Week 36 & 37

So we've been winding down the last few days, getting ready for our Christmas holidays! Been our days have been a bit lazier I'll do this update in sections of what we've done rather than by days.

 

Weather

 

We've had another week and a half of amazing weather - we've almost forgotten what a cloud looks like and it has even reached 20 degrees on one day. It's certainly not feeling Christmassy at all, we are thinking we could have our roast outside tomorrow!

 

 

Sunset beer

 

Breakfast in the garden in December

Having said that it has been very cold at night and first thing in the morning - we have had to crack the ice on the chickens water every day.

This day the whole bottle froze!

Hallway

 

The hallway has been our main project this last week, and at last it is finished and look great! Obviously we still have the stairs to build and we want to extend the front porch and change the front door, but for now it is done.

 

Painting the bedroom door...

We had left this area above the door uncovered as I was hoping to scrub it up and have it exposed. Annoyingly though we didn't have enough movement on all these wires to make them look neat, so we ended up having to plasterboard it aswell.

Boarded

Plastered

Painted and decorated

The other big job to finish in the hall was cleaning up the two stone walls we are leaving exposed. This meant scraping out all the joints, re-pointing it using lime mortar, scrubbing it all back and, finally, PVAing it all. All these jobs are easy but dusty, musty and not much fun. It is worth it in the end though - they look fab.

 

 

PVA going on

I also did a bit of electrics this week and managed to wire in our new light fitting. This is actually a really easy job and shouldn't have taken more than half an hour, but it ended up taking me all day and using three different wires because I was testing it with a broken lightbulb! Ahh!!!

 

And, finally, we decorated with pictures and bought in a stack of wood to keep us from going out to the barn every evening.

 

 

Camping field

 

We also did a couple more days cutting down those thorny bushes in the camping field. We have decided to pile the branches up over each stump and leave them to dry out. Eventually we'll set them on fire and this should burn the root as well and hopefully stop them growing back.

 

Getting there, but still alot to go.

You can see here the piles for burning over each tree we've cut down already.

Van

 

We have managed to get our van a bit more sorted this week too. We took it in to Chirpan for an oil change and a top up of anti-freeze, which in true Bulgarian style took over an hour and 3 three men to do!

 

But this was nothing on our day out trying to get the brake discs and pads replaced. G (of S & G) had kindly offered to put them on for us, but we realised that we needed to buy a couple of tools for him to do it. So at about 10.30am we set off to Chirpan to look for said tools. We tried all the builders merchants we know of, but no one had them - they were particulary big parts for working on the van.

 

So we decided just to go back to the car shop where we'd bought the pads and ask them to put it all on for us - they had said it would cost 60 lev (about 20GBP) so not too bad. So we went to the shop but had trouble translating to the woman so waited around for a while for the young mechanic to turn up - who could speak very good English. He said they could do it today but not until about 2.30/3 o'clock. Yay! By now it was about midday so we decided just to go to a cafe and chill out until then - luckily we had the puzzle page from The Times newspaper that Kathy had left here to keep us entertained! Two and half hours later we drove up to the garage and dropped off the van to be sorted.

 

Then we had to wait again so we went to a different bar and had a beer. It was another hour and a half before we got called from the garage and walked back up to collect the van. But no!! The van was still jacked up and there was a problem (of course.) The brake pads we'd bought in SZ were the wrong size for the van - ahh. Luckily they had some here in Chirpan we could buy so we told him that was okay and off we went again to wait some more. It was almost 5 o'clock by now and the mechanic had said he would be at least and hour and a half longer so we decided to go to Flamingoes for dinner.

 

After two hours we left the restaurant and waited in the cold outside for another hour to be called again, walk back and find the van still jacked up and without wheels! Bloody hell - what now!!? But he had actually replaced the discs and pads now and he just wanted to show us that one of the bearings had gone before putting the wheels back on. So that is another problem to sort out another day, but by now it was gone 8 o'clock at night and we just wanted to go home! At least it's all sorted now and we have found a really good, friendly, English speaking mechanic in Chirpan so that is good to know.

 

Waiting in Christmassy Puzzle bar.

Cute house in Chirpan park.

Socialising

 

S & G have two of their kids here with their two partners for Christmas, so we have seen them a couple of times this week. Last Wednesday was one of their daughters 18th so we went to round their house for drinks and dinner. It was a fun night involving drinking games and cake!

 

 

Last night we saw them all again for a drink at our village bar. This ended up being an absolutely hilarious night!

 

Kitten we found at the bar!

 

Pile up!

