Getting On With Things

Well, we thankfully had a break in the weather on Thursday evening. Heavy rain overnight refilled the water butts and gave everything a good watering, not to mention having cooled things down by at least 10 degrees, which is much more bearable.

As a consequence, I had a much more comfortable walk with the dog on Friday morning and could even get her to run after the ball, which she's been loathe to do during the hot weather.

When I got back to the house, I decided to tackle a job that I started during lockdown, namely to frame one of LB's still life oil paintings, that she made for her GCSE exam. I had bought a cheap frame from a charity shop back in February, but needed a mount, which I finally got around to ordering from eBay last week.

Anyway, it arrived on Thursday whilst I was at work, so the following day I cut it to size and finally got the painting ready to hang in our kitchen, which is the place that inspired it. Here's a photo of it:

and the inspiration:

I also got around to ordering another mount, for a print we bought from the Royal Academy when we visited a David Hockney exhibition.  The original mount got discoloured by the sun and a new one was needed, so when that arrives, that will be another small job completed.

I still need to order some glass for a couple of other frames, but I'm not sure how much that will cost, so it might have to wait until next month now.

My only other accomplishments on Friday were to pickle another couple of jars of red onion and  do some laundry before returning to work on Saturday.

Whilst I was at work yesterday, OH managed to make progress on hanging the hammock in the garden.  He's cemented in the posts to hang it from, but we still need to buy some heavy duty hooks before we can hang it and use it.

After a busy day at work yesterday, followed by a very good night's sleep, today I'm planning to tackle the ironing pile of doom that has built up in the corner of the living room. Wish me luck.

As far as I'm concerned, even managing to accomplish small tasks on my days off these days is progress, as it's far too easy to just chill and achieve very little.