Summer 2014

I've not posted for some time as I have lost the charger to my camera!  A new one is now on it's way so I can retrieve all the holiday photos.

Summer was not as good as last year but we still had plenty great days at the beach and in the water.  It meant that not a lot of work was done on the house!  We started the summer with a fantastic outdoor performance of 'George's Marvellous Medicine' at Duff House in Banff.  This was the second show we have seen from Illyria and it did not disappoint.   The boys swam with their snorkels, jumped off the harbour wall (once!) and enjoyed meeting some friends from last year.

We have had our builder and plasterer in finishing off some things for us.  The coving was completed at the beginning of the summer.  That has really finished off the rooms and has also stopped the draughts!  Our builder has bricked around the back of the fireplace and that marks the completion of the living room.   All we need is a door on the downstairs toilet and cement at the back door  and we can apply for our completion certificate!

Illyria's George's Marvellous Medicine at Duff House

Snorkeling in the harbour

A storm coming in - we had a few of those!

Couldn't get the boys off the beach on this night! 

Living room finished, I love the fireplace!

Another lampshade made by me

Coving finished

Downstairs bedroom finished

Curtains in the living room

Kitchen cabinet painted

Why do all the little jobs take so much time??!  It is great to finally see some rooms completely finished.  We are ticking items off our finishing list but still adding others as we go along!

The suffolk latch handles work really well.

This cupboard hides the boiler and the fridge!

The boys art

Michael's rustic shelves!

Hardcore ready for the chuckies

No longer do we use a random breeze block as a step!

Spring!

We really are on the final push with the house now with only small but time consuming jobs such as door handles, cupboard doors and shelves.  The carpets and stair runner are down now so the house feels much more finished.

As we have had such a mild winter we have managed to do some things in the garden too.  The old shed has been emptied and pulled down - that was an interesting day with my dad!  The kitchen now gets much more light and our neighbours commented that their kitchen also seems much brighter.

Easter holidays are nearly here and we intend getting all the little jobs finished.  We cannot believe it is nearly 3 years since we bought our bolthole by the sea!  The projected timescale of 9-12 months was maybe just a little unrealistic!

Think this is my favourite quilt ready for quilting

Lots of happy childhood memories on the back of the shed door.  I want to know who Arran was Elma!

Going

Gone!

A new year

Sorry, I know it has been ages since my last post!  We have been finishing off lots of bits and pieces, none of which make very interesting photos!

We had a great time in the house over the Christmas period with our parents.  The weather was cold and crisp and we were able to do lots of walking to work off all the food.

We have started to landscape outside with the addition of a new fence which really tidies up the garden.  The back part of the garden has been levelled ready for a patio area, we just need to demolish the shed so we can finish it off.

Inside, cupboard doors have been hung, a few light fittings have been fixed and the downstairs bedroom now has a carpet.  I bought some beautiful fabric from Liberty in London when we were there on our long weekend.  I cannot wait to make it up into another quilt, Great British Sewing Bee has me inspired!

On another weekend away we visited Boyle's in Glasgow and picked out our coving for the downstair rooms.  It was a treasure trove of all sorts of designs and I think we came out more confused than when we went in!

The men doing the washing up!

Fantastic weather on Boxing Day

Took a couple of attempts to get the cables the same length!

Love my light fitting!

Carpet laid in downstairs bedroom

Toilet is functional but room has no door yet!

New fence and patio area

Christmas is coming!

It's official, we will be having Christmas at Cullen!  We only need to finish off bits and pieces inside now so we will be staying and having our first guests during the Christmas holidays.

We saw Santa at Christies in Fochabers then had some lunch and Christmas decoration shopping at Baxters. When we went back to Cullen we had a walk around the harbour to see the damage caused by the storms last week.  Our poor harbour beach was battered, the sand level is normally more than a foot higher than the picture and the harbour jetty was littered with pebbles and a few boulders washed off the beach.  We have never see the tide come so far into the harbour.

The boys had fun making some decorations for the Christmas tree out of broken bead necklaces and old buttons I bought at the Cullen Antiques Centre.  I love this converted church, I always buy something in there!   We finished the day by lighting our newly installed wood burner and decorating the tree in my favourite style; a bit of old, new and home made!

You can see the debris washed up at the back wall.  There also used to be 2 benches!  Even at high tide this part of the beach is not normally under water.

Pebbles and stones washed over the wall on the right.  Even some of the tarmac was eroded and washed along the jetty

The baubles made by us!

Another step closer!

Things do feel that they are moving too slowly but we are nearing completion (of inside anyway!)  We have no heating but do have a hot shower so we spent most of our 2 week October break there finishing off lots of little bits and pieces and enjoying the mixed weather!

We did a bit of painting, sealed and grouted floors, put up curtain rails, installed the cooker hood and showers and even attached some door knobs!

The first few days were lovely and we got out on the bikes to explore some of the area.  We discovered Cullen House which is an old mansion which has been converted into apartments.  The grounds are open to walk through a couple of times a week.  They were beautiful with the leaves all beginning to change colour and nice and flat for the bikes! There is also a church which dates back to the 11th century within the grounds.  The boys enjoyed finding out how old the stones were and figuring out what the symbols meant! The boys also had a few circuits on the

BMX track for the first time which is just 5 minutes away from the house.  I now know where to find them when they get a bit of independence!

A trip to the Macduff Aquarium is always on our list of places to visit and Miles was even lucky enough to win a shark in a raffle!

We had our first visitors some of whom got soaked and some enjoyed the fantastic October sunshine!  Miles and Zack both enjoyed showing their friends all their favourite places, crabbing and playing in the sea.