Things that make my life easier right now.

Here are some thing that are making my life easier right now (I think in the blog-o-sphere this is called "saving my life right now" but that feels more of an autumn/winter vibe for me)

1. The canteen at my office.  My office is a 2ish hour commute away.  I go once a week.  On office days I don't have to pack any food as they have a subsidized canteen.  In the morning I usually get either a salmon bagel and cream cheese (my fav!) or a yogurt and fruit and granola parfait.  They do hot lunches most days, and have excellent sandwiches other days.  Also, the chef makes AMAZING cakes and I wish I could eat last week's chocolate raspberry cake forever.  It both gives me something to look forward to on my office days AND relieves any stress of packing lunch.  No matter what I get, breakfast and lunch and drinks never come to more than £5.

2. My kids sleep.  Or maybe my kid's sleep.  Basically, I am super lucky and my kids sleep.  They sleep by 7:30pm every night.  Sure, they wake up early (before 6 is too early, if they sleep till 7 it's a miracle), and sometimes Lilah falls out of bed, but in general, they reliably sleep.  It has SO MANY knock on effects for our lives.  Andy can go out at 7:30 knowing the kids will 99% be asleep by then.  We can get the house sorted and we can start a TV show by 8pm.  I can have friends over anytime after 7:30.  

3. Handy Andy.  My husband is very handy.  He can fix and build stuff.  I am lucky as I am decidedly not handy.  

4. Flexible working days and working from home.  Honestly, how did we ever do it before.  I could never be moving forward in my career the way I am without flexible working.  

5. Kindle.  I wasn't sure if I would use it enough, but I do and I love it.  

6. Fruit.  I am anemic and trying to up my iron, and I remembered how much I love fruit.  Some dried fruit has iron, some regular fruit has iron.  I love eating fruit.  Unfortunately I'm also on Iron tablets now, which can have some digestive side effects, but these side effects can be fixed with... you guessed it... fruit!

7. Vinted.  I know I'm so late to this used clothing buying game, but today we had 8 shirts, 3 pairs of shorts, 1 button down shirt and 1 sweater delivered for Isaac for less than £30.  For comparison, one button down shirt from M&S is £14.  I need to list some of my own clothes on there soon too.  Unfortunately nothing Isaac wears survives enough to be resold (most ends up in the clothing scrap pile as it's so stained and usually has holes.  Who are these kids who leave clothes in good condition?)

8. Planning.  Life is somewhat complicated.  Our weekly FLOM is helping us keep it all together and do fun stuff.  We have so many moving parts and I'm glad I have one space in the week to go through everything with Andy.

9. Massage.  Because it is amazing, and I bought myself a package of 6, and I found someone who does amazing deep tissue massage that feels moderately painful at the time and immensely restorative after.

10. Blogs.  Thank you all for entertaining me!

Kitchen Project - A potentially underwhelming reveal?

Our kitchen project is done (for now!)!

If you remember, we started with this:

Moved to this:

And now, we have this!

It feels like a rather underwhelming reveal now, but at least the fridge is in the right place.  I would love to get some sort of free standing unit that holds those bins and has counter space (or maybe a drawer??!!?), or even a standalone wall mounted unit to hold bins and give us some counter space.  That space is 30cm wide, so not huge, but wide enough for a standard small cabinet.

The builder who took the cabinets and tiles down called back to say he didn't really want to do anything else with our kitchen (he said it much nicer, but that was the gist) so thankfully we already have a plumber lined up to install the dishwasher on the 17th of July.  Then I can really do an after photo... because this whole project existed for the installation of a dishwasher.

I am really enjoying having a full-size fridge again.  It's much nicer than an under counter fridge, and bigger.  We still have a second freezer in the garage, and I am hoping someone will come buy our under-counter fridge soon (otherwise it's getting donated on the 17th).  

We also need to buy a dishwasher now - what a minefield!  Why are they all wifi connected?  Why are they all £600?  I had thought they would be under £400 and that for £500 I could get something from a UK/German/American Brand.  This is not the case.  

