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Recently in the news there was a story of a retired lady whose neighbour’s house had set on fire. The fire had spread into her house, an ancient thatched roof cottage, and burnt it to the ground. The lady in question had cancelled her home insurance to save money and was now left homeless and unable to rebuild her beloved home.
Source: bbc.co.uk
It got me thinking.
In these times of austerity measures we are all looking to reduce our outgoings. For us this has meant that I’m sewing the stash of patterns and fabric rather than going out and buying whatever takes my fancy. We’ve cut back on the cable/DVD rental services. We now have the bare minimum. To be fair we could have lost the cable entirely but as we don’t go out very often it seemed like a step too far. We are just being more aware of where we spend our money and what on.
I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing. Frugality sometimes reminds you of everything you do have.
But the one thing I would never sacrifice is the home insurance.
You see, I’ve been in the position where I’ve been thankful for home insurance. Before I met the Husband I lived with a guy in Surrey for about 7 years (man…that was a lucky escape!). In January 2003 we arrived home from work to find our house flooded.
Not the kind of flooding where a pipe bursts and you need to fix the ceiling and replace a carpet. Maybe repaint a little.
Source: chertsey.surreyherald.co.uk
Nope.
Full on, river bursts its banks, house under a foot of water, you need a boat to get to your house, and everything on the ground floor is ruined kind of flooding.
And we didn’t even live on the river. The water had just risen up through the water table as it couldn’t cope with all the excess.
Two cars written off. Carpets. TV and DVD player. White goods. Kitchen units. All furniture. About 500 books. Every single thing on the ground floor ended up in a skip.
All the ground floor walls had to be stripped back to the brick to half height and replastered and redecorated.
Even my sewing machines were ruined. Both of them!
The house had to be dried out once the water had receded. So big drying machines had to be hired.
We lived in a hotel for a week and then lived in a rented house for 6 months. £1800 a month that cost.
It’s an expensive thing, being flooded. Seriously. We reckoned the total came to over £60,000. And that’s 9 years ago. But the home insurance covered the lot. Every last penny.
Some of our neighbours didn’t have insurance and had to cover everything themselves. It was heart-breaking to see.
So this post is just to say that whilst everyone is tightening their belts at the moment, I’d suggest you think twice before cutting back on your home insurance.
Just sayin’.
PS…we’d been back in the house two weeks when we had the burst pipe type of flooding too. And yes, the insurance covered it.
* This is a sponsored post*
Usually I’m a bit “bah humbug” about Christmas decorations.
They go up just before Christmas.
They come down straight afterwards.
Which is very strange as I really do love Christmas. I’m just very resistant to the whole “Christmas is in the shops before Halloween has finished” state of affairs.
Not this year. I’ve been itching to put them up and finally found a chunk of time on Friday morning to get them out of the loft and into the sitting room. I blame the kids for this change of heart.
- Funny how you can see things in photos that you can’t see in real life…I need to buy a couple more strings of gold beads
We have a sackful of Santa’s (what is the collective noun for Santa’s? Sackful? Beard? Sleigh? Who knows?)
And, there’s also the other kind of decorating going on.
Button’s bedroom has been driving me to distraction for ages. It hasn’t been redecorated for nearly 3 years. Whilst I loved the colour scheme and it was the first room I’d decorated for one of my babies, it was looking very shabby indeed.
I also happen to know that Santa has some lovely things in store for her for Christmas, and then there is another pretty spectacular gift being made that may be for Christmas, maybe for her birthday, but either way will require some space. So I feel I can’t put it off any more, and whilst it might be slightly crazy timing, I feel better for having this project under way.
It will be painted by next weekend, with Button moved back in (she’s currently camping in The Boy’s room, with all the chaos that entrails!)
Then she”ll be ready and waiting for when the real Father Christmas comes down the chimney in two weeks time.
What I want to be doing is sewing…I have a dress pattern altered and the fabric cut and ready to go.
It’s sitting on the sewing room table singing its siren song and begging me to come make a start.
What I’m doing house stuff and one of the jobs du jour is painting shelves for The Boy’s room…they are shouting the fabric down and have waited longer to be done.
I’ve been putting them off because, whilst you can balance the shelves themselves on a couple of bean cans to facilitate painting, the wooden brackets are a bit more troublesome.
