Tea Room the Fourteenth

[amberlight]

Welcome to the 14th instalment of the Tea Room. It's now officially spring, and we've moved the tea room to a Gipsy caravan pulled by the tea room horses, which is making its way up the countryside in an effort to follow spring. There are of course hedgerows filled with spring flowers, Mellors the handsome gardener/driver/handyperson, the usual virtual Bishops, and the assorted animals and characters from previous tea rooms. All are very welcome to join in with us parents of one (or indeed more!) for general chat and the occasional very odd conversation. Climb aboard, grab a cuppa, enjoy the view, relax!...

gardening and plumbing now - impressive.

Something I do appreciate about Australia - I can at last keep a maidenhair fern alive! The bottom corner of our garden is slowly being turned into a "fairy glade" sort of place, with lots of feathery ferns, a little pond/water feature, windchimes and a seat - somewhere for me to escape to. Just need to kill all the bastard mozzies first... It's nice and shady, dampish so things like maidenhair ferns grow very well.

UniS - wahey for getting contracts exchanged!

Daisy, hope the new kitchen wall gets done soon

CMOTD - pics, definitely, please! We have a cruddy room at the back at the mo that we want to turn into a shower room at some point - MrThumb does have a tame plumber but he's dragging his feet over contacting him to discuss the renovation

Hurrah for new UniSHouse - sounds fab !

Daisy - DH is all at the length of time to sort out your leak. But at least it is finally done

I will take before and after pictures and post them. Whilst the current bathroom/ensuite/downstairs loo (we decided to just get it all over and done with in one fell swoop) aren't totally vile (thinks of burgundy bathroom suite in one student house and avocado in our first house), they are very badly laid out with nowhere to put anything, and horrid floral tiles

Ooooh, more property porn.

The UniHouse sounds fab! Is it close to your current house? In the same village? And well done on mighty quiz performance.

And there's still clearly some hope of making a gardener of Daisy. Perhaps, Daisy, you should enrol for the RHS course with private tuition from Mellors in -the-- potting shed? When we lived quite near to where (on the basis of nothing more than my fevered imaginings) I think you might live, we only had window boxes. We also had a mad downstairs neighbour who lopped off my trailing nasturtiums out of spite. Ahh, memories.

Porridge for brekkie, anyone?

Main bathroom now emptied of all suite and tiles hacked off. That took a distressingly short time !

Cat3 is hiding in DS's sleeping bag (which appeared last night when we were trying out the new self inflating camping mat). I think she may take up permanent residence there.

The list of things that needs doing in our house is getting longer.

One of the most urgent things is major work on the 'porch' which is actually part of the hall - windows rotten, but don't want UPVC due to increased width of dividers etc and need then for UPVC front door...

Then need to decorate downstairs loo (we call it the wine cellar (WC!), because when you're sitting you can take a good look at the (fairly empty) wine rack) and bathroom - ds has started on the wallpaper removal in both - and both need a washable rather than carpet flooring.... Plenty of tiles to hack off in the bathroom though CMoT, so if you want some more to do....

I confess that I have no hand in this process at all - the nice bathroom company men are doing it all, and I am working in the sitting room as my office is directly under the bathroom and rather noisy. I could send DS round with a cold chisel to take your tiles off if you like ?

We are having tiled floors put in, plus a generous tiled splash area round the loo downstairs to reduce the wee spillage issue

I'm not quite sure what posessed the people before us (who moved out with dd (3.5) and ds (18mo) to have beige carpet laid in the downstairs loo... Have blue carpet upstairs too... I will have to get to the remains people and see if I can get a piece of heavy duty lino that's not too dear to replace them both.

Bathroom porn!! I'd quite like to redo our bathrooms but we can't stretch the budget that far.

T&E, thanks for your Googling intense research on blind tulips , I think I'll just yank out and compost, the rest sounds way too much effort for me.

I'm meeting a girlfriend from nursing school this morning! Haven't seen her in 16 years. She and her husband moved to Australia (he is a mining engineer), so we (barely) kept in touch by snail mail and then email, but last Sept they moved to Port Moody which is a 30 min drive from us!! I'm so excited. A bit nervous, too. Kind of like going on a first date, as another friend described it. Her youngest is a few months younger than JB, so that should be fun.

Lemon almond muffins, anyone?

Muffins. Yum!

Yup, I reckon that composting is the quick and merciful end for your tulips, Jacksmama.

Let us know how your date reunion goes!

JM, I reckon you'll be fine! At least you know stuff about her and can reminisce together - a bit less tricky than meeting internet "strangers" (I'm not talking about you and CMOTD here, I mean me and the Sydney girls who I had only exchanged about 5 posts with prior to meeting them)

lemon almond muffins sound fab - just the thing to keep me going with my indexing

MUffins, did some one say muffins... let me at them. am in need of some virtual sugar and gooooe.

