It's been cold and frosty out there this week, but I was delighted to see that the bulbs we planted before Christmas have started to come through. 

At least I *think* they're the bulbs we planted - there's a small chance they may be unharvested garlic. We'll see. Whatever they are, it's nice to see some new greenery out there and it's making me feel like spring is on the horizon (however distant). 

I've also been delighted with these autumn bedding plants, which are still going strong despite the frost. 

I suppose it's probably pretty sheltered out there - the edge of the garden is only a few feet from the house, and we're in a built up urban area so maybe it just doesn't get that cold. Whatever the reason, the tubs are looking positively lush, not bad for Christmas week. 

I've got high hopes for this giant poppy - I thought I'd killed it in the summer but having planted it in the ground (rather than a pot) it now looks like it'll soldier through. I wonder if we'll still be here to see it flower... 

I've never grown ornamental cabbages before - I always thought they were a bit pointless, when you could just grow a real cabbage and make a nice meal out of it. But then I didn't grow any real cabbages, and these ornamental ones take up very little room and have been a great source of purpleness, especially now when much of the rest of the garden is full of sticks. I'll definitely have them again. 

They're ever so frilly and delicate, and such a beautiful colour. Looks like I won't have too much of a problem making the garden look inhabitable to sell the house in February after all. 

I'd love to hear what's going on in your garden if you're willing to share - feel free to post a link to pictures if you have them! 

We had a frost overnight, and this morning when I popped out for milk the grass was sparkling in the sunshine. 

I spent a lot of time faffing about in the house, but eventually in the afternoon I managed to get outside. 

I love this route. Down the hill, then up through the woods, up and up and up, round the top, and then back down the hill again. There wasn't much light in the woods. 

Eventually I emerged at the top of the hill (with much huffing and puffing, I might add). It was cold, and the sky was turning pink. 

It wasn't quite as dark as these pictures make it look, and I did stop for a quick hot chocolate (laced with mixed spice and almond extract - my new favourite thing). Then it was time to whizz back down the hill, grateful for my windproof jacket and thermal gloves, and wishing I had slightly less worn brake pads (I ordered new ones the minute I got home). 

I've enjoyed these last couple of days of exercise and fresh air. We're visiting family again tomorrow so it'll likely be a day of indulgence and sitting around, but I've reawakened my enthusiasm for being outside so I hope there'll be much more of this in the new year. 

A couple of days of sitting around is all I can manage it seems, and as the sun was shining this morning, I pulled on my boots and went for a walk. 

I didn't take the car, just walked out of the front door and up the road. We're fortunate that we can be out in the countryside in about fifteen minutes here, and it wasn't long before I felt really quite far away. 

You can just about see the city there in the middle of that picture above, about 3 miles and a whole world away. 

After about four miles I was getting a bit peckish. Fortunately I'd packed a picnic.

Nothing fancy, just a bit of leftover pasta and a flask of hot chocolate (with a sprinkling of mixed spice and a dash of almond extract which made it feel ever-so-luxurious). 

Oh, and a couple of biscuits, because you can't have a picnic without biscuits. 

I love how food always tastes so much better when you're hungry and in the fresh air. 

After my dinner (which didn't last long, as it was too chilly to be sitting down) I was revived and carried on with a spring in my step. A lot of my wanderings were on roads, but they were quiet back roads, and I barely saw anyone all afternoon.

Out in the middle of nowhere, I came across several sculptures in the woods.

At first I thought it was someone's garden, but it turned out to be the home of stoneface creative, a couple of local stone artists. Someone was hauling wood by the stream, and gave me a cheery wave. Most unexpected, and most cheerful. 

I walked just over nine miles in the end, and it was so lovely to be out in the sunshine and the fresh air. It's been quite warm today - at one point I even considered taking my jumper off - but now I'm home I'm curled up under a blanket and very grateful for my hot water bottle. 

I'm toying with making *move* my word of the year for 2017. Move house, yes, but also move me. I remembered today how much I love a nice long walk, and I plan to do a whole lot more of them next year. In between finishing the half marathon and starting the 62 mile bike ride I seem to have signed up for in March, that is...

