Freedom

Well this Saturday marked the beginning of a new phase of 'lockdown', the biggest relaxation of the rules yet.  Pubs and restaurants allowed to reopen, hairdressers finally allowed to sharpen their scissors to tidy up the nation and people allowed inside your house and not just in the garden.  

We embraced one of these, can you guess which one?

Thanks to a daughter who used to be a qualified hairdresser, we'd had a hair cut last weekend so we weren't one of those waiting patiently outside the hairdressers and barbers waiting to be called in for their well overdue appointment.  Neither were we the ones first though the doors of the local pub or restaurant - in fact our local pub isn't reopening until tonight, I wonder if they wanted to avoid the chaos of the first night of freedom?

We were the ones who opened their doors to their grandchildren and welcomed them inside their home!  Leo couldn't believe it when we told him he could come in through the front door instead of having to nip down the side path and stay in the garden.  Honestly, you know the expression 'bouncing off the walls'?  Well that was him, on the sofa, on the armchairs, upstairs in the bedrooms, he had to check that everything was as he remembered it.  It was so sweet hearing his 'I remember this' and 'oh, this is still here'.  Little does he know that when he finishes nursery at lunchtime, grandad will be there to pick him up and bring him back here for lunch!

Sunday was really blustery and it was nice to just be home, cooking a roast lamb lunch, reading the Sunday papers ...

Honestly, you can't leave a newspaper laying around for five minutes without Coco thinking it's a new blanket for her to lay on!

I finally got round to starting a new project at the end of last week.  One which has been on the 'to do' list for quite a while.  Our dining room furniture is about 18 years old and the chair seats are looking a little worse for wear.  The fabric is quite faded and marked and I've been thinking for a while that I could recover them myself.  But then I've got cold feet and thought it could be quite a disaster if it all goes horribly wrong.  I've looked at videos on youtube and I've googled 'reupholstering dining room chairs' for weeks and last week I took a deep breath and decided to order some fabric and a staple gun.  I found a website which sells Multiyork fabric - I guess it is either discontinued lines or end of rolls but either way it is lovely quality fabric for half the price of anywhere else I found. 

So I took a deep breath, asked Paul to help unscrew the current seats from the chair frame and cautiously started to remove the old fabric.  It was a bit nerve wracking, especially when it came to pleating the fabric round the corners but all in all, I'm quite pleased with the end result!

One down and three to go ...