Introducing the temporarily-named Betty, the awesome creature we bought in Melbourne:

She’s currently living on the tv cabinet:

But we feel like we need to construct some sort of floating-above-television shelf to protect her (and other such things) from certain very intrigued kitties. Another project for the list!

In completely shocking news, on Sunday I dragged out the can of paint we’d bought about 18 months ago and actually painted under the stairs (where previously there was a Very bodgied incomplete job with the sample pot). Looks infinitely better already, needs two more coats I think. It took less than an hour. I figure if I attack the 1-2 hour jobs each weekend, there will eventually be progress – and we’ll eventually see the end of the ghastly yellow.

And in other exciting Palace-ly news, a few weeks ago we had the electrician in to fix the balcony light (which was causing power-outages when we turned it on), put the bathroom fans on a separate switch to the lights (heavenly!!), replace the hideous light fitting in Don’s land, fix a flickering light and replace some of the halogen downlights in the living area with LEDs. Sadly installing power-points where we wanted them would have required pulling down half of the interior of ThePalace(OfLove). He did a genius job and will be back tomorrow to put the LEDs on a dimmer (So Bright!) and replace the remaining halogens, oh and replace the hideous light fittings (with the horrible blue mosaic effect) in Joe/Frank and Bessie’s rooms.

There are still a few things on the list – which we must prioritise, particularly maintenance tasks (like having the air-con serviced), dealing with some rust on the balcony.

This home ownership caper is excellent, but exhausting!