I mentioned the other week I was considering joining in with FrugalWoods' uber frugal month in January. Well, the decision has been made, and we're getting ready for a shake up in our spending habits and financial routines. If you fancy joining in too, pop over there and sign up (you don't have to sign up, but you'll get daily encouraging emails if you do).

Mrs FrugalWoods has posted some homework for us, and since I am diligent and always do my homework with plenty of time to spare (ahem), here's my start at working through the steps. If you're intending on reading all of this you might want to grab yourself a cuppa, I don't half waffle on... 

Step 1: establish your goals
We want to move to a detached house with a lovely big garden. I want to have the option of working less. Right now, we are in a position where we could have one of those things, but not both. In ten years, I want the mortgage on our new house paid off, and to be in a position where I can choose to work (very) part time if I want to.

What I'd like to achieve from uber frugal January is: 

• saving as much as we can towards moving expenses so we don't have to add them to the mortgage and pay interest on them
• dropping some spendy habits and cultivating some cheerful non-spendy ones

Step 2: review last month's spending
Hmm. (Un)fortunately for me, I can do this very accurately, as I use the YNAB budget software (which in itself is not free... although if you do decide to sign up after using that link you'll get a discount, and I'll get a referral fee ). This tells me that in total this year, I have spent £16772.81. Crikey. 

(A quick word about our household finances. We own this house outright, after Peter spent 25 years working and paying off the mortgage, some of that while I was messing around doing a PhD. I am now the main earner - my wages are paid into our joint account, and I keep track of this and what we spend from it obsessively. We consider all money shared, but as Peter's income is mostly cash, and he is (by choice) in charge of food shopping, this mainly comes from his income, which I don't keep track of. Which is why I can be deadly accurate about most of our spending, but not food shopping, and not his personal spending, which he does very little of).

Anyway. That annual total breaks down as follows (I'm going to round up to the nearest £10 and use my existing, slightly odd, categorisation for ease). I've noted the monthly average as well as spending for November, as I think the average is slightly more revealing as not everything comes up each month. 

True expenses - £5170 (average of £430 a month, £112 in November)
This is the category I use for things that I know will happen at some point in the future - birthdays, Christmas, car maintenance, dentist etc. It's also where all the DIY spending is being logged, which is why it's so huge.

Monthly direct debits - £3480 (£290 a month, £313 in November)  
Council tax, water, gas and electric, internet, home and mobile phones etc

Everyday household expenses - £1880 (£167 a month, £50 in November)
Diesel for the car, odd bits of food (definitely a category that can be reduced!), household stuff

Quality of life goals - £1840 (£153 a month, £550 in November)
This includes holidays and weekends away.

Annual bills - £780 (£65 a month, £72 in November)
Car tax and insurance, house insurance, tv licence

Jenni fun spends - £2200 (£183, £250 in November)
Oh dear. This category holds my tea and cake spends, plus clothes, odd bits of fun travelling for me, and any other little bits of nonsense I care to waste my hard earned dosh on. 

Well, that was interesting, but as Mrs FrugalWoods tells us 'do not berate yourself and do not get discouraged... you're participating in this challenge because you want to improve...'. So, I'll move swiftly on. I realise I've lumped a lot of things in together here but I'll expand on various bits as we go through January, this is just an overview.

Step 3: Categorise your expenses
Now we're going to categorise into fixed mandatory expenses and discretionary expenses, and rather than rely on last month's figures, I'll use the monthly average that YNAB gives me as this will be more accurate. This doesn't cover absolutely every single little category as we'd be here all day, it's just the main stuff (but I will be tackling the small things too!)

Another quick note, this time about what I've categorised as 'fixed mandatory' - these are things that either can't change (like council tax and the water bill), or that are annual bills already paid for this year, or that I've already spent considerable time trying to reduce over the years, and I'm happy with current level of spending, and therefore they're not being covered by this challenge this time round.

