Well where did January go? and February seems to be slipping away at a rate of knots too. Not that I'm worried, that means that spring will be here before we know it and I LOVE spring.Signs of spring are everywhere here. The sun has been shining, although it is now cold again, and our daffodils are all coming out.
January was actually very hard for me. The illness I suffered over Christmas dragged on for 3 weeks and combined with my situation with my ex partner, it left me feeling down and despondant. It was hard just getting out of bed each morning. I felt like I was in a long dark tunnel with no light at the end. This came as a great shock to me because I am not normally a 'down' person and it took all my strength and the support of my mum and a few good friends to pull me through it. It's not somewhere I fancy going again, very scary.
On the upside work has been very busy with the New Year bringing new opportunities and lots of new customers who are always so excited to have found me. I am busy making preparations for an open house sale in Spring, 3 days, so that people can come and visit me here. I get daily requests from customers to know how to get to 'my shop'. They are disappointed to hear that the physical shop doesn't exist and that the business is primarily on-line. This will be a great chance for customers to come and visit and have a good rummage through my stock (of which I have masses!). I am hoping that the weather will be nice by then so that I can have it outdoors, using my Cath Kidston gazebo, as well as indoors. I will be serving teas and coffees as well as home made cakes and cream teas. It will be loads of fun. If any of you want to come please let me know and I will send you an invitation.
I have been househunting in Exeter. I have decided that this would be the area I would most like to move to and although we have not yet sold our house I have been using every weekend to do reconnaisance missions to check out various areas around Exeter to see which would be the nicest to live in. So far I only like Topsham which is just gorgeous, a small but pretty town just a few miles from Exeter. Nowhere else has grabbed me yet, If any of you have any knowledge of the area around Exeter and can help me please let me know. I can't decide whether I want to be right in the city so that I can walk everywhere, something I can't do here, being so remote means driving everywhere, or to look for a cottage in a village nearby. I have a yearning to still be in the countryside and a small rural town like Topsham seems to offer both options.
I have taken on the services of an independent marketing expert to help with the house sale. He can tell us if there is anything we are or are not doing that could help to market this house to the right sort of person. In my opinion we have not yet had the right person through the door. We had one lady on Thursday (our first viewing since before Christmas) who was the most likely candidate so far. She loved my house, loved all my things, but her husband wanted to be right on the coast. We are just a little too far from the sea for him. oh well. In the meantime we are taking the advice of the marketing chap and making a few changes to our details, new photos, and the interior, changing the room layouts in some rooms and reducing the price. Wish me luck!
I had a visit from my lovely friend Amanda. We managed to drink a few bottle of wine between us, stayed up 'til 2am putting the world to rights and then went for a long walk on the beach to blow away the cobwebs. Bleary eyed photos attached (at least Amanda had the good sense to wear shades!). I love the beach this time of the year. One thing I do know is that I don't want to be far from the sea.
Alfie has been having skateboard lessons from Jack. It's a real benefit for him to have a cool older brother figure to do things with. He really needs positive male role models at the moment.
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