We moved in blindly....for anyone who is unfamiliar with the situation, I was very ill in pregnancy and myself and Jon ended up moving in with my parents in Liverpool so that I had someone with me while he was working.
Once Tyne was born, and I started to get better....we of course wanted to get our own place and head back to Devon where we had lived before.
But due to Jon's job and traveling with a young baby, it wasn't possible for us to keep visiting Devon to do house viewings.
It ended up that my sister (who already lived there) and my parents (during visits to her) did some viewings for us, and they ended up finding our house....so we moved in never having seen the place before!
Of course this isn't the ideal way to move in to a property, and there are aspects of it we don't like much....but on the whole it's a nice big house with lots of space, and has certainly served us well over the last year.
One of the things that wasn't ideal about the house, but is sadly the case with a LOT of rented houses in Devon, there is no garden space.
It's a terraced house near to the town centre, so there is no front garden and only a small yard space in the back.
This was fine when Tyne was a tiny baby as I'm not much of an outdoors person anyway, but now he is older he needs a little outside space.
This was how our yard space looked before.
No safe, grass area to play in....very dull and dark. No greenery whatsoever.
With (a lot of!) help from my mom who is MUCH more green-fingered than me, we bought some roll-out artificial grass and some flowers and plants....and managed to transform this bleak space to a lovely little town garden which is the perfect size for Tyne to play in!
What a difference a bit of greenery makes!
Tyne loves to play outside now - the grass is lovely and soft, and the good thing about artificial grass is that its obviously never muddy and doesn't hold the water!
He uses his water play tray, slide and see saw out here a lot when the weather is nice and we'll be setting his paddling pool up this week too!
This weekend we enjoyed our first picnic in the garden!
We were very kindly sent this beautiful picnic basket from Wilko (£25.00) - I absolutely love it, it's the perfect size for a little picnic dinner and includes proper cutlery, plates and cups!
Tyne loved getting stuck into his outdoor dinner....we had all of his favourites, including his ABSOLUTE favorite which is corn on the cob! (and Mummy's favorite Falafels too!)
We also used our little Summer Picnic as the perfect time to try out BN Biscuit's new flavours - raspberry and chocolate!
Both of them were delicious, but the chocolate was the winner in this house!
Tyne had never tried them before and was besotted with the smiley faces!
I made the mistake of singing the "Bn Bn" song from the ad campaign when he ate his first one, and he thought it was hilarious to make his biscuit dance while I sang....so of course thats what we then had to do for every single biscuit each of us ate from then on!
We had so much fun having our little picnic, and it just goes to show that having good family fun in the Summer doesn't have to cost the earth...it can be as simple as just a picnic in the garden!
I'm loving having a nice little outdoor space to relax in and watching Tyne play outside is lovely.....and I've really been enjoying buying some nice bits & pieces for the town garden too!
I particularly love these outdoor lights (£10.00) which were also from Wilko - they look so pretty all lit up of an evening!
How have you been enjoying the summer so far?
If you enjoy my blog, please consider following me on Bloglovin'