Fixed mandatory expenses
Council tax | water | internet | mobile phones (we both have cheap, monthly, sim-only deals) | my union | tv licence | Peter's national insurance contributions | web hosting | car tax | breakdown cover (paid annually in May) | car insurance (paid annually in March) | 

Discretionary expenses (with average montly spending over the last year)

• My tea and cake - £45
• My clothes - £30
• My travel - £20
• My 'other' category - £100 (gosh)
• Diesel - £60 (outlandish considering neither of us use the car for commuting, but this will also include days out/weekends away)
• Food and household - £81 (again, outlandish since the main food shopping comes from a different budget!)
• Joint treats budget - £76 (takeaways, tea and cake together etc)
• Birthdays - £25
• Weekends away - £120 (gosh)
• Gym membership/races - £37

These are the things I'll be starting to tackle in January. The house insurance is also up for renewal, and our fixed energy deal is coming to an end so I'll shop around for a cheaper option for both of those too. 

Step 4: What can I eliminate entirely? 
Taxis, definitely. Clothes, for January at least - I have plenty, and most of mine are acquired through idle charity shop browsing which I reckon I can forego for a few weeks. Takeaways. 

After that it gets a bit harder. We've had a discussion, and decided that if we invite friends out, we'll suggest our house, or a picnic, rather than a cafe. However, if we're invited to something that's already happening (a birthday in a restaurant, for example) then we'll go along. We'll see how it goes. 

Step 5: Embrace the art of substitution
What can we substitute? Diesel perhaps? We do a LOT of just nipping to the shops in the car. I'm going to get walking again, and dig my bike out of the cellar. My gym membership is due for renewal in January, it's £180 (£15 a month) and I use it a bit, but not much. I'm going to hold off renewing until after January, and instead run outside, do yoga at home, and explore the world of youtube exercise videos. 

Step 6: Reduce spending on discretionary expenses
I have a terrible habit of nipping into the shop for milk on the way home, and coming out with a bag full of food. This is why Peter is in charge of food shopping, but somehow we've drifted away from cooking and into buying pizzas and the like. Food is a big area we can make improvements in. I've already written about my work lunches, but there's more we can do too. 

A big thing for me is roaming the charity shops at the weekend. We have a lot near us and it's something we really enjoy. We won't stop, as we're still looking for things for the house (nice excuse...) but I won't be buying clothes, books or anything unnecessary for January. It's only one month after all! 

Step 7: Empower yourself to insource
I don't think this is a step I'll have a problem with - we've already decorated most of the house ourselves after all, and I have had precisely ONE haircut in the last year (which cost £7). We certainly don't use a cleaner, or a car cleaning service (you'd laugh at the thought if you saw either our house or our car). Easy peasy. 

Step 8: Examine your habits
Buying food on the way home from work. Nipping out for breakfast at the weekend. Leaving the shower running for ten minutes before getting in it. Putting the heating on in the morning and just leaving it on for the rest of the day. I'm sure there are more...

Step 9: Plan ahead
This is definitely an area with room for improvement. I'm rubbish at planning ahead, and it definitely costs me money. For January I'll be taking lunch to work, bulk cooking at the weekend and freezing meals for after-work dinners, taking snacks with me when we go out, packing a flask of tea for a picnic.

Step 10: If you do buy stuff, get it used (or cheap)
Another one we won't have a problem with. Peter is fantastic at sourcing DIY-related things (doors, floorboards etc) on Freegle and Gumtree. We rarely buy anything new. I'll keep an eye on it to make sure, but I think we'll be fine here. 

Step 11: Banish excuses
Oops. I can already see a few excuses that have crept in to this post... 

So there are - off to a good start with thinking and preparing. I'll write about individual things as they come up, but at least we've got a benchmark to move from. 
​

Merry Christmas! 

It's been a quiet day round here. A restful lie in, and then a spot of leisurely present-opening with a nice cup of tea (those are for the whole of our families, by the way, not just us two). A couple of chocolate coins before a wholesome porridgey breakfast, and then a couple of hours of reading, a spot of yoga, and then we settled in for a tasty dinner on a makeshift picnic basket table. 

