Leap Year Birthday!

Yes it is the one in four year when I have a birthday. I have the week off - hurrah! We were hoping to have a bit of a birthday party, but the building site meant that we just had a smaller group of people round. Next birthday for the bigger party!

We have friends who are taking a sabbatical in Australia, look what a lovely 'Birthday Card' they sent! Try not to feel jealous about the sunny weather!

Thanks to evyone else for the lovely presents. xx

The photo of the cake hasn't really come out as it was dark

The trifle was yummy too - but no photo.

E went skiing during the day. Also no photos, was cold and windy but snow very nice and good coverage considering earlier bareness.

Look what we woke up to this morning!

Tour of the property

I have a number of photos I have failed to post, so some here as a tour of the house, land and some of the animals.

The view on a sunny winters day

The current heating

The new heating

The bedroom (notice that under the window sills is now filled in with hempcrete, lots of other spaces and round windows etc are also done ready for plastering)

Front of the house (will eventually all get re-rendered as is currently cement and needs to be something more breathable.

Beautiful outdoor seating which will keep us sane crammed in to the temporary accomodation with the central heating

Storage - we hope damp will be fixed eventually with new rendering

The crunky barn

White male rabbits (no babies yet - I mean the females not the males obviously). The bottom one broke his leg a few weeks ago. Seems to be healing ok. He looks a little thin and it is a bit squint, but hopefully he will pull through and it isn't because he has brittle bones or something

Inside of the disaster of a barn

Upstairs with all our stuff in boxes as it has been for FOUR years. Will be exciting when we get to unpack it. Hopefully we will like what we have.

More of our stuff in the spare bedroom

Yet more stuff - and some hams drying and freezers (x2) plus a fridge

Doug skiing (light not very good for the photo - but amazing back drop)

Snow shoeing

Warren and his flock

The Ouessant sheep. Getting a bit concerned that there are no lambs yet. Last year the first one was end of January.

Mucking out the stables

Bluebell and Lismore

Owen inspecting the cleaning of his stable

The lovely stables

Other sheep (currently above the stable)

Horse poo moved up to the potager (veg garden)

Poor blackcurrent before weeding. Bit swamped

After weeding

Nine out of sixteen beds have been weeded, but this is the not weeded end. The paths need a bit of work too.

Looks better from the other end

The string the hops grow up plus the house below, the new electricity wire and lovely snowy mountains in the background

Highland cows in the lower field (Buttercup and Bif are in here too - Bluebell still has to be separete as she feeds from Buttercup, probably we will have to sell her but letting Lismore grow up first)

The cat in her solarium

Shower nearly done

Well ok, needs slightly more work before it can be used. But starting to get easier to visualise how it will look.

Poppy has recovered!

She has started eating again. Including some vomit on the lawn from when she was sick! Nice!

Poppy isn't very well

She has been sick a few times and wouldn't eat yesterday and today only managed a bit of bread. Yesterday she managed an energetic walk, but today she is much more subdued.

We might consider the vet tomorrow if she isn't somewhat better.

Making curtains

I need to write this down so I remember for the next set. After these two there are still four more to go before the (London) flat is fully equiped. I should do some net curtains as well - I hate the things but they would fit in with the neighbours.

These come to just below the window and I made the lining 9cm shorter as it should come down to higher than the curtain and only has a single hem

The material is 142cm wide and the lining is 136cm wide. Ideally there sould be a bit of a bigger difference in width but that worked ok.

Hem lining with 5cm hem

Line up top of lining and curtain with right sides facing

Sew down the sides (with equal hem on both so lining remains narrower)

Sew tops together (2cm). Make sure you fold so equal amount of curtain wraps over on each side.

Machine 2 cm hem at bottom of curtain.

For these curtains I sewed down the side creases as the material wouldn't hold the well when ironed.

Then attach gather tape 5cm from top.

Hang the curtains and hand stitch final hem.

The final hemming still needs doing in this photo which is why they are draping on top of the radiator a bit. Doug kindly pointed out that many Weatherill curtains remain unhemmed for years rather than just the few days needed to let the fabric stretch to its full length. Slander I say.

The builders over the road will be pleased these are finished as they won't have to see me getting my underwear off the drying rack many mornings - less than suitably dressed.

Heat recovery from shower

This pipe will allow us to recover some of the heat from the waste shower water. Inside here it goes down a heat exchanger with incoming cold water which will heat the cold water a little.

It has been difficult planning ahead for things like this, but important if the house is going to hang together as we want.

More work

Not long now until the plastering.

Walls round the shower have started

Various bits around windows and under the window sills have been filled with hempcrete.

Not long now until the plastering! So much to do!

Moroccan style flat bread

Ok it is pizza by another name. We had decided to have pizza and I had made the dough. Then I had a great urge to have lamb. So I spiced the dough and the tomato pizza sauce with Moroccan spice and put lamb, egg, mint and yoghurt on the pizza.

Not a good photo, but very tasty.

Big hole for ventilation

We have been having a bit of a trail with fitting the heat recovery ventilation. The first unit was the wrong length and didn't go all the way through the wall, the replacement was sent in the wrong width. But that is ok because we didn't get the wider one because it was more expensive - so good news. Another plus of the wrong size was that we ended up having to redo the hole in the wall. This was a good thing because the original one was slightly in the wrong place, but we didn't want to redo because it is quite a big job. 

You can see the origional hole (filled in) and the new bigger hole here.

Here is the unit. It was quite unwieldy to bring on the plane.

Oh what a beautiful morning!

Oh what a beautiful day.

Bit of an improvement over the pouring rain of last weekend!

Much colder though so the 'central heating' is working overtime.

Internal wall and other jobs

The walls for the toilet have started to go up.

This door will be painted white

There will be plasterboard on the metal grid there.

All the places where there were wooden guides for spraying have been removed and the gaps filled with hempcrete 

Window sills have been crafted and put in place. The hempcrete underneath will be extended up to touch the under side. Once the walls are plastered it will be painted white - it looks good in wood, but it is slightly different to the windows so will look better white. Gloss? Maybe eggshell kind of finish. Maybe a touch of colour instead of white? Blue? Brown. Some time to think about it anyway.

The radiators will be attached to those metal bits on the wood cross bars. The whole lot will be nicely plastered flat before that though.