It's been a productive weekend, I've achieved several things that have been on my list for a few months. Mr SC and I went to the reclamation yard, I had never been before and wasn't expecting it to stock so much and such a wide variety of antiques and amazing items I would have loved to have a home big enough to accommodate!

I have a 1930's terrace house with some period features although I would love it to have more. It has white plasticy moulded internal doors that I hate with horrible brass look handles. So we went to see how much it would cost to get reclaimed doors as I love natural waxed wood and I have original sanded floorboards so it would unify the look. I got a bit of a shock, on the website it had said they have reclaimed doors in stock from £100 plus VAT so I had assumed since my doors were quite standard sizes I would be spending around £650ish for five internal doors. My quote came to £1225 plus VAT!!

I did chose a lovely gothic arched door with glass panels for the door between the living room and hall to let extra light in, but even for the standard doors it was almost £200 each - and I totally forgot to budget for door handles- which I suppose are essential to use the doors!!

So I may just get the door for the living room, and I'm also going to explore some cheaper options, as I found a local store online that makes replica doors. Their prices appear to be about half the price of the reclaimed ones, so next weekend I'm going to the showroom to see how good they look up close, and get a quote.

Then we visited a local maritime festival to see the ships, it was very crowded though and muddy because of the rain, so we didn't stay long. In the evening we went to see the new Brad Pitt film "Inglourious Basterds", which is a black comedy about a group of Jewish soldiers who go on a rampage killing Nazis. I enjoyed it even though there were a few gruesome moments, there were some hilarious comedy moments.

Today I 've been having a quiet day organising my week ahead, making a list of books I'm going to borrow from the library. As I've bought a few books from Amazon I've started using their recommendation tool to give me suggestions of new books that might interest me and it seems to be working well. Then I went through my kitchen cupboards and planned my meals for the week ahead. I have a few frugal batch cooked work lunches left from last week - spaghetti and chilli so that sorts out a couple of days. I got a lot of groceries last week, including 8 jacket potatoes for £1 so I'm going to be having jacket potatoes for lnuches and dinners - with various fillings - cheese, baked beans, tuna mayo, and my favourite madras mayo. I make it using a little madras paste mixed with reduced fat mayo to add a little flavour, and I use it to make chicken wraps, and flavour sandwiches with a little kick.

I took some pictures this weekend of the colourful flags flying from the ships that I thought I would share. I would love to spend a restful week or two at sea just floating about watching wildlife go past and catching up on all the books I keep meaning to read and music I keep meaning to listen to. But I don't think I would feel confident enough to hire even a small boat and take it out to sea - and I don't think my holiday budget would be up to hiring a yacht anyways! This week I plan to study some more towards my language course I'm continuing next month, and spend an evening organising my next creative project as I keep putting these off!