plans...

i haven't really let myself get excited by this, because i watch grand designs, and i've seen the hideous set backs and time delays and budgets spiralling out of control. but sam and i are on our very first baby steps of creating our very own grand design. it's not radical, or ground breaking, but it is really exciting. let me explain a little futher...

some of you may know that my husband sam is a farmer, which by default makes me a farmer's wife. i'm not very good at it, and i'm even less interested in it. the only thing i have in common with the more usual species of farmer's wives is that for some reason i am particularly good at making yorkshire puddings and i can bake a fairly mean cake. i don't own a pair of wellies, or any form of headscarf or black labrador... anyway, sam may be a farmer, but we don't live on the farm yet, we live a few miles away in a market town, in a modern box on a housing estate. for many, many, many years, we have known that eventually we would move to the farm, (sam's childhood home) and indeed when we married 8 years ago, sam's ma was having thoughts of moving out (his pa was not terribly impressed by this possibility)...but then she fell seriously ill and obviously nothing more was said. now sam's pa lives on his own in a pretty large farmhouse and the time has come for the next generation! the house needs alot of attention; new roof, central heating, windows, doors, you name it, it needs replacing (but obviously i will be instructing the builders to keep everything, you just never know...) the main part of the farmhouse (the bit with yummy almost floor-to-ceiling sash windows) was built onto an old cottage that then had a strange extention (strange because it was built using completely different coloured bricks than the main house and using black tiles on the roof. why is that strange? because the other half of the roof is tiled in red. it's pretty awful) put on after the war, so it's really 3 eras. there's beautiful parquet flooring in the kitchen and lounge...mmm (and the best bit of this is that we're moving the kitchen from one side of the house to the other...and the old kitchen will be my studio! with parquet flooring! in my studio! with windows on three sides! mmm! falls into a dreamy rapture...) i think you get the picture...

so today we went to the architect's house (a house built in the early 70's and has tons of original stuff, as well as some amazing classic pieces of furniture...i'm sure there was an eileen grey table, and stunning lighting, yum) and picked up the plans. there were a couple of minor issues to clear up, but bascially everything is great. and i've allowed myself get just a little bit excited. just a tiny bit. i've been going to bed every night with piles of old living etc and elle deco mags, and falling into dreams spiked with cole & son wallpaper and designers guild goodies. ahhh. bliss.