Animals

 

Not much to say about our lovely animals, except that we took them to the vet so now neither of them can have any babies for 6 months, so that's a relief. Here are soime pictures of them being cute.

 

 

 

 

Shopping

 

We've had the usual market day - the last Friday before Christmas so we've really stocked up! We've also bought enough food and booze to last a week so we don't have to go shopping again hopefully. For Christmas we decided  to each have 30 levs (equivilent to 10 pounds ish) and buy each other some small gifts so we have something to open on Christmas day. The shops in Chirpan aren't massively inspiring, but it should be fun anyway! We've also bought the all important OVEN so we can cook Christmas dinner - woo!! We weren't sure whether to fork out and buy the one we want in the kitchen eventually, but we ended up buying a small temporary one because it is much easier to set up for now. And it actually works really well so we can have it in the kitchen, down the line, as a spare oven.

 

Alright then...?!

Lunch out on market day

Oven!

First oven cooked dinner at home!

That's Christmas day sorted.

We decided to wrap the presents in newspaper, I don't think Pete will mind this one though!

Other

 

We've done a couple of afternoons paid gardening so we don't have to worry about it over the holidays.

We have also set up the Xbox!! :D

And that's it! We are now watching A Christmas Carol and we're about to get the mulled wine going over the fire. We plan to have a holiday now until next year, so not sure when the next update will be - it depends if we have much to write about!!

 

I hope you all have a lovely day tomorrow. Vesela Koleda and a Happy New Year!!! xxx 

 

 

Week thirty five.

So when I left you last week we got ready and headed out to Chirpan to do some last minute shopping before going to the train station to welcome Kathy.

 

At the train station everything went smoothly and picked Kathy up, drove home and got the fire going. We had a lovely evening catching up with a few beers and a yummy lentil and sausage soup for dinner.

 

Sunsetting over the Rhodopi mountains

Sunsetting over Chirpan

Welcome!

Care package :)

Including home made Christmas pudding liquer! Yum!

Tuesday

 

We woke up early and had a cosy morning drinking tea before all heading up to the kitchen and getting some more huge pots of food going for the freezer. We also took the bacon out of the brine so it wouldn't get anymore salty - it is now ready to be smoked and cooked.

 

More cooking for the freezer

Bacon has done it's first stage

 

Once the food was bubbling away on the hob we decided to go out for a longish walk around the lavender fields. It was a slightly overcast day but not too cold and the walk was lovely. When we got home we were even able to eat lunch outside!

 

 

This is a hypnotised chicken!

 

In the afternoon the sun had shone through the clouds so we thought it would be nice to do some work outside and finally get around to trimming the mulberry tree. The leaves have all dropped now so it is okay to prune it, and we need to do it this year or it will knock the barn roof down. So Pete got up there with his chainsaw and me and Kathy were sorting them into good wood for the fire and trimming off all the small branches. Obviously we can't burn it this year as it is still live, so we made a raised area by the front wall to leave wet wood to dry out for next year.

 

Lots of branches to sort

Throwing the trimmed ones over the wall

Home made pallet

Done! Starting next years collection.

Before

After

 

We stopped working just after 4 and had a gin and tonic up in the walnut orchard and watched the sunset. In the evening we ate delicious pork and beer stew and played scrabble by the fire - a perfect winters night!

 

 

Wednesday

 

Morning tea :)

 

Another relaxing early morning and today we went out to Stara Zagora as Kathy wanted to help us get the brake pads and discs and we had been told about a spare car parts shop there. We found the shop easily but unfortunetly they didn't have the discs in stock. We did get the brake pads though and they said we could either come back today after 3 or tomorrow for the discs. We did a bit more shopping around SZ - including getting a christmas tree!! - but we were finished by about 1 and decided to not to waste the rest of our day by waiting around, so headed back home.

 

Treeee - it is alive so if we look after it we can keep it and it will get bigger every year

We didn't want one of these toilet brush trees!

 

Back at home we warmed up with a cuppa and then we decided to do a little bit of work for an hour or so - Pete chopped some wood, I painted half of the hall way white in preparation for painting it with colour and Kathy very kindly did all the washing up and cleaned our fridges (which definitely needed doing!!)

 

Once we'd done all this it was starting to get dark so we had a beer sitting out in the last of the light and then got wrapped up warm and headed out to Chirpan for the 'turning on of the Christmas lights'. We had been told it was quite a fun event with fireworks, a Christmas market and free wine. Annoyingly we saw the last of the fireworks going off as we drove in to Chirpan and were slightly disappointed to find only about 4 stalls with home made crafts and, most importantly, NO WINE!! Ahh well, the lights were nice and I bought a very pretty wreath made by some school girls. Oh, and Santa was there.