The total cost so far has been £400, plus £30 beer payment to andy for all his painting work.  We'll see what the dishwasher install comes in at, but this is still the cheapest of all the options we looked at and the quickest, and I'm so looking forward to never washing a dish by hand again (kidding/not kidding?)

What was your last big or small home improvement project?  Are dishwashers very expensive or am I very behind in the times?

Weekend Updates / Food Plan / Grocery Habits / Freezer Habits

Andy is on a cycling trip this weekend so I am solo parenting.  I have been kind of dreading it because it turns out two year old can be hard work (sometimes... who knew? Why isn't there a book about this or a name for this?).  After Andy left, in a moment of parental inspiration, I got out glue and random scrap pieces of felt and let the kids glue things to other pieces of paper.  This kept them occupied for over an hour.  I will admit I then spent £25 on random craft supplies from Wilko and can't wait for those to show up.

Our friends came in the afternoon for a classic toddler playdate, which involved moving from the padding pool to the house to the paddling pool too many times.  The kids put on a show where they forgot all the words, and then everyone went home before dinner. 

Dinner was ham sandwiches and scrambled eggs and fruit, because I guess that is a balanced meal?

Today we are going to a friend's house for a play date and hopefully Andy will be back soon after that.  I honestly do not know how single parents with young kids, or parents with partners who work abroad or travel lots do it.  (Elisabeth!!)

This morning we are getting a grocery delivery, which I haven't done for months.  It turns out, I like choosing my own fruit and veg.  I also spend £80 whether delivery or online, but the delivery prices seemed to go up faster than the in store prices (at the cheaper store by our house) so we shifted back to shopping in store.  

Also, one of our logistical issues is that our FLOM is on Friday and we generally need food on the Saturday so one of us goes to the shop on a Saturday since next day delivery wasn't a thing last time I checked.  

Side note - one of the signs the pandemic must be over - full availability of grocery delivery slots:

On another side note, we since the recent fridge/freezer reshuffle (photos to follow!) I decided we need to eat more of our freezer food and we need to finish up more of our grains we don't often eat.  Yesterday I made hummus with the remainder of the fava beans.  I still need to use the buckwheat and the giant cous cous.

We also need to eat some of the leftovers in the freezer, which I have recently started dating better (after I pulled out a bag of frozen Thanksgiving Turkey in June).

Food plan for this week:

• Sunday: Chicken sliders and Fries (with chicken from the freezer)
• Monday: Fish Curry (with freezer fish)
• Tuesday: Tacos (with leftover freezer meat)
• Wednesday: Jacket potato & Beans
• Thursday: Pasta Bake (with Frozen meat of some sort)
• Friday: Noodles and Tofu (must find recipe!)
• Saturday: Pizza

Do you get groceries delivered or do you go to the store?  What's your favourite Buckwheat or Giant Cous Cous recipe?

Kitchen Project - Middle and Middle 2.0

Last time we had plastering work done on our house was in November, and it was on the new loft.  I remember the plaster took 5ish days to dry.  It turns out, plaster dries much quicker when it's 70+ degrees and not raining!

The plasterer finished last Monday (it took him 2.5 hours, which means his hourly rate is higher than both mine and my husbands professional career rates, but I won't think about that too much)

It looked pretty terrible, but dried in 48 hours.  It's always interesting doing house projects as it look like the kitchen was at some point painted blue? And before the very dull magnolia tiles were set down it looks like we had some 1950s red square tiles.  Also, we are not sure what some of the wires in the walls do, so everything was plated and shoved back into the wall if not an outlet. 

Andy and I did the mist coat on Wednesday night, which made it look worse.  Progress?

On Monday Andy did 2 more coats of white paint, and it's actually coming together:

He did one more coat last night and when I get back from my work trip I'm excited to see the result!  Once dry we can move the fridge into place and then we just need to get a date for the dishwasher install.  The kitchen is somewhat of a pain to work in right now so I am looking forward to getting things more in place, although I know that the real benefit won't be until the dishwasher comes.  It will be nice to have a full-size fridge freezer again and it will be interesting to sew what I can do with the rest of that corner space.  

