and a Happy New Year to everyone!

Yes, Happy New Year.  Hope you all had a good time and the going back to work/school/etc isn't too bad.  We had a quiet, but good one.  Laura went back to Scotland on Friday - they make quite a thing of New Year at Samye Ling with a huge bonfire and all the one thousand plus butterlamps lit, so she was quite keen to be there for that.  So we were back to just we two on Saturday.  I worked in the morning, then Phil and Ann called in for a cuppa with their son in the afternoon and we followed them out for a quick once around the 'block' for a breath of fresh air before coming back to light the fire and read for a bit.  Somehow, when we 'read' we always end up falling asleep - well we had been up since 6am for me to go to work and we had a late night ahead of us!  We made Beef Wellington with fillet steak for dinner which was just scrummy.  Bob went outside just before midnight with a log, money and bread to throw in as the first things to cross the threshold in the New Year for luck (it's a Northern thing I think).  Then a bit later one of the neighbours called round bearing a piece of coal which was nice.  She stayed for a while and we finally went to bed at about 2am.  All very nice although I will admit to a bit of a fuzzy head in the morning . . . . can't think why?!!  And so we can now say that we moved into our cottage last year - how strange!

On Friday we put the first door-sized window in the lounge.



The glass is, of course, made to measure and is a fairly snug
fit, but it has to have a slight gap all the way around to allow for
a bit of movement in the wooden frame.  Once it's in place you put
wooden beading on the inside to secure it and hold that in place with
panel pins.  It's a bit nerve wracking hammering the pins in so close
to the glass I can tell you!  I'm pushing on the beading to make sure
the silicone we'd put round the frame seals the glass in place.



And here we are looking out of our new window.
The old door frame is still there.  The idea is that
the glass is set back and so is unobtrusive (maybe
when it's mucky and doesn't reflect, that'll be the case)
and we are supposed to hang wooden doors that are
hooked open to maintain the look of the barn it used to be.
Whether we'll ever get round to that last bit, I don't know.



And so we survey our work.  Handy to have Laura here to take
photos of both of us together!  These window thingies'll take a
bit of getting used to, it looks a bit weird.  From the outside, with the light on
in the 'lounge', it's starting to look like some sort of barn conversion!
It certainly confused the chickens when they went in the other door, but
realised they couldn't get out of this one anymore!

The blackbird has been back pecking and flapping at the oak room window.  I think it must have been away visiting relatives for Christmas because I don't think it came while Laura was here.  The bird feeders are now very busy and seem to get empty rather quickly!  That may be because the woodpeckers and jay have found them.  The jay was quite funny when it first found them - it sat on a small branch next to the feeder and then tried pecking at it from there.  Of course, as you can imagine, the feeder just swings away when it does that.  The jay actually lost its balance once and swung down under the branch with one particularly wild lurch at the feeder!  One day we had a herd of redpolls in the birch trees outside the kitchen window, there were loads of them and were thoroughly enjoying the birch seeds.  I don't think they're that rare, but it's the first time we've seen them and I read in the paper the next day that their numbers had declined dramatically in the last couple of years, so I guess we were quite priviledged.  Once again, we have a robin who likes to think of himself as a chicken and hang out with our girls (they don't seem to mind this honorary member of their flock).  Elvis went through a bit of a wambly patch over Christmas and we seriously thought she might not make New Year, but she seems to have perked up.  She's definitely getting old though and needs her regular naps while the younger two go exploring and running around - she's not laying eggs anymore again, I think those few a while back were just a last fling!