And I would like to thank..........

Very kindly Sue who writes a blog called Writing Home has recommended our blog for a Leibster blog award. As a recipient of the award I can also recommend five other blogs.
I read very few blogs due to a distinct lack of time, but there are a few special ones that I catch up with as and when I can. I will sit down and take some time to talk about them soon, I promise, but in the meantime thank you Sue, it's always nice to get some positive feedback.

(and I will try and find out how to insert links so that you will be able to see them when I have recommended them!!!)

La boîte de nuit du père noël

Look innocent don't they?! The little swine second in line (Baron - aged a few months) has been taking full advantage of my electric fence not working properly and escaped 3 times yesterday. Today we have replaced the energiser and even when he got zapped he just did the equine equivalent of a shrug and wandered off unpeturbed!!

I have been sanding beams this morning - what a lovely job that is!! I hate dust masks and goggles that steam up within seconds so that you can't see anything. They look fab when treated and sanded (the beams not the goggles!!).

I have been helping Neil with putting up the silver foil insulation in the house/barn upstairs.
The four year old child of Dutch Bird saw all the insulation and picked up on me calling it a 70's disco club 'Oh!' she said 'la boîte de nuit du père noël!!!' (Father Christmas's nightclub!!)

Neil is working like mad and has repaired the wall above the barn door and with Keith's help has reconstructed what was a pigeon house above the barn door and made it look much more attractive.

You may be wondering why there is a spray bottle with 'no cat wee here' written on it. That was originally a concoction put together by a friend of ours, who swore that it would stop our elderly cat using the entire house as a litter tray. Although we miss our old cat Romey we don't miss that annoying little habit and the bottle is now just being used as a water spray.

The next photo is Neil insulating the ceiling. As you can see the work is going on into the night!!

Finally my good mate Judi came to visit and we had a lovely hack out on Sunday. Although Judi and I were suffering rather badly with hangovers, we were still smiling in this photograph!!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to you - and here the New Year has bought a new spurt of activity. Jason has somehow encouraged some good friends of his to come over for a working party next month, one of whom is an expert in heating, so the race is on to build the stud work for the upstairs rooms so that we can have a chance of getting our heating installed.

Here are some pictures of the bathroom being built. Do you really think I have a chance of having a bath this year?

Well in any case it is fantastic seeing more progress. Neil always said once our first floor was in he would be able to make great strides. The weather is abysmal at the moment so at least he is warm and dry working on the house. Unlike myself, getting soaked on a regular basis and yesterday getting pushed over into the mud by a very large horse. Occupational hazard I guess!!!