Double take and Office decor...

Got to the Wharf this morning, enjoying the bright sunshine (although not the wind-chill, my ears almost frozen off twice on the way in), beep my RFID enabled ID card at the tiny perspex security barriers in reception at One Canada Square, waited patiently for one of the lifts to come and get me, crowded in with a bunch of other skyscrape-o-naughts and prepared for takeoff (16 floors of Express Zone - a literally ear-popping journey)...when the doors opened I took one step outside and decided I must have (daftly) got off on completely the wrong floor (and *almost* got straight back in again, until I confusedly noted the number 22 on the wall - basically when I left on Friday night, this hall was completely devoid of subtle squares), the second thing my brain did is decide that all the pillar-box red I could see through the doors (at each end) was some variation on that plastic netting you see erected around roadside excavations and there had been some sort of construction incident I was being protected from (it used to be an elegant clear glass curved wall beyond the doors)...

As it turned out, our area (as it had been since the move) was not complete after all and the decorators had been busy over the weekend finishing everything off...I'm not sure I'm terribly fond of it (not that I'm pretending to be any sort of Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen figure, it's just that) when it comes to decorating choices at *home* (at any least) I tend to shy away from massive blocks of primary colours, preferring a simple white (or off white)...anyway, that was not all, we now have a functioning hot desk next to us (only used so far for cake storage) -

- complete with chairs and giant plasma screens (which show Sky Sports/News all day long), and also a tiny little meeting area with banks of brightly coloured chairs and glass tables, which I haven't seen anyone use yet, but I'm sure will be very useful when important visitors are being kept waiting by people... ;)

I guess you could say we've gone sort of "Popham Little Chef"-themed... ;)

Canary Wharf Christmas Decorations...

...are up (yay!), and it looks like they have actually bought some news ones for this year (or spruced them up a bit at the very least), no festive signs in evidence this year either...! ;)

Arty pictures of Christmas at Canary Wharf

Sorry, feeling a bit abstract at the moment...it's sort of liberating not to worry too much about focus (and things) for a while... ;)

Work Christmas Decorations

There we go...I've done my part! I know it's a little early...but hey... ;)

Bathroom and Nursery, weekend update

It's been another busy weekend, I finished off the plasterboard skimming in the nursery on Saturday (and because it was so hot it was a bit of a nightmare) the sanding took much longer than I thought and was harder work than I thought, but it was well worth it, the wall is really smooth and jolly even now (even if I do say so myself)...probably shouldn't have worn black clothes though, when I came out it looked like I'd had a collision with a sack of flour, all in my hair, in my ears and up my nose...took ages to clean up all the dust, starting with the vacuum cleaner, and finishing up with a damp sponge on the walls themselves (a surprising amount kept on clinging to them even after repeated wiping)...on Saturday night, instead of watching Britain's got talent, I made a start on the painting, but gave up after a wall and a half as the finish looked terrible (really disheartening after all the effort I had gone to), oddly in the morning it had all magically straightened itself out (could have been just the electric light playing tricks with my tired eyes, but I definitely concluded to get some better paint would be a sensible thing to do, the stuff we have is way too watery)...

Sunday, for once, I actually had a full day of rest (even fell asleep on the sofa at about 9pm)...! This week it's going to be chaos at home, the bathroom is going in - and we are going out (to avoid the upheaval)...we are staying with at my folks place in Oxted, the only bad thing is that they aren't going to be there as they are off on holiday...So this morning we loaded up all our clothes and wash kits (etc) into Poppy the Beetle and after work I'm heading straight there, the next time I see the house (which will be at the end of the week, just before we go off on our mini break to the South West), the new bathroom should be installed!

Skimming plasterboard

Nursery update time, really starting to feel like we are getting somewhere now...spent quite a bit of Saturday, Sunday and Monday filling in all the holes, scraping off the hard-to-remove final bits of the old wallpaper and then smearing ready-mix plaster all over all the walls (about 1-2mm thick), trying to get as even a finish as I could (started off pretty bad, got much better - and quicker - as I went along)...had a bit of a panic on Monday lunchtime when I spotted a load of little cracks, but a quick call to Flyingpops dad resulted in the blissful knowledge that this was quite normal, even for a professional plasterer, and one was just to fill them up with filler...so the next step (next weekend) will be to sand down the walls (to get a nice smooth finish) -

- you can see where I've had to lay it on thicker (to cover bits where the plasterboard was damaged) little ridges have been left in places, but I had a go with the sandpaper and they come off very easily indeed...it was a bit of a tedious thing to actually do, but it should mean the end result is a much better finish...can't wait for it all to be done...!

Spring Cleaning - Nursery Required

Let me share with you exactly what happens when you suddenly discover that you need a nursery (in a house you have been occupying for some time)...it's actually quite simple - either you pack up and move to a house with one more room in it (and with the economic climate as it is, very few people are selling houses at the moment - unless they can't help it), or *years* of treasured possessions have to go either into the loft or into the bin...and if your loft is already fairly full, you find yourself just having to be brutal...and I thought I had been pretty aggressive at de-cluttering when we moved into the house - nah-uh... :(

I'm still coughing and sneezing from the amount of dust we have managed to kick up (and it feels like the process has only just begun), which does indicate that perhaps *some* of those treasured possessions had been a little neglected (meaning I wouldn't miss them too much)...but it's still painful to dump quite so many things that at one stage or another I certainly intended to keep forever (I never imagined the black bin liner hovering inevitably in their distant future, but it was obviously there all along)...

...and now that bin bag has arrived...well, bags actually...heaps and heaps of books (enough to fill three Oxfam shops), jewel cases enough to build a new Crystal Palace...trinkets and gadgets enough to populate a museum of the history of cool technology - once loved plush toys, their cute eyes appealing (to the very end) for their sentences to be repealed (only to be cruelly denied) - this is a material cull...

