Thrifty But Glam

Since getting the keys to our home 10 weeks ago so many things have changed.  At one point the house literally looked like a building site!  Walls were knocked back to bare plaster, dado rails ripped out, doors removed, carpets torn up, fixtures and fittings gutted and the cloakroom suite completely ripped out. Thankfully we are now on the final stretch (under 6 weeks until we hopefully move in!) and I wanted to do a video walk through to document just how far we have come in our renovation journey.  In hindsight, shooting in landscape would have been a much better idea, but sorry folks you'll just have to put up with the scaled down view! If you can't remember the condition of the house when we moved in, I featured it in a blog post here :) Our home is definitely one built from love as it is thanks to amazing parents, friends and family that we have achieved so very much.  The Mr and I have sadly had minimal input with the physical side of things (joys of ill health f

It occurred to me a few days ago that I haven't technically announced my pregnancy on here!  Sure I may have mentioned in passing in a few recent blog posts that we are decorating the nursery etc, but seeing as I am 24 weeks along tomorrow, I guess I really should be making the formal proclamation! Well we had IVF/ICSI back in May (2015) and although it almost killed me (I WILL post my scary OHSS stories over the next few days) we were successful!  I am almost a Long Term Trying To Conceive Graduate, and although we are a matter of months from having our baby, I still don't think it has sunk in. Junior will be due on January 25th 2016 and of course we are over the moon! Like most things in life, we never get the easy ride.  Firstly I was hospitalized for just shy of 3 weeks immediately after our IVF egg transfer as I'd managed to develop Ovarian Hyper Stimulation Syndrome (OHSS).  It doesn't sound all that scary, in truth most cases are mild and just severely u

So, last week I shared our initial moving in house post and I promised to share some of the more interesting house quirks (or bodge jobs as the Mr calls them), so here we go! The first thing I noticed when we stepped through the front door with the keys in our hands was that the previous owners had left a lot of random things attached to the walls.  There were coat hooks, childrens plaques, mirrors and strangest of all two notice boards in the kitchen. A bit of closer investigation to the notice boards revealed that the previous DIY novices had left it all behind as it was attached with no more nails!  I mean seriously, who sticks a light weight cork board to the wall with a heavy grade adhesive when a simple frame hook will do?  What were their magnets made of, lead weights?! For those of you that are fortunate enough not to be familiar with this god awful invention, when you try to remove anything that is secured to a wall with it, the damage is so severe that great big chunks

Well it has taken almost 5 months, but we finally completed on our new house! Previously we have always been lucky enough to rent or own new build flats and so purchasing a property almost as old as me and the Mr has taken a huge dose of adjustment! We purchased our house on the shared ownership scheme and although it is far from perfect (and admittedly very over-priced!) we know we were lucky enough to be accepted as the scheme is highly sought after with huge waiting lists.  For us (like most), it was the only way we would ever be able to buy our very own home. The major drawback with viewing shared ownership homes is that only the barest of details are listed (both online and with the estate agent/housing association) and you are lucky to see a photo of the outside of the property, it is almost never that a listing will feature interior shots or floor plans.  This means that you get into the habit of booking to view and having to keep an open mind when it comes to figuring out i