Be Excellent To Each Other

Fabulous, Meems. I’m sure you’ll excel and hopefully really enjoy it. Watch out for splinters!

Sounds great, Mimi! Looking forward to seeing your creations.

Nice one, DB! Infinite wood ahoy, now you can thicken the pieces you already have.

I bought a puzzle maker yesterday.

That looks like a fairly straightforward DIY project.

I've only noticed this as a trend on dustpans recently. Realhomes.com says, "You might not have noticed them before, or perhaps you just dismissed them as a random design feature. But these ridges are designed to pick up excess dust and hair that collects on the bristles of the brush while you're sweeping up any mess. Anyone who has used an old broom to sweep up a tiled floor will know how quickly lumps of dust accumulate and stop the bristles from doing their job. Comb your brush through the grooves to remove the dust, hair and crumbs, rather than spreading swept-up dust and germs around your home."

This sounds like bollocks to me, but I haven't put it to the test.

I bought one of these last year. It's as Hozelock Multi spray pro, current cost is £29.99, and it developed a leak through the handle.


I was going to buy another one, but noticed that a lot of reviews said they'd had the same problem, so I bought a cheaper one at £16.99.



I've had a couple of these before as well, and they'd last longer if certain members of the family didn't allow the gun to drag along the ground when winding in the hose.

I've stopped buying plastic hose bits and guns and switched to brass (making sure it has nylon and rubber bits inside, not plastic) because plastic fails way too quickly, especially when you're lazy and don't drain it all and move it all indoors over winter.

the Shark vacuum we got has a pet hair attachment that does basically the same thing. Works well.

How dirty do sharks get?

Not at all with this vacuum

Some new key rings

New phone!

That photo genuinely looks like you're performing some kind of magic trick where you're levitating the phone in front of you.

You should have got a new belt at the same time.

Also, who took the photo??

A model of my car

What kind of saddo would have a model of their car on their desk?

Some new earbuds. With the terrible brand name EAR FUN.

Thing is, I had the previous version and they do a great job of noise cancelling the rubbish they play at the gym.

One of these:



What a machine.

One of each of these.




Possibly the most overtly middle-aged things I've ever bought. Even more middle-aged: I have enormously enjoyed using both. My car is reasonably clean inside for the first time in ages. I don't turn the oven on for a lone pie or piece of fish. Extremely satisfying.

I have that exact same one and it is INCREDIBLE.

I even used it to weed the veg soil this year.

I misread that as ‘loner pie’ and felt awful for you.

It really is. So satisfying too.

How the other half live…

I think you mean…

How the other half sieve

What actually is it? Some sort of soil tiller or something?

Yeah it's for sifting through soil to take out stuff you don't want in there. Did our borders and took out about two wheelbarrows full of stones and all sorts of crap. Got all the newly sifted soil, mixed it with a load of fresh compost and now our soil is the envy of the neighbourhood.

We mostly use ours for refining and aerating the soil from our compost bins to use in the garden, but in those pictures I was just shovelling in loads of loamy compost and using it to filter out the young weeds at the start of the season, which I personally felt was genius.

I sent that puzzle maker above back as I didn’t spot it was a 110v In my defence the prod pics didn’t show the plug.

So I ordered a cheaper Bosch one…



and with pennies save (and a few more) I ordered another one of these LG 4k monitors so I’ll have two running off my Mac Mini, squee!

I bought a ninja

Looks like a tiny fridge with giant handles.

Not a very good ninja either, it sticks out like a sore thumb!

It does a little

And yer toaster needs a polish.

It was on offer.

When are you getting the laser harp?

When I get to it on my list.

I bought a EweTube

Haha!!

Also, Herdy are great!

I also bought a matching tea towel. I’d not seen them before but they do some great stuff.

Remember back in January when I said we'd bought a negative chimney?

Nearly there with the new kitchen. Nearly there.

Looks incredible, Bik. What a great amount of space!

Ta!

It still feels small because of the old oven stuck in the middle of the room. Saturday should have the new ovens and hob wired in and that space finally opened up.

Also we can barely bring ourselves to use the new acres of worktop

After the oven is removed I'll take a new set of photos including the couple of metres that are behind me in those two.

If I ever have to move again I'm going to kick off.

Where was your feeder from? We've been looking for the same style but with the solid inner instead of the mesh inner and it's been sold out everywhere we've been looking

Actually, that's not the one we bought, it was the mesh one, for peanuts rather than suet balls. It's made by Gardman and we got from Notcutts Gardening Centre in Woodford. They have a variety of that type, with cage surrounds.

Looking good. Am super jealous. We bought this house four years ago and back then I didn't really cook (although I did bake a fair bit). Now I cook all the time and so I need to update the kitchen (we actually took out the extractor hood thing and filled the hole at the time).

Thing is, all kitchens now are sleek and modern and minimalist, which is entirely my style now, but I think I want a really functional cook's kitchen with pans and knifes on the walls and shelves with dried pasta and whatever. Like one that inspires me to cook even more. I just can't figure out how to go about it. And so I'm stuck with the basic-ass kitchen we super quickly refurbed when we bought the house.

I was lobbying for hanging pans on the walls - that far end one at least - but lost.

The shelves will keep loads of larger jars out in view though, and we've got some rods with small jars for other spices to mount somewhere.

That end section in fact is going to be my bread station, with flour and bannetons and kneading board and so on permanent display to remind to me bake

I think we'll end up putting some of those magnetic knife strips on the wall even though there's billions of worktop space for the knife blocks we have now.

The expense is hideous and inconvenience barely bearable at this point, but I can't wait.

Those photos meant it look super busy. It's not that bad, as time goes on it's all shrinking away. When all the additional lighting is in and gets rid of shadows it should open up more.