well worth it since I could not have bought the materials to cut them myself for what I paid per diaper. Justin told me when he put one on that if we got 50 more of them he would be perfectly happy. We don't need 50 but another dozen in this size and three dozen or so in smaller sizes should do us along with some sleeping diapers.

Up next, the ruffling foot for my sewing machine FINALLY came in so I will be working on the pettiskirt I started for Devan while we were home and send that to her. I have 30 yards of chiffon so I'm going to make one for Olivia for play clothes and put at least one in my ESTY shop. I also got in two yards of oil cloth to make bibs with, I will be making a couple for us because we are in desperate need of bibs and putting the rest in my shop. I also have a shirt cut out for myself if I ever get to it and I would love to get to my fabric stash and make myself and Olivia some new clothes since I have lost a couple of dress sizes since moving here and Olivia is growing like a weed.