Short trip to Belgium....

....has come and gone.  And I'm glad to be back home.
Nothing beats the clean air of Ireland, the beautiful sea and mountains, the relative peace and quiet.

I stayed at my mother's place, in a small town. Her house and little garden are an oasis in the urban sprawl that is Belgium, Flanders in particular. Nevertheless it is surrounded by other houses, schools, busy roads and an awful lot of air traffic.
Traffic ! Traffic ! Traffic ! Traffic everywhere, Traffic jams everywhere.  Road works. Road blocks. Diversions that have diversions ! It is enough to suck the life out of everyone who has to use the roads on a daily basis, twice, to get to and from work.
We visited my brother and his family with boy (8) and girl (4) and they too have their own oasis in another town/village. What was a reasonably quiet street when they moved there,  is now a neighbourhood where many houses have sprouted out of the ground and there is very little green left. Still, it is a village atmosphere and they seem to have pleasant neighbours.

I wish they could all move here too. They love it here. They are nature people. They want the children to know and love nature. They love the sea, the mountains, The walks. The clean air.

Maybe one day they will...

I miss them, but it's good to be back home.

Patricia xxx...x

It's been 4 weeks tomorrow

since we left Belgium.

We've had some pretty hectic days before we left. Last minute packing, container arriving, loading and container leaving again, before we could set to the road, direction Ireland.

I have difficulty writing about those last days, as I really don't want to think about it much, plus the fact that I was so exhausted that most of it happened with a foggy brain (mine).

Anyway, the cats went to my cousin, Nancy's cattery on the Friday till Monday, when we picked them up and began our journey.

 

 

The container got delivered Thursday afternoon.  Great start ! He got stuck on the small road  near our house and had to be pulled free by a neighbouring farmer and his tractor.

 

That settled, the driver decided not to attempt to offload the container at our house (not possible, he said), but dropped it off at the neighbours, who were kind enough to accommodate. But it meant that all our belongings had to be transported 150 meters or so.  It was an arduous task, but with the help of some friends and family, we did it !

 

Or so you would think !

If only Bert had notified me beforehand that our belongings wouldn't fit into a 20 ft container, but in fact that we'd needed two three of them ! I would certainly have organized it differently (that's what I'd like to believe, anyway)

Just how many times have I said : "Bert, that will never  fit into the container, will it ?", Only to get as reply : "Of course it will ! "

Never in a month of Sundays.  

Thus we set to the road with more than half of our belongings still left behind. Lucky that the house sale hadn't competed yet or we would have been snookered.

Bert then arranged another container for 2 weeks later to get the rest of our stuff. He would be in Belgium then to sign the contract for the sale of the house.

The new owners were kind enough to let us have a day extra to empty and clean up the house. Which Bert did, by the skin of his teeth AND renting extra storage from Shurgard self storage

 

I really don't want to think about it for the time being, so I am going to leave it at that !

 

 

Monday morning at 7am the first container left and not long after we did too. Two cars. Bert driving one with our dogs, Millie and Sam, while I took behind the wheel of the other car with my mother and 5 cats. Calais, here we come !

 

A few hickups with the trafic in Belgium later, we arrived at the channel tunnel in Calais safely.  There we had to have the pets' passports and micro chips checked, which went very well.

Once in the UK, the journey from Folkestone to Pembroke was extremely smooth sailing, unlike the ferry crossing from Pembroke to Rosslare.

The Irish Sea is rough at the best of times, but this was something else entirely. Thank goodness all three of us were tired at the verge of exhaustion and that we had a cabin booked or we would have settled into the lifeboats for the night - just in case.

Never knew ships could make circular motions like that. A few times I was woken up because I felt being lifted off the cabin bunk and dropped right back onto it. All three of us between wakefulness and fitful sleep, too worried and tired to speak. The ferry toddled into Rosslare harbour an hour later than foreseen on Tuesday morning around 7.30 am.

Thank you, Ireland, for welcoming us back with a clear blue sky and the sun out, even if it was still somewhat blustery.

A gentle 5 hour drive later we arrived at the house, where we unloaded the pets and flopped out on the furniture that was left by the previous owners !

 

 

I would go through it all again for a this. ^

 

Thanks for popping in.

