Tumble Driers, Haircuts and Granny Squares!

What a strange week it has been so far - nothing out of the ordinary has happened, but it just seems to have been a loooonnnngg week!
I have a couple of days off work now, the first in ages, I am off tomorrow to take delivery of a new tumble drier, my old one finally gave up the ghost at ten years old - probably decided it had had enough after years of being overworked! I have gone for a condenser tumble drier this time, as the siting of it is nowhere near a window, and have tried to find one as energy efficient as possible, but the best I could find has a 'C' rating.
The in-laws are also coming through tomorrow for a long weekend, so me and the hubby are taking advantage by having another night out - (the second this year - steady!) and I am having my hair cut and coloured on Saturday in preparation and am really looking forward to it.
My eldest son has joined the Filey Sea Cadets this year, which you can find out about here He is desperate to get his uniform, but I must admit to being a bit concerned when he announced after one session that he thinks he might like to join the Navy - he is only 10!

Thank you to everyone who had a look at my new website and was kind enough to leave a comment, it seems from your comments that we have achieved what we set out to do which was create a clean looking, easy to navigate website which was free from gimmicks. We will be advertising in the christmas issue of Ideal Home magazine, and each issue thereafter, so if you read Ideal Home, look out for us! I have done a little draw, and the winner was Kelly, so thank you very much Kelly (and everyone else) for taking the time to comment, and if you e mail me your address I will pop a little something in the post for you!
Finally, I can't go without letting you know about my Granny square progress, as you can see from the pictures, I have completed 29 and have another 16 which are waiting for the final two rounds of pink to be added, so that's 45 in total. I had originally intended for this to be a 56 square blanket, but I now have another plan for it, and so it may become bigger, but details of that in my next post.
Have a good weekend everyone - Natalie x

Finding Myself.....

Over the past few weeks while reading all your lovely blogs, a dawning realisation has slowly come over me. I have looked around my home and realised that I am not being true to myself. I have tried to create a home in which all the family (until recently I was outnumbered male:female by 3:1) feel at home - but what I have ended up with is a home that doesn't really reflect any of us. My lightbulb moment, I suppose you could call it, came when even my husband said that our house lacked 'touches' and that none of it looked 'finished off'. I think in the past, I have been swayed by 'showhome' type rooms in glossy house magazines, but I have neglected to think about what I really like, and what reflects me. So I passed my hubby a copy of Rachel Ashwells 'Shabby Chic' and waited for the inevitable 'you're not doing that to our house' - 10 minutes later when he emerged from the toilet with the book under his arm, you could have knocked me over with a feather when he said that 'it wasn't what he was expecting' and then told me to 'set my stall out, and decide how I want our home to look'. So I now feel like I have been set free, and I'm off now to dig out some gorgeous mother of pearl teacups that were given to me by my Gran, so I can put them on display and appreciate them every day. Sorry for the long post, but I hope you will keep popping by my blog to see how I'm doing and catch up with my progress as I transform our house into a home x