Suspect I have pissed DH off today. I made him make a disision about what time he would be picking boy up from childminder next week. And he huffed about having to make up hours if hes going to leave early 3 day next week, so isn't home yet. Now he has known for a few weeks that I am working next week and boy is being childminded and would need picking up, bringing home and feeding and putting to bed... its not rocket science.

Ho hum.

Men, eh?

I have invited Bergitte, the starter of the thread about bereavement, to join us for a muffin. Good job that we have the cake tin of requirement and it will never be empty!

Bergitte - if you're reading, welcome - have a muffin...

These are very nice muffins JM!

Lovely muffins - do you have the recipe to hand ?

DS very excited to see our new bath in the garage. And more so to walk on the sticky plastic covering the hall/stairs/landing

I am feeling like a proper wife/mother this evening as I have been darning.

How about a bellini this evening ?

Evening all, thanks for the muffin JM.

How was your mn meet up anyway Thumb? Did you have fun? Were the people anything like you expected them to be?

No news here. I'm off at a conference in Geneva next week and then the following week I'm in Spain so have been booking flights etc. I am getting all emotional thinking about being away from LittleO, I'm such a wuss!

I don't do gardening,I can't even manage to keep house plants alive for long. Our garden is patchy grass, an overgrown patch that dh tried to use as a veg garden, and a few daffodils at the mo. It's really miserable to look at. It makes me wish we didn't have patio doors right out of our sitting room. Whereas when we bought the house it was something I liked about it as I imagined sitting there looking out at a lovely garden.

Mary and Amber have been very quiet lately, I hope they are ok.

Helloo,

Thanks for inviting me D&E

Thank you for the muffin. Is this like the WI? Do I have to bake?

My DH does all the cooking nowadays and I've become deskilled (thankfully ). Wish I loved to cook but can't quite see what I'm missing... I don't read cook books either (apparently most people who buy them never cook!!)

Hello Bergitte!

"Is this like the WI? Do I have to bake?"

• No no no not if you don't want to. We have an odd jobs man who looks however it pleases you for him to look and he is happy to do anything you would rather not. He is called Mellors and is currently cleaning our caravans.

If you like baking feel free to share if not Mellors is a dab hand at whipping up a quick sponge here and there so just wait and one will be delivered to the fireside along with tea or bolly or any drink you fancy really!

• welcome.

Hi Bergitte, welcome to the tearoom. Fortunatly, by the power of the tearoom, you don't have to bake (and the food is non allergenic and calorie free) as food magically appears.

It can be like the WI, if the WI have buff waiters/butlers/handymen (ours is Mellors), and a large wine cellar

I did a Paris mn meet up today at a Stella McCartney for Gap breakfast. It was really lovely. I already know bonsoir so it was nice to catch up a bit outside of the normal places I see her and I had a fabulous time in the park afterwards with whereistheball and our dds. So... How did your meet up go thumb???

Hi cmot!

Was the Stella stuff lovely ? I looked at the collection when I was in Chicago, and loved the military jacket, but could not bring myself to pay that much

Sorry for the x post - I was distracted by DH telling me that oldest nephew had posted on Facebook (he had defriended us, but DH keeps an eye on him as his wall is visible) that he had bunked off school today

Hi Bergitte, welcome ! I'm relatively new also, I've only been here since January.

Just did a big tesco shop online, it cost 208 euro !! It really needed doing though, have been scavanging (spelling?) for food the last few days, making what I can from the random bits in the freezer and cupboards (again spelling?!!). You know I heard once of a website where you can input all ingredients you have and it will generate a list of possible meals for you. Anyone know of this? I'd love to get the address for it.

Wow, Tea, that sounds glam! Do you just bump into Bonsoir alot then? Do you two live in the same type of area, as I guess Paris is pretty big!

CMOT your nephew defriended you! Why, to stop you finding out all types of dodgy teenage things about him?

My brothers girlfriend defriended me when my brother and her broke up, so I guess she's his ex girlfreind really . She has since sent me a friend request again. I'm glad because they have a 3 yr old dd together and I like to hear news about her.

Yep - he is 17, and acting out rather a lot - nothing too awful, but drinks a lot, and certainly not above bunking off a few times. And being stupid enough to discuss it on Facebook. This is stupid enough that DH will call his brother tomorrow to tell him about it.

Will you get any time in Geneva ? I love it there, and theres always the entertainment of playing spot the CERN physicist.

Tis conference season for us too. But I know that no matter how nice the venue, I'll see very little of it. And this year I don't even get to overlap with JMs vacation

No I don't live near ba, AandO - I work around where she lives.

The Stella stuff was quite funky, fun and kooky.

cmot - grrr at the defriending thing.