fame at last..........well, sort of.......

Last week I was having my usual Saturday morning magazine fest, this involves a lie in, tea, toast and most importantly time to read in peace. Out of my pile I chose BBC Homes and Antiques and made my way to the contents page. I nearly fell out of bed, for there was a picture of our very own kitchen. Now don't get me wrong, I did know that someone had been and taken pictures of the house (be a bit weird if I didn't, eh) but we didn't expect them to be in the mag until next year. Amanda, the very talented photographer is a friend from school who mentioned about this time last year that she would like to take some shots of the house and see if she could place them with an interiors magazine. Now, although I love my house I can also see all the faults, the dust balls, leaky patches, cracked toilet, scuffed walls and bits of crap everywhere, so I was dubious as to whether it would be good enough. However, Amanda did us proud and took some fabulous pictures and earlier this year we heard that H&A wanted to do an article.

We were told that it would be going in early 2010 so it was a bit of a shock to see our kitchen there, right in front of me. I broke all my magazine reading rules and rushed through straight to page 59 and I have to say it was a great spread. The only downside is the picture of the old crocheting crone in the corner but I can avert my eyes from that bit quite nicely. It's a bit surreal seeing your house on paper, it almost doesn't feel like ours, but it's very exciting . The whole family have been out buying up all the copies , Ian alone bought 4, and it's been a great conversation piece for the last week.

The pictures here aren't the the best quality, I couldn't stop the flipping light shining off the pages, but you get the idea. Thank you to all the lovelies who left some very kind comments about our home, we love it and the children can't quite believe that we're in print.

News of a more depressing kind came a few mornings before the magazine arrived. Ian had to go into hospital for a minor op and stayed in overnight because of some complications. I've never really had a problem about staying in the house alone and went to bed as normal. Next morning I came down to find that someone had forced open our kitchen doors and been in and taken my handbag from the living room. Once the situation had sunk in, and believe me it took a couple of minutes to register what had actually happened, at first I thought I'd left the door open, I immediately thought of the children and I can't describe the cold feeling of dread that went through me. My legs went to jelly and the run upstairs to check them seem to take forever. Needless to say they were fine and none the wiser. The police came straight round and I had to pretend in front of the children that it was all a big adventure and managed to hide my shock until they went to school.

My handbag was recovered, all they'd taken was £6, they must have been so disappointed with that haul. The same night they also went in my lovely neighbour who lives alone. Both of us have now had super locks and burglar alarms installed. One of my biggest fears has always been someone getting into the house at night and to be honest if I sit and dwell on it and consider the "what ifs" it does haunt me, but I refuse to let anyone make me afraid to live in my own home, so life will go on as normal. My peace of mind will not be shattered by the creeps who think they have a right to invade my property and take the things Ian works so hard to provide, to be quite honest it makes me more angry than afraid, but there are so many nicer things in life to dwell on that I'm trying to close this chapter.

Onto things of a lighter nature, since the photos were taken I've had a major overhaul of the kitchen. The blue dresser was never quite right in there and I had a picture in my head of a cube type storage system since seeing it in a book somewhere. A bit of a departure from my normal style, but a couple of trips to the DIY store, a lot of drilling and painting later.........ta dah.........

Ian wasn't convinced about the whole thing so I did my usual trick and bought, built and painted the whole thing before he could argue about it. I think he likes it now but no matter because I love it, all my treasures (crap) are on display and easily accessible and it's freed up some cupboard space. The whole cleaning business will be a nightmare but we'll cross that bridge later.

The dresser has been moved to it's new home on the landing and I'll show you that later, I know, you can hardly contain your excitement, not exactly rock and roll on this blog is it!

Let's finish with a couple of gratuitous fire shots, can't resist. Our boiler seems to have gone into turbo heat mode and we can only have the radiators on at furnace level so we're hiding our heads in the sand and using the fire instead................

Happy weekend all....................