After dinner we went for a walk around the fields. The light was fading a little, but it was lovely to be out, and we barely saw a soul. 

After it went dark, I went back out for a run. The sky was bright, and the clouds seemed almost lit up as they scudded across the sky. 

This time of year always feel spare somehow, separate from the rest of the year. For the past few years I've been fortunate to be able to take a couple of years off work over Christmas, and so the whole fortnight feels like the start of the new year. Today I feel like I've started as I mean to go on next year - fresh air, exercise, and a whole lot of sitting down and reading. I hope you had a good day too, whatever you've been doing.  

I don't feel remotely prepared for Christmas this year. Last year, I was uncharacteristically ready weeks in advance, and vowed to do the same in all future years. Needless to say, that hasn't happened. A combination of DIY, working full time, and general overwhelmedness has conspired to ensure that I will be out finishing my shopping on Christmas eve, like all the other unprepared fools.

Oh well. It's too late to do anything about it now, except don my festive earrings and enter the thronging hoards (and, of course, vow to be more organised next year). I'm looking forward to wrapping it all once I'm home, maybe with a glass of advocaat and something festive on the tv. 

I love Christmas, but I have a slightly ambivalent relationship with gift-giving. I love giving people things - I just fret wildly about getting just the right thing, and that can sometimes make present-buying (or making) quite a stressful experience. I've had to work hard over the years to remind myself that I don't have to buy everyone just what they'd buy for themselves, and that sometimes the gift you never even thought of yourself is the very thing you end up loving. But I still haven't quite conquered the fear of giving someone a present that they really don't like.

My family and friends are grateful and appreciate recipients, so I don't know where this has come from. I really do wish I could let go of it, as it can be quite debilitating sometimes. I think I need to cultivate the habit of collecting things when I see them throughout the year, rather than trying to be inspired all at once. 

Another thing I'm not ready for is my upcoming half marathon. I ran ten miles along this trail last weekend, but it was slow and ponderous and not at all reassuring. 

Oh well. Both Christmas and the race will arrive whether I'm ready for them or not, so I might as well just face forwards and do what I can with the time I have left. 

We've had some progress on the house front today - again as the result of a bit of outsourcing. We don't have much carpet in the house, and most of what we do have isn't being replaced, but the bedroom carpet has been there for 30 years and was rather a mess. 

No amount of hoovering is going to make that look any better. And so, far too early this morning, a nice young man came and fitted us a new carpet. I think I last showed you this room back in August, when we'd finished the cladding and started the painting, but not finished. One wall was still dark green, the paintwork was gold (and royal blue on the landing), the carpet was covered in plastic from when the plastering was done several months ago, and you can't really see it, but there was no skirting board at all on the cladded wall. 

Well, this morning it looked like this. 

Slight improvement, yes? Ignore the piles of stuff on the shelves outside the door (oh, and ignore the fact that there's no door - there's not even one on the bathroom at the minute).

I'm not sure how long this room will stay empty for. There's a chaise lounge in the kitchen that needs a new home for a start. But right now it feels good to have one room free of paint tins and screwdrivers. 

So bring on Christmas, and the half marathon. I might not be properly prepared, but I'm ready enough (or at least I will be after tomorrow's shopping trip). 

This is what we look like most of the time now. Glamorous, yes? This is what happens when you refuse to get other people in to do the decorating. 

We did relent a little this week though - my sister very kindly hopped on a train and came over to help us paint the spare room. 

Plemty of people have offered to help over the last few months, and usually we've said no. We really don't want to seem ungrateful - we're just not very sociable DIY-ers. When a job is straightforward (like painting an empty room), it's fun to have others in to help, but most of our jobs haven't been like that. 

Take this week, for example. Last Monday night after work, I decided the time had come to replace the bathroom door, which is too small for the frame, and will be going on the spare room. We have a new door, so I hoped it'd be a straight swap. 

The old door came off easily (hooray!) and I tested the new one just to make sure it would fit. I don't think it will come as any surprise that it didn't. 