Patricia xxx...x

 

 



Perpetual Home Movers

So we are now the proud new owners of two houses in our beloved Sneem, county Kerry, Ireland.
My life feels quite surreal right now. Who would have thought that after leaving 9 years ago we would ever go back.
I remember when we left, Bert saying, "You do realise that we will never be able to buy a similar house in  similar surroundings around Sneem for the price we got from the sale of the house."
He was right - for a while.  House prices went up and up and up, until the bubble burst...
Being the restless souls that we are and, not forgetting, perpetual home and country movers (gosh ! life would be simpler if we were just to get rid of all our tat and bought ourselves a gypsy waggon and a horse), we decided to go back to Ireland. 
It took us 2 years to plan and  to get things in order.

The timeline of the big move is as follows.

• Friday, 12th April

- Arrival of shipping container (we bought a second hand one, that way we can make use of  it in Sneem as storage - we're gonna need it !)

- Cats go to  my cousin, Nancy's cat hotel , which is just on the other side of town.  Easy peasy.
The dogs will stay with us, hoping we'll be able to manage them as we load the container.

• Saturday, 13th & Sunday, 14th April

- Load container with the help of friends.  Neatly loaded, to make good use of the 20 ft space.

• Monday, 15th April

- Container gets picked up in the morning.
- Stuff 2 cars full of dogs and other belongings
- Get cats from cat hotel, stuff them in car too
- Pick up my mother (who will have made picnic parcels), she is coming for the ride and will get a suitable space in my car.
- Ready to roll by 12 noon
- Drive to Calais to get to the Channel Tunnel
- Hopefully all goes smoothly with importing the pets.
- Arrive in Ashford
- Drive through England and Wales towards Fishgard to catch the ferry....

• Thuesday, 16th April

- Ferry Fishgard - Rosslare at 2.45 am
- Arrival in Rosslare at 6.30 am (or thereabouts)
- Drive to Sneem with estimated arrival at 12 noon
- Brass band, cheerleaders, flags will be welcoming us back (haha)

The shipping container will leave the docks in Antwerp on Wednesday and arrive in Cork on Friday morning, so we will not be seeing our worldly goods till the next Monday at the earliest.

At this point the pets have had their shots, micro chips for the ones that didn't have one yet, passports have been updated, etc etc.  The dogs need a treatment for tapeworm between 1 and 5 days before arrival in the UK.

Boxes have been filled and many more still need filling. The weeks ahead are going to be hectic, to say the least.

Thank you for reading
Patricia xxx...x

A Neglected Blog

Well, dear readers, I have neglected my blog good and proper !
There are reasons and a thousand excuses for that, but I'm not going to bother you with the latter.
The fact is that my head space didn't let me get onto the Blogger World.
We will be moving house and country soon. I wrote about that in October 2012 . I'll leave the developements of that subject for the next instalment on this blog.

Unfortunately when we got back from Sneem last October our dog Sam became ill. A bit of a dry cough at first, so a coughing syrup was prescribed by the vet. No sign of improvents made the vet give him antibiotics. Again, no improvement.
On the contrary, he became very weak and in a matter of days he lost his eyesight and lots of wheight.  In the meantime blood tests were done and the results showed absolutely nothing conclusive.  An ultrasound showed an enlarged spleen. Biopsy. Nothing conclusive.

Our next step was drive all the way to the Universitary Animal Hospital in Ghent. Obviously they repeated all the tests and were stumped, just like our vet. They advised a drip and cortisone treatment in the hospital, but we opted for that to happen at our vet's, which is nearer to us.

He got stronger and his eyesight came back.  He could come home, but has been on cortisone ever since.  Sometimes he gets a bit weaker still and then the cortisone dose gets upped.
It gets upped because he gets fatter, so he can have more.  He gets fatter, because he eats loads.  He eats loads because of the cortisone.  You got it, a vicious circel.

The vet now believes it to be a neurological problem.  Like a brain tumour.  Why not get a scan, I hear you ask.  1300€ is why.  They might find a tumour, but they might not.  And then ? We will know it's a tumour.  His treatment would still be the same.  Keep him comfortable till the day comes when we have to make this damn awful decision. 

A decision we recently had to make already with one of our cats, Squirrel. My little darling. Fourteen she was and was slowly getting  to the end.  Every day I think about her with pain in my heart.  I feel guilty, still.  But apparently it was for the best.

It is something you don't really think about too much when you get a pet. They just don't get as old as we do and there will be a point in our lives when we have to say goodbye.  It is hard.
On the positive side, they give us so much while they are with us. Unconditional love, great companionship. They make us laugh with their antics and sometimes they make us want to strangle them when they have pooped in an unreachable (for us) corner !

