General Chat

Morning all
Beautiful sunny day here and not too cold. Just been on the phone to previous estate agents( see new thread) and oh my is all I can say!!

Good day to get some washing out in the fresh air and save the dryer.

No real plans for today but bits and bobs to chase up and sort out.

Did quite a big order to Amazon last night and that has almost completed my xmas shopping. Actually just remembered, Tesco is coming tomorrow...ooops totally forgot so need to go through the list one more time.

Hope everyone else has some sunshine today :-D

Florence in the hebrides

I am pleased that your sister’s estate is finally settled Ginnie, everything does take so long. We are still mired in all of the legal stuff for the house sale, with no idea of when we will be moving, so we are just in limbo

It is a much brighter day today, but still drizzly and cold. Despite the wind all of the Beech trees surrounding the house still have lots of leaves on them, but they will stay until the spring when the new ones start to grow

Afternoon everyone looking in.

It is now raining here and fairly blowing hard and of course it was bin day lol....never fails.

I have been busy wrapping gifts and have parcelled up 2 boxes ready for posting so that was job well done.

Linda, you made me laugh about the leaves blowing in your neighbours garden :-D :-D :-D, my mums old neighbour was so grumpy, he would have thrown them back over the fence.

Joan, shame your leaves couldnt blow away from your garden too as that would save a job for you. Hope you get the new bits for the chain saw soon and then you can get the tree cut down.

JustGinnie, so glad for you getting the estate sorted after all this time. Its quite a relief isnt it, not having it all hanging over your shoulders.

I have just received an email from the manager of the estate agents that we cancelled with along with a marketing report etc and that they are thinking of new ways to sell the property :-S :-S

I have just replied informing them, I gave 21 days notice to end the contract and this expired on the 9th Nov! Maybe they may like to communicate with the whole team as its quite obvious one person has no idea what another in the office is doing! It's really just sums them up :-P

Well haven't my lunch yet so off to make a sandwich of some sort. As for tonight's meal, haven't got that far yet lol.

Florence in the hebrides

Good afternoon to all.
A better day for us today after a terrible day yesterday, not stormy but the rain was relentless, rained all through Sunday night & absolutely chucked it down all day yesterday, the water bowie was so full it was on permanant overflow.

We still have some leaves to come down, on Sunday afternoon I managed to get rid of some piles of leaves that I had left lying.
Our son in law came over on Sunday to try & deal with one of our very tall mature Cherry trees, he got a few large branches off it but the chain saw wasn't working well, it had become rather blunt & so SinL had to give up, new chain & sharpener on order, hoping he can come over again soon to get the tree down.

It's a nice dry day today so I have been outside this morning & made a start on lopping the many branches into smaller easier to handle lengths that SinL cut down, a boring job but has to be done, gives me something to do, lol.

Ginny, good to hear that you have got your sisters estate finalised at last, been a long time.

Linda, I wish when the wind blows all our leaves would blow over into the surrounding fields, it would save me having to clear them up, some do end up there but most just collect up against the low lying garden walls, & they have been sooo wet this time they are not so easy to rake / sweep up.

Well I must get outside & do a few more of the branches, I would like to get the rest of them sorted, then all I have to do is move them to the area of the garden where we can burn them.

Joan.

Cold today and wet same as yesterday . Most of the trees opposite have given up their leaves now but the little one across from us is hanging on to them defying the winds. l

OH has been given a date for his knee op. So he has the pre op apps to go to and of course his other apps. ie eye test and diabetic eye test both come through as well so he is out and about to various clinics this week .

We finally got my sisters estate wound up and everything settled at last.

Hope your next Christmas stall goes well Florence . Nice to have people appreciate handcrafted work and buy it.

Hope everyone is ok

Ginnie

I am glad you haven’t got the storm in Scotland this time. The rain was pouring down when I went out this afternoon. The wind was dreadful, but OH was pleased firstly because it was stripping lots of leaves off the trees and secondly because it was blowing them into next doors garden :-D
The wind has died down now thank goodness because it buffets my bedroom wall if it is bad, so it should be a quieter night.

Evening all.
Gosh, the day has passed so quickly as i was so busy.

Got all my ironing up to date and that took ages as had sheets and duvet sets to iron.

I have lots of xmas presents all over my bed in piles lol. So daughter came home with some things i needed to finish off some and then tomorrow, I shall be wrapping and parcelling ready for posting a bit later on.

Dad tel to say, his 2 front teeth are coming out on Wednesday. One is giving him lots of pain and the other is nearly falling out. So I listened to that tale for nearly an hour!! By then it was time to make some food. I just had cheese toasties and daughter had some pulled pork? with new potatoes.

Linda, I heard about storm Debi so hope you are not too badly affected but I think Ireland has bore the brunt. That was good you lost 2 lbs . well done you.

The fayre was ok ish but not as good for me as the last one but was better for daughter. Swings & roundabouts i guess but we have done ok between us.

