Tiny Sparks of Joy

Sorting through the remains of the school year and planning more photobooks so we can recycle all this art guilt free. I adore the ones from Google photos I’ve ordered.

The glass backsplash we splurged on for our kitchen. It is beautiful and shiny and sleek and minimalist and I love it every time I look at it.

Holiday time on the way. France here we come (again).

This podcast episode. We don’t live in a small home but there’s always something to be gained from listening to how other people live their lives.

Eight weeks of maternity leave left. Going to focus on the joy of this and not the return to work.

Tiny Sparks of Joy

Another tidying festival, this time involving all the summer clothes I’ve held onto for year  but now actively dislike. Time for a small summer capsule wardrobe.

New sockets and switches in our lovely new kitchen.

Letting go, of physical and mental stuff.

Summer holidays being less than three weeks away.

Enjoying last year’s sparkling wine and the memories it sparks. Things have certainly changed a lot in a year, mostly for the better.

Pizza

One of the only things my husband really wanted in our new kitchen were quartz countertops. I was on the fence, mainly because they added 25% to the cost of our refurbishment and would delay completion because they had to be made to order. I’m happy to say he was 100% right. I love them, he loves them, they look amazing.

Having work surfaces again meant we were able to make pizza for the first time in many weeks. My husband makes amazing pizza dough and I make the tomato sauce. We had some leftover asparagus spears and these combined with some mozzarella cheese and a tin of anchovies made for a delicious lunch.

I have resolved to buy a pizza stone to cook pizza on, however, because scraping the remnants of cooked dough off various baking trays and roasting tins was no fun.

Oh Happy Day

Kitchen renovations have meant we were without a tap and sink downstairs for the past two weeks. This has not been good. I’ve washed dishes in a baby bath inside a larger bath and improvised with a bath towel to make a draining board. Thankfully we have an outside tap which provided us with drinking water but the absence of a sink was something I felt keenly. Every surface felt grubby and making food and tea or coffee was irritating. Sad to say I’ve eaten more than my fair share of junk.

Yesterday I wasn’t expecting Tap Man to come but he did! And installed our new tap, something which I hummed and hawwed over because it was a bit pricey. I LOVE THIS TAP. This, along with a shiny new sink, is the stuff of dreams. I washed up after dinner, wiped all the gritty bits out of the new drawers and made a pot of tea. Bliss. I will never, ever take easy access to running water for granted again.

Tiny Sparks of Joy

A walk from one side of the city to the other, and crossing the bridge which looks like a harp and traversing streets I never see on foot.

A little lunch date after said ramble.

A working dishwasher. The stuff of dreams.

Looking forward to our kitchen finally being finished. Inching towards that goal this weekend.

Holiday plans. New passports, a new campsite and a new car.

Tiny Sparks of Joy

This sticky toffee pudding. Far too much but oh so delicious.

An easy read, free from my local library. Every time I get a book via the order system I marvel at the awesomeness of what’s available.

This mess, because it means the end of our gross stippled ceiling and progress towards a new kitchen.

And also these messes, because ditto. I’m trying to look beyond the whirlwind of stuff in every room in the house and concentrate on a nice end result.

New Kitchen

Couldn’t think of a snappy title for this post so this one will have to do. After three years in our house, our new kitchen is on the way. In a fortnight I’ll have said goodbye to a tiled floor that I curse daily, a giant fridge which doesn’t seem to have enough space, weird triangle shaped narrow cupboards and peeling veneer that I’ve never liked.

In preparation, I’ve started doing this:

The Ikea storage boxes we bought eight years ago for our wedding and which have served us through two house moves are currently being pressed into service for a kitchen clear out. I had decluttered a lot of stuff before we moved and during what I thought was a ruthless organisation session last year but there is still a lot of stuff. I’ve been weeding out the stuff which I know I won’t use because I haven’t used it in the three years we’ve lived her.

I’ve also started doing stuff like this:

Clearing out our cupboards of eatables and drinkables is satisfying. I’ve had two bags of coffee beans for a very long time. I found a coffee bean grinder mid clear out and put it to use. The first grinding was only ok, I’ll try the second tomorrow. Either way, the coffee will be drunk as we’re nearly at the end of the stash we picked up on holidays last year in France.

This is a boring yet satisfying process. I’m tempted to leave everything in the boxes for a few weeks, only retrieving what we actively want in a given moment, in order to see how little we actually need.

It’s Time To Rearrange

The kitchen in our house isn’t a room I’ve ever loved or even liked a lot. It’s slightly worn, the cabinets aren’t a style I’d choose, the layout isn’t what works for how I use the room and it sparks little or no joy. When we first moved in I planned on getting the cabinets repainted, but time went by and the two samples the painter dropped in sat on a shelf and I decided I wasn’t going to put money into a kitchen that I hoped wouldn’t be around long term.

This weekend I had enough of looking at our two recycling bins which had taken up permanent residence in front of our large sliding door. I decided there and then that perhaps a tiny fix might help me like the space a bit better. I decluttered two catch-all cupboards that tend to rain tupperware containers, which enabled me to clear the space under the sink to stow the box for paper and plastic recycling and I squashed our food recycling under the oven. Already the space feels a little bigger and I just have to remember to empty the recycling a little more often.

So a tiny set of changes can make a difference, but that still hasn’t stopped me using the Ikea kitchen planner during quiet times and daydreaming about replacing what I have now. The bigger change can wait.