I explained this to The Husband, who gave me The Look.
Then he disappeared to the garage, returned with screwdriver, 4 long screws and 2 old bits of wood:
It would seem I have no excuses now….the shelves will be finished this week!
July has been a crazy busy month. And it’s not over just yet!
The Chaos Monsters have finished nursery for the summer and they’ve been swinging between bouncing off the walls and being tired and grouchy. So much so that Button has reverted to afternoon naps.
With naps back in place you’d think I’d be getting loads done, but not so. Niece Stitches has been in hospital with a bad attack of “we-don’t-know-what-the-heck-is-wrong-with-you-and-causing-all-this-pain”. It started with a mad dash to her house for me so I could take care of her kids, and a mad dash to the hospital for her in an ambulance. Princess Rose was amazing, talking to the ambulance controller on the phone and looking after her mummy until the ambulance arrived. When did 4 year olds get so smart and brave?
Niece is home now but still not well. Thankfully her MIL is in-situ and here for the summer to take good care of them all. And a great job she’s doing of it too.
Whilst all that was going on Mr S was off work with gastroenteritis. Although it was lovely for us to have him home for a week instead of dashing around the country like a man possessed, it wasn’t quite the break we’d hoped for. Thankfully he is back to fitness and today has crafted me a lovely gate to corral the kids in the garden:
- Not quite finished but fabulous none the less
Tomorrow we shall clear a space for the sandpit, move the last of the junk out of the garden, cut the lawn and plant the lovely lilacs that Himmelbjerget bought me for my birthday. Then we can enjoy the garden for the summer and the kids can play safely without me chasing them off the drive every two minutes. Much more relaxing for all concerned, I think.
Obviously in all of this my sewing machine and I have become almost strangers.
I don’t think the black trousers will be finished this weekend, and that’s OK. Life gets in the way and I’m just glad that everyone is better (well, I know Niece Stitches has a way to go but at least she’s in the system now and that can only be a good thing).
So for August the only plan I’m making is that the sewing machine is coming down from the sewing loft and onto the kitchen table in the hope that whilst the kids play in the newly safe garden, I might get a few lines of sewing done. And I really need to as I fell off the fabric abstinence bandwagon
It’s an unlabelled but probably lightweight linen from Abakan. I’d seen it a few weeks ago and resisted temptation but on my most recent visit I simply couldn’t walk away. As there were only 4 metres left at only £4 a metre it seemed rude not to, so I snapped up the whole lot and skipped away a happy girl.
Now all I need is for whoever is pinching all my time to buzz off and let me get on with things.
Here’s hoping!
The problem with slow sewing is that it takes a while to complete a project to show you.
The trousers are at the second toile stage.
The denim skirt is nearly finished…top-stitching the waistband, top-stitching the hem, sewing a button-hole and button and I’m done.
Also it’s too darned hot to get Mr S to pose for photos in his Whitfield jacket, so I can’t even share those with you.
However, I have had some lovely luck in the past week.
I won the Clean Mama giveaway
over at Infarrantly Creative.
I couldn’t be more thrilled.
I have to admit that I hadn’t come across Clean Mama before this giveaway, but I’m really glad I have as her ethos and products are right up my street.
You see, I’m one of those oddballs who simply has to do all chores and housework before I start doing any dressmaking, knitting or whatever. Crazy, no? I’d be far more productive if it was the other way round but I can’t live with the mess. It makes me twitchy. And then some!
So to me Martha Stewart and the Fly Lady are modern-day heroines, and anything that can get me more organised and my house cleaner, well, I’m going to go with it.
And it turns out that Becky has some fantastic products to help me out.
I chose the Starter Kit
and swapped out the Christmas Kit for the Fitness and Weight Loss Kit.
I’m already using the Fitness and Weight Loss Kit to jump-start my stalled weight loss (you may have noticed I’ve been very quiet about that over the last few months…now you know why!) I’ve even started drinking more water ‘cos there’s tiny little check boxes for each day just nudging you along to be more healthy.
Pretty neat.
Top of my list from the rest of the kit are the All Over Everywhere List (for those days where you’ve got lots of different errands to do in different places…like every day!), the Menu Planner (this not only helps with shopping but is my key to eating more healthily so works with the Fitness Kit too), the Food Inventory and the Before I Forget.
