IN COURT

we wanted to see a new sight in london so we caught the tube to waterloo station and boarded a train headed west in london to the lovely hampton court ...

a quick cole's notes history lesson ... back in the tudor days cardinal wolsey built a magnificent palace for himself and king henry viii quickly annexed it for himself as his palaces were not as majestic ... he added onto it and at its peak in the tudor days it catered to about 800 people in king henry's court ... the stuart family (james i and charles i) and oliver cromwell also called the palace home ... charles ii built a new wing of the palace and william iii and mary ii added on to his design with a baroque palace ... they had plans to demolish the tudor portion but lack of funds (as with most building projects) stood in the way ... so we visited the tudor and baroque palaces that exist side by side along the thames in hampton court ... enjoy the tour we certainly did

the tudor portion on the grounds

clock court base of the tudor palace

astrological clock made for henry in 1540

wine cellar for the tudor court

one of the many parts of the tudor kitchen used to cook for 800 people a meal

fountain at the apartments and for special occasions wine would flow from it

every apartment in the tudor palace had its own fireplace ...

hence all the chimneys

beautiful gardens in the tudor portion

the new "addition" in baroque style

one of the grand staircases to the apartments

who wouldn't want a room decorated in weapons?

one of the throne rooms

a kingly bed ... not usually used for sleeping in

a hallway that housed the orange trees in the winter

just another courtyard to wander through

the pride of king william ... his gardens

and hunting grounds

seriously who wouldn't want to be a princess and live here?

cheers ~n

JUST A WALK IN THE PARK

so far living in london has been A-MAZ-ING! we seriously cannot get enough of this city ... j and n are a couple of suckers for history and it is truly an absolute dream to live in a place that is so rich with history, beautiful architecture and so full of life ... completely opposite of our small city in canada

well it is october and there is no snow here, it is still green and sunny and surprisingly warm ... j jokes that we are living in tropical london :)

we ventured out and decided to go for a picnic in a park ... so many beautiful spaces to choose from but we went for the biggest in london town ... hyde park ... what a fantastically lazy afternoon to lose the books and get lost right in the middle of the city ... enjoy

cheers ~n

A STUDENT AGAIN

just a really quick post to announce that i'm officially back in student mode and am consumed with loads of readings of academic papers, excerpts of textbooks and sitting in 3 hour lectures ... i still cannot believe that i'm actually in london working on my master's degree ... i am taking 2 modules this autumn term ... my first course is "planning for education and development" ... it is a practical course on education policies and different planning approaches developing nations and the international community use when delivering an education system and the various issues that are encountered ... my second course is "economic perspectives on education planning" ... the main focus is on efficiency and equity of education and how that relates to teacher training, incentives and education for all ... absolutely loving this ... will keep updating

cheers ~n

MISADVENTURES IN LIVING ABROAD

well the joys of being on holidays is that you get to enjoy a hotel stay and all the perks of eating out, sleeping in, visiting sights ... traveling to another city for school is a completely different story ...

j and i had to madly rush around london as we only had a few days in our hotel and with our trusty tourist map and tube travel card we set out to try and find a flat to let ...

well first day we wandered around some neighborhoods we thought we'd like to live in and were disappointed at the prospects ... too far away from school, too shady looking, too close to all the pubs and really loud touristy areas ... so we restructured our plan and decided to focus on the bloomsbury area as that is where my school is ... we emailed some letting agents in the area and tried to set up some appointments ...

second day woke up to some emails and tried to organize some viewings and many of them couldn't meet until the next day ... by fluke we found an ad and phoned the letting agent and we could meet them in 20 minutes ... we ran over in the rain and met our lady and had a look around ... all i can say is the photographer was amazing at making the studio flat appear deceptively spacious ... we looked at 3 in this cartwright gardens building and it wasn't too bad ... extremely secure buildings that are well taken care of, the flats are furnished, laundry on site and super clean ... 2 out of the 3 were in the basement and the third was on the 3rd floor overlooking the tennis courts and green space and about 2 feet larger than the others ... we considered putting a deposit down but as it was nonrefundable and it was our very first flat we looked at we went on our way and tried to find our next viewing down by hyde park in paddington area ...

we caught the wrong tube line and ended up on the opposite side of the park and we ran to the neighborhood in the pouring rain only to find that our letting agent wasn't even there and when we phoned him he said he was on his way to meet us and after waiting for 45 minutes he still didn't show so we left ... we phoned to secure the flat on the third floor at cartwright gardens and within the 45 minutes of leaving the place someone had already secured a lease on it ... we decided to put a deposit on the slightly larger basement flat and went home somewhat happily that we found a place that would work for me to walk to school ... i'll admit we still we a little unsure if that was the right thing to do ...

the next morning we went to put all the paperwork through and it was confirmed that this was the right spot to live because transport for london decided to have a tube strike and it really showed us the nightmare of trying to get around when one of the major routes of transport gets shut down ... i felt much better that i had a 10 minute walk to school and a quick trip around the neighborhood we found a beautiful grocery store and a shopping centre that has a market on the weekends ...

