Category: Jack the Cat

Jack Sprat could eat no fat..

~ Elliementalist ~ 5 Comments

This past week Husband and I have been repainting the hallway/staircase/landing.
The walls were a sort of magnolia pink white which had yellowed slightly. And the skirting and architraves were all very scuffed. (These were all like this when we bought the house)

Continue reading “Jack Sprat could eat no fat..” →

Bathroom update 01

~ Elliementalist ~ 5 Comments

Dear Readers,

This week we started doing up our bathroom. This has proven to be a bit of a pain as it is our only bathroom! We started with the ceilings. The previous owner did not use proper bathroom paints and so even though we mostly keep the window open there was beginning to he mildew marks on the ceiling. This is also an issue because the ceiling is really low compared to some houses.

The previous owner also did not check the watts requirement for the sort of lights they installed so the paint bubbled on the mdf around the downlighters. So that needed extra sanding.

The ceiling had strips of MDF interspaced with plastic mirror strips but we decided to paint over those as well. So I sanded them too inorder to give a grip surface for the paint.

Ceiling before, with the mildew stains and the mirror strips
Ceiling after sanding

It took me the better part of the day to sand the ceiling and the architraves around the door. I had to keep taking breaks as the blood would run out of my hands from sanding above my head. I did have a sanding block though so that made it a little easier.

Ceiling after one coat
2 coats
Final 3 coats

The painting took quite a while as the special bathroom paint required 6 hours between coats! That meant that it took us 3 days before the bathroom was fully functional again. The final coat also had to be left for 24 hours before fully dry!!

But we are much happier with the ceiling now and hopefully it will be more mildew resistant. In terms of the bathroom we still need to finish painting the door and the architraves but we were having visitors this weekend and we didn’t think having the only bathroom doorless was very hospitable 😂

On Friday My hands were soooo sore from sanding that I couldn’t knit 😢 but my hands are feeling better today (Sunday)

Jack has been an adorable little nonsense as usual
Playing with his mouse toy

Hope that you all have been keeping well!

Peace and love Ellie Xoxo

Jack the Cat

~ Elliementalist ~ 5 Comments

This last week has been pretty busy for me, believe it or not. So today I am just going to share some pictures of Jack 😂

Being cute but naughty playing in the closet.
Matching with Husband’s mug
Enjoying supervised time outside in the sun and munching grass
Not appreciating being locked inside when the humans are outside gardening
Cute cuddles in bed ♥️

That’s it for now. Hope you enjoyed the week according to Jack.

Peace and love,

Ellie

Another Nothing But Knit 2 Quiz

~ Elliementalist ~ 1 Comment

Dear Readers,

Nothing but Knit posted another Quiz and I did so enjoy the last one that I thought I’d do this one too.

Questions:

  • How are you filling your time at home? Are you cleaning out your closets? Crafting? Maybe trying out new recipes?
  • Have you discovered anything worth watching? My local cable company is offering up free channels, is yours? Have you tried anything you’d like to recommend?
  • Have you found a silver lining to this whole stay at home thing?
  • Have you found a blog post that’s been particularly inspiring to you? Please share. It doesn’t have to be coronavirus related, inspirational is the only requirement.

My answers:

  1. I am hoping that one of these days I will work up the motivation to do some much-needed spring cleaning. But until then I am just being gentle with myself and trying to avoid anxiety overload by knitting lots and doing a little bit of painting each day.
    I have also been thinking of doing some baking but at the moment bread is still available in our shops so I want to keep my flour and yeast supplies handy in case there comes a time where our shops do not have such things. However, if the shop stock situation gets a lot better I will do some baking just for the fun of it
  2. I have actually not been watching anything! Can you believe it? I usually watch a lot of knitting and crochet Youtube videos but I have been enjoying just crafting in a mindful way. However I have really been enjoying this video/audio it is 8 hours of bird song recorded by Johnnie Lawson. While I do live sort of in the countryside our double glazed windows cut out a lot of the outside sound, and it’s a bit cold still to have the windows open… AND we have a LOT of young children in our neighbourhood so sometimes the outdoor sounds are a little less peaceful. haha.
  3. Well, to be honest, I kind of always stay home. However, as my husband is now working from home we get to have lunch together which I think is really great. The whole situation is also giving me a great chance to learn some gratitude. I could be sad because I can’t go to the park or the beach or the forest and knit in nature when the weather is good. I can’t nip to the shops if I discover I don’t have a craft supply that I need. The post and deliveries are taking extra long…. BUT I am so very thankful: I have a whole house to live in, some people only have one room in a flatshare, some people in extreme poverty in my birth country (South Africa) have whole families living in one room! Lots of people don’t have gardens. I might have a small garden but it still means as soon as the sun is out I can go outside as much as I like. On the opposite end to people living in cramped circumstances, there are some people who live on their own who are really suffering severely from loneliness at a time like this. I have both my husband and a lovely friendly cat to keep me company.
    I am also a very creative person who does not find it hard to fill her time with projects and so I am not suffering from boredom like some people are. And for all of these things, I am extremely grateful. I am also thankful that my husband still has work and can work from home so we do not have to worry financially like some people do.
  4. This is a hard one as so many people have been doing some pretty inspirational things. But the post that first comes to mind is this one by Highland Heffalump. She has a very impressive and inspirational list of projects.

I hope that you enjoyed this quiz and that you like the little photos I included. They don’t really have much to do with the quiz but I thought that they brightened up the post. And they’re sort of related because they were all taken in the last week.

Peace and Love
Ellie