Theoretically, the door was exactly the same size as the frame - but the frame isn't quite straight, and isn't quite the same size all the way round. No problem, I thought, I'll just neaten the edge of the frame a little. ​

Much swearing ensued, a trip to buy a new set of chisels, and seven days later the door has been attached  (no thanks to me, I might add), but didn't actually close, so is now removed again.

It hasn't exactly been a sociable job, and most of them have been like this. We're quite aware that we're not that much fun to be around in the face of minor house-fixing fiascos, and so I hope family and friends will forgive us when we rebuff their offers of DIY help. I'm sure there'll be plenty of opportunity in the new house! 

Having said all that, it was lovely to have my sister come and help with the spare room, which now looks much better. 

In fact, we worked so quickly that we also got round to painting some of the kitchen. This room is an odd mix of woodchip and cladding (we ignored the cladding for now, and we're just painting over the woodchip, not replacing it). One wall was 30-year-old grey/blue, with faded patches around where picture frames had been, and another wall was bright yellow, painted several years ago in a bid to brighten the place up. I'd painted over the black paintwork earlier in the week, so things were already looking up. 

We've got with a pretty shade of 'English sage', and I'm quite taken with it. It already looks much better, even though we still need to do the fiddly bits round the window and the boiler, and the whole thing will need a second coat to properly cover the yellow. 

So we're getting there, even if at times I feel like we're going backwards. This week I'll patch up the rest of the kitchen painting, and we're having the bedroom carpet replaced on Friday so we'll need to empty the entire room before then. 

I'm looking forward to some time off over Christmas - a few days of lounging around and visiting family in various parts of the country, and then a week or so to get stuck in to some uninterrupted decorating. We might even be finished soon, you never know... 

I spotted these festive baubles while I was running through the woods this morning, aren't they pretty? A few trees were decorated along my route, and it did make my eight mile plod rather more cheerful. 

It was a good job someone had added festive frippery, as the woods themselves were rather brown. 

Autumnal, yes, but not awfully colourful, and I do like a bit of colour. 

I was having a good ponder as I plodded along. Mostly about the fact that my half marathon is just four short weeks away, and (as usual) I haven't quite done enough training. Also, that the half marathon is next year, which means that next year is quite soon, which in turn means that Christmas is very soon.

When I wasn't running through my Christmas present list in my head, I was pondering the new year, and specifically two (related) things: finances, and moving house.  

Having waffled on about finances a couple of weeks ago, a friend pointed me towards the Frugalwoods blog, which I'd not come across before. Because I can get a bit obsessive about such things, I am currently reading back through the archives - I'm proper nosey and I do so love reading about other people's lives and how they manage their finances. 

Mr and Mrs Frugalwoods are, it turns out, very frugal, and are hosting an 'uber frugal month' in January. Now, we consider ourselves to be pretty frugal by nature, but as we're about to commit to a mortgage which will likely take up what feels like a vast proportion of our income, there's no harm in seeing if we can do more. 

We've already decided that DIY spending won't be included in the challenge. January will be our final decorating month (yay!) and we will be buying anything we need to get the house ready, whether that be paint or flooring or odd bits of furniture. Fortunately, being naturally thrifty, we will scavenge and buy used when we can, and do most of the work ourselves. 

There's still plenty to examine in the budget, and I'll delve in more detail nearer the time. One thing I reckon we do pretty well on is breakfast - we mostly eat porridge, made with water. 

Before you start telling me that sounds like something you'd be forced to eat in prison, I should tell you that I do add salt, sugar and cinnamon, and also various other things if we have them - usually either apples or sultanas. At the minute, I weigh most of my food, in an attempt to fit back into the half of my wardrobe that is currently too small (kind of frugal, if you think about it...).

