Grey.

It's been a grey, slightly wet and cold day. I ventured out in the afternoon to put some mail that was addressed to the last owners back in the post box with return to sender written across them. At the same time I kept my eyes open for the umbrella strap which seemed to have gone missing. I thought it might have dropped off when I put up the umbrella on the last leg of yesterday's journey home. It was only as I neared the post box that I guessed that the strap had probably dropped inside the umbrella and that was exactly where it was.

Apart from doing some more sewing along the zip I'm fitting into Peter's coat a lot of my day has been spent gathering ideas for the new house.

The bungalow on the right, the only one in the village with a red roof, is very tired and is going to need a lot of upgrading. I enjoy designing interiors and exteriors as well as gardens and keeping costs down only makes the challenge more fun. I'm a firm believer that good design is more important than simply throwing money at a problem.  

The current porch  opens directly on to the pavement/sidewalk with the offset front door getting some shelter from the wind. A good idea at the time I'm sure but try getting furniture or building materials through there.

After a lot of late night thinking and browsing through innumerable on-line photos I came up with this plan. The porch will be centred on the front door + sidelight with a slightly wider opening onto the pavement. The sides will be filled in to the same height as the garden wall and have glass above. The front opening will be high enough so that if once we've replaced the front door we find that we still need to close the front of the porch there is room for another door. We'll be replacing all the other flat roofs with fibreglass roofing but I think the porch should have red tiles to match the main roof.

Ever since I saw one of these in a shop window years ago I've wanted to have one of these reproduction Victorian ridge tile dragons. The Welsh dragon above, doesn't seem right as we're not Welsh ourselves.

The St George's dragon below might also be inappropriate so my choice would be the baby dragon, below. There are some more amazing dragon ridge tiles around but they are very expensive.

This evening instead of my usual bowl of salad I cooked cauliflower with a diet cheese sauce. I still used some butter to make the roux but less cheese than I would normally use perked up with extra mustard. I also tried adding finely chopped cauliflower leaves, just the young inner ones. That worked well giving the sauce a bit of crunch and extra flavour. Peter had cauliflower with his dinner too but with some cheese sauce that he'd made yesterday. It made a nice change but actually I'm perfectly happy to eat my salad. I usually eat it with cottage cheese or sometimes mozzarella, grated cheese or tinned mackerel.