August

I always think of August as a drowsy month: long, hot and sleepy, everything slowly dying off and coming to an end as the seasons shift towards autumn, bringing with the cooler breezes and a new-year burst of energy.

This August has felt a little like that due to the heat. Even when it has not been sunny, the air has often felt oppressively humid and warm. We returned from Suffolk two weeks ago to another heat wave, a hot house and a very parched garden. I became obsessed with saving any grey water and was amazed (I still am) by how much we could save when washing our hands, rinsing fruit and vegetables, running the tap for hot or cold water, or lightly used washing up water. I even saved water from boiling eggs and vegetables! It all helped and, combined with a couple of days of rain, the garden has recovered two weeks on.

But it was warm. Dog walks had to happen very late at night.....

...or very early in the morning. We got to our usual dog-walking field at 7.30 am on a Sunday morning and were surprised to find it full of people with the same idea. 

John was finishing off the decking before he went back to work and he would be sawing away until about 11, then is was too hot to do anything, the kind of heat where you don't really know what to do with yourself as sitting in the garden is unpleasant and the house is boiling too. So we went to the beach and swam in the sea.

I found that this would cool down my body temperature enough that the hours after we returned from the beach felt much more comfortable, plus it did prolong the holiday feeling a bit which was nice.

I settled back into a gentle home routine, finishing off decorating jobs, doing lots of washing and unpacking holiday souvenirs. The village we stayed in had a nice little antiques shop in which I bought this oval platter (lemon for scale), Moroccan bread basket, and French linen tea towel and pottery "dairy bowl" in which I keep eggs. All inexpensive and already much used, especially that platter which I'm pleased with as I had been after a serving dish for a while. It's big enough for the Christmas turkey! 

We also bought what I thought was called a "spirit measurer" but is actually a "jigger" from the Adnams shop (Adnams are a brewing company based in Southwold). Holiday memories every time we pour a gin and tonic.

Still making the most of the holidays, we had a day out in London with my sisters, five out of six of the cousins and my parents. We started at the Imperial War Museum before walking over to Tower Bridge. 

London was very wet and humid that day, and we got caught in one exceptionally heavy downpour during which I kept thinking "I really hope it's raining at home too - the garden needs it."

Tower Bridge was fun. John and the kids and I had visited at Easter, but we went again as it's a fairy inexpensive visit, is interesting and give fantastic views of the surrounding area. Walking over the glass floor always tickles me. 

We narrowly avoided another drenching by popping into a coffee shop just in time, and got to watch the rain bounce off the pavement from the comfort of a chair with a cup of tea. 

It was a great day out though - I always find a trip to London energising and exhausting all at once.

Back home, I have been in the garden lots, composting things like the the dead herbs, and replacing planters and window boxes with ivy, cyclamen and brassicas with will hopefully take us well into autumn. 

We visited this local sunflower farm which was an absolute treat for the senses in every way and just what I needed after a morning spent painting Bella's bedroom and fighting off a cold. 

It's definitely a place to go to take photos - here and there throughout the fields are props like bicycles, benches, haybales - this hammock - which are lovely if you want to persuade your reluctant children into having their photos taken.

In addition to the sunflowers, there are large areas of wild flowers bordering paths through the fields. 

It was all very restorative, all that colour and beauty. It made me wish I could paint.

The fields are only open for as long as the flowers are in bloom (and I think they have now closed for the season) but it was so thoughtfully planned and nicely done, I will definitely go again. Plus you get to pick a bunch sunflowers for your £5 admission price. 

Since then we have been making the most of the last days of the holidays - seeing friends, spending time outdoors, enjoying days out and just generally trying to suck the marrow out of August. 

Summer holiday home improvements

Hello! I hope you are all well? I thought I would show you some photos of some of the DIY and decorating we have been doing around the house over the summer holidays.

I am finding that one of the downsides of being a teacher is that the six week summer holidays seems like an eternity at the beginning. At the start of the summer, it is surely six months! It is dangerously easy to over-fill those precious weeks with all manner of jobs and actually find you have spent most of your summer with a paintbrush in your hand (apart from a glorious week in Suffolk). I am not moaning, just wishing I had balanced things a little more. 

But this summer we got lots of jobs done which make our home work better for us. Number one was a fresh coat of paint for the kitchen-diner which, although last decorated only a few years ago, takes an absolute battering from us as a family. Our kitchen is small and every inch works very hard, all the time. Add into that two children and a dog, and the paintwork can get pretty filthy. 

This is what our kitchen (the dining-room end) looked like: a gorgeous blue-green which I did like but always found cold. This room faces north-east and, while it's lovely in the morning, is bathed in blue-grey light throughout the afternoon. I often found it felt chilly and a bit busy, and what I very much wanted (needed) was a room which felt warm and calm. 

And so I talked John into letting me paint it, and talked my kind and ever-patient mum into helping me, and off we went.

We filled and sanded. 

We began coat number one.

And then coat number two.

Then, after a third coat on the blue-green walls (but not the white ones) we undercoated the woodwork. I may have been heard muttering if that I ever talk about painting woodwork a dark colour again, stage an intervention.

More undercoat. There seemed to be a lot of undercoating. 

And then, finally, done. 

All walls, radiator and woodwork are painted in a soft pale pink (Julie's Dream by Little Greene Paint), a gorgeous warm colour which is a little reminiscent of the colour of bare plaster. A warm, almost beige neutral that glows in the sun but is still enough of a colour to work with the white kitchen cupboards and tiles, and colder tones of the grey quartz worktop.

When I came down one morning and saw the whole room bathed in early-morning sunshine, I knew we had done the right thing. The room feels both warmer and calmer. We have still not hung any pictures or fairy lights and I may not for a while. 

While Mum and I were painting the kitchen, John and my Dad were tackling the decking. We inherited with this house (seven years ago!) a large area of decking outside the kitchen. It is a great use of space but the decking has increasingly become wobbly and uneven to the point of being one large trip-hazard. Badly laid to begin with, it had not worn well.

But we had a plan! We (royal we - John and my Dad did the work) pulled up each board, repaired the rotten joists beneath - many of which had sunk, hence the uneven surface - then flipped the boards over and re-laid them. They laid them in a staggered, brick-like fashion, instead of the "striped" fashion you can see in the picture below.

Here are the boards in their new pattern. Most are old although there are some new ones in there too.

They started at the patio doors and moved backwards so that we could always use the decking if we needed too.

Finally, once the boards were down and edged, my mum and I jet washed them....

...and then Bella and I treated them with a natural-colour stain. 

I planted ferns in the space under the large rhododendron bush.

Then we moved all the furniture back into its place and commented that there's a reason why people do this kind of work in the spring - so that they can enjoy it over the summer, rather than at the onset of autumn.

And finally we gave Bella's room a quick lick of paint, changing her two pink walls into a deep forest green, and updating the very old and tired blinds and curtains at the two windows. 

Bella keeps her room meticulously tidy and is responsible for her own cleaning, changing the bedding etc. So it's only fair that she can decorate it how she chooses. 

This spurred me on to do something to cheer up our very tired and sad upstairs toilet (our main family bathroom is on the ground floor). We've never done anything to this room apart from paint it white and pull off the plastic tiles that covered the floor seven years ago. After a while you just stop noticing certain things. But I added more plants and hung a gallery wall of floral pictures and it feels nicer. We still need a new sink and to re-paint the room but it will do for now 

I have many more photos of the things we've been up to over the last two weeks - it hasn't all been decorating - which I'll share soon. I am consciously trying to squeeze every last drop out of the summer holidays before I return to work next week and there's still a couple of days left.