So you see, I have been preoccupied with  all sorts.
My next blog instalment will not be far off and possibly of a more positive nature.


Thanks for reading
Patricia xxx...x

Puppet Theatre Makeover

 

I have a nephew - Mathias (5) and niece - Sarah (1.5) who are both cute as pie and misschievious in equal measures. 

My dilemma is what to give them on special presents days, like birthdays or christmas.  They have so many toys that I don't want to add to the pile unless it's educational, something that releases their creativity or something that they will treasure forever.
So I came accross this puppet theatre in a Recycle Shop. Bought it for peanuts and gathered up a load of second hand hand puppets at the same time.  We still had some hand puppets at home that once belonged to Bert from when he was a wee little lad.
I revamped the puppet theatre with a lick (or two) of paint and new curtains.  Some of the puppets got new clothes that I made with pieces of fabric that I had lying about (read : had been hoarding) and got their faces washed thoroughly with soap and water. The other puppets will be given to them in dribs and drabs over the coming couple of years - hopefully before they have outgrown the theatre (blushes)
So here are the pictures of the project.

 

A rather insipid and tired looking puppet theatre.

 

 

Transformed.

 

 

Meet the puppets.

Grandma & Granddad

 

Granddad & his dog

 

Granddad's dog.

 

The Twins (they were Little Red Ridinghoods, but I changed their profiles, seeing I have a whole tribe of them)

 

King and Queen

 

My guess ? Winnetou who got a real suede outfit.

 

We gave it as their Christmas present and boy did they enjoy it !

 

 Look at his litlle face

Granddad's dog has the most success

 

Not always used as was meant but fun nonetheless.



Their parents were going to leave it at ours till the next day, but Mathias insisted it traveled home with them that evening and he started lifting the theatre himself to bring it to the car.

 

Mission accomplished ! Could not have hoped for a better reaction.



Thanks for visiting.
Patricia xxx...x

Trip to Sneem and Intermittent Fasting - 5:2 - Part ???

I really am not the most consistent blogger in the world, I know that.  And I assume you were all thinking that I had given up on  my low carb - IF diet.  Right and wrong !
Dieting is hard. Dieting when on holiday is nigh on impossible.
But I had semi prepared myself and had 3 fast days before we left for Ireland.  Still, in the weeks before our trip I've kept myself busy with baking my mother's (who turned 75) birthday cake, I obviously had to 'taste' it.

I cleaned the house, did a pile of laundry and ironing, cooked some chicken and rice for the cats and dogs as a 'haute cuisine' treat for when we were away, got 'some' food in for our pet/house sitter (my mum - it was her birthday present, the house sitting ;) ).
How I love going on hols, NOT.  It's all the prep that I have to do beforehand, not to speak of emptying the suitcases when coming back home.  Blergh!
That's why we (I) just prefer to move house to another country, at least then you have all your furniture and stuff with you. Ha !

Yes, our holiday to Sneem wasn't just a social visit to all our friends and acquaintances. We also went house hunting.  Some of you may know that we have accepted the offer on our house in Belgium and we now needed to start looking for something in our beloved Sneem.
We have put an offer in on two properties and they have both been accepted, so we are on the right track.

Two properties ? Well, yes. One in Sneem village as an investment and one near the Sneem estuary right at the water's edge, to live in.
I just adore the place on South Square, the building has a lot of charm (and a lot of work too) and has sitting tennants (comercial) who will stay. It has a small garden (full of Japanese knotweed, 5 old mattresses, rotten  wooden dressers and all the other stuff we haven't seen yet). But it also boasts a stone barn with a beautiful arched gateway.  We heard it used to be a butter factory, but I can't seem to find any information about it on the net.

It is ripe for restauration and I cannot wait till we can get the whole place spruced up. To make it the gem of Sneem village.

The house near the water is a 'new build'. From the outside it looks okay-ish, the interior is far, far too modern (think Kelly Hoppen-esq ) with near white wall to wall carpet in all the bedrooms and living room, highly polished white floor in the kitchen that give me the feeling of walking over ice cubes, black kitchen.  The windows are uPVC, wood imitation with 'fake' crossbars between the double glazed window panes. They'll have to go !

