87 & 88.

Seasons greetings all and a Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

 

Presents under the tree

 

Just a very quick update today as we are waiting for my parents to arrive here this evening. We have had a nice and relaxed week, doing odd bits and pieces. I won't bore you with a daily account of '...and then we chilled', so it'll just be an overview and a couple of pics for you all!

 

Just to mention also that weather wise it has been chilly but beautifully sunny everyday, that I can remember at least!

 

Mezzanine

 

We have been doing some sporadic work on the mezzanine. We've replaced the plastic tarp for an actual plasterboard wall and have insulated it all from behind. This wasn't a particularly pleasant job as we had to work from behind, in the grotty attic. But c'est la vie, it was worth the effort as the kitchen is now sealed and the mezzanine is almost finished. We've foamed, taped, fillered and plastered two coats onto the plasterboard, so just a lick of paint to go (but that can wait until after the holidays.)

 

Back in work mode

Plasterboarded - from the back

Insulated - from the back

And this is the view from the front

Gaps all foamed

All plastered and beginning to look good

Christmas shopping

 

We spent an entire day out in SZ doing a Christmas shop. We loaded up on enough food and wine to feed the village and also got to buy a few prezzies for ourselves using the Xmas money Pete's mum had given us. Christmas shopping for yourself is definitely the best kind. We've also been to Chirpan to buy yet more food and booze and have, of course, had the usual market day. Having my parents come over for the festive season has made us put a lot more effort into everything and it is nice to make it a special occasion. :-)

 

Christmas market in SZ

Food

 

Pete has gone mad with cooking and it looks as though we'll be eating our Chrsitmas dinner leftovers well into January. He's also made sausages rolls, muffins, stuffing, pate, mince pies, gammon, bacon... I could go on. We've also planned a traditional vegetarian feast for Xmas eve, so peppers and vine leaves have been stuffed and we've cracked a huge bowl of walnuts ready for roasting. We will also make the traditional 'pita' bread, which is a round loaf that you bake with a coin in - the bread is the torn between the family and who ever gets the coin will have good luck for the next year.

 

Yummy sausage and bean stew for dinner

Chestnuts and dried apple

Hanging out in the kitchen

Butternut squash ready for freezing

Peeling walnuts and listening to radio 4 - the good life!

Figgy muffins

Rolling stuffed vine leaves

Stuffed :-)

Festivities

 

Already we've been wearing our santa hats, drinking wine and playing games. We've also had S & G over for some drinks and S made us some tasty (and cute) snowman meringues!

 

Christmas is here!

Snowman meringues from S

Water

 

There has been one episode this week... We awoke early on Sunday morning (to get ready to meet some friends for a day out) to find that we had no water. Our initial thought was that our pipes had frozen, although we were certain we'd insulated them pretty well this year and it had only got to -10 over night. In a mad rush we went outside to dig up and uncover our two outside stop taps to check if we could see a problem. Everything there seemed cosy and warm, so we covered them again and went inside to get a fire going, just in case the pipes in the house had frozen. We had to leave at 9 to go and meet our friends but with the stress of the frozen pipes, the fact our phone had decided to take on a mind of it's own and some other bad news we'd had from home we decided not to go in the end, which was a real shame. There was no water for the rest of the day and we spent the whole time being grumpy about it! We got the house as warm as possible and back outside we poured warm water over the pipes around the stop taps as well pointing a small electric heater at them. Nothing worked - so we thought either the water was off for the village or our pipes had frozen underground. We went over to ask two of our neighbours if they had water, but it turned out that they both turned off their water for winter anyway, so that wasn't much help.

 

Monday morning there was still no water so we headed to the Mayors office to see if she knew what was going on. Typically the Mayor wasn't there, but we did bump into a local, who speaks amazing English, who took great enjoyment in telling us the water pipe for the whole village had frozen and they weren't going to fix it, so we'd be waiting until summer for water! We were slightly relieved as at least it wasn't a problem with our pipes, but obviously this was terrible news and there was nothing we could do about it. We drove out to the local spring to fill bottles and went to Chirpan and tried to think of positive solutions to not having water for Christmas, or for 3 or 4 months for that matter.

 

When we got home in the afternoon the water was back on. Ahhh Bulgarian life!!! :-D  

 

We did, however, discover our village library whilst investigating the water issue!

 

Collecting water from the spring

Animals

 

Unbelievably we have (almost) no pets photos this week, except from when we took them both to the vets to get their 6 monthly contraceptive injection. So instead here is a photo of one of the goats who kindly provides us with delicious cheese.

 

At the vets

Goats

Sisters together!

 

And that's all folks. I'll leave you with a few photos from around the village and some awesome sunsets we've had this last week. I wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! xxx 

 

Sunsets from the balcony

Around the village

Turkeys around Spasovo... with not long left I imagine! :-(