Saturday is smaller with fewer stalls but that may well be in our favour...we shall see.

Well some paperwork to do and then watch the soaps later,

Hope all is good with everyone else looking in.

Florence in the hebrides

Brr, it is so cold today. I went to my slimming class this morning, amazingly I had lost two pounds last week. The toads were awash with water, I didn’t realise that it had rained so hard during the night. It is really windy now, we have a coal effect electric fire and the wind coming down the chimney has just blown some of the coal onto the hearth.
I have just planned the meals for the week, so will go to the supermarket this afternoon to get the ingredients for the week. I need to get a card for my great niece and get that in the post. Her present is going straight to her home courtesy of Amazon and her mum will wrap it up for me.

Oh goodness Florence, you are lucky to have such a nice friend.

We went to Harlow Carr Gardens on Thursday,it isn’t a garden centre, it is an RHS garden. I managed to walk 4.2 miles around it, which was good exercise. The autumn colours were lovely, but I would like to go back in summer when the flower borders will be in full bloom.

It has a Betty’s cafe as part of it, we had to queue for twenty five minutes to get in. Once we were inside, I wasn’t impressed by the speed of the service. Despite being told that the waitress would be with us in a minute, no one turned up, so eventually we grabbed a manager and complained. The waitress then came immediately ;-) Once we ordered, there was a really long wait for the food to appear. It was really nice when it did turn up and we weren’t pushed in any way to vacate the table, but overall, we weren’t impressed especially as it costs so much.

Yesterday we went to Beningbrough Hall, a National Trust property near us. It was surprisingly busy to say it was a cold November day. We waited until one o’clock to get lunch and poor OH was miffed because he always has soup of the day and they had runout.

We have had a lovely time with our son, he is leaving this morning and is going to spend the day with my daughter and stay overnight before he goes home tomorrow.

I hope your card sale goes well Florence

Wow Florence, good job that you were not on your own and friend could bail you out, I am sure that you would have done the same for her. Pleased that you had a good trip. that was as good as a tonic for you wasn't it. Like you I do so appreciate the frinds who take me out. even though I can get to two towns easily by bus it is friends who take me to garden centres.

Afternoon all.
I love garden centres Linda. Last time I was down south, dad took me to a huge centre about 20 minutes away and it was fab.

We had a lovely meal and spent hours looking at everything from plants to garden furniture and of course all the gifts and goodies.

Yesterday my friend took me out for the day which was great. organised my bag and parcel for Australia on Wednesday so she arrived and off we went. Arrived at the PO and then.....panic stations. I had left my phone on charge in the kitchen which also had my bank/credit cards in the wallet of my phone!!!! I could not believe it as usually i am so organised. Thankfully my friend said just buy everything you need and when you get home, do a bank tf to me to settle up.

What a lovely friend indeed. But I felt really embarrassed as that has never happened before. Anyway, i got to the 3 shops I needed to, went for lunch which was great and then to the big supermarket.

Have to admit, my legs were aching and very sore in the knees by 3.30pm so we wrapped up the shopping and headed home.

Haven't laughed much in ages so yesterday was more than a shopping trip, the laughter was the best medicine lol

Today, just gentle pottering and tidying up. Getting organised for the next fayre tom but a later start 11am not 9am. Everything is the boxes already. I have removed my cards from my phone wallet and put them back into my purse as what happened yesterday is not going to happen again.

Could have managed without the phone as friend had one but not without my cards!

I seeing that snow has been forecast for next week. Eeek it's jolly cold here today anyway so anything is possible.

Hope all is well with everyone looking and keep warm :-D

Florence in the hebrides

Dinner was very nice Florence and slimming friendly. I stayed over last night, so that I could look after Esme as her mum is on the way to London.

All is nice and quiet now as both girls are at school. I have just had a tidy up and am having a sit down before I do a bit more. OH and son are coming back mid morning and we are going to go to Harlow Carr Gardens which are just down the road. I haven’t been before, I think summer might be a better time to go, but there should be some nice autumn colours. They have a Betty's restaurant as well, so we will have lunch there. We will come back in time for Esme getting home, so we can play. I will make dinner and do bath time etc. My daughter gets back about 9.40 pm, so we can go home after that.

Lol linda. Well normally we have a microwave packet of rice between us but..... in the freezer I had 1/2 a plain naan from the local butcher. So I cut it into 4 pieces so we only actually had a small quarter each which had less carbs than the half packet of rice. The naan is very thin, not like the supermarket ones.

Enjoy your time with your son and hope the meal is lovely.