We'll also need to add a garage/tool shed as there isn't any. Every house needs a tool shed. 
Whatever we paid for the place, it's going to cost us an arm and a leg to get it to work for us in the style we like. But it will be worth it in the end as the land is pituresque with stunning views over the water and the mountains.  Added bonus, it has a stream and a pond too !

From past experience we know that till completion of a sale lots of things can happen, so we prepare ourselves mentally for that and hope for the best.  Fingers crossed.

Now about the diet.
While we were in Ireland we stayed in the  Sneem Hotel.  I kept my cool and didn't over eat on bread, sweets or any other carby fillers.  For breakfast I usually ate yoghurt (lovely and creamy) topped with almonds, walnuts and prunes (that'll keep the bowels moving), then a cooked breaky of sorts : egg (always egg) either poached or fried, tomato, mushrooms and white pudding (which was very tasty indeed).  Right, sometimes I did give in to a slice of toast with a good lump of butter.
For lunch we usually had a filled sandwich on the go or at one of the many coffee shops.
Dinner, either at the hotel, D O'Shea Bar (which serves great food) or at friends (I couldn't resist Jo-Anne's cake or Pam's scones smothered in jam)
So yes, I did sin a bit, but not as much as I did this Saturday when we were already home.  I made some lovely starchy risotto with butternut squash. I also ate a whole (200 gr) bar of chocolate filled with hazelnuts on that day ! It didn't seem to weigh that much to be honest as the nuts felt very very light. ;)

I recovered from this blip on Sunday. No more carbs. I have it out of my system, with a fast day yesterday and today.
Some of my recipes ? I'll try and get them on this blog soon. That's a promise I'm hoping to keep.

Intermittent Fasting - 5:2 - Part 5/6

Not much has happened in the last 2 weeks concerning the diet. We've fallen nicely into a routine of fasting on Mondays and Tuesdays, eating kind of normal all the other days. With normal, I mean still low carb and counting calories as good as I can.
We also seem to have one day a week were we go a bit bonkers. Usually a Saturday or Sunday.  Like yesterday for instance. My niece, Sarah got christened and my nephew, Mathias had his 5th birthday party. Obviously there was carb overload in which I played a big part,  because yours truly baked a cake for Sarah and cupcakes for Mathias.

Two top layers were red velvet cakes and the bottom one was frangipane .


For Mathias I made a pirate ship from a shoe box, inspired by this one , an island from half a styrofoam ball covered with sugar paste and then his pirate cupcakes.

And here he is waiting to blow out the candles that his uncle Eric is trying hard to light first.

Today it is back to the fast and I am dying to get stuck into my dinner.  We're now having a go at saving our calorie allowance for dinner and dessert.  Dessert is not cake or chocolate ! Oh no ! Fruits or maybe a yoghurt is what we have.  I'm also trying to keep fast days meat free and use soy protein or quorn one day and fish on the other day.
We don't own scales to weigh ourselves, so last week I used my mum's and it looks like I have lost a few kilos at least.  My clothes also seem 'less full', if you know what I mean.

And another bit of news that I just cannot keep under cover till a later time. I might jinx it, but whatever happens happens. 
We have buyers for our house ! Yeah, I know, exciting !  Deposit paid, promise of purchase signed!  There is just one catch.
The buyers asked to have completion on April the 30th at the latest.  Whilst that is still a long way off and it might just be easier to move house and country in the spring time and not in winter, it leaves me feeling a bit anxious. 
They seem like the right people to move into our house. They love it and they love the unkempt garden.  We are supposed to let the ivy grow up the gable again and they do not want us to use any kind of weed killer.  They will adopt our chickens and Arthur the cockerel.
Fingers crossed for a completion without hickups.

A week Ireland has been booked and I'm looking forward to it !


Thanks for visiting.
Patricia xxx...x

Intermittent Fasting - 5:2 - Part 4

Been having a few hectic days lately and it was not so convenient  for us to start our fourth fast yesterday (Monday) so we postponed  with one day.
Bert is having it difficult as we ( I ) decided we were going to fast the whole day and eat our calories at dinner time. Hu ho !  He has been fighting the hunger pangs with cups of stock made from half a cube, each.

