Last two weeks in a nutshell

Things have been pretty busy for the past two weeks as I was preparing to go back to school. After New Year I start getting the urge to start doing prep for the new term. A lot is done at the end of the last term but there is always something else waiting. Each year I cover my books and files with a different set of paper.  Red and white are the colours I went with this time with black thrown in to break it up a bit. I like doing this at home during the holidays when I have time to fiddle around. It's quite relaxing sitting on the veranda doing this.

My paper

One of the files

We give our children pre-printed book covers. I am fussy about everything being done properly so I took mine home during the holidays so that I could stick the covers on myself and trim off any excess paper. A cup of coffee mid morning also is part and parcel of the process.

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Table on the veranda with everything I need at hand

We are very happy not to be going away. Where we live is a popular holiday resort and over Christmas and New Year it gets really busy. Fortunately for us we live within walking distance of  "The Village".  I think Chez counted it as 254 steps from our place to the shops. As you can see in the pictures below we had some lovely sunny weather. 

The main road leading into the village from our side

 We cross this street on our way to the shops - at the bottom you can see the sea

I thought I would add a few photos taken downstairs in our very tiny garden. It is perfect for us because we don't need a big garden. It's nice to sit there and read and we can braai (barbecue) there as well . 

 Downstairs in our very tiny garden

 My spot for relaxing was on a lounger looking at this view. The pool is in front of us down a few steps so cooling off when you get too hot is not a problem.

 The book I was reading and my journal. I love the fact that there is no rushing around and I have time to read lots of books.

 Plants in containers to my right

During the last week of the holidays we also had a repairman in to fix up things in the house that were reported to the agent last year in March and nothing had been done. One of the repair jobs was for him to replace the cistern in Caelen's bathroom. We were sitting downstairs one day when we heard a loud noise but didn't know what it was or where it came from. It sounded like something had exploded. I couldn't see anything so left it, thinking it must have been next door. A short while later I thought I could hear running water so I went to investigate. I found a pool of water on the bathroom floor and more running down the back of the cistern. After switching off the water I lifted the cover of the cistern and saw a large crack running all the way down the side of the cistern. Mystery of the noise solved - toilet out of action! By the way, this all happened before Christmas and was only fixed after New Year. 

The toilet - she is broken!

Now it's almost as if we hadn't been on holiday. Daily routine has gone back to normal. The weather has been extremely hot and humid. We have had our aircon on most nights otherwise we wouldn't be able to sleep comfortably. February is usually our worst month but this year has definitely been hotter than normal in January. As I type this I am sitting in my costume and we have the aircon on which we don't normally do

during the day.