Hello again! I guess apologies are in order for the amount
of time it has been since my last post... but I promise I’ve been busy, not
just ridiculously lazy (I wish it had been laziness!). I have no idea where
this blog post is going to go, so it’s probably worth grabbing a cup of tea (or
a gin!), because you could be in for a long slog!
So where have I been? For those of you who don’t know,
myself and Anthony have moved into our new flat, (which we own!). It’s all very
exciting, though that is not the first word that springs to mind when I think
about our experience… exhausting is more apt! Unfortunately, because we are
both saving our work holiday for the wedding, we’ve not really booked any extra
days off to deal with the move, which I think has made everything all the more
overwhelming and knackering.
So, let’s begin at the beginning. We were fortunate enough
that the new flat didn’t NEED any urgent work doing; it has recently been
decorated and new carpets laid, and the kitchen and bathroom were also in good
nick. However, as I’m sure most of you can imagine, when you’ve been living in
rented accommodation for 5 years, as soon as you get your own place, you want
to make it your own. Anthony hated the decoration in the new place, and I
wasn’t overwhelmed by it. The plan was to have a couple of weeks where we
overlapped with the flats, so that we could decorate the new place before we
moved in. This didn’t quite happen… all we managed was to paint half the
kitchen! In hindsight, this wasn’t even a useful room to paint as we didn’t
need to move any furniture in, but shoulda woulda coulda – I could go on
forever about what we should have done!
On moving day, we hired a van – I drove, and thought I would
hate it. But I loved it!! And we couldn’t have managed without it, it was our
saving grace. We started properly moving stuff over on the Monday morning, and
by the Tuesday evening, we were completely in. The Tuesday evening was
definitely my low point. We spent over 6 hours deep cleaning our old place, and
it really did seem like we were fighting a losing battle. I also didn’t
anticipate it taking more than 2 hours, and I HATE cleaning! That, alongside
the physical exhaustion of moving, did not equal a happy Natalie, and I’m sorry
Anthony! I was truly a nightmare that night.
Decorating around the furniture and boxes was a royal pain;
this is when we did become grateful that the kitchen was decorated, as we
managed to get rid of 5 large boxes by unboxing kitchen stuff. We did most of
the decorating ourself, and almost all of our colour ideas were mutual – the
only exception is the bedroom, where I had no idea what colours I wanted, until
Anthony suggested we decorate in our wedding colours, which I LOVED! Below are
some transformation pictures:
These transformation pictures are by no means the finished
product!! We’re still living in a fair amount of clutter; unfortunately,
Anthony has been working ridiculous hours due to the get-in for the summer show
at the theatre he works in; he’s been working 14 hour days every day for the
last couple of weeks, which has meant that we’ve had very little time to work
on the flat together. However, every day it feels more like home; we’ve added a
few finishing touches, such as a Harry Potter doormat, our bed (complete with
all our books), and our sofa (which I assembled myself! And was then basically
useless for the next 3 days due to extreme muscle aching...)
I feel like this blog is a bit rambly, so I apologise for
that, but I’m still shattered! And any update is better than no update, right?
Long story short, we are making this place home, and I have every confidence
that this place will be so beautiful when we’re done with it. It’s a massive
change from living on the High Street, but I think both myself and Anthony are
actually 60 years old inside, so this place suits us to a tee!
In terms of wedding, we have done very little! But I’m not
stressed about that because we had got so much done in the first 6 months. The
main things we’ll be sorting in the next few weeks is notice of marriage,
invitations, window shopping for suits and finding ways to incorporate all of
our passions into the day. Currently, I’m actually not hugely missing the
wedding planning, because I’ve been so tired and busy with everything else. But
I am at a friends wedding on Saturday, and I have a feeling that will
thoroughly refuel the fire! I’m also waiting for an email from my wedding dress
shop, as she said my first fitting will probably be around September; that
feels completely unreal!!! I think it will all sink in again very rapidly from
then.
Anyway, I’ve done enough waffling here to last a lifetime,
so I’ll leave it there, but thanks for being patient! I'll update you as and
when I can :)
X