Last week Wednesday we had a meeting with our estate agent who is trying to sell our house. Unfortunately we had few viewings over the last month and a half.  Summer holidays and bad weather, people booking last minute planes to the sun didn't help.  It has been quiet in general in the property sector.
Now most of the house viewers we welcomed thought the garden is not to their taste, too wild, too much work, too large, etc etc. 
We are now focussing ourselves on our garden which in all honesty has been left a little unkempt. With this lovely summer weather (ahum) every bit of weed has firmly rooted itself in our garden, even if we have weeded somewhat in between showers and mown the lawn fairly regularly.
Our hedges (the beech hedges we inherited when we moved here and of which some we have cut back drastically over the past three years) look untidy. We had also created some arches which were not yet looking at their best.  You get the picture, not conducive to a house sale.
Our estate agent recommended that we took down the ivy from the front gable of the house !  My heart jumped up into my throat. It's what made me fall in love withe the house in the first place.
They assured me however that 80% of potential buyers hate it.
With a heavy heart we removed the ivy from the house (only the front, mind) on Saturday and it went from this

to this

in a matter of hours.

I came across 8 birds' nests, old ones granted, but that means from now on the birds won't be nesting against the gable anymore. More heart break.
At least we know now that the ivy hasn't caused any damage to the bricks or pointing. It can only mean that the materials used for this house were decent.
Dilemma. How to get those sucker roots off.  A few google searches later we opted for the pressure washer, even if we read horror stories about damaging the bricks and/or pointing.  Worth a try at least on a small patch.
We don't own a pressure washer, so we needed to wait till Monday to hire one. 
Sunday we tried to made good use to tidy around the driveway and near the front of the house.  At around 4.30 pm all hell broke loose.  A text came in from the estate agent that they would come Monday morning, 10 am with potential buyers. 
Oh blimey ! Very, very short notice.  Took the vacuum cleaner aaaalll the way upstairs and started a cleaning frenzy ending when reaching the depths of the basement utility room. That was 10 pm. There are nicer things I can think of to keep me occupied on a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon. Bert started the lawn mower around the same time as I started up the hoover.  He was ready before me, but the grass was long and he had to work till darkness fell. Ach, it is our own fault, we should keep on top of things, but time managment isn't one of our strongest points. Obviously.
We didn't even have time to have dinner before then, so we were very naughty and got chippie chips ! A small one, and it didn't satisfy me at all to be honest.
Monday, before 10 am, the house viewers and EA came.  They did the tour in less than 15 blummin' minutes and they had the cheek to not want to look at the garden !
It was obvious to me (judging a book by it's cover) that they were the type of people who want a trendy and very modern house with a very straight lined garden. Seeing the flashy car they arrived in  yes, flashy and pimped) Bert and I just knew. That's a no.

Having this clean house again and not being in time to go to the hire shop for a pressure cleaner, Bert dissappeared to his study and I went into my 'studio/craft room'.
Soon, my little niece, Sarah will get baptized and my nephew, Mathias will celebrate his 4rd birthday.

 

I bought them a puppet theatre in the second hand shop, which I will give a face lift and I also bought second hand puppets.

 



They all need a new wardrobe and I made a start yesterday.

I have four Little Red Riding Hoods, and this one will no longer be one. She will be cast in a different role altogether with a lovely flower print frock.

Grandma will no longer be ill in her bed, but will be in the kitchen baking pies and cookies, wearing a flower print dress and an apron with lacey frills.

 



The king will make an appearance in this story. But he's still at the taylor's as he still needs a Royal collar on his coat.

He'll probably be presenting his princess daughter at the debutante ball.

 

What a lovely day it turned out to be. Just relaxing and doing something creative with not much else on my mind.

 

 

This morning when I woke up, Bert had already dissappeared to the hire shop.  Once home he got started with the power washer, and......it worked a treat ! Bricks and pointing (and the paint even) still intact and all the rough roots gone.

Now we hope that the painter will come on Saturday, as promised, to give us a quote for painting the front gable, all the windows and the roof overhang. I really dislike the dark brown windows. Luckily indoors they have been painted white-ish.

 

Whilst Bert was power washering a woman stopped and asked if she could go in the woodland next to and behind our house to have a look. Sure.

She phoned the EA there and then, made an appointment to view the house an hour later.  Well, she didn't seem to be scared off by the garden. That was a good sign. The house was still decent from the last viewing so all was good.

She loved the house and would contact us again after talking with her husband.  Wether that is just talk or not, we don't know, but viewings seem to be picking up again and we have another potential buyer lined up for Friday too.

 

Wish us luck !

 





 

 

Recipes from last week's fasting you can find here and here

 

We've had a tasty fasting meal tonight. The recipe will be posted soon.

 

Thanks for visiting

Patricia xxx...x