Getting ready for moving in

 As I said in my previous post, we're hopeful of being able to 'move into' the caravan from this coming weekend, provided we get the bedroom decorated with no hitches, and the toilet in good clean working order.  Our plan is to stay at the van for a few days at a time - no set plan as such, just whenever we have no appointments at home and the weather looks good for a few days.  I'm not really wanting to stay there if it's going to be persistently raining - we had lots of caravan holidays when I was a child and I have many memories of rain hammering down loudly on the roof and us kids miserably looking out of the windows, bored to tears.  If we're going to have prolonged rain, frankly I'd rather stay home than endure it in the caravan.  Fortunately, the weather forecast seems to be pretty good for the coming weekend.

I'm going to need to write lots of lists for the next few days - lists of things we need to take to the caravan every day, to stock up for when we move in.  Clothes, toiletries, bedding and towels, kitchen equipment, dog stuff (a bed for Betty, some of her toys and some treats are there already).  Books and DVDs, a pack of cards and dominoes, some craft stuff (a couple of drawing pads and pencils).  And food, of course, mostly tins and packets, coffee, tea and long life juices (neither of us drinks much alcohol, hardly any in fact).  Some basic crockery, cutlery, mugs and glasses are already there.  I shall take a selection of stuff every day - we wouldn't be able to fit it all in the car in one go anyway.  We're taking the new fridge over tomorrow.

I've been getting the Gardeners World magazine and a static caravan park life mag delivered for the past 2 or 3 months (both subscriptions were bought on a very good special offer for the first year).  We haven't read any of them yet, I've deliberately kept them to take to the caravan, so that's something to look forward to.

There's a small garden centre on the way to the caravan, we've not been in there yet.  I want to have a look in there sometime this week and hopefully buy a nice perfumed rose and a lovely pot for it to go in, using some of the legacy money my friend left me.  She loved roses, as do I, so having a nice rose in her memory in the caravan garden will be a fitting reminder of her.  Toni loved purple, it was one of her favourite colours, so she would have approved of my colour choice for the van lounge!

The bedroom, both bedrooms in fact, have padded headboards affixed to the wall - the one in our double bedroom is in an awful state, heavily stained, although the material is in good condition.  Ideally, we'd like to take the headboard off the wall, take the material off and re-cover it.....however, the headboard is firmly fixed to the wall and there's no getting it off, we've tried very hard.  It appears to be stapled or even nailed all round, and may even be glued as well.  So tomorrow I'm going to firstly have a go at steam cleaning it with my electric steamer.  I've bought new curtains for the bedroom - I chose a long length, as I had the idea of cutting off the extra length and using the material to cover the headboard, we'll staple it all round using husband's super duper electric staple gun.