Matei insists on accurate reportingMatei has spent two weeks gallivanting with my mum around Belgrade and providing us with regular updates of his progress, like so ( Read more... )

Today's parenting strategy has been much like yesterday, although I have been paying Matei in raisins to put back whatever Helena pulls out.


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After 3 weeks of hard graft, 3 nights cleaning until 3am, countless swear words, and a bone-deep weariness which has slowly turned into a cautious sense of glee, the kitchen is finally done.

Behold!


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The ongoing house renovations are seriously making me question my will to live (less than 72 hours before the children come back and still lots of rubble everywhere, aieeee!) but a couple of small projects have improved my mood considerably ( Read more... )

Kitchen renovation is moving along, transforming itself from nightmare into merely the kind of dream in which you are trying to run for a bus but you are wading through marshland and your legs have inexplicable sandbags attached to them.

( Click for photos )

Self-inflicted:


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One of the ways in which the blogging world continues to inspire me is to make me want to create things of beauty. To name but a few, Ryan Marshall takes wonderful photographs*; Holly Burns does lovely art and craft things in her house and has been the force behind inspiring me to actually make my bed every day, because it looks nicer and makes me ( Read more... )

The mess in my house is currently unquantifiable. Z and I are painting one of the rooms, because we are hardcore profoundly insane. The painting may sound relatively simple to the childless but it involved the following ( Read more... )

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At long last, after two weeks! of such infernal tortures as
1) moving furniture (probably the first time in my life when I've thought such thoughts as bookcases? Who needs bookcases?)
2) no internet! [except for scant stolen time at work] not knowing what you’ve all been up to and whether spoofed has had her baby yet ( Read more... )