Happy New Year, folks! I think it's about time we take a step away from our blogging hiatus and just introduce you to our new home, already. What do you think?
Bryant and Hannah have a home in England! The beautiful thing about homes in the United Kingdom is that most have a name. Just like you, your sister, your dog, and I do. Ours has a name, too! It's Pollardswood Cottage. 2 Pollardswood Cottage, actually, because it was a gatehouse back in the day and was converted to two separate houses in the late 1970s. We live on a really great street that is actually known for being the residence of several famous and rich people. It's funny, because our house is so modest next to almost all of them!
You may notice the material of the roof looks different. It's THATCHED! Our roof is made of thick, dried hay, lades and gentlemen. Apparently this is a big thing in only a few places in the world and England is one of them! Ours was actually designed by a famous thatcher, of whom the name escapes me at the moment. We learned all of these great things when we first moved in mid November.
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| Bryant is excited to have a house! |
We have a small yard, or
garden, as the locals call it, and it's fenced in with a small driveway. Our household goods came on the 1st of December and we are almost done putting everything away. Moving into a house is a lot like cleaning up your room, only on a much grander scale. Confession: most of what is left is my (Hannah's) stuff in the bedroom and getting around to making the bed.
The charm of our house comes with a few downsides. The biggest one for us at the beginning was the narrow and low staircase. We were not able to fit the box spring of our American Queen mattress up the stairs! We really don't have much room for this problem, so for a couple weeks we had a giant square leaning against the dining room wall.
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| Very depressing! Our box spring. |
Are you curious how we got it up the stairs?? Bryant sawed the thing in half and we bent the metal top in half like a hamburger bun and muscled it up the stairs! I wish we could have gotten video footage of such a feat, but there you have it. It eventually bent back to place and Bryant mended the wood back together with metal plates. Just like new!
We have already have two major holidays in this house. We hosted Thanksgiving Dinner for a couple of friends from work. We had never made a full turkey dinner before and there were only four of us. We bought a turkey breast instead and made a sweet potato casserole and stuffing all in the
AGA!
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| Our first Thanksgiving! Bryant had a mustache at the time. |
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| Cassie and Steve, our Thanksgiving guests. Bryant learning how to carve. :) |
This house is the perfect Christmas cottage. Because we took a break from blogging in December you weren't able to see the transition into the Christmas sprit, but here are a few shots of what it looked like last week, only with
a lot of presents under the tree:
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| The dining room |
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| Our Norway Spruce from the local garden center and Mr. Snowman. |
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| Our Sculpey Nativity made an appearance on the window ledge. |
Sorry we didn't update you with all of this stuff sooner so that we could update you with detailed, more up to date, events now. A short summary...
Christmas was a wonderful break and we are really settled into our home and enjoying hosting my sister, Sarah. We've gone on several short trips including to London, Cambridge, Ely, and Bath. We have slowly been becoming acquainted with our neighborhood and England life. We have been going to a small Baptist Church in Beaconsfield and attending a Tuesday night Bible study. New Year's weekend was relaxing at home while Sarah and I relived our Bath trip by watching both versions of BBC's Persuasion by Jane Austen. I have also started reading the book. :)
We are so excited for this new year, but can't imagine any year being better than 2011. For a special New Year's treat be sure to watch the
New Year's Eve celebration in London from last night. Bummer we didn't think to go. Perhaps next year!
Whenever my work has a potluck I try to chip in with my share and donate some sort of food. As I am not really into cooking meatballs in bulk, I like to add to the dessert table with some sort of baked treat (what a surprise, right?).
