On Sunday morning, Emily came home as pleased as punch having received a fantastic mark in her karate grading - she's now a blue belt :-)) We then dashed out to buy paint, bedside tables, lamps, curtains etc for our bedroom. I'm sure the staff in B&Q must be experts in marital discord, rofl, judging from the number of couples who were not entirely in agreement over their decorating choices. Jon and I were in complete agreement, of course.....most of the time ;-)..... as was Emily. There were a bewildering array of shades of "cream" to go for, though, so that took us a while. Emily eventually chose for us...soft coffee it is then. More dilemmas over the gloss for the window and skirting board, but eventually lilac won the day. We also got some wall decor, a rich red lampshade and more bits and bobs for the rock garden too.
Next stop was a fabric shop to look for curtain material. Except that it was set to work out at nearly £100 for the fabric....not quite what we had in mind! We decided that our old curtains, washed, would have to do - but someone up there was in a good mood because in The Range we promptly found a beautiful pair of rich red curtains in exactly the right size reduced to only £15. We also found bedside lamps, throws, cushions, more accessories and bedside tables - except that all the beside tables we'd seen were £50+ each. So we went for a pair of kiddies bedside tables in bright purple and pink with fairies on at £9.99 each - after all, they can be painted and stencilled, so....and indeed Emily and I have been painting them all week. They're now cream, and will have red chinese script on them.
Monday was D-Day so we spent all morning moving what we could out of the bedroom (quite some task, given our clutter and the lack of any spare rooms) and then Emily and I spent all afternoon stripping wallpaper, which she loved. Jon and my Dad took out all the fittings/fixtures and false floor/false ceiling that had been on the old walk in wardrobe, soon to be Jon's spiritual alcove. On Monday night we went to Jacki's as normal, where we did lots of rune and astrology readings. Emily and the girls were keen to practice their plays (such enthusiasm for education, bless 'em).
On Tuesday we were ready to cover the room and ceiling in white paint in an attempt to cover the yukky purple paint job on the top half of the room (yes, yes, I liked it (and did it) ten years ago, but really, it had well and truly had its day) and the bare plaster on the bottom half of the room. We all had a go at that; Emily loved doing the ceiling! Ran out of white paint by late afternoon, so Jon dashed to Asda to get some more. Asda's own white paint is the pits. It would barely cover even the pale green that the walls of the old walk in wardrobe had been painted, let alone the purple paint. That was a little traumatic. I don't do chaos and I was rather more narky than necessary by the time Tuesday night came round :-/ For large parts of the time we had no room to move up here, let alone work or relax. Decorating always is that way though, of course; one of those "it's going to get a lot worse before it gets a lot better" times. Piccies of some of the work in progress, including the state of the alcove bit:
Yesterday the soft coffee paint finally went on; Jon did by far the lion's share of the hard work, but me and Emily did do one wall between us :-)) In the morning Emily and I went out for some retail therapy and came home with yet more lovely red and purple stuff, including a huge rug, plus some clothes for Emily and shoes for me. Jon also painted the window frame, the skirting board and the door and ripped up the carpet. Spread out over Tuesday and Wednesday, I'd been having periodic meltdowns, having discovered that not only was the bed we wanted not in stock anywhere but nor were the wardrobes..... fortunately, late last night we solved the problem and tracked down exactly what we wanted. The bed's still going to take fourteen days to get here, but it is a beautiful silver bedstead, exactly what I've always wanted. The feng shui colours for our north facing bedroom are cream, red and silver, so together with the purple for Jon's spiritual development, we're right on target there.
The floorboards are proving a bit of a problem; lots of them are broken and there are huge gaps between them too. We're still going for the original bare floorboards plan, but now we're going to paint them a warm chocolate colour to fit in with the colour scheme, then varnish them. With my love of all things eight-legged, not, I'm a bit wary of the huge gaps in the boards and between the skirting board and the boards, but Jon assures me he's finding a way of dealing with all that, so - I'm happy. Today the old bed and the old wardrobes have finally come out of the room, ready for the council to collect, so that the floorboard hard work can commence.
While Jon and Emily were out at tai chi this morning I caught up with some work, then Emily and I had some Beltane fun this afternoon while Jon was having rather less fun running errands for his father. Emily and I "harvested" lots of lovely flowers from the garden - hyacinths, bluebells, dandelions and daisies (the "weeds" being much to Grandad's disgust) and then Emily made herself an absolutely stunning Beltane flower crown, complete with yellow, white and purple ribbons. She was in her element wiring the flowers and is now very keen to take up floristy, so we've added that to the fashion designing, bakery-owning vision of her future, bless. I took lots of pictures of my beautiful Beltane Princess; she was sooo pleased with her crown!
We also made some tissue paper flowers for the altar tree, and twined a pretty pastel flowers and butterfly decoration through it too. We did make some fairies, but they're not on the tree yet. Emily also made a maypole for the altar, and then finally she dressed our blank god and goddess figures to be the god and goddess on their wedding day, all in shades of yellow, purple and white, using up the last of the harvested flowers. She made a bridesmaid for them too, from the spare wooden figure, and arranged them under the maypole with one of her Tutankhamun figures to marry then, lol.
The bedroom's looking super now; I'm so proud of Jon and all his hard work. Here are some pictures of the newly painted window, the alcove and the woodwormy, gappy floorboards!! The wall colour looks washed out in the photos, but it's actually a lovely coffee-cream, very warm and cottage-like.
Orbs near the ceiling in this one of Emily and Gramps investigating the floorboards:
This evening, Emily's had fun looking underneath floorboards; she's also made a time capsule scroll, which she's placed underneath one of the boards, inspired by a piece of old newspaper she found under one of them. She's written a long letter and included photos of herself, our five living cats and our beloved Merlin, plus a page from today's newspaper. Here she is placing it under the board.
Tomorrow we're off to friends for the day; the weekend has an absolute ton of deadlines for me, so that will be busy, busy, busy. Next week, we're looking forward to getting back to "normal" after the chaos of decorating; it will pretty much be done by then apart from waiting for the bed to arrive. Until then, there's another twelve or so nights on the sofa and floor for us!
Finally, a very cute picture of Romeo, sharing a quiet moment with Merlin at his grave, on this beautiful Beltane day.
1 comment:
belated happy beltane :) love the new look bedroom, it's great. Hope it's all coming together now for you.
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