So I can tell you that I eat 40g of oats for breakfast, and as I bought 1kg for 75p at Aldi the other day, I can tell you that those 40g cost approximately 3p. At the minute we have (not particularly frugal) Sainsbury's sultanas (£1.50 for 500g), and I have 30g which (I think!) works out at another 9p. Add in a pinch of salt, a couple of teaspoons of sugar, a bit of cinnamon, and enough electricity to power the microwave for exactly two minutes, and, even if we include the cup of tea (teabag, gas to boil kettle, dash of milk) we're probably looking at under 15p for my breakfast (Peter I can't vouch for - he doesn't weigh his so might eat as much as 25p worth, gosh!)
​
My lunches don't fare so well (Peter is often near home, so can cook, forage, or eat porridge again). I went through a phase of taking leftovers, but we're not cooking as much as we'd like at the minute, so that isn't working. What also doesn't work is having a selection of sandwich-making items in the house (they get eaten too quickly). Instead, I stock up on the way to work on a Monday, which means my dinners often end up looking like this.

Sophisticated, yes? In case you can't quite tell, it's a couple of seeded flatbreads topped with cheese triangles, salad, and cheesy Wotsits. As I said, sophisticated. 

I'd not actually worked out the cost per day, but I'll do it now as I'm looking things up anyway. Flatbreads are 14p each, so that's 28p per day. Two cheese triangles is 34p. Salad is roughly 18p a portion, so that makes 80p a day. If I do have cheesy Wotsits (and most of the time I try not to, much as I love them), that adds another 25p. I also stock up on yogurt (50p per day), satsumas (33p per day), and some kind of snack biscuit type thing (roughly 24p a day). That's £1.87 a day (£2.12 if I add in the Wotsits). 

While that's cheaper than buying lunch at the work cafe, it's still around £10 a week. I'm at work roughly 44 weeks of the year, which means I'm spending approximately £440 a year on work lunches (obviously this isn't exact - some days I meet a friend for a cafe lunch (even worse!) or get a free lunch (yay!) - but it'll do as a rough calculation). Is that a lot? It feels like a lot - the perfect target for an uber frugal month!

When Mr and Mrs Frugalwoods were at work every day, they batch cooked rice and beans at the weekend for work lunches, which they calculated at the equivalent of approximately 31p a day (which would work out at £68 a year). Even if that only replaces the bread/cheese/salad, it's still a saving of £108 a year, and I bet I could find or make cheaper alternatives for the other things too. I was going to say 'I wouldn't want to eat the same thing every day' - but in fact I've been eating EXACTLY the same thing for lunch at work every day for months, and I haven't minded one bit!

So there we are - we've commited ourselves to examining all of our spending and having an uber frugal month in January. If you fancy joining in, you can sign up here (you don't have to sign up, but if you do you'll get some tips by email I believe). 

In the meantime, any suggestions for frugal and tasty lunches to take to work would be most welcome!

As we slip into winter, I mostly want to be curled up under a blanket with a cup of tea and a good book. That isn't happening much this year, but warm drinks and cakes and cafes and friends are going some way to making up for it. 

It still feels like autumn out there at the minute, but there's a definite feeling of winter in the air too. 

In between doing things to the house and going to work, I've been trying to get out in the fresh air, which at the minute mostly involves walking to places I have to go anyway, and running. This is one of my favourite paths to run down. ​

We've been trying to get out and do things in the evening  too - something we've always done but which has been a little neglected of late with all this decorating. 

And, of course, there's the usual charity shop and antique shop wanderings, which occasionally yield a little something for the house (nothing from this picture, I hasten to add - even I wouldn't know where to start wading through all that!)

But mostly it's just friends and tea and cake. 

I'm well known for my ability to nod off in crowded, noisy rooms, including on sofas at parties, and occasionally even in the pub. I've discovered that if you slip a hot water bottle into a thin drawstring bag, you can carry it around under your coat all day and nobody will notice. Today, someone mistook my 'emergency cardigan' that I keep at work for a dressing gown. All evidence, I think, of my sensible embracing of cosiness at every opportunity. 

There's not really much point to this post, it's just an excuse for gratuitous pictures of cakes. This evening I've been on my hands and knees again painting skirting boards so there'll be a post about that soon. For now though, I'm already in my dressing gown and woolly socks, so it's probably about time to head off to bed. 

