Town mouse and pantry mouse

😭😢🐭🐁 My most horrendous week - March 2019...

I walked into the pantry on the Saturday night and as I switched on the light something skittered past me on the worktop so I ran for my life 🤣

Drummed up some courage and poked about with the end of a brush handle.  Took quite a while but then I saw the little beast.  Phoned Grant - he was on his way back to work after having only been home for a wee visit for an hour.  Phoned Dad - he was out at a party.  Told me to whack it if I see it and to lay out traps (our plinth drawers had signs of a mouse last year but we sealed up the holes and no sign since but the traps were here for me to use)

Made sure everyone in the house knew not to use the pantry and managed to sleep on and off that night dreaming of wee moosies.

Next day was Mother's Day and we lost an hour's sleep with the clocks going back - thanks for that!  Who decided to have Mothers Day that day?!  The cake and chocolate from the traps were gone but no mice were caught - just feeding the mouse making him feel welcome 🙄

That night I woke up from a dream/nightmare about mice and freaked out I could hear little feet on my bed.  I continued to hear little feet...then a bag I had in my room rustling.  Took a long time of listening and poking about my room but I eventually seen the little nightmare.  I was so freaked out I sat crying on my bed with the attic hatch stick amd a couple of walking sticks in case it jumped out at me 😥

Got the teenager up and asked him to help.  He sat with me for a while and it kept running out from under my bed when we sat quietly but Finlay got bored and told me just to go to sleep.  Haha great parenting,

I lay with my weapons for a long time and eventually my little friend wandered out and into the lobby.  Finlay heard me chasing it so he came out of his room and Eliza woke up too.  It jumped down the stairs to the landing then the next set of stairs and zipped under the livingroom door.  In there I sealed us all in and we chased it for an hour.  At one point it ran up the lining of the curtain and we could touch it through the fabric.  I didnt want to whack it anyway but definitely not in my cream curtains :O Tried to shake it out into garden through the window but no luck.  After that we lost him so we called it quits and went back to bed but sealed the door up with brown parcel tape.

In the morning I checked and he was still living it up in my livingroom so I left him there and phoned the exterminator aka My Dad - Grandad Ian.  He dealt with it (using a toy saw 🤣).  It had climbed into my couch and eaten a button!  I was really hoping that was the end of it but my Dad had me terrified there would be a whole family of them living here so I went through to the pantry and after poking about for a good while I caught sight of another one!  Grandad Ian to the rescue again please📱!

Door resealed ⛔


It went into hiding again so it took quite a while of Dad going through the pantry piece by piece but eventually he got him with the handy toy saw again 🤣 Must have been gluten free it had been eating my GF flour poor coeliac mousie 🍞

I was petrified for weeks after that.  There was signs of another one and Finlay saw it run under the fridge.  All the doors got sealed and every hole we could find has now been blocked up - including the one under the fridge that one had obviously been gaining entry through.  It is now August and I am still terrified to go to the pantry or reach in for anything so I poke around first.  Also don't like that I have to stand in the dark bedroom trying to get the baby back to sleep wondering if a mouse will run over my feet 🐁We sat out with the fire pit on the other night and I could hear something rustling in the bushes.  They are pretty cute but I have now got a real fear of blooming mice!  Fingers crossed they got the message and don't bother coming back here although with all the moths I have now I could prpbably do with a mouse to sniff out where they are coming from.  Absolutely petrified to find a seething moth nest in my wardrobe so I poke about in there to get my clothes out too 🙄

Everyone always says they are more scared of you than you are of them....I don't think that can possibly be true.

Kitchen Games Room

We finally decided on a kitchen table!  We had been using the Dining Room to eat in but although the table was left to us with the house it felt wrong to use it every day it is so beautiful.

The room off the kitchen was just a dumping ground to begin with because we didn't know what we wanted to do with it.  When we bought our living room suite we moved the old couches through to the kitchen room - it still doesn't really have a name I call it the back kitchen room I am not sure what it should be called.  

It was ok but I didn't like sitting in it and as we use the back door all the time this is the first room everyone sees.  My washing was also in here on rainy days on the airer and it was just an embarressment to me.  The kids were liking it for playing in - Eliza on the xbox or watching tv and Sturrock playing with his cars and toys.  It was also great to use for a sleepover - right next to the kitchen for helping themselves to food though 😟  We also have two budgies and this is where they have free rein so under the couches was very difficult to keep clean of feathers and mess because the couches are so heavy and the gap is very small the hoover doesn't fit underneath.

