Just in time for Christmas we made it, dear friends: our new flat in lovely Wales is as good as complete! As I told you in my last post, we ordered all our new furniture as flatpacks and saved a lot of money that way – and had a lot of fun, too, assembling all our new things. And last week, we did the last three of them: the second wardrobe and the desk for my darling husband’s office, and a sideboard for the dining room to house all our DVDs and CDs. We made it without help this time, even though the wardrobe was quite a bit of work! So, now the office is complete; it’s turned from a storeroom into a beautiful workspace.
The sideboard from IKEA proved to be a bit challenging, too: while everything else was pre-drilled and marked perfectly, the hinges of all things just didn’t work in the beginning; the screws wouldn’t go in with anything, and no advice about it, either – until I went online and googled the problem, and a very simple answer came up: put the screwdriver on the screw, and give it a good whack with a hammer! That worked, and so we’ve got our CDs and DVDs all sorted nicely now. I must say, though I thoroughly enjoyed our DIY, I was rather glad this one was the last one for a while…
And my own workspace – for trying out many more new recipes to write to you about, dear friends – is, of course, my new kitchen. I was thrilled with it from the very beginning – SO much space for everything, lots of cupboards and drawers and workspace! I started tidying up and adding a few more things: a big spice rack for all the spices, herbs and stock cubes, a deep fryer and even a pasta machine!! I’ve never owned either of those before, so as soon as I’ll try them out I’ll tell you more about them…
What I did have already was my good old food processor, my Moulinette, which I’d brought over from Piraeus in September; a GREAT help in the kitchen for all sorts of jobs, I assure you, dear friends! I’ll tell you about some of its uses in my next post.
And since we’re in Wales (and I already feel SO much at home here!), I decided to make my kitchen a real Welsh one – with a Welsh flag right above the cooker! I also bought a Welsh tea towel to make the place even more authentic and cheerful. Little Bennie loves it, of course, now that he’s back home right where I first got him; and since we’re by the seaside and there’s always a supply of whisky in the house, Lep and Nessie also feel very much at home here!
We’ve decorated our flat for Yuletide, and now we can wind down at last after this long and difficult year and look forward to Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
I know this year has been difficult for everybody, but I hope, dear friends, that you’ll all find a bit of peace and quiet over the next days; and now that the vaccine is coming, better days will be here soon. And please – stay at home as far as possible and don’t meet up with too many people (I know it’s tough when you can’t even see your closest relatives – we won’t be able to travel to Greece to be with my parents, either); we don’t want a Coronavirus catastrophe in hospitals all over the world to unfold in January…
I wish all of you a wonderful holiday season, and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
Roberta Franklin 