Hello and welcome to my first house update! We’ve lived in our new house for NINE MONTHS already It’s gone so fast but also feels like we’ve kind of lived here forever – it really feels like home.
The difference it has made to our lives is incredible, we’re just so much happier being in a different area, closer to family and with lovely neighbours. We get outside so much more, even when it’s cold, and I’m just so grateful to have a lovely garden for us to spend time together all spring and summer.
It’s not massive or anything (nor is the house), but we have a lovely patio area with a big outdoor table and chairs and lots of pretty pots which I’ve filled with beautiful plants (OK – my mum has). Then plenty of grass and borders filled with gorgeous mature trees, bushes and plants. My favourite is a fig tree at the back, in front of our garden wall (which I also love!).
I’ve never been much of a gardener, and in our old house even when I managed to plant some bits in the border or in pots I never really knew how to look after them.
But now I’ve started to garden more and more and I’m actually really enjoying it. I’m loving the whole process from planting seeds and watching them grow (or not), to digging things up and cutting stuff back.
I’ve currently got salad leaves, courgette, mini cucumber, sweet peas, and some herbs growing and it’s so exciting! In fact, I’ve just eaten some of my salad leaves for the first time and they were really tasty! I’m loving how rewarding and satisfying it is growing your own food.
Although, my courgette and cucumber have bugs all over them all of a sudden (black fly maybe?) so please let me know if you have any advice to get rid of them! It’s annoying, as the courgettes in particular are growing really well. My mum said to try putting a garlic clove in the soil, sticking out a bit so I’m going to do that. My sister mentioned spraying them with diluted washing up liquid but I don’t love the idea of that.
We have an old garden shed that needs to come down, and then we might build some raised beds there to grow more veg, oh and I want to buy some tomato plants as well – my sister always has loads of tomatoes growing over the summer and it makes me jealous.
We’ve done an absolute ton in the garden already – the people who lived here before us didn’t do any gardening so it was all a bit of a mess, especially after being empty for a couple of months, so there’s been a lot of cutting things back and getting rid of dead stuff. I seem to find a new ball hidden under something every time I garden! At the weekend I also found some dog poo bags buried in a corner, a big log with ribbon tied around out and random bits of plastic crap. There’s also loads of fake stones all over too which I find bizarre.
We’re also grassing another area that was just a mess of Spanish Bluebells that had taken over plus quite a few roses. So my wonderful mum cleared all of that for us last week whilst we were on holiday; digging up all the weeds and moving the plants we wanted to keep, to the border, so that it’s ready for turf.
Not long ago it felt like we still had a mountain (of weeds) to conquer in the garden, but now, although there’s still lots more we want to do, it’s looking so much better and doesn’t feel so overwhelming anymore.
Ooh we also have a little pond which we had always intended to get rid of, but we all love it so much that we’re definitely keeping it now. We love watching all the wildlife. We’ve had loads of frogs for months, then they were VERY active and VERY noisy for a couple of days, then we got frogspawn! I thought they hadn’t survived, to be honest, but we suddenly have loads of tadpoles! We’ve also seen a couple of newts.
My daughter adores all types of animals so she is constantly outside spotting frogs and newts – it’s so lovely. It’s like we’ve gained even more pets moving here. Before the frogs were about I cleared out a lot of the lilies that were taking over, as well as removing a lot of dead leaves and guk, and then we bought a couple of oxygenating plants and these little bags that you chuck in that help to keep it clean. It was looking loads better but now it’s got clearer you can see so many dead leaves in the bottom, but you can’t get them without getting ten tadpoles in the net too, so that has to wait!
I’m looking forward to the baby frogs soon. I have such fond memories of me, my sister and our cousins spending time around my uncles pond, holding baby frogs and watching them grow, so I love that A is getting that now.
Inside the house we really haven’t done a lot yet. I’ve done loads of clearing out but that’s about it so far. It’s just gone so fast. We probably would have got a new kitchen by now, but we can’t decide whether or not to open the kitchen up to the dining room. I really want to because the kitchen is pretty small and it would look so lovely. But it’s less practical as we won’t be able to shut the kitchen door to cooking smells or stop the TV and music spilling into different areas.
It’s also taken me longer to get started with decorating as there is woodchip absolutely everywhere; almost every single wall AND CEILING have woodchip on and I have bad memories of removing that when I was young! Plus the walls may well need plastering once that’s removed so it’s not as simple as wallpaper stripping and then painting.
I have chosen the wall colour for the lounge though – Dulux Heritage DH Blossom – a really lovely pink. The lounge and A’s room are the first we’re going to tackle. A’s room because she’s never actually chosen how to decorate her own room before, so she’s really enjoying picking out a theme (beach!), colours, and accessories for it. She got a beautiful little starfish trinket dish in Skiathos – I love having stuff like that which means something and brings back memories.
We do need some bits of furniture for the house – it’s kind of mid-century modern so I’ve fallen in love with that style of furniture as it just fits it so well, so I’m constantly on Facebook Marketplace looking for the perfect retro unit or bookcase.
So that’s really as far as we’ve got with the ‘new’ house. Not very far, except for the garden. But we’re just enjoying living here so much and I really love pretty much everything about it. I’m trying to just take my time with it all and not feel like everything HASTOBEDONERIGHTNOW, but I do struggle with that. I’ll be glad when the lounge is done at least as we all spend lots of time there.
I’ll do another house update again when we’ve got somewhere with the decorating!
Lou xx