I woke up one Saturday and we were sitting having breakfast in the room when I told Grant I hate the room so much I want to change it and bin the couches.  He quickly agreed!

We didn't want to spend too much on the room because it would still be used in the same way - somewhere to eat and play.  Ikea online it was!

 Waiting for the delivery of furniture while the couches were gone - this seemed a long few days for Eliza not having a couch to lounge on playing the Switch!

 Grant went away for a week so me and my little helper built the Poangs from Ikea

 He needed a lot of little breaks though!

 Next we built the bookcase - wanted to move a lot of the books out of the bedrooms because with baby number 4 on the way we are having a shift around upstairs too!

 Eliza was a great helper

 The cabinet at the left is a shoe unit because they kept ending up in a heap in this room too.  The Trofast toy storage we have had since our last house but it works great in this room to keep Sturrock's toys together for playing downstairs.   Two comfy Poangs we have not been fighting over yet!

 The essential TV for gaming and watching Friends reruns...

 Our table we got from Great Furniture Trading Co and came with 2 benches and 2 chairs - we went for the bigger table because of our growing famiy and also I look after my nephews two days a week so this gives them all plenty of space to eat.

 I love how the bookcase has made us sit and read more books downstairs - we always read before bed but now we include it more as part of our day.  On top of the bookcase is some of the handmade wooden items I sell through Wairoa Wishes on Facebook or Instagram (Teepee, Clouds, Mountains and Name blocks).  There are rainbows on the photo before at the window also.

I am so happy with how the room has turned out and I use it much more now and want to be in it.  It also helps keep the rest of downstairs tidy because there are homes for everything that used to get left lying around. 

Here are a few pics of when we first moved in and how the room has transformed

                             Still our little helper ❤

Oh my god the sawdust was unreal here when all the work was getting done! 

 The couple who owned the house before us used the room in a similar way.  We closed off a door into the kitchen as there were two (where our tv sits now) and it meant in the kitchen we could fit a fridge freezer.  I am glad we did this - one of those decision you question and it keeps you from sleep!  We couldn't decide which door to keep open but this way works really well for us.  We are waiting on getting new windows fitted this month hopefully then we can decide about whether to get curtains or blinds.  We are lucky the house is really private so we have not had anything for over a year of living here but I think it would finish this room off nicely and be cosy for the winter.  Can picture me sitting feeding the new baby in the Poang reading to Sturrock....dream on!  What I can actually picture is Sturrock demanding me to put the baby down so he has my full attention.  He is a needy little 2 year old whose world will be totally shaken by the arrival of a baby brother or sister!  Wish me luck! 

Loving the livingroom

So we moved into the house of our dreams in the summer after updating every single room.  It was a really busy time getting all 5 of us settled in and I loved every minute of it (well maybe not every minute!)  There were a lot of decisions to make and each one seemed so important at the time I don't know that any of them would have made a huge difference but I am so happy with most of the choices we made.  There are a couple I don't like to dwell on but were mostly driven by cost which was obviously a major consideration in a project so big.

I already shared the pantry and the downstairs shower room transformation so going to show you the livingroom today.  Now Christmas is past I have some time on my hands again.

The livingroom was a huge selling point for the house.  The lovely bay window looking onto the South facing garden we could see the potential from our first viewing.

I loved the velvet mustard curtains although my husband was not so keen and unfortunately they were so sun damaged I didn't get the chance to convince Grant we were keeping them 😃 I do plan to make cushions from the fabric but as with most of my grand plans I never seem to have the time (or maybe just make the time).

 One of the first jobs *we* did (I tidied after the work got done I didn't do very much in terms of actual renovations 😃) was to remove the old fireplace and stonework and to centre where the fire would be positioned although we didn't plan on a wood burner at that time (now the winter has been and we see how cold the old house is I am so so thankful we got the wood burner!)

                                                                          Tiny helper

                                                                          Big helper

For the whole of the downstairs (apart from the shower room) we picked engineered hard wood flooring which I love!

We had to get special fireproof boarding for the fireplace and we got this lovely slate hearth from a fairly local stonemason.

