On a brighter note...

We are thoroughly enjoying our new home. It has taken us a little while to get it to where it feels like home, i.e. painting bedrooms and section clearing, but now it does. Apologies for the following pictures - I never think to style a room before I take photos, so what you see is how we live :-)  

Bear in mind that all the Before and After photos were taken at the same time of day - the darkness in the rooms in the Before shots is due to the overgrown foliage outside the windows blocking natural light, and with the room lights switched on. In the After photos, the room lights are not even switched on and the light in the rooms is purely due to sunlight.

My daughter's room Before:

and After:

The walls are actually white, but the sun has reflected the red duvet cover around the room

I covet the throw on her bed every time I go in there. And can't help stroking it because it's sooo so soft

My bedroom Before:

And After:

Spare room Before:

 and After:

The landlady says she will paint the window frames in summer

The landlady came round this morning - the first time since we moved in - and was delighted with how good it is looking. She even thought the yard looked great. I guess compared with how it was, it does. But to me it still looks pretty awful with a great deal to be done. More on that later.

Sadly...

R.I.P. BEAUTIFUL SOPHIE

Sadly, one month after moving into our current abode, we lost our beautiful Sophie. She was 15 years old and had made the transition to our new home very well. She was relaxed and obviously contented - alternately snoozing in the sun in my room, or outside in a little 'nest' she had made beneath the living room window. It was in her nest that my daughter found her, curled up. She had had a stroke and was badly affected down one side, so we made the decision to have her put to sleep. She was not distressed or in any pain, so we kept her with us overnight to say our goodbyes and I took her to the vet the next morning. It was over in seconds, and she remained calm right to the end.

  

I wasn't intending to plant anything in the garden yet because it simply isn't ready for planting, but I brought her home to bury and needed to put something over her to mark her place in our lives. I found a lovely small evergreen magnolia hybrid called Fairy which only grows to 2 metres.

 We have bought some solar-powered fairy lights to lie on the ground around the base. When the tree is larger, possibly we might thread them around the branches. 

Sophie was a part of our family for so long. She was my daughter's 7th birthday present and so has always been in her life really. The other cats and dog obviously missed her. As my daughter held Sophie before we buried her, Diego came up and sniffed her and very gently touched her face with his paw, the way he and Delphi often reach up and touch our faces.

Goodbye, Old Sophie. Gone but never forgotten.