Lucy's antics

We've had a lovely start to November here....mild weather still and the colours of the season have been magnificent. We have plenty of big old trees around the village which have turned to orange and are now dropping their leaves at a pace and covering the green and the paddocks. In this photo our house is beyond the red telephone box and from our kitchen window we get a lovely big slice of this view.

Lucy is just loving preschool more than ever. She thrives there with her friends and teachers, all of whom she is getting to know better and better and feeling at home with. It was a great decision to send her every day, as she gets a good routine during the week and always looks forward to her time at preschool when she gets up in the morning. For the last two Saturdays she has complained that school is closed!

On Saturday evenings we have been watching Strictly Come Dancing, which for my American readers is our equivalent to Dancing With The Stars. It's on early evening so Lucy stays up with us to watch it and we have regular dances together and cheers for our favourites. Lucy loves the dancer with the pink hair...surprise, surprise! Last Saturday Lucy lined up a whole host of her soft toys in front of the telly so that they could watch the dancing too...

Her eyes are a little scary in this photo - she's not really a devil child!!

Lucy is definitely less challenging and more co-operative these days since turning 4. Hopefully those won't be famous last words. It makes life so much more enjoyable! She is very excited about Christmas of course, and the shopping is well underway. Every day Lucy comes up with new things to add to her list for Father Christmas so at some point we will have to tell her that he has finished his shopping and anything extra will have to wait until next year.

I am busy painting half the house and getting rooms into the colours we want them. I'm also tackling the woodwork in many places where for the past 9 months I have been eyeing them up and getting fed up with how tatty they look. My biggest challenge was to paint the hallways (up and downstairs) and the stair well which is pretty high. I managed to do them all on my own with some brave ladder work. The results are wonderful so I will get some pictures posted before long (and when I have finished the artwork that is hanging on the stair wall). So my aim is to get the house looking as fresh and new as possible before Joe's parents come for Christmas.