I love a bargin, so heres a little run through of some crackers from the last 4 weeks...

This is an original watercolour dated 1954, in a gorgeous oak 50s frame. We found it in a charity shop in north Shropshire for the barginuss price of £5.

More butterflies for my ever growing collection, Rich thinks we might need to buy a bigger house sooner rather than later! Found of ebay for just 99p! How could I resist!

I have recently discovered a new charity shop in Bath, this little pillow was picked up last week for just £1 from there. I love it mostly because I have no idea what the hell this animal is supposed to be? Any ideas? Rich hates it, I can tell this because when I whipped it out to proudly show him all he said was "Hmmm..." which is husband for "its revolting but I'm far to nice to actually say this to your face, but if I see it in the living room I will chuck it on the stove" we are all entitled to our opinions but to be on the safe side its living in the office for now.

More fabric off cuts for my patchwork quilt I'm making to cover our arm chair in the living room, 50p from the same charity shop as the mystery animal pillow.

Picked up from Lansdown carboot sale this morning, 75p for a 50s Pyrex disk (always useful) why does it have a lobster on? Can't imagine you would cook one in this disk as its too small!! It makes no sense!! which or course is exactly why I parted with my pennies for it. 
I have started collecting the old Thomas the Tank Engine books as well as the vintage Ladybirds. I vividly remember Dad reading them to me when small, so I think 50p for 5 books is pretty cheap for a little trip down memory lane.

And lastly the bargain of the week, 8 packs of vinyl floor tiles in black and white. These retail at about £3 a pack from B&Q , I know this as we had only been pricing these up about 2 weeks ago as we will be doing the kitchen and bathroom floor in them, so imagine my little shriek of pleasure when Rich spotted these and the lovely lady only charged us £4 for the lot!!

See you have to spend money to save money....or something along those lines.

...And on it goes, ok things had ground to a halt for a few weeks because of work, then our plumber needed to move a pipe that was in the way, anyway we've had the quote to fit, got the stove down to Bath from Shropshire now its just a case of finishing off the hearth.

We needed to extend the hearth into the the room by about 200mm (to stop logs that might roll out when opening the door setting fire to the carpet) once Jerry had shifted the offending pipe Rich was clear to box in and pour the front part of the hearth.

God our living room does look like a bomb has hit it!

I'm only posting these pic so that in about 2 months I can come back on here and remind myself how awful it was! So hearth laid we needed to make a decision about what we wanted on top of the concrete, Rich was in favour of slate but on investigation we found it was a bit out of our price range plus having it cut to size was going to be a right headache. So we compromised and decided to try to find some 6x6 black quarries tiles, quarries of course being a medium Rich and I are happy to work with after out experiences at the last house!

Thus we found ourselves yesterday out at Ben's Tile and Reclamation Yard in Frampton Cotterell near Bristol.

Theres nothing nicer to poke around it than a good rec yard!

These where so pretty I almost brought a load, luckily lack of readies prevented me! Eventually after wandering about we found what we needed...

We only needed 40 but you wouldn't believe how long it took us to find that many that where all the same thickness! Quite important as we don't want to stove on the piss! Also we couldn't use any that had a crack in as they will be subjected to pretty intense heat on a regular basis, harder than it sounds when sorting through tiles that are over 100 years old! We got them for £1.40 each plus the good old VAT, not too bad!

They should look pretty nice when their all in (fingers crossed by then end of this week).

Not long now and that stove will be in that hole and I shall once again be the owner of toasty toes! Not bad considering we've been in the house less than  a year.

Once again things have been crazy busy around here, house job, car jobs and library jobs all seem to come at once! I have managed to pick up some more hours at work so for the next 6 months at least I shall have less time to spend working on the house, as it will be winter there will be less we can do anyway so hopefully that will work out and not mean Rich is swamped with no help!

A week or so ago we got another little job under our belts that I have been meaning to do all summer, the great chicken plan once again fell through this year as we simple had too much on our plates. The chicken house we got last christmas is currently half build and we needed to sort a base for it to stand on (so it doesn't rot sitting on the lawn all winter). 

We have an old concrete base where a greenhouse used to sit, the greenhouse is long gone but we thought this base would make good hard standing for a little chicken coop, there was jsut the small matter of tidying it up and some how stopping the massive weeds taking residence in the old beds.

Enter me with my usual stroke of genius (insert snigger here) and suggested we use the old underlay we ripped out of the living room to act as a weed suppressing mat under the large slabs we scored free from gumtree.

This seemed to work a treat with the added bonus that its one less think we have to drag to the dump and will end up in landfill! We need a solid base for the coop as we are prone to rats round here and as we're out in the country side foxes too. Hopefully this will stop unwanted visitors burrowing in.

Ok, I realise this doesn't actually look that great but its a massive improvement over the huge pile of brambles that was here before. Now all I need is an old greenhouse which we can then replace the glass with thick wire, then we can make a run you can walk into for ease of cleaning out. Now begins the hunt for an old greenhouse!

One job down 23000 to go....

...This was happening...

It feels like yesterday and a hundred years all at once, so much has changed in the 2 years since these where taken, both exceptional happy and unbearable sad, one lovely chap has held my hand through it all (and the 10 years leading up to this moment).

Happy Anniversary my love, you are my sunny days and my rainy ones!

...for christmas this year I would like one of these...

Arn't these great, polished steel plate racks, but can I find anywhere selling these! I have been scouring eBay and the web in general but the only place I can find that sells these is a french company in Paris.
So my little questions to anyone reading my nonsence rambling is any ideas where we could source one of these? 

Mmm...shiny and practical!!

Love love this market, I have been meaning to post about his for a few weeks, it is held a Bath Racecourses every month and is well worth going for a little look if your in the area, there are many goodies to be had...

And heres my personal favourite, if only I had had enough pennies to take this chap home...or indeed anywhere to put him when I got him home!

Yes indeed, a grand kitchen fortnight, not quite as exciting as it sounds (if you can believe it!) so the reason for the recent absents is we had to go and spend a little time with our 'old dear' of a kitchen, currently residing in the in-laws garage....

Richard being the little trooper that he is practically lived in the garage for two weeks, dismantling, drilling out rivets, sanding, primering and many other things that looked and sounded complicated and filthy. I did my best to help where I could but sometimes brute strength is needed and a girl can do little but offer to make tea and fetch another plaster to stop all the bloody.
Yes our kitchen needs a lot of work before its ready to come home, we have after looking the paint over and realised that it really needs a complete respray so all the front facing panels need sanding ready to be sent to a car body chap Rich knows. At the moment it all looks a bit rubbish...

I keep telling everyone (including myself ) that it has to look worse before it can look better and yes everyone one does indeed think we are mental but I have faith that Richard will pull this poor old metal heap back from the brink and save her!!

And one day in the not to distant future I shall walk into my kitchen and not see the pile of rusty crap above but this little beauty...

Oh yes...she will be Mine!..er...Ours...!