I think a new kitchen bin is in order soon but I am sure Andy disagrees... it's hard to find a balance between a bin that's big enough for what we need but that doesn't take up all the floor space.  We've been using a £4.50 IKEA bin for 5 years.  It might be time to upgrade.

Do you like your kitchen bin?  Do I think about bins too much? is this the most boring post ever?

Camping Recap

This weekend we ticked off a family bucket list item - camping!

We booked a campsite about 90 minutes away, near the coast, for Friday and Saturday night.  We took Friday off work to pack and so we could arrive in good time, and made it to the campsite by 2:30pm.

There was a slight detour when we realized we had forgotten to pack Lilah's clothing bag and had to stop at Tesco to buy her some clothes for the weekend.  £25 later we had a 3 pack of shorts, a 3 pack of shirts, and a new swimsuit.  

The kids were very excited to set up tents.  They were very excited to eat dinner.  They were very excited by camping stoves and very excited by our friend's camper van.  

We don't own a family camping tent so we set up our 2.5 man tent and our 1.5 man tent. We made one small mistake by bringing a single airbed and a camping pad - I had assumed kids would be asleep by the time I went to bed and I could shuffle them both onto the camping pad.  Because they were both awake I ended up sleeping on the ground (ouch!) between the two beds (in the 2.5 man tent) which was not ideal for both sleep quantity and quality.  

Saturday morning I was very grumpy (I am not good on little sleep) so Andy took kids to the park and I slept until nearly 11 (on the air bed, which was pretty comfortable)

Saturday afternoon we went to an amazing Welsh beach.  Did you know Wales has amazing beaches?  Some Welsh beaches rival what I saw in Thailand and are better than beaches I grew up with in California... depending on weather of course.

Saturday night was BBQ, which the kids loved.  Then we tried having them sleep in separate tents, so Lilah joined Andy and Isaac was in my tent.  Lilah fell asleep almost immediately and Isaac slept when I got to bed - he told me I could sleep on the air bed because the air bed is big and I am also big.  Thanks buddy!

Everyone slept until 7am - YAY - and woke up very happy.  Kids played in the tent for a bit

Then ate some snack before heading off home

Although it was a great camping trip it definitely made me miss camping in the USA.  Camping in the UK is mostly private - farmers set up campsites on field.  This means there are often LOTS of other people around.   Here's a map of the site we stayed in (the dots are all different types of pitches)a:

There wasn't much separating us from our neighbors.  I always felt like national parks in the USA had secluded camping, where even on a campsite you still had some space that was yours.  Including a picnic table and a BBQ, usually.   Sometimes we have found great campsites here, and sometimes we have slept next to A**h***s who listen to Oasis until 3am.  this was fine before we had kids, this is less fine now.

Overall camping trip 1 was a success, with definite room for improvement.  The kids loved it, and everyone is very tired, but it was a great weekend.

When I got home I took all the photos and ordered a cheap and easy photo album for the kids - it took me all of 20 minutes to upload and I let Snapfish do the layout.  Hopefully that will arrive this week and the kids will enjoy it.

Have you ever been camping with kids?  What is your favourite campsite?

Thursday Randomness

Today I drove to Bath for work due to train chaos.  It was an interesting experience to drive and I missed the train - even though the drive was quicker the train is far more relaxing.  I don't like the not knowing part of driving - when traffic will be or wont be.  The drive out took about 90 minutes and the drive home took a bit more.  The train is just 90 minutes each way (plus transfer time and getting to the train station) so it is longer but once on the train it is less stressful.

Unless, like last week, the train just goes past my station without stopping.  I didn't realize trains could do that?  I filed a refund complaint online and got 25% of my ticket price back (so, £6.20) however that didn't really make up for the frustration.

