Friday Inspiration

Another week I haven't spent much time online! This time attempting (unsuccessfully) to fix the turtles filter which has broken again, making some garden upgrades (and basking in the sun!) and reading Stephen King's 'Rose Madder', which is not part of the 6 book challenge I mentioned last week but I got sucked into reading it...I have my next challenge book waiting. Although I don't need to rush the challenge is to read 6 books in 6 months and at the moment on average I get though one a week...

Anyway onto the inspiration...

I had planned to do something similar to this to our bathroom mirror at our last house but never got round to it, it's a lovely way to brighten up a standard mirror

I really like this informal and light dining area, it's the kind of table I can imagine eating breakfast at on a Sunday morning...

This is not really my style but this living room jumped out at me, the combination of colours is so moody but bright

 I do love a map, and on bedding! You can lie in bed planning where you want to go next...

Framed fabric, such a good idea, especially for the bathroom where if there's a lot of steam you might worry about artwork getting damp, these can just be replaced cheaply or even washed!

Have great weekends all, I'm looking forward to a relaxing one after a busy bank holiday last weekend!

We're ready for the sun!

I shared pictures of our outside areas in this post, and we went to the garden centre a few weekends back and bought a few plants to put in our courtyard garden. Then I've been gradually getting them into pots and planting seeds.

I moved the table to underneath the window as that area gets the most sun in the afternoon and evening, and this is when we'll be using the garden the most. Luckily every part of the garden gets some sun through the day at different times.

Lined up against the kitchen wall are our edible plants, from left to right, first planter onions and rocket seeds (not grown yet), planter with the trellis in random one left by landlords (We're going to see if anything grows in it, if not we'll hide it somewhere), the small pot next to the broom has basil seeds and the long planter is our herb garden containing parsley, mint, coriander, garlic and thyme, next to the door are tomatoes.

The two long planters are the only new ones we bought so far (the others we already had from a previous house with a gravel garden) and they're pretty good as they have a reservoir at the bottom you can fill to keep your plants watered. I think they were £8.99 each, but unfortunately the receipt for these and our new plants fell victim to a leaky water bottle in my handbag so I'm just going from memory!

Then on the other side are the flowers and shrubs

There's an evergreen in the corner that the landlords left, then our indestructible ivy (I left it behind when we moved and went back to get what I thought would just be the pot, but it was still alive!). Then the new plants are the lavender, the yellow shrub which is a forsythia and should fill out to be a couple of feet tall and wide, the pot next to that is an old herb pot but it only has some leggy mint and straggly parsley left in it so I'm going to use it for some flower seeds I have planted on windowsills once they have grown, then the blue pot has a new clematis plant and the one on the end was left by the landlords (I have no idea what it is).

I also took the tarpaulin off the barbecue and the bikes to move them into the corner, as they were in the middle of the wall so hogging quite a bit of space. I also managed to get them back under one tarpaulin rather than two so they are a bit more streamlined.

All the plants behind the barbecue are ones from the landlords. That area is kind of a no man's land as far as I can tell, our bit ends at the steps but I can't see them using that patio as they have the rest of their garden and patio (their patio chairs are on the other side of the house) and there's a large hedge behind this patio (you can see it better in the photo above) that visually separates our part of the garden from theirs. We'll see once we all start using our gardens a bit more who uses what I suppose!

Once the plants all fill in a bit and the seeds grow I think this little area will look a lot brighter. It's already much better just having some plants out there and having it ready to use for eating outside, barbecuing and sitting in the evening with a glass of wine...

Another cat photobomb, I swear Minty had some kind of challenge of how many of my photos she could get into today!

Leaks

I was changing the cat litter tray the other day when I noticed this

Water behind the turtle tank. Damn.Well actually at the time I think I said some words rather more explicit than 'damn'

This looks a bit odd that I just took a photo of the spreading puddle, the thing is I can't move the tank on my own (it's heavy) so had to wait for Tom to get home, and had already got the turtles out and started draining the water with the syphon at this point! Also I turned off the extension cord at the wall as soon as I noticed it sat in a puddle.

So the turtles got an unscheduled trip into the bath, Tom got a panicky phone call from me that went something along the lines of 'when will you be home...ok no rush but the tank's leaking water everywhere', and then we spent Friday night sorting it out. It seems the tank itself is fine no leaks from the joins or anything, but the filter was leaking. It sits in the cupboard in the stand and the water was going out the back so we hadn't noticed until the puddle got quite large.

We dismantled it, cleaned it out and put it back together carefully, so far it seems to be ok (We think maybe we didn't put it back together properly last time), but we might need to get a new one sooner rather than later as it's starting to show it's age and is meant for fish not turtles. The stand has also gotten quite damp from standing in the water, so it's looking a bit gross. We got the dehumidifier in to try and dry it out (and obviously cleaned up all the water) but it might be time for a more modern one sooner that we thought.