Winter Is Coming: we’re ready for it!

It’s been quiet of late on my blog I know but here are good (if not so exciting) reasons for this.

The nights are drawing in quickly, my husband is now back at Uni and as such we did the usual and gave the house a thorough top to bottom clean. Everything has been taken apart/pulled out/lifted up and cleaned out/under. We’ve also done a few odd jobs that have been pilling up.

The bathroom light has been replaced (joy to any of our friends who have used our facilities within the last few months). Now it’s getting dark early we thought it best not to have people wee in the dark (I’m thinking of my floors). 

The cabinet now has a full working set of bulbs in it and we have a few spare, and it looks lovely when it's all lit up and we have guests over for dinner. Doesn't it look pretty?

The recipes that I’ve collected have been transferred into my book and the paper counterparts thrown in the recycling. I rediscovered the three versions of the Be-ro cookbooks I have and I’m definitely going to be working my way through them this winter.

We’ve also lived through mouse-gate. Yep, when we pulled out the fridge and freezer to clean behind them we found a hole that Jerry would have been proud of, and evidence (i.e. poo) that mice had been there. So we bought a humane trap, the mice didn’t take the bait. In fact, after scrubbing every inch of the floor they decide they would get on top of the cooker to see what was happening.

Tim found one on the side when he walked into the kitchen, it hastily scrabbled into a teeny hole underneath the kitchen units. It decided about five minutes to make a break for it and Tim (with quite scary cat like reflexes) caught it under a saucepan.

We drove out to the fields and let it free, came back, filled the hole with expanding foam. Tim scrubbed the rest of the kitchen with bleach and went to bed, only to find that we’d managed to trap a mouse in the kitchen when we filled the hole in. This one was again caught by Tim under a colander (Tim and Jerry!) and again let go in the very same fields. The kitchen was again scrubbed down with bleach and we haven’t seen evidence of any mice since.

I’m glad we managed to get them out quick. They are adorable but it’s not nice to think they’re scurrying about your kitchen in the night trampling their waste everywhere. Living in the area we do though it’s not a surprise we’ve had some furry visitors, we’re not far from the curry mile and that amount of food waste about attracts all types of rodents. I’m just glad it wasn’t a huge rat!

We sold a load of stuff on ebay and made a little extra cash to put into appliances for the house to make it a bit of a cheaper winter for us electricity and gas wise.  

I have purchased this fab invention; the heated airer!

Gone are the days of putting washing on the radiators to dry and running up the heating bill. This bad boy costs less than 5 pence an hour to run and you can fit up to three loads of washing on it at once!

It’s pricey at £85 BUT it’s certainly been worth the cash so far. It takes the chill off a room too which is great if you’re trying to save some cash. We've had it on in the bedroom with us at night to keep us toasty warm, and no need for the heating in the morning. Mind you the condensation does build up but we just open the windows in the morning before I leave for work to tackle that problem. 

I have also invested in a slow cooker. I bought it along with two slow cooker recipe books from Lakeland and I was quite surprised at how versatile slow cookers are. I am very much looking forward to experimenting with it over the next few months. I shall update my progress as I go.