Premier Snowfall

Well we have had our first snowfall of the winter this week and it was pretty spectacular. It snowed all day on Wednesday - quite heavily here, which is quite unusual.  We carried on with the work in La Picholine but it was freezing in the house with no heating and a bit too dark without the sunshine.We had an early finish and prepared a list of things we need to carry on. We decided to go and collect these on Thursday morning.

Thursday morning arrived and with it a change of plan - There was still lots of snow and still quite cold at  - 2 degrees - so Bryan decided to steal the car and have a  morning with his camera, around the area to record the event. The afternoon was spent editing.  Back to work tomorrow - I think a shopping trip is on the cards.

We are still plaster boarding and doing 1st fix electrics. Hopefully we can finish this by the end of the weekend. It takes a lot of thinking and planning to make sure we have all the wires in place for plugs, light,oven, hob, dishwasher etc before we cover them all up. There is no room for errors.

Still at least with all this snow we have somewhere to keep our beers cold -

 Cheers........

2013

I can't believe that over a month has gone by (and the year ended) since my last post....My New Years resolution will be - Must do better !!!!

Midwinter Sunrise in Cebazan

The Bathroom window has finally arrived and is fit - so all is secure and watertight now - another job crossed off the list.

We spoke to the guys who were supposed to be coming to do the rendering on the outside of the villas at the end of November and they said that they were behind with their work and it would be January before they would get to us, so we had a change of plan and decided to spend Christmas with our family (and friends) in England.  We had a wonderful 2 weeks catching up with people and watching little ones in their school plays, doing the school run and no DiY.  The only downside was I have now brought the flu back to France with me...... Today is the first day since we got back that I have found a little bit of energy to do something. Homemade/homegrown celery soup is on the stove top and I have even made a start on the weeding outside.

Bryan has been plodding on in La Picholine tout seul and the framework for all the interior walls are in place and he is now finishing the electrics and plumbing that need to run across the floors so that we can then finish the plaster boarding.  Our next big job is to put a topping of sand and cement on the floor area to cover the pipes and make the floor ready for tiling. Not a job I am looking forward to but someone has to do it -  I hope he waits until I am fully recovered before scheduling this.

We collected our Olive Oil from the mill early in December and bottled some of it to take back to England for gifts.  Because we bottled it straight away I had to filter it first but the results were excellent and it looks good enough to eat, hopefully with some fresh Cebazan bread dipped in it....Mmmmmmmm.

The weather has been fantastic since  New Years Day - we have eaten lunch outdoors a few times and yesterday the temperature was 16 Degrees in the shade.  Much better then the weather in UK- out of 15 days we only managed 1 without the rain....... I know which I prefer.
The wild birds were happy to see us back and they are very busy filling themselves with the peanuts and seeds on offer on the bird table. Its nice to sit eating lunch and watch them squabbling over the offerings. They get a little more used to us every day and don't seem to worry about us being close by.

My new list is now finished and tomorrow morning will see us back at the builders merchants buying the shower tray, shower fittings hot water cylinder and lots more pipe and wiring....... Happy New Year everyone.