God where has the time gone - it's nearly THREE MONTHS and such a lot has been going on.

Front bedroom has been decorated and we have moved in although it's still housing the two spare mattress (4 ft and 4ft 6). Have moved the sofa bed out into the other bedroom and it currently has stuff stacked on top of it again.

Have retrieved all of our fans from storage - even though the front rooms are cooler than the back, it still got too hot during the July heatwave. Also retrieved the frame of the 4ft 6 bed intending to put it together only to find that I had stored the bolts in a box somewhere unknown in storage unit?? :( hence the mattress is still taking up residence in the main bedroom.

The new loft hatch and ladder are installed and the hallway decorated - have a new wardrobe acting as coat cupboard in place of the fitted ones.

We ordered a 12 yard skip to get rid of our rubbish to date thinking that we would only half fill it but we had enough in the end to fill it.

Still have all the books that I found in the loft, no dealer seems to be interested although some of them seem quite OLD. Have decided to keep these but not sure what I'll do with the others. There was over 100 and will probably keep about a third.

Glazing was done the second week of July, and it's made such a difference. Not sure we could have survived the heatwave without the new kitchen windows. Can still watch quite a bit of the wildlife.

Got the paving works started mid July. The plan was to pave the front garden then the front verge, then extend the existing small back patio, but at the beginning of July when we got the first water bill after the installation of a meter we discovered that there was probably a problem with our water main, so we deferred the work on the front verge and started on the back after the front garden.

Unfortunately it took the water board's contractor about three weeks to come round and decide that there wasn't a problem with their end, so now we've had to dig up some of the new paving in the front garden and have a new main put in. Cheaper that trying to find the old leak.

Then last week had the local tree surgeon family come round and get our greenery into order. They've taken down most of the silver birch (which had been badly hacked about and killed off by some unknown contractor) - just left us a 6ft 'stump' (as requested for our 'feature' gateway), have tidied up our fruit trees and taken away the honesuckle bush that was dominating one side of our garden. We've gained about 3m by 5m of garden at the back, although we can now see through next door's hedge so will have to re hedge our side of the fence when the time is right (about end of september). Then we had them tidy up the front, there was a laurel? that has been tidied up and massive rose bush by the front gate that has been cut back to just a tiny bush. It's left a big gap along the wall but I can get some more plants to fill the whole.

Finally we have the electrician lined up to do the rewiring at the end of this month so we're taking ourselves away for a bit so that he can 'crack on' and not have to worry about getting the power back at the end of each day.

That's all the catching up done..... I think