Life is always busy at Kitchen Witch HQ but this past week has been total utter chaos, but in an absolutely fabulous way. Lots going on behind the scenes with new projects and ventures. Apologies for being vague but planning and testing has to be done first.
Adding to the chaos we are having the front of our house re-painted, the front wall rendered, new paving and a new gate. This means that Eric has someone to bark at continuously for the entire day, every day this week. Thankfully the crew are lovely and incredibly patient with him. Several days of preparation were done and then yesterday they started to paint. Pete took cups of coffee out to them mid afternoon and was surprised to see so much white paint on the house and a random turquoise colour. Surprised because we had originally discussed painting the whole front a sage green.
Confusion ensued and I was called out from a Zoom meeting to assess the situation. There had been a huge misunderstanding (in hindsight we can see how that happened, but that's a long story) and the house had been painted totally white with turquoise accents, although they hadn't quite finished and the wall was yet to be painted. They were so apologetic and immediately offered to change it, but...and here's the thing. They are such a good crew, they work full eight hour days with no breaks and are so cheerful and polite, they even take their shoes off when they come into the house each time they need to fill a bucket with water! I really felt for them and having had a really bad day myself yesterday I wasn't about to make theirs a bad day too. So I stood back and took it all in - it looks clean, tidy and smart and actually that was good enough for me. After a bit of discussion they suggested painting the wall with the turquoise just to liven things up, so we agreed. At the end of the day we had another look, they haven't quite finished the painting yet and the paving and gate still need to be done but the house colour made me smile. It positively shouts 'hey I am a seaside house and I am loud and proud' and I am very happy with that. I am not sure Pete is convinced yet, but as he said to the crew 'if she is happy then I am happy'. The crew were visibly relieved and I was very pleased to not have made their day a rubbish one too. Last night when I was thinking about it I realised the house now match the Kitchen Witch website colours so that makes me happy too.
One of the changes within Kitchen Witch has involved me finding some space to work and store my books so the poor ole spare room has been moved around again. What I needed was a large table workspace and I considered several options then remembered we had an old table stored away under the bed that might work. When we set it up it was darn near perfect which was a blessing a. because it means we don't need to purchase one and b. because this old table has a history. When we purchased this house 29 years ago we had no furniture at all and had maxed out on the mortgage so we lived with very little for a long while. One of the first items we purchased a couple of years later was a dining table and chairs. Over the years that table has seen many, many dinner parties, band get togethers, family events and suffered two children eating at it and doing craft projects on it. The table now bears the scars of all of those, particularly the paint and glitter glue that still adorns it. The base of the legs also bear teeth marks from the house rabbits we had when we first moved in. It also served as my desk on more than one occasion. When the house renovation was completed two years ago it was relegated to storage under the bed and replaced by a smaller table. I was very pleased to be able to resurrect it and now use it yet again.
One of the 'sssh secret squirrel' projects involves dragons and that project is nearly ready to announce, the last pieces arrived this week and are being sorted.
The next 'sssh secret squirrel' (what is it with squirrels and secrets?) is also nearing completion and that will be announced around the same time.
So it is all systems go here at KW HQ and I am very thankful to have Ness and Heather on board, they work incredibly hard, often behind the scenes, but KW wouldn't function without them. Also a big shout out to Pete (aka 'the hand with the coffee') because, well just because really ♥