This has been my view for much of today. This is the bannister rail at the top of the stairs, which was previously painted in royal blue gloss, which doesn't go well with the new 'soft cream' colour scheme. 

Here's a tip: if anyone asks you to strip gloss paint from a bannister, just say no. Stick your fingers in your ears, sing loudly, and then go and put the kettle on and make them a nice cake, and say no again. 

I confess that Peter has taken most of this off, with a heat gun and a scraper. It's taken months - it's hard work and quite dull, so is done between other jobs. But this week I'd taken the stair carpet up (to paint over - not strip - the royal blue gloss on the skirting board), and I decided to get the last bits off with paint stripper before putting the carpet back down, in that way that one job leads to another which leads to another... 

Paint stripper is a wonderful invention. Normally I try to avoid particularly noxious chemicals, but I think we've used our share of elbow grease on this job, and the scraper was struggling with the curves in the wood. Twenty minutes of paint stripper, a lot more elbow grease, one ruined toothbrush, several sheets of sandpaper, and a stint with an electric sander, and I think we're finally getting there. We'll finish it off properly another day - once the paint stripper was out of the way, it was time to replace the carpet. 

I have no experience of fitting carpets, and while that doesn't usually stop me, I won't be ruining the new carpet we're putting in the bedroom by fitting it myself. However, I only took the stairs carpet off the other day, and folded it all concertina-like in the kitchen, so I figured it would be pretty easy to just plonk it back on in the same position it was in before. 

The strips of underlay were separate, and in an ideal world I might have replaced them, as they were quite thin and worn, but this carpet is old, and I don't have any underlay in the house, so I turned each piece round so the worn part is at the back of the step, and it's made a remarkable difference to how the carpet feels. I suppose it's a bit like turning your mattress (although you wouldn't usually wait til it was completely crushed flat to do that). 

It was surprisingly easy to refit the carpet, and it makes me wonder whether fitting a new carpet is really as difficult as people make out, especially on the stairs where you're only trying to get a small bit flat at a time - although I suppose I was cheating in a way as my carpet was already stairs-shaped.

Half way up the stairs I found this. 

I've been ignoring this for months, if not years, but while I was sat on the stairs it seemed sensible to sort it out. But how? Various carpet-repairing websites suggested cutting a patch out of a spare bit of carpet (which we did have), enlarging the hole, and using carpet tape to stick the new bit in. I was reluctant - partly because we didn't have any carpet tape, which would have meant delaying the job, but also because this is on the edge of a step, so is likely to get caught by shoes on the way past (which is probably how it happened in the first place). 

Instead I settled for a kind of botched version of darning, using invisible thread. 

Not perfect, and I'll always be able to see it, but I doubt a casual visitor will notice when walking up the stairs. That carpet is nearly 25 years old, so anyone buying the house will likely want to replace it anyway, but at least this way the eye isn't drawn to an obvious hole. 

Somehow, those two jobs plus a trip to the DIY shop have taken most of the day. Isn't it always the way? 

This evening I suspect I'll mostly be lying on our newest item of furniture: 

Please excuse that dying plant, it's on its way to the compost bin, I just can't seem to keep it alive. But look at that chaise longue! We bought it second hand from Gumtree this week for £50 and we love it. We sleep on a mezzanine floor, so the ground floor of the bedroom can look a bit bare (when it's not full of decorating equipment, that is), and this, with a nice rug, will be the perfect addition. 

Of course, we need to remove all the decorating equipment, and get someone to replace the carpet first, so for now this is under the kitchen window. I love it, and might have to expand our new house criteria to include 'room for permanent chaise longue in kitchen'. Just the right place for lying for half an hour with a book, a cup of tea and a home made biscuit, wouldn't you say? 

As for the rest of the house... well. Many things are nearly-but-not-quite finished. Some things aren't even started. We're doing what we can, and the rest of the time I'm just lying on the chasie longue and closing my eyes so I can't see the mess.