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