Florence , I laughed at your comment about eating naan instead of rice to lose weight. I do Slimming Workd of course and rice is “ free” but Naan is absolutely loaded in syns. A large plain Naan is 19 syns, a mini one is 9 syns. You are only allowed 15 syns in a day for all the naughty extras, but if you eat lots of syns, you will only lose weight slowly.
Naan has far more calories than rice

We have come to my daughter’s house, so my son can see it. She is cooking dinner and it smells nice. I have to stay over as she goes to London early tomorrow. Mt son and husband will go back to our house and come back in the morning

Hi Florence, I think there is a button on them, not "quite" sure as they are quite high & can't see the mddle bit that clearly, but will try a W stick if it happens again !
It gave us a nasty shock as well, very scary

I once got woken in similar circumstances when I was alone in the house (hubby in hospital) a loud screaming sort of racket got me out of bed sharpish but I couldn't locate the noise straight away !
Eventually I found an old FURBY toy had "woken" up but it wasn't working properly & so all it did was screech, I put it down to one of the grandchildren who had "tampered" with it that day.
Nearly had a heart attack, lol.

I was just thinking that it was much lighter for us this evening, for all it rained all morning & into the afternoon the sun came out around 2-00pm & there was still daylight at around 4-45 pm.

Joan.

Joan, when my new fire alarm went off one night at 2am, all 3 alarms as they are linked went off together for no apparent reason. My walking stick was long enough to reach the alarm and press the button in the middle which stopped the noise.

Thankfully, it hasn't gone off since but it scared me senseless as I thought there was a fire somewhere and at that time in the morning, half asleep, I really panicked.

Do yours have a button in the middle? Is so a broom handle or a walking stick should be long enough to reach the button to switch the alarm off. We think some dust went in the little opening or a wee spider.

Well its very dark here and still raining with a few hailstones thrown in and a rumble or 2 of thunder earlier. Looks like lightening may happen so I filled and boiled the kettle.

Sweet & sour for tea with just naan bread, no rice as trying to lose weight lol.

Florence in the hebrides

Hi Linda, you are as busy as ever re things to be done with your house move.

We have 2 smoke alarms & had to have the 2 back up batteries replaced about 5 years ago when one of the alarms went off, we were asleep one night when suddenly the terrible screeching noise started, on checking for smoke & the like & not finding anything we thought it must be down to the battery, BUT neither of us could reach the alarm to remove the offending battery, & as it was around 3-00 AM,we could hardly send for our daughter to see to it for us.

The was no chance of getting back to sleep & so the noise went on until a more suitable time came round to get help from our daughter.
Nightmare, as there was nowhere to go in the house to shut out the horrible noise.

It has been chucking it down today, everywhere is sodden, & more leaves have come down, yesterday I had to re sweep the areas that I cleared on Tuesday, there are still some parts of the garden that haven't been touched yet, & looking from the window, they are well covered with leaves'
It's not going to be any easy task clearing them all, I need a windy day to help shift some, preferably landing in the surrounding fields, lol.

Hoping all is well with everyone,

Joan.

Afternoon everyone.

Its wet and windy here and thank goodness I decided to go to town tomorrow!

Yesterday was a busy day with all sorts going on and I spent a chunk on the day sorting out various things to do with mums damage. A team will be going out to assess the damage "soon" as they are very busy and then I will be updated.

Had a huge amount of washing too and today have just spent the morning getting it all ironed, but all up straight now.

My xmas gifts are mounting up and hopefully can finish off some tomorrow and then Sunday will be a day of wrapping and parcelling.

We made a lovely pan of veg & lentil soup yesterday too with crusty rolls and it was very tasty. There is enough for our tea tonight and 2 rolls left over.

Linda, do you feel the world against you? Nothing ever is straightforward, its one step forward and 2 steps back isnt it. Hope the alarm battery isnt too expensive.

Joan hope you are ok as heard there was some flooding in your area. The wet leaves will be difficult to sweep up so take care.

Well off to finish off me chores and then chill later with finishing off my knitting.

Florence in the hebrides

I hope everyone is OK as the thread hasn’t moved for a couple of days.

We are just waiting for our son to arrive, he is staying until Saturday which will be nice as he lives in Worcestershire , so we don’t see him that often.

We are in limbo with the house move, just waiting for the legal things to progress. The survey is being done today, so hopefully that will be fine.

While we were sorting out paperwork to pass onto the new owners, we realised that the burglar alarm was well overdue a service. We have it done annually and get a discount on the house insurance because of that. Without the service, the insurance won’t be valid, so we arranged for it to be done this morning. I remember last year they said it would probably need a new battery this time and of course it did :-( To be fair it has only been replaced once in the past twenty years, but the thing could have Heldon until we left! It is a very big chunky thing, so goodness knows how much it will cost.

I am pleased you did so well with your cards Florence.

What a nuisance with the car hitting your mother’s garden, you could have fine without that. When we were selling my mother’s bungalow, water started pouring in through the garage roof, so we had to have that recovered, all expense we could have done without.

It is so cold and drizzly here, OH took some leaves off the lawn yesterday, but there are still lots on the Beech trees to come down yet. The pavement walking from my house into town is covered in wet slippery leaves. I walked on the road yesterday as it was safer than potentially falling