Other slightly less amusing parts of this process (if that were possible), have included dismantling (in the nursery to be) and then spending two and a half hours trying to reassemble the (might as well be) cast iron futon in the old office (to become a spare room/den for me) with much sweating, swearing, pinching of fingers in pliers/mechanisms, getting trapped between metal and wall (or metal and floor) and muscle straining hefting of stupidly heavy futon mattress...and there is so much more to come (hopefully some of which will actually be enjoyable, like) repairing, putting shelves up into, then sanding down and painting one of Flyingpops old wardrobes to become storage for baby clothes (and other related goods)...

Oh and of course (how could I forget), we have all the upheaval to look forward to of having pretty much the whole of the upstairs redecorated (i.e. stripped back to the plasterboard redecorated, not just a lick of paint)...still, at least this time a) I don't have to do it all (we are going to pay), and b) all the window frames are plastic rather than crumbling wood (saving a lot of time, effort and gloss paint)...

Our Tiny Christmas Tree

Here we go, finally got around to taking a picture of our tiny Christmas tree...it's a live, pot grown spruce pine, apparently they grow about a foot a year, so next year it should be a little more impressive!

Had a bit of trouble actually decorating it though, almost every single decoration we owned was *way* too big (put the bauble on the branch and it simply sagged towards the ground and fell off), the smallest set of lights we could find in the house was a set of 200(!), which frankly would have completely buried the poor thing, so Sunday morning was spent on a bit of a mission to find the absolute smallest of everything on offer...

Tesco was a let down (only coloured light sets, or ones far too long), Woolworths we skipped thanks to a report that they had been already stripped of everything good, Dorking Car boot sale yielded a tiny set of hand-made painted wooden stockings and presents (for a pound), Dorking Garden Centre netted us a small pack of white glass baubles, but again no suitable lights...we finally scored a white set of 20 (just what we were after) from Knights in Betchworth (they even tested them for us before we left!) along with some adorable little hanging signs that say all sorts of festive catch phrases...and actually, it was Knights that had by far the best selection of Christmas decorations (for both inside and out) having turned over at least half the store to the purpose, so if we ever need any more, I know where I will be heading first... ;)

Christmas Decorations

So we've made a *start* on the Christmas decorations -

- Flyingpops popped up into the loft on Saturday to put a load of summer things (like the big fan) up into the loft, and bring a lot of winter things (like the Christmas decorations) down...I busied myself stringing the lights around the front of the house while she tidied up the front garden -

- although we have agreed that we are going to be doing things a little low key this year for the simple reason that we are spending Christmas day and Boxing day away at the respective sets of parents and then spending the rest of the break down in Cornwall (so there didn't seem much point in really going to town)...

- and this includes the tree - we decided to go green and buy a living one (after taking advice from the staff at Priory Farm) -

- (it's also a bit of a waste of money to spend £50, as we normally do, if we're not going to be around to enjoy it)...we had a little look around Christmas Tree Land anyway (as it is jolly festive)-

- but actually more people seemed to have come along to ride the train than actually buy any trees -

- anyway, we picked our little tree out...because it is alive and there is no danger of needle dropping we were able to go for a traditional spruce pine (with that perfect Christmas Tree shape) rather than the oddly squat and twisted non-drop ones that are popular at the moment...

It's out in the garden at the moment (where it can live inbetween Christmases from now on), I think we'll get around to actually decorating it next weekend (although it might look a little odd with the usual 200 light set smothering it)...so that might have to change!

It's starting to look a lot like Christmas...!

Well, the trees and tinsel have re-emerged from storage in the office making the place look extremely festive -

- and classes full of school children are frantically busy sliding around and falling over on the Canada Square ice rink...so here we are - December - and only 3 weeks to go!

Am I too early to wish Everyone a very merry Christmas? ;)

This does (of course) mean that once again I am going to be up a ladder this weekend, risking life and limb to put up all our lights...*gulp*... ;)

Christmas Tree is up...!

It's filling the room with an amazing "pine" smell... ;)

Tis the season...

Well, a super Christmas-themed weekend, got the decorations out of the loft (well, Flyingpops did that actually, I held the ladder), put the electric lights out all over the front of the house, in the pouring rain (even managed an extra set this year wrapped around the pillar on the porch), then zoomed to Priory Farm to their "Christmas Tree Land" -

- with everyone else in Surrey (it seems, had to drive twice around the car park before we got a spot!) -

- to choose our tree -

- didn't get quite such a huge one this year though (trying to economise where possible) still managed to spend £30 though...

Cleveryly (learned our lesson from last year) we picked one without a huge great trunk, so we only needed to saw a tiny sliver from the end to get it to fit in the base...not quite sure when we are actually going to get round to decorating *inside* the house, but the outside is certainly looking festive now... ;)

Christmas decorations in the office...

Aw, doesn't it look festive...! ;)

Still a bit early to be putting them up at home though...

The weekend saw...

...the finishing touches going to the living room (I know, I know, we've been here over a year already!)...so a few pictures of the extremely expensive, extremely heavy, lined curtains going up, along with a heavy duty white wooden curtain pole (required to support their weight)...some pictures (more on Flickr if you want to look there) -

- before (cheap metal expanding curtain pole with two Ikea "throws"...didn't do much to keep out the sunlight, and didn't do much to keep in the warm)...

...during (large mounting piece of wood, screwed into timber frame, laser levelled, holes filled and painted with the same paint we used for the living room walls)...

...and after (looks like choosing the white pole was the right decision, it blends right in!)...Oh and it was boiling in the living room when I came down this morning and the heating had only been on for ten minutes...phew!