treating myself

 I'm really excited (and a bit intimidated) by the thought of making our home into OUR HOME at last.  I'm forever wish-listing home-decor books on Amazon, but today, when I was meant to be looking for a present for someone else, I decided to treat myself to a couple.

I'm really meant to be saving money, but I justified it by telling myself that each of these books was equivalent to 2-3 interiors magazines in terms of price and without all the adverts and hopefully with lots more inspiration and things I actually like and might be able to tailor to my own tastes and recreate without selling a kidney.  And...and...and...  Well, I bought them.  Yay!

I can't wait to be at the stage of making things look nice rather than being at the stage of scratching our heads and trying to make things work/undo the dodgy DIY of the 1970s that we keep finding everywhere.  I suppose it does no harm to start gathering inspiration early, right?  Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

I have a small collection of vintage home decor books, mostly from the '70s, that I'm always meaning to share here (some of the rooms are amazing!) but that would involve setting up the scanner and scanning and saving... I just don't have time/space for that sort of blogging at the moment.  It's so much easier to steal a picture from the internet and blog about that.  Bad, bad me.  I hope to be back to my blogging A-game one day!

I've been on jury duty this week.  It was a logistical nightmare and my mum had to come and stay in case we needed her to look after Dulcie.  As it turned out, I didn't have to sit on a jury and just had an unexpected week of free time with my mum here to distract Dulcie on non-nursery days.  Hooray!  I went into ruthless/productive mode and cleared out many dusty heaps, drawers and cupboards.  If I was trying to get rid of 365 things this year, I think I'd have set a new record by completing the challenge in early February!  The British Heart Foundation have been inundated with bags of random stuff all week, mostly junk but with a few things they might hopefully be able to make a bit more money from.  I don't think anyone visiting us would notice a great difference (and anyone setting foot in our flat for the first time would certainly still be horrified) but it makes a big difference to me to know that progress has been made and that a few cupboards are no longer housing hidden horrors.  I wish I could take some time off work this week and continue.  I'm raring to get to stripping wallpaper etc!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that someone advised me to gather the low-hanging fruit.  I've been following this advice and it really has made a difference to how I feel about everything.  It's all progress, all positive, all distracting and, at the end of it, you have a basket of fruit even if the upper branches remain untouched... if you see what I mean!  But even the low-hanging fruit is easier to gather when you have some time off work and a live-in baby-sitter who also cooks and cleans!  Our freezer has magically restocked itself :)

Goodness, I'm getting good at writing nonsense.  That last post about reading made no sense whatsoever when I looked back at it.  Sorry if you tried to read to the end.  I knew what I meant at the time... I think! :)