And that’s just for starters!
I’ve yet to sit down properly and set up all the information but I can already see multiple uses for these. The All Over Everywhere List is going to be perfect for To Do lists for finishing off home dec chores for each room. I’m going to allocate a Before I Forget list to each of the kids to remember those little milestones and the bonkers things they say.
So thank you to Beckie and Becky for this great giveaway.
An why don’t you mosey on over and check them out too.
Just to let you know that I’m not affiliated in any way with Clean Mama. Becky hasn’t paid me for this review, nor has she threatened me with physical violence. She’s far too nice for that. I’m just genuinely thrilled with these printouts and wanted to share with you.
Hey, and lets not forget Beckie over at Infarrantly Creative. Not only did she run this super cool giveaway but her blog is tremendous. She’s amazingly creative.
All images in this post are courtesy of Clean Mama and Infarrantly Creative… with many thanks.
Saturday morning dawned bright and warm and the boys had a plan to paint the garden fences.
This plan was not without discussion as I had my heart set on Tudor Black Oak. The boys thought I’d finally and irredeemably lost my mind. Needless to say I won and off they went to buy the fence paint.
On their return Mr S posed a change to the plan. Now you know that I’m fond of my plans and that I like to keep pretty much to the original specification.
On this occasion however I was very quickly swayed from my original course.
And at the end of the day, instead of painted fences and a patch of earth awaiting seed, this is what we have:
- The green, green grass of home
Just how cool is my husband?
And how fabulous is my nephew for working on this for us too?
Oh, and how thrilled can one girl be about having her own patch of lawn?
The weather here in Lancashire has finally turned to Spring and after letting the ground dry for a few days our back garden, which has lain untouched since last year, looked like this:
But Mr S and Leon worked like Trojans yesterday afternoon.
They cleared rocks, lifted gravel, and shifted soil. They also dug up some rather immense remnents from a 60ft willow tree that we had removed a couple of years ago:
Although us girls had very little to do but enjoy the sunshine, the men were adequately supervised throughout:
And at the end of the day we have a cleared, prepared bare canvas:
Next week, weather permitting, the boys (the big ones, not the toddlers) will be painting fences.
Then we seed the lawn.
I’m so excited to see our garden starting to take shape. Thank you, guys.
You knew it was going to happen…..
Two gorgeous cups and saucers to match the teapot and jug from AWIAC. Courtesy of eBay. £7.50 including postage and packing.
How could I resist?
According to Mr S I now need side plates on which to serve cakes to go with the tea.
Who am I to argue?!?!?!
Before I start I have to say that the pictures don’t do this justice, simply because it’s so big! It’s nearly 70 inches wide and about 80 inches long. Huge!
This is An Angels Story Quilt, designed by Anni Downs and made for Button by Ma Stitches.
It is spectacular.
It almost fills the whole wall of her bedroom, which is where it’s staying until she is big enough for it to go on her bed.
It changes the whole look and feel of the room.
And, most importantly, Button absolutely adores it. She pronounced that she was “very excited” about it whilst Daddy was hanging the café rod. She declared it “beautiful” once it was on the wall. My girl has excellent taste!
As you can see the appliquéd stitcheries are just lovely. 
But perhaps the most impressive aspect of this quilt is that it’s the first quilt that Ma has ever made.
I kid ye not.
Impressive, no?
Despite the best efforts of the Great British Weather, the deck is now complete. The rest of the garden looks like it’s been shelled, but two small people don’t give a damn about that, they’re two busy to care:
Mr S has worked like a trojan to get this done, ably and amply aided by Pa SIL.
Woodwork (and DIY in general) has not been Mr S’s area of expertise. Nor, necessarily, of comfort. But despite this he has set too and worked miracles in this house and garden. He’s knocked stuff down, built stuff up, and generally made this a safe home for me and the babies. He’s even pitched in with the decorating, being a dab and speedy hand with a paint roller.
But the deck is something else. He’s transformed a big unsightly hole into a place of fun and frolics for our babies. And when the new furniture arrives, a place for me to sit out with them and watch them grow, and for us grown ups to end the day with a glass of wine and conversation.
So, thank you, honey, (and Pa SIL) for such a wonderful gift.
I am blessed to have such a good man in my life. I really should marry him, no? 
