I came ‘home’ from work thinking about what today signifies and was mulling over an appropriate photo to represent it. I wandered into our wonderful (if not quite perfect yet) bathroom and spotted this and decided it’d do very nicely thank you.

So why is today such a big, important day?

A number of things. This is my 1,400th posting to my diary – 1,400 consecutive days – none missed and no archive shots. I reckon that’s something to ‘write home about’ especially because I didn’t even think I’d do a year when I started but it’s remarkably therapeutic – especially when I find out my ‘reach’ is quite extensive.

I also had what’s a really major victory for me on ebay last night. I can’t believe it but I won an auction – and after losing a gazillion I’m a bit chuffed to now be the owner of something extremely nice for our nest. Two lovely oak bedside tables – very nice indeed. That means we can move the old Ikea ones to the spare room and our guests will no longer have to balance their early morning tea on upturned cardboard boxes with fabric thrown over them! Two bits of nest building in one go – that’s quite cool.

Today is our first anniversary of owning this house. Yep – a year ago at around this time we were shutting our doors to our helpers (Alan and Dee) and thinking we’d made it. The grand plan. All the major parts in place. We promised ourselves no work for a year. We broke our promise big time. Why? Because however much we wanted to have a quiet life, the full grottiness of the place came home to us at that moment! So, since that day we’ve:

· Finished off the house ‘down the road’ so it could be occupied by someone less mad than us. (Less mad because they moved into a pristine home with nothing needing doing!)
· New garage doors
· New windows and doors all around our annex
· New windows in the house (grr still leaking)
· New bathroom
· Leaky central heating sorted
· Radiators moved to ‘sensible’ places
· Full rewire
· Opened up the fireplace in the sitting room
· Plastered and mostly decorated the dining room and the master bedroom
· Got the garden mostly under control
· Got rid of probably four full-sized skip loads of rubbish left by our predecessor (we’ve actually hired and filled two and we must have taken at least two more to the dump ourselves)
· Grown a whole array of food – in fact, we ate green peppers from our own greenhouse in our supper last night.
· Demolished an unsound shed and built a new one
· Built a henhouse
Last but by no means least, took down the ceiling in the lobby, replaced it, fitted a light and decorated our entrance hall.

There’s probably more but to be honest this seems like enough given our promise to ourselves.

My Mum and Dad gave me this box of Lush goodies for Christmas (thanks both) and one of the bath thingies caught my eye tonight – it’s called ‘Ne Worry Pas’ and the instructions are to whisper your worries into the magic grotto and then let them dissolve away……how gorgeous an idea is that? I must say that I think the Lush team is so imaginative and so in tune with the things I want from life that almost every encounter with them makes me smile and feel good. Priceless! Also - do you think it says visit www.lush.co.uk for lust? Or is that just my fertile imagination?

So, 5th January 2007 – a day with no worries to remember!

You can get a flavour for how foolhardy we were by looking at my post from that day!