In other news, this weekend we are going camping! I have booked Friday off work so we can have a long weekend and leave before the crowds.  The weather is looking good:

We are staying near (but not on) a beach.  I think the kids are going to love it and I could use a long weekend.

I am still not convinced by The Netanyahus.  

Have you read this book?  Am I too basic to enjoy a pulitzer prize winning book?  I think I can tell when they are making a joke now, but I'm not sure that's a compliment to the humor.  I did listen to 2 hours of it while driving today but switched over to podcasts for the last hour of my drive.

I listened to an interesting podcast on children and phones/screen time today.  The argument was that we should aim to make our houses/lives more interesting for kids that screens, by providing engaging activities and an interesting home set up.  It was more nuanced than that but had some very good points - one thing I found interesting was the comment that children are losing out on descriptive narration because adults are so quick to show things on phones.  

I notice this when people visit us - it's wonderful that people want to share their lives with our kids but instead of talking about things they use phones to show them things.  The example used in the podcast was the difference between "I saw some ducks today, they walked across the road, they had beaks, there were 5 ducks" etc vs. "Here look at these ducks I saw".  I  hadn't thought about the language aspect of phone use before but it definitely made me think about whether we are losing descriptive vocabulary now that we can so easily share visuals (not to mention how that transition affects the visually impaired community).

Whenever I take photos of the kids they say "let me see!" and my new answer is "you can look when we get home (or "later" if we are at home) and they almost always forget.  It would be so easy to show them but I don't think they gain anything from it.

That's it from me today - time to pack for camping!

Tuesday Timeline - a day in the life

Here's a day in the life of me! This is a Tuesday, which meant I was off work and watching the kids.

5:30am - Wake up, drink tea, do some important admin (I forgot what it was, possibly blogs)

6:10am - drive to friend's house for breakfast

6:30am - breakfast with friend

7:30am - drive home

8:00am - kids play in garden and do "rice play" while I do some house tidying & dishes.  Andy goes upstairs to work.

9:30am - drive kids to nursery for Isaac's Graduation Photos.  Drop off Isaac, Lilah and I go to the park.

11:00am - Pick up Isaac from nursery. Stop at M&S on the way home to get ingredients for a picnic lunch

12:00am - Home and I finally accomplish my dream of making a kid friendly charcuterie board!

Andy joins us for outside lunch

1:00pm - Get the pool out and kids play in pool and outside.  Short lived arts and crafts time that doesn't go well.

2:45pm - Kids getting ratty so we head out to library for a change of scenery.  Lilah falls asleep in the car which is not a good sign.  She is very tired and I regret not trying for a nap (she is a very intermittent napper)

3:00pm - return books to library and get new kids books

3:30pm - home from Library.  We make smoothies (frozen spinach, banana, milk & frozen berries). More pool time.

4:30 - Andy finishes work early and hangs out outside with kids.  We decide to do early bath and then TV as Lilah is starting to fade..

5:00 - Bathtime followed by Lilah meltdown.  Isaac and I watch Zog and the Flying Doctors while Andy takes care of Lilah

5:30 - Dinnertime - Chicken Gyros.  Normally a family favourite but poor Lilah is just too tired.  I put lilah to bed after a cup of milk and a story and she falls asleep by 6pm

6:00 - Finishing up family dinner, I don't often get the chance to eat family dinner without Lilah.  Isaac asks engaging questions like "why is my left hand on a different side than your left hand?"

6:30 - Isaac stories and bedtime, he's asleep by 7:15

7:00 - Dishes and tidy house

7:30 - Chat with my visiting family until 9pm

9:00 - Shower and Bed

That's a Tuesday.  I had a truly adorable moment where we walked out of M&S with Lilah holding Isaac's hand and Isaac holding my hand.  The cuteness lasted all the way to the car, where Isaac said "I need a wee!" right as I had strapped Lilah into her carseat. I told him to do a discreet car park wee. Sometimes you have to grab defeat from the jaws of victory.