Alright gang?
So quick life update, I (Ellie) now live with a dog?! As a self-confessed crazy cat lady (who is wearing a jumper with a cat on as I write this) this is a bit of a change. But she is an ANGEL (most of the time). This is Tilly, she is the most gentle and sweet natured old lady you have ever met.
(More pictures on @ellielovestoast)
Another lockdown eh…
We hope it isn’t affecting you too much. Don’t forget that you are never alone if you don’t want to be. These guys are specialised to help you out, and available 24/7 – Samaritans (call 116 123) and Shout (text SHOUT to 85258). Also, drop us a message! About anything and everything, we are here. (I’ve perfected the art of watching a movie in sync with someone else and am loving doing it)!
There’s some more helplines and also some vague advise from Ellie in the Mental Health blog posted a few months back.
Right then, today for you I thought, that seeing as we’re in our new lockdown, I’d finally let you know what I got up to in the last one. That being a lot of baking, some trying to run, but mainly a bathroom makeover!
Firstly, the baking. I, of course, along with the majority of the population, baked a banana bread or two. But I also tried experimenting. I made flapjack brownies which were DELICIOUS, if you didn’t think too much about the amount of sugar and butter in them… I made mum a bouquet of cupcakes for Mother’s Day, I made my own granola, which yeah, great! I made an apple cake, the densest thing I have ever made and eaten, ice cream helped. I also tried to make some more savoury things including a beetroot hummus!
Right the running… So I started the Couch to 5k, I almost made it to the 5k… But I doubt I could do it run that now. Mum was doing Joe Wicks every day?! I think she’s scaled back a bit now but she’s a much better (and probably much fitter) person than I. I may try to run again during this lockdown and well maybe the rest of my life but it’s cold outside and I will take any excuse I can get to stay in my bed.
I did some crafty bits too, I tried and failed to turn some jeans into shorts (don’t ask), I did a couple of those embroidery hoop kits, and I painted lots of random bits of cardboard. Mum reupholstered a chair (again proving she is the greater person always)!
BUT, the bit I am most proud of, is my Bathroom Makeover! I’m going to post a few pictures in this blog post but more on our Instagram, check them out here.
My dad has steadily been demolishing and then rebuilding the house, at this current moment he has built an extension, done up a bedroom, created 2 new bathrooms, demolished 2 old bathrooms, knocked down at least 3 walls, ripped out the kitchen (and then rebuilt a temporary kitchen in the space where an old bathroom was, whilst he redoes the kitchen)! There was a time when we had 4 working toilets in the house, there was only 3 people living in the house at that point. (Obviously, my dad is also a greater person that me…) Anyway, in one of those new bathrooms there was a big stretch of blank wall that needed something on it, and seeing as I’d been painting bits of cardboard, dad thought I was up to the challenge of painting something permanent on that wall!
Here we go then! We decided on something like a mandala in the same colour as the tiles already in the bathroom. So I did some drawings and we settled on our design. (I’m saying our and we cos the whole way through they gave me free rein to do whatever, but obviously it’s their house so I wanted them to be happy with it, so by saying our, if they hated it then I didn’t f*ck it up, WE did). Then came getting the design on the wall… This was tricky and took forever. Firstly, dad worked his mathematic magic to scale it up so it would fit on the wall. He printed out a segment of the mandala and then left me to mark it up. This was the bit that took forever, basically what I did was to pin the segment to the wall and then with another pin poke holes through the paper to leave little dots to follow, honestly, marking it on the wall took me about 3 or 4 days…
Now for the fun bit! Painting! But before I could really get going, we had to pick our colours. Dad took one of the bathroom tiles into B&Q and got a tub of paint colour matched and we mixed it with white paint to make our different shades. We settled on 3 shades, mixed up big batches and then I got to work! (I used the different disregarded shades to paint a little wooden fish!)
I started with my lightest colour and worked out from there. It took a while, the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in fact – apart from the new Spiderman’s (cos they won’t let us have them, boo Sony) and Thor 1 and 2 (because there was no way I was subjecting myself to that). It was also super fiddly in places, very thin lines that I wanted to be tidy, and curves that made my wrist bend in impossible ways.
I am so proud of it! I actually can’t quite believe how good it looks too. It felt like a wonderful little victory during such a shitty time.
I hope you enjoyed this little life update and ego boost for myself. Keep that chin up and enjoy the sun while we still have it. You are doing amazing and I am proud of you!
Ellie x
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