Home & Garden archive

I wrote this last week but have been a tad busy – oops! Juneathon day 7 saw me take another slightly unorthodox activity day. No, not more vacuuming (although there was plenty of that), but the second Sunday spent totally gutting my home ‘utility’ (that… read full entry →

As I count down the days til I’m back at my desk at home, I feel like I’m in sort of “work limbo” right now. I’m actively seeking and quoting for freelance opportunities — some of which are looking more positive than others — but… read full entry →

In a recent post I mentioned the fact that I was finally going to finish decorating my living room. Karl and I started this back in 2012, but a combination of small children, full time work and laziness got in the way so it was… read full entry →

Despite my best intentions, it was inevitable that raising £20,000 to buy my ex out of our joint mortgage was an optimistic endeavour at best. Right from the beginning I had to factor in a more realistic plan: remortgaging the house for the value of… read full entry →

After Flymo pretty much demolished the majority of my seedlings earlier on the year, my enthusiasm for the garden waned somewhat. I lost interest in the daily maintenance required to keep the beds free of dandelions, grass pathways free of nettles etc and the continued… read full entry →

Anyone got any recipes for rabbit stew? Someone’s been a very bad rabbit. After moving the rabbit and guinea pig hutches up to the gap at the back of the top lawn (I know this means nothing to you unless you’ve seen my garden) last… read full entry →

Further to my last dairy free post, where you’ll remember I moaned that everything contains dairy, I set about creating a meal plan for the week (having seriously lost my mojo with the whole planning thing since going dairy free) and hit a bit of… read full entry →

We had some sunshine here in jemjabella-land today, so despite the chill in the air, everyone was wrapped up warm and shoved into the garden (and as such both kids were asleep for 6:30pm despite Oliver having late nap!) I’ve re-potted my strawberry babies from… read full entry →

This has been sat in drafts for so long, I figured I’d get it fixed up and posted otherwise it’ll never see the light of day! This is my easy “pea”sy fish pie recipe (it’s a pun, I’ll get to that shortly ;)) For the… read full entry →

I didn’t think it had been that long since I cleaned under the sofa last. And yet, having just done so, I found… teething toy rattle pair of pants (Isabel’s) 2 socks (1 x Isabel’s, 1 x Oliver’s) large Lego wheel 8 mega bloks 1… read full entry →

Is scraggy a word? Firefox isn’t flashing me the wiggly red line of doom… When we moved into this house (the ‘omg mega debt’ house) there were carpets throughout. We made the decision to rip out the carpet in the front room and replace it… read full entry →

Spurred on by your suggestions in my plea for ideas post, Karl and I have set about hacking at the living room this week. We’ve pulled off 90% of the paper, started removing the hideous and uneven polystyrene coving, and replaced the skirting that was… read full entry →