A Chill Week - Week ending 9th November 2024

This week started with a very lazy day at home on Sunday, as I wasn't working. I had a Whats App call with a friend in the morning. She'd moved to Spain 5 years ago and we'd lost touch. It was good to hear her news and I'm happy that she wasn't affected by the tragic recent flooding in parts of the country.

I didn't actually do a lot for the rest of the day. I did do a bit of sewing on both my hexi quilt and the scrappy cushion cover. I didn't complete the latter though. In the evening, OH and I watched the last episode of Jilly Cooper's Rivals on Disney+. It's been quite entertaining. I did love the 80's, despite the politics. We're looking around for something else to watch now.

On Monday, I wasn't working, so I had the whole day to go shopping out of town again and I was out the whole day too. I did some shopping using my staff discount at another store, to buy a few Xmas and birthday presents for LB that I couldn't get in our store. This saved me £11. I did a monthly Home Bargains shop for essentials that we use regularly. Then there was the Lidl and Tesco grocery shopping. I  managed to save £6 at Lidl using a 10% off voucher and then used a couple of Clubcard vouchers I'd been sent at Tesco giving me £8.50 off my shopping there, which all helps at this time of year. 

On Tuesday, I was booked into a class at the gym, so headed there in the morning, which was good. I had another day off on Tuesday and wanted to spend the rest of the day at home. I tried the sofa cover back on the shed sofa to see what it looked like now I've machine stitched it together and made the cushion cover. I was very happy with how it looked.

I continued to work on it, pinning and basteing the hem all around the bottom and doing the same for one of the front pieces. I'm just awaiting delivery of some velcro to securely attach it to the sofa. Then I just need to make the front of the arms which is probably the trickiest bit of the whole thing, as they are an irregular shape. I think I will need to create pattern pieces to do this bit. It has been lovely to have some time to work on this this week and make some progress.

OH, meanwhile, has been working on painting the stairs this week. Here's a picture of how they look for the moment:

We're not sure we're sticking with this colour. It's growing on us, but it was the best of the ones we tried and it does create a lovely matte finish on the stairs, which now feel much more luxurious to tread than bare with bits of nail heads sticking out. While we're waiting for some more paint samples to arrive, he's working on prepping the floor in LB's bedroom, ready to paint that. It's much easier to do that when she's away at uni with most of her stuff.

On Wednesday, I spent the morning doing more sewing. I hemmed the sofa cover on the machine, altered a thrifted skirt and finished my scrappy cushion for the kitchen.  Then it was time to get ready for work.  My velcro arrived today, so when I next have some time I can start to attach it to the hemmed edge of the sofa cover.

Work was okay. I was doing a different job, which was a little slow, so I was glad when the shift finally came to an end.

On Thursday, OH was out all day and I booked myself into the gym and headed off. I had a good gym session and then came home and started to try to make the arm fronts for the sofa cover.  It is a bit tricky, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually. I almost got one pinned in place.

I then had to get ready and go to work for 2pm. I was on a section that I enjoyed today, so the afternoon flew by and before I knew it, it was 6pm and time to go home. It was my last shift for a few days which felt good. It was nice to go home after work and have supper with OH, rather than eating late on my own after a late shift.

I wasn't working on Friday, so I did more work on the sofa cover and got both arms basted to the cover. I now just need to machine sew them into place. I also spent some time packing for our trip to Yorkshire for OH's father's funeral. We were setting off the following day.

On Saturday morning, we decided to go to the gym before setting out on our journey to Yorkshire.  There was a free session at 9.30 am, so we attended that, then went home to get showered, packed up the car and then set off. Our journey there was pretty straightforward with very few hold ups, which was great. We got to OH's mum's house for mid afternoon and stayed for a few hours chatting and catching up on news. She was good and coping very well with everything.

Later, we made our way to the lovely cottage we were staying in, in another village. We were pretty tired by the time we got there and were going to go to the pub for a drink, but decided against it and stayed in instead. Luckily, the owners of the cottage had left us a bottle of Prosecco as a welcome gift, so we made some supper and I had a couple of glasses of that whilst we watched some TV.

It was nice to be back up north, but we were a little apprehensive about the funeral and how everything would be on the day. Only natural I think.