Sofa so good!

Woo! New sofa! With free man and cup of tea included ;)  First proper big furniture purchase for the house... feel like we've turned a corner from all the DIY ...

Front Lounge - the sequel

So, the last time we had a look at the front lounge was back in September last year. Well its time to revisit and finish off what we started. First though, we needed to clear it out ... and sometimes that means being slightly ingenious about how you move heavy things about ...

Peregrine Watch

Today we went up to the Downs to catch the Bristol Ornithological Society doing a Peregrine watch. You can read more about it here. 

We got to see two parents and three fledgelings flying around. We even caught a glimpse of the fledgelings being chased by a couple of kestrels! We don't quite have a birding zoom lens so this is the best picture we got - of one of the adults (I think) flying overhead. I love Bristol and its wildlife!

Tip Trip

We've been doing some major clearing out this last week. Lots of Ebay-ing and Freecycle-ing. And then today we borrowed Sunshine's dad's Volvo and did a massive trip to the tip ... got to the point that we weren't sure the back axle was going to hold up! 

So cathartic though ...

Stair-be-gone!

Went out to teach a dance workshop today, only to come back to this ... Sunshine had decided to have a go at the staircase ... no more side panels! Its really nice and really opens up the hallway and allows so much more light to bounce around. Now just to work out what actually we want to do to for bannisters ...

Kew with Americans ...

We hadn't really planned on going anywhere over the Jubilee Bank Holiday weekend but then we had a message from our friend Mark saying that he had a half day layover in Heathrow on his way from the States to East Asia. He was thinking of coming and visiting us but it just didn't make sense with the timings... so instead Sunshine and I drove across to Heathrow; picked him up; and then drove over to Kew Gardens for they day - finishing with dinner and dropping him back at Heathrow (and us driving back to Bristol). Our other American friend Allen who is also in London this month came out to meet us too... 


I love Kew; I could spend DAYS there just sitting and drawing plants. We all got really excited by this Australian plant called the Wollemi Pine which looked like a Christmas tree with its own baubles! We also spotted a beautiful green woodpecker and Sunshine managed to get a few decent shots of it pecking at a tree. Even the slight drizzle didn't put a damper on things (we'd just run into a green house every time it rained!).... mmmm must go again ...

Loft Hatch

After we got back from kestrel watching yesterday, Sunshine got on with getting our loft hatch in place. We had one there previously but it didn't have an attached ladder and was so narrow that it wasn't really very useful for getting things up there. Anyways, I couldn't really get involved apart from passing tools up and down. Sunshine wired a new light up there, cut a bigger hole and installed a loft hatch with a ladder. It still needs wooden batting round the edges to tidy it up - but at least its in place. We bought the hatch ages ago so its nice to finally tick "install loft hatch" off the to do list :)

Kestrel Watch

Sunshine and I were up pretty early this morning so we went out for a walk to go kestrel hunting. There are a couple of old warehouses along the riverside where we live and you can see a pair of kestrels nesting there almost every year. Their nest is pretty easy to spot in amongst the pigeon and crows nests ... they leave a very white deposit on the wall! They were definitely there this morning - we even got a "bumshot". Unfortunately couldn't tell if they had young ones. Here's a close up of one of them... 

Pressure washed ...

Our friends and neighbours, the Peskimos, are in possession of a pressure washer. Sunshine decided to borrow it this weekend to see if he could wash the grime off our outside walls. Unfortunately it had more of the effect of washing the paint off! So we stopped. But we DID get to wash the paving slabs in the back "yarden" and having pulled the hose through the house, also washed the front path. Both now no longer look black ... its so refreshing!

Mark and Nic's wedding

This last weekend Sunshine and I travelled over to Cambridge for the wedding of one of my closest friends, my man-of-honour, the person who actually introduced me to Sunshine... Mark, and his lovely lady Nic ...

It was a lovely, happy wedding and Sunshine was the official-unofficial wedding photographer. The venue was fantastic; the weather held up; the food was lush; and we got to sleep in a gypsy caravan that night! 

Congrats Bitterjug and Niddynoo, and of course baby Grace, for coming together as a happy family :)