 

These girls asked for a photo with me - it's like being in India again!

 

After we'd 'wandered' around the stalls we stopped in a bar for a beer and then drove over to Hotel Trendafiloff for dinner. It was the first time we'd been to the hotel and had to sit inside for dinner, but we had a lovely evening - the food there is so yummy. Back at home we got the fire going again and sat up for a little while before heading to bed.

 

Thursday

 

A working day today! First thing Pete was upstairs and the onto the roof with his bacon to smoke it over the chimney - using cherry wood in the wood burner only! Once that was going he was back down in the garden pinning fence over the falling wall and starting to put posts in for our new chicken coop. We have been told by the Bulgarians that during winter the wild jackals get hungry and start coming nearer the house. The lady who used to live in our house advised us to move our chickens down, nearer the house as the jackals are less likely to come to the garden - especially if we have Lucy on guard. Of course, the Bulgarians actually think we're mad to keep the chickens at all over winter and they highly recommend we just eat them, but we don't really fancy eating them - they're far too scrawny!

 

Bacon viewing the village

This old fence will keep the wall from collapsing.

The start of the new coop

 

Anyway, whilst Pete was doing that Kathy and I were working in the hallway - Kathy finishing off the walls I hadn't painted white, and I was starting with the colour we'd bought. We wanted dark grey but the colour we picked turned out to look quite purpley on the walls - luckily we love it, I think it is my fave colour in the house so far! :)

 

One wall done

 

Pretty wreath on the gate :)

 

Once we'd done our first coats we left the hall to dry and we headed outside to help Pete with the coop. Me and Pete got got the fence from the old coop down and re-used it on the new one, we also made a gate, with a lock and everything, which took about 5 minutes to make and I don't know why we didn't do this before. Whilst we did that Kathy was bringing bricks down for the bottom of the fence, to ensure nothing can crawl underneath. With all of us working we were done in no time and we relocated the chickens - who seemed happy enough, expect for one who hid her face under the coop for a while. They are all settled now though and it is nice to be able to see them from the house.

 

Me and Kathy in the garden

Finished

Happy ladies

Beautiful clean coop aswell

Bacon cooked - yum yum yummm!

 

In the late afternoon I cracked on in the hallway and got all the painting done whilst Pete and his mum took Lucy out for a walk. Then we had yet another lovely dinner (when isn't it!?) and watched a movie by the fire.   

 

Painting in the hall is done

And the other way.

Chilling

Friday

 

A slightly later start as me and Pete didn't set an alarm and we set off to the market at about 9.30. We had a nice morning buying veggies and introducing Kathy to our friends at the market! We also bumped into Baba Villay which was so nice! :) After we'd done our shopping we stopped for a pancake in a cafe and decided we would go to the tyre shop to buy our winter tyres. We also got the guys to put them on for us and it took about an hour, in which time it got very, very cold and started to drizzle. By the time we got home we all felt like ice blocks so we got the fire roaring and had a very chilled afternoon in the yellow room, away from the cold and damp day.

 

Average Bulgarian leeks

Lovely old lady who sold us these hand knitted socks...

... love them!

 

In the evening we went out for dinner again, this time to Hotel Chirpan. This is the strange hotel we had stayed in on our first night in Bulgaria, but we hadn't yet eaten there because we thought it looked too weird! However, someone had actually highly recommended the food, so we decided to give it a shot. It was defnitely very Bulgarian inside, but the food was great and we ate ALOT of it and had another marvellous evening. It was about 11 when we got home so we went to bed feeling very, very full!

 

Saturday

 

Already our last day with Kathy - what a fast week! The sun came out for us though and it was lovely and sunny and warm. We started the day slowly with a massive fry up - our first since we have been in Bulgaria! And with homemade bacon!!! It was soooo good! :D

So feeling full of energy we thought we would make the most of the sunny day and head up to the camping field to start cutting down the thorny bushes that cover some of the land. Other than marking the corners of our land, this is the first work we have done on our camping field - so that was exciting! (Also a bit overwhelming as we have ALOT of work to do up there.) We started with the chiansaw but the bushes aren't very thick so it turned out to be easier just using a saw and the loppers. Pete was cutting them down whilst me and Kathy got a bonfire going and burnt them all. We ended up going two bonfires and burning about 13 bushes, which did make some difference, but there are quite a few more to go. Anyway, it was a really nice day in the sun - we even had only t-shirts on at one point! And once we were done we sat next to the fire and watched the sun go down with a glass of shandy.