And after a long long loooooong wait the wood burner was installed.  When we eventually came to fit the woodburner we had delivered in summer (we left it packaged up in the garage until the day of installation.  Bad move!  Especially after our shower tray fiasco should have known better!)  the glass was broken 😢.  We had to wait for the glass to be delivered which took a lot longer than they stated.   Really disappointing.  My husband managed to fit the glass himself which was lucky because we would have had another wait before the wood-burner-glass-fitter-person we heard about would be ready :)

The fire guard was a bit of a disappointment I got from eBay thinking it was a good price for a babydan but it must be fake because the screw holes are all in the wrong place.  Wish I had just paid the full price but I do love a bargain.

 We got the tv unit from the Next sale and I am really happy with it - although I would prefer an antique old fashioned unit - this suits us just fine for now and I like the scandi looking legs on it - plus it has plenty of space to hide the dvd player, wii and all sorts of wires and junk.

Our couches we bought from DFS after living with our old suite for a few months but hating how awful it looked!

 I am actually not that keen on the cushions and plan to get around to making those mustard yellow curtains into cushions sometime soon....

 Especially to match these babies!!!

I love love love these chairs so much - they were our most scary purchase though!  I was scared I was making too bold a colour choice but I just love how they make the livingroom feel.  These were also in a sale from Gillies

We took a long time to decide what we were doing about the windows - the view is so good I didn't want blinds or curtains that might detract from that.  But the further into winter we got (especially without the wood burner going in until December) the further the cold got into our bones - those beautiful old windows are not the best for heat conservation 😰 so we finally picked some curtains.  While I was in hospital getting surgery to cure my horrendous sciatica my Mum and Dad hung the curtains for us - I just cannot get a pencil pleat right.

We had to get the curtains taken up because the windows are an awkward size.  I got them from Terry's Fabric but not that impressed by them - the seams are off and they twist now they are hung up but because we got them taken up we didn't see that in time to send them back.  Yet another live and learn moment....  Other than that I like the neutral look of them and we bought two sets so they could hang in four places - one extra wide pair and one standard width.  Now the fire is in we don't always shut the curtains at night because I do like to look out at the sparkly lights of the town but there have been some very cold nights that needed the fire on and the curtains shut!  These windows are the next project to be tackled before we have to go through another winter with the chill factor.  When we moved in we replaced all the upstairs windows but the downstairs ones will be as and when we save the money and don't decide to spend it on something more exciting!

Some of the details:

 For Christmas my sister gave us this yellow throw which  brings the mustard together from the chairs

 Got this lovely handmade shelf from Fallon Knowles  - even though I put myself on a spending ban I loved this and bought it as soon as she posted it on Instagram

 My husband is the best - instead of questioning me when I said I spent money we don't have he said I could have it for Valentine's day and I should buy a succulent to go on it 💌

 The chandelier is from Laura Ashley

 While I was lying recuperating on the couch from my back surgery I directed Grant with his list of jobs  :D The printers tray got hung up

And the gallery wall after much deciding on placement.  Poor baby number three doesn't have a photo printed out.  I have rectified this now!

 I love how it has all come together - still bits and pieces to add and I would prefer an actual rug but for now we have a car mat permanently out :) Broom broom broom 🚌🚅🚴🚒

Handmade bird lampshade HandmadebyLauraK
Antique little pear = charity shop wedding present 🍐
Second hand painted table

 Little Cox and cox birds my son won in a bottle stall!
Little handmade pumpkins I stole from a wedding 🙈 - I did confess to the bride a few weeks later that I had taken the centrepieces and she said fair's fair she stole a knitted heart from our wedding!!  Hahaha

     









                                                                      Urbanara blanket

Cox and cox birds
Debenhams mini cake stand
Rose and Grey star lantern

Lots of shelf space for all my little trinkets 

Tiny yellow house from Glenshee Pottery 

Second hand lamp (got two of these was so happy with myself)

        From outside in

Love these little lead lined windows they are so cute 

Couldn't get to the end of this post and not mention I started a new little venture selling handmade wooden decor  called Wairoa Wishes - these blocks are one of the things I sell.  Would love it if you followed on Facebook or Instagram to see what else I do - orders can be taken via Etsy, facebook messenger or direct on Instagram  

Anyway...hope you liked the transformation of the livingroom.  I share photos of the house renovation on my Instagram page if you want to follow along and see more

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