Reigniting old passions

It's OK, don't panic, I didn't find an old boyfriend on Facebook and run away with him. To tell you the truth, I don't have that many ex boyfriends, and less interest in reigniting anything at all with them (I certainly knew how to pick them in the past, but that's another story).

No, today I'm talking about reconnecting with things that make me happy, that give me some sense of satisfaction. In the past week or so I rediscovered a couple.

Renovating
As I have mentioned, we are currently renovating. I guess you could say we've been renovating since we moved in here 12 years ago (as of yesterday), but in the past few months, we have been gathering a bit of steam.

We've had a fairly rough/interesting couple of years, with lots of ups and downs, and with me starting a new (and very demanding) job, we have let things slide a bit.

Anyway, I got a bit keen and decided I'd paint one of the walls, mainly so that we could live with the colour for a few months and see if we liked it. When Anthony does the kitchen, we will be replacing the ceiling in the lounge/dining/kitchen area and repainting, so I wanted to get a feel for what colour might be OK there.
Once I started preparing the wall, I thought it might be good to put a new window in. The old one was almost falling apart and looked pretty shabby. In fact, most of the room did
9sorry, forgot to take a 'before' photo (again), this is a kind of old one):

So we went out to the Handyman's Trading Post and bought a new window. Actually, we bought a new window, a glass door and a beautiful big set of cedar French doors which we will use in a shed/rumpus room we're building, but the window was the one going in first.
I'm very lucky that Anthony (as well as being a very talented woodworker) is one of those 'handy' people. So replacing a window was no problem for him. I did some bits and pieces, but I'll give him all the credit. I did the painting though. It turned out quite well:

We went for blinds because I like how they are tidy and hide away. We still have to finish the valance, but I think it looks much better.
The only trouble now of course, is that now that that wall looks great, the rest of the room/house looks a bit shabby. Actually, I guess that's probably a good thing in many ways, as it prompted me to do a thorough clean and sort. It's very nice and tidy now (in this end of the house anyway).

While we were doing it, I thought how nice it would be to do that for a while: buy a house, do it up, sell it again, buy a new one. I think it would be a nice way to love for a while. You could even do it in different states if you were really adventurous!

In the meantime though, we have quite a task ahead of us. At the moment, Anthony is building a BIG retaining wall out the back. He hadn't been lately, first because of the Samuel thing, and then because of the buckets and buckets of rain we've had lately. The wall is looking great though. We've used concrete sleepers so that it will last a long time, and they are very effective.

I just hope we'll have some dry days soon so we can get it finished! (we are actually much further along than this, I must go out and take some more photos.

Once the wall is finished, we are going to build a big shed, which will be like an extra couple of rooms (lined, insulated, power etc). Somewhere to put the pool table! (and all my teacher crap)
Then (the bit I'm excited about) Anthony is going to build me my kitchen. We have already bought a nice Lofra stove, and a sink and range hood, so I am very keen to get it all going!