Chickens

Just over a week ago, we took the plunge and got chickens. I'd been scrolling through pages and ideas on Pinterest for months, and we finally felt ready.

They are ex intensively farmed chickens, so arrived balding, hen-pecked and the size of a small dinosaur. These aren't straightforward animals, they are used to being fed 3 square meals a day, under artificial light with not much space to roam. This is the ugly truth of our demands on meat. The chickens don't know any different and all their needs are met. Certainly made me think again about my chicken curry though!

The hens were frightened of the day light at first, and quite jumpy when we opened their coop. They are now in and out of their roost and down the ramp onto the grass, and generally loving life. We get some amazing eggs from them, and the girls are learning about the life cycle of animals and the food we eat. I thought they'd freak out about eating chicken and eggs, but if anything they think its great, and ask lots of questions. 

They haven't been outside in the garden yet, but today is the day. We have a treat ball to fill with goodies for them, and I intend on spending the day at home gardening and cleaning their coop out, so I can keep an eye on them!

Meanwhile, eggs for breakfast! Mmm

Our Current living situation

I feel I needed to write this, probably just to get it off my chest more than anything. I feel like we are living in limbo. We are in a lucky position at the moment, living in a  lovely village, on a lovely plot, and I am blessed that I am able to drop my two daughters off at school every morning which is all of two minutes walk away.

However...

The house is much smaller than we are used to. The girls are so unbelievably messy. My eldest is a hoarder who keeps every tiny thing she finds, so her room is filled with mouldy conkers, 'precious stones' and bits of scrap paper from school. She insists on getting everything out to play with, and her little sister is starting to learn a trick or two from her.

My youngest has a room smaller than a dining table - she is currently in a cot-bed which only just fits into her room, there are a set of drawers and a small wardrobe - but these are squished in behind the door.

We have all adapted pretty well to a one-floor living arrangement though. Given we are very social people, we quite often end up having friends over for a spontaneous pizza/film/drinking night, and the girls are no more than 5 meters away from the kitchen or the living room at any given time, and yet they manage to sleep through us listening to Queen blaring out of the soundbar without an issue.

It is all such a strange scenario in that I love living in this bungalow. But I should hate everything about it. We have Dark brown carpets, loud floral wallpaper, 3 small bedrooms and only 1 toilet (first world problems, I know!) it just seems so backwards to move from a modern new-build, which had every lovely thing you crave in a family home, to something which is just an idea. I am so lucky that my Husband can turn his hand to almost anything DIY-related (apart from plastering, but I won't go there). Nothing is too much trouble for him, and I have some vision. We rumble along quite nicely in life. I just hope it all comes together and our plans are passed.

Planning

Planning our renovation...

We have the house (plot), we have (some) budget and we have plenty of ideas. The difficult part is putting on paper what you think you will need as a family. The house will need to be big enough to cater for our needs over the next 15+ years, but not too big and impersonal.

I dream of a large open-plan kitchen, with an island whilst my Husband wants a massive double garage, with space to fix cars, and space to house a gym. All of this boils down to planning and us making sure we budget right to ensure we get the basics right, before letting our dreams get us carried away.

Luckily for me, my husband is a dab hand with AutoCad, and can draw anything to scale. He has spent many an evening drawing up rooms of the house as it is now, and trying to figure out where we start with the renovation work. We decided to break it down into two phases.

Phase 1. Build the garage with master suite above.

Phase 2. Extend the existing house.

Seems pretty easy when you write it down like this, but the truth is, I'll be freaking out the entire time this is being done. Just going to the bathroom when you have two young children is difficult enough, never mind knocking walls down...

This is a rough plan of what we'd like to end up with, downstairs. It is overlapping the current floor plan to give you an idea of size.

We have yet to submit planning as we cannot seem to settle on the final design. Watch this space...

My first Blog post...

My Husband & I are planning on building our very own dream home. We recently bought a three-bedroomed, 1980's bungalow in our dream village location, in North Yorkshire. The house itself is clean, and perfectly livable, but having moved from a beautiful four-bedroomed new build, the bungalow is a million miles away from the immaculately presented walls, and lovely new bathrooms we are used to.

We have two young children, Jessica is five, and Hannah is two. Village life is something we have always wanted for our children. Previously we had the lovely house, but lacked the village life, and general space outside that we felt we needed to thrive as a family. Now we have the space, and the village life, just not the house that inspires me...but all of this is set to change, as we have a plan.

Here is our house as it stands...beautiful, I know!

The plot of land is reasonable though, the front garden stretching out about 100ft long (at its longest part) and around 60ft wide across the front garden.

The bungalow itself is 18m wide, which is enormous by modern standards. Our old house, for example, was just 10m wide. But I suppose this is all on one level.

The back garden is lovely, with views out to countryside and mature trees. From the living room, we can't see any houses. But we do live right next door to a school.