The house is getting there at last!

Yesterday our new joiner fitted our internal doors and our home is now looking so much more like a house again rather than a renovation project. It's lovely to sit in the living room or in our bedroom with the door closed; it makes everywhere feel more cosy and more private.

Next Saturday the joiner is coming back to fit our window sills and to build a cabinet we need in the  living room. Then a week on Monday our new suite is being delivered. At that point all the work we were planning to do on the house for now will be done! We can just relax and enjoy our lovely home. We still need some more furniture and we have other rooms we want to work on but that will all come in time.

It feels like the stripping back, the central heating, the plastering, the joinery work has taken forever. It feels like it has dragged on and on and on. And for a while it felt like there was just no end in sight. Yet it's actually only 2 months tomorrow that the purchase of the house completed. From this side of it all, it seems amazing to me that we've achieved so much in such a short space of time.

It's amazing to see the end point in sight at last. And to see our home getting lovelier by the day. :)

Radio

I've been asked to condense five of my favourite blog posts for a segment on local radio. I happily agreed and was then persuaded to arrange to go to the studio to record it. I'm due to go today for the recording. Eek!

I'm really pleased with my blog, it's my own personal therapy but I do get lovely comments on twitter about it, which I very much appreciate. I'm happy to share my posts with a different audience via the radio.

I've printed out my piece and have been reading through it this morning. I've just realised that the last time I read publicly was at my Mum's funeral last year and the first segment of my radio piece has a slight echo of what I wrote for her funeral. Rather than this being upsetting though, it's made me feel more confident. My Mum was so touched when I told her I wanted to read at her funeral and I was so proud that I managed to do that last thing for her. I remember how she spurred me on when I had to give my first major presentation at Uni, she always believed I could do it despite my lack of confidence.

I wore a purple dress and a bright red mac at Mum's funeral because she hated black. I'd promised her I'd wear red. I wear that mac often now and it never makes me feel sad, even though I had thought at the time I'd never wear it again. So I'm going to wear it today and think of my Mum. She'd be so excited about me reading something I'd written on the radio. I'm going to try and garner some of the excitement she would have had for me and carry it with me this afternoon.

Wish me luck!

When I Loved Myself Enough...

I'm working through lots of my issues at the moment and it's really hard. I'm supposed to be learning to take better care of myself and I find that difficult.

In the process of moving house I had to pack up all my belongings, which included all my books. During the packing of them I kept spotting books that I had forgotten I owned, including a little book called 'When I Loved Myself Enough' by Kim McMillen. I love little quote books and my Mum often used to buy them to cheer me up. This is one that she had given me and it had got buried on my shelves.

I kept it to hand when we moved and today I spotted it on my bedside table and thought I'd read through it. It's made me cry. It's a little overly sentimental but so much of this little book spoke to me. I don't love myself enough, I'm very hard on myself, I'm overly critical and I think I deserve the bad things that happen in my life. Reading this book has made me understand a little more what people mean when they talk about taking better care. I need to go easier on myself, I'm not a bad person.

I'm going to treasure this gift from my Mum, more than I ever did before, because I think it contains a lot of the answers.

We've moved!!

Well, we've finally moved! We had most of our belongings at the house by Wednesday so we spent our first night here then. We moved the rest of our things in stages over the last couple of days. It's been hectic and exhausting but we're finally in! We handed over the keys to the apartment yesterday so now it's officially official... we have moved!

It was emotional leaving the apartment for the last time. Paul had lived there for five years. I've been there over a year and it's been such a happy place. I'll miss it because it was an amazing apartment but our new home is completely ours. No more inspections and no more rent to pay. No mortgage either. The house is entirely ours.

I keep walking around the house amazed that it belongs to us. Every single item, every single brick, every single everything about this house belongs to us.

It feels fantastic!

House

Finally, the house is getting there. The plasterer finished yesterday and the relief is enormous. It's felt like he was never going to get finished and has been quite stressful as we have to move into the house next week as our notice period will be up on our apartment.

The joiner is hanging the doors in our living room today so we'll be painting them over the weekend. Then our living room carpet is being fitted on Monday morning. It means the living room will be close to finished. It will be the only room that is near finished so will have to double up as our bedroom for a little while.

As soon as the plaster in the bedroom is dry we'll be getting that painted and getting the joiner back in to fix the skirting boards and architraves.

I can't wait to see it properly starting to take shape.

We'll be hiring a van for the middle of next week to move our stuff. The apartment is crammed full of boxes at the moment and neither of us are looking forward to moving them. At least once it's done, it's done. We don't plan on moving again for at least a couple of years now!

This time next week we should about have everything moved in and be busy organising and painting and cleaning. I'll be so glad to get to that bit now.

It will be lovely to spend our first night together in our own home though. It will definitely warrant champagne!

Today I'm packing more things for the move, which is coming ever nearer. We're due to move early next week so I'm really focussed on getting our apartment packed up and ready to go now.

This afternoon I packed up my Mum's jewellery and some of her personal souvenirs that I want to keep. It made me cry to look at them. It's still hard to look at things she wore and loved and know that she's never going to wear them again. But I am going to wear them. Today I'm wearing one of her favourite rings, it's one I'd bought her and it makes me smile to be wearing it.

It's amazing the happiness and sadness to be found in a drawer full of stuff.

I found the funeral service sheet from Mum's funeral, which made me sad:

Then I found the very last Christmas card I gave her and the words in that made me sob. I remember writing it knowing it would be her last Christmas. Things like that are harder than you can even imagine. And I still find it hard to remember that I'll never again have cause to buy a card with Mum on it.

Then I found the tickets from when we went to see We Will Rock You. It was a Christmas present to her from all us three kids and our partners. We took her in March 2008, just a few weeks before she started being ill. I'm so glad we all managed to have that amazing weekend in London together. Mum had always wanted to see this show and she loved it.

And with that was the ticket from when I took Mum to an Elton John concert. She was a huge fan of his and so I couldn't resist getting tickets when I found out he was playing locally. We had seats in the front block and had the best time. He was on stage for over three hours. I'll never forget it as long as I live.

Then there was this poem that Mum had clipped out of a magazine. It made me well up but I love the words and will keep this. Mum found this after her Mum died and she kept it all that time. The words gave her comfort and now they'll do the same for me.

I'm left feeling very reflective. I'm learning to concentrate on remembering all the very many good times though.