thinking we were good to move in the next day we tried to set up the money transfer with the bank and the nightmare began ... we could only transfer an amount that large if we were there in person (well obviously that was not going to happen) the next option was we could transfer up to $1000 a day over to the company and at that rate we would be moving in the following week ... so the next best solution was to get one of our parents to go down to their bank in canada and force them to transfer the money over as soon as possible ... it actually worked but of course we had to delay moving in by 2 days because of the slowness of this whole process ...

in the midst of all of this i had to go enroll in person at the institute of education ... stand in many queues and find out at the end of it all that my canada student loan didn't really count for my status as a sponsored student and i was expected to pay a third of my tuition right then and there ... i managed to talk them into signing my loan papers and granting me an extension though ...

no pictures yet of the interior of our spacious flat at cartwright gardens but a view of the exterior of our lovely building ...

yup that's our ground floor flat ... what a lovely view :)

our gigantic door and awesome tiled stairs

one of the best parts about walking home is the fantastic curved street completely lined with baskets of flowers and planter boxes ... it really does make the tight living quarters more bearable and a little more dreamy :)

cheers ~n

JUST A FEW NEW THINGS

as i type this a lot has happened in the past few weeks ... so many changes everywhere in the jplusn house

first off we worked our butts off for months and finally made progress in the finishing of major parts of the house ... still didn't get all of it finished but that's what our happy helpers are for (thanks again guys we really couldn't have done this if it wasn't for you)

as you can see all of our doors now have handles and it is so lovely to hear a click as the door smoothly closes

my attempt to grow a herb garden this year fell short and i ran out of time and patience trying to get those seeds to sprout ... so it will have to wait for next spring until i am back in the country ... they are tucked away safely in the garage and my photobooks that i made of j and my trip to new york now occupy the shelf

we finally found a light at the home depot to fill the entrance way ... we got to enjoy it for about a day and then we were gone ... something to enjoy when we get back

our master ensuite has all it bits and pieces in place ... i didn't get a chance to snap a pic of the drywall progress but oh well

you get the idea of what it's going to look like when it's done

of course one of the biggest changes was the exterior of the house ... j's uncle strapped the house and got it ready for it's extreme makeover

then we filled the spaces with blue styrofoam boards to help up the insulation factor on the house ... it already feels warm and cozy

next some amazing james hardie board siding to amp up the drama on the house ... we hadn't heard of it until about 3 weeks ago and i must say it is gorgeous ... the perfect color, the most amazing grain to it and the beauty of this is it looks like wood but it's cement board so no maintenance ... yeah!

the start of something beautiful ... the dormers are going to be the same siding as the bottom of the house and then the triangle parts are going to get a lighter tan color and some vertical pieces to give it a nice contrast ... i'm sure it will look great when it's finished ... this is where j and n exhaustedly left canada, boarded a plane ...

and as i type this ... this is what is now outside my hotel room window ... we are in london for some time while n gets to start her master's in education and international development at the institute of education

it's noisy, it's busy and it's going to be a welcome break to take an extended working vacation ... can't wait to start my classes, find a flat, tour london and of course travel around in europe

cheers ~n

LOOKING SO FANCY

near the beginning of n's summer vacation she had an ambitious idea to dig up a bunch of grass and build some lower tiered flower boxes in the front yard ... well as n's extended summer vacation comes to a close ... n and her fabulous mom have had a couple weekends to sneak away from the never ending house finishing list and step out in the sunshine that finally came and build the planter boxes and finally fill them up with cedar mulch and i must say they are looking so lovely

with the addition of our spacious and lovely veranda came the challenge of trying to salvage the skinny walkway and make it appear larger than it really is ... enter some gravel from the backyard used to make the teeny tiny sidewalk appear bigger

the flowers now reach all the way to the sidewalk

who doesn't love symmetry? it was a little tricky to get this but i think it looks fab

side profile ... so nice to have the front almost done

i am pleased with the end result

cheers ~n

MAJOR BLOG SECRET

so we had to decide what to do with out puzzling front entrance and come up with a solution that would work for our little house ... we wanted something covered to protect the entrance way from the elements and something to add a little space to ... on a friday night j and his trusted happy helpers came up with this grand plan to build a covered veranda and they worked exceedingly fast and this massive project was completed in 2 weekends

here's our little hut before all the dormer additions

house completed with the bedroom dormers

our new and lovely two tiered deck

it's wonderful to have all this space

what the house looks like now ...

i can't wait to get some chairs and a table out front ...

and some pots and flowers ...

and the house numbers ...

and the mailbox ...

cheers ~n

SOMEONE'S TURNED 30

well as each year passes it is inevitable that you get older ... well this day of september 4th n hit a milestone ... i turned 30 ... my lovely parents brought over some of my favorite flowers to commemorate the day

i received many birthday cards of course poking fun at how old i am getting ...

oh the joys of being the oldest

another look at the beautiful flowers sitting in my dining room

cheers ~n

update - j also arranged a fantastic surprise breakfast brunch at the hotel macdonald in the empire ballroom on the sunday ... all of my family and j's family were there ... it was an amazing atmosphere to be dressed up sitting in a fancy ballroom and enjoying a buffet that cannot be described ... the food ranged from salads to custom made omelets to an entire dessert station ... absolutely fantastic and an amazing way to turn 30