 

Before

After

 

As it was getting dark we headed back to the house and prepared some salads and wrapped some veg in foil for dinner. We then got another bonfire going - the third today! - a smaller one this time, in the garden, and put the veg on to roast. We sat out whilst the veg were cooking and watched the stars, but didn't hang around much longer afterwards as it was bloody freezing. Inside we had (guess what!?) a delicious dinner, followed by a glass of our homemade sloe gin and a box of chocolates. Mmmm. :)

 

Mmmm sloe gin and choccies

Sunday

 

The alarm went off at 5.30am and we got up in the dark for our last cup of tea with Kathy before heading to the train station at about quarter past six. At 7ish we saw Kathy off on the train - it has been a really lovely week and so nice to have family staying in the house and enjoying our warm fire with us. :D

We were umming and arring about what to do today - we wanted to go to SZ again to try and get the brake discs but as it was only 7 we knew we'd have to wait until at least nine for the shop to open - if it opened at all on a Sunday. Not wanting to drive all the way home and then out again we decided to risk it and hope that a cafe would be open to wait in.

 

Sunrise on the way to SZ

 

As there was no traffic we were in Stara by about 7.30 and were a bit annoyed to find that the shop wasn't open on Sundays and, from what I could read of the sign on the door, was actually closed until after Christmas. Argh! Not wanting to waste the journey completely we drove to Lidl, thinking we would do some Christmas shopping for things we can't get in Chirpan. Obviously Lidl doesn't open until 9 on Sundays so we parked in the centre of town and went in search of a cafe. The only thing we could find open was a kebab shop (!?) so we sat in there for a bit and had a coffee until we felt too uncomfortable and had to leave! Instead we wandered around the town for half an hour or so which was very cold but sunny and actually quite nice. We then headed back to Lidl and did a quick shop, before heading towards home. We did have one last place to stop and that was the computer shop so I could buy myself my Christmas present (which, by the way, I have wrapped up myself and put under the tree until Christmas day!) But, of course, it didn't open until 10 so we waited around again for half an hour and were the first customers in. Luckily there was a very helpful guy who spoke English so I chose and bought a new computer in about 20 minutes, and we finally headed home.

 

Post Office, SZ

Block of flats, SZ

 

We spent the day cleaning and washing up and I glued on some edging on the bedroom door and painted it whilst Pete took Lucy for a walk. We also hung some temporary hooks in the hall as our coat stand has broken. Once all these bits were done we went in the yellow room, got the Christmas album and the santa hat on and decorated our tree!! This took the rest of the day and then we watched a Christmas film and drank Amaretto! Yeahhh, feeling Christmassy!

 

Still more to paint,, but getting there.

TREE!

Monday

 

This week we are on a mission to get our van sorted so we were out this morning at 9 o'clock, heading to Chirpan. I can't remember if I wrote about trying to go to the spare car parts shop in Chirpan last week, but we did and the lady was so rude and unhelpful and we had no idea what she was saying we had to leave. This time I was armed with 'Brake pads' 'Front' and 'Can you order for me' written in Bulgarian, so I thought we'd be alright. Even with this she still started ranting at us about something we couldn't understand until she called in the mechanic who, thankfully, spoke a little bit of English. It turns out she needed the serial number of the van (not just the make and year) to be able to order it for us. So we gave it to her and she said to come and pick them up this afternoon - success! We then drove round the corner to a garage and queued for ages to ask him if he could change our oil and oil filter. Turned out he didn't have the right filter today, but we can come back tomorrow. Annoying. We also wanted to get the rust hole fixed but the garage where we like the guy was closed today for some unknown reason. Annoying. So we headed home and spent the afternoon doing bits and bobs around the house, including painting the ceiling in hall - which will need one more coat tomorrow and it will be finished.

 

 

At about 4 we decided to head back into Chirpan to get our discs. We thought we might as well kill two birds and we took Lucy and Bilko with us as they both need contraceptive injections and the vet only opens at 5 in the evening. We picked up our discs (yay) and then got to the vet half an hour early and waited outside in the van. We'd bought Bilko a small cage and she was not loving her first car journey - she wouldn't stop meowing and kept trying to claw me! Bless her! At 5 we went in the vets only to find he didn't have the right thing today and we should come back on Friday - There seems to be a pattern emerging!

 

So with a semi-successful day behind us we have come home, got the fire going and are now spending the evening watching TV and writing the blog.

 

 

Thank you again Kathy for visiting us - it was a pleasure having you! And thanks everyone else for reading. Good night xxxx