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We went to view yet another house at the weekend.  But it wasn't right. Again. I can't tell you how many houses we've been to see over the last five or six years. If I had a tenner for every one, the financial situation would be less tight! Also, if you worked out how much we had spent on petrol or diesel going to see them, that would be a scary sum.

 We originally made the decision to move to mid Wales but then we started acquiring grandchildren who live less than a couple of miles away.  This means that we see them regularly which we enjoy very much.  I love watching them grow and change and develop new skills. If we moved to mid Wales then we would only see them maybe two or three times a year.  And I would really miss our church. So last year we made the decision to stay vaguely in this area.  The problem is that a house with any sort of land or even a very large garden is silly money around here.  Any house that we can afford will have something dire wrong with it or else the location will be problematic - like the one this weekend.

So I'm getting despondent.  I've worked my socks off building up a deposit and we are on the brink of giving up and remaining smallholderwannabes for ever. We have the allotment and I have my chickens but I would love a field to call my own. And neighbours that don't watch every move we make.

The upside to this weekend is that the lane the house was in had blackberries, elderberries, sloes and crab apples.  And I had some carrier bags in the car.  So I am busy making preserves again.  I have some stewed elderberries dripping through my jelly bag and will make them into elderberry syrup this evening. There were some hawthorn berries, rowan berries and rose hips too, so with a handful each of blackberries and elderberries and some of the crab apples, there will be some hedgerow jelly soon. It is a few years since I got enough fruit from a hedge to do a real hedgerow jelly without cheating. I've been reading that taking a couple of teaspoons of elderberry syrup is really good at the onset of a cold and kicks the immune system into action.  Worth a go!  And it is really nice as a drink made up with sparkling water too.

After much debate and discussion and "looking into things", we've decided not to go ahead with the house we went to view.  My husband just loved the house so it has been a hard decision as the house and field ticked so many of our boxes - probably more than any other property that we've seen. 

Some boxes, however, remained unticked.  It was an old two up two down kind of house.  At some time in the past, one of the upstairs rooms was divided into two so that it is priced as a 3 bedroom house.  There is also an extension across the back which gives a nice size kitchen, a conservatory and a bathroom.  There is no bathroom upstairs and we could not see any way of installing just a toilet without losing the upstairs cupboard, sorry, third bedroom.  The stairs are fairly narrow and the ceiling is very low and the handrail swaps from side to side to accomodate the odd wall/cupboard arrangement and it would be a long and potentially dangerous journey to the downstairs bathroom at 3am.  When I am tired or indeed half asleep as at 3am, my balance is dreadful.  The house is semidetached and I cannot see the council giving planning permission for a two storey extension as it would ruin the symmetrical look of the house from the road.  Councils seem to be big on the "look" of things.  There is the slight complication that we would have to have a mortgage again (yuk!!) in order to buy the house and what would we use to pay for the extension even if the council gave permission? If we gave up the third bedroom and turned it into a toilet ( maybe fit a shower cubicle in as well but it would be very tight), that still leaves the problem of the stairs.  We'd also have reduced the saleability of the house as there would only be two bedrooms.  At some stage, when we are old and decrepit (more than now...) we would have to move again so resale value needs to be thought about as well.  Not a major factor at this point but one not to be ignored either.  What if eyesight got worse or our creaky knees or something and we couldn't drive?  The nearest shop is definitely driving, not walking, distance away.

Ah well.  I was encouraged that there are such properties still to be found out there.  And disappointed that this was not The One.

Lots of things have been happening here.  We've been away on holiday.  Just five days because that was all we could have with animal sitters but we enjoyed them.  We went down to Devon to see my husband's family so we spent time up on Dartmoor.  I need my regular fix of hills and Dartmoor is wonderful.  There is always somewhere to go and park the car, go for a walk without meeting anybody and then come back to the car for a cuppa from the flask.

On the way down to Devon, we stopped off to visit an old schoolfriend of mine who has recently moved house and now lives in a beautiful bungalow with lovely sea views.  It was great to see her and her lovely new home.  We also popped across into Cornwall to visit a blogfriend that I haven't seen for a couple of years and had tea and cakes (homemade, of course) with her.  It was good to catch up on news.  She is a really nice lady and very kind to let us visit. And I do enjoy a natter with like-minded people.

After visiting this friend, we went to visit a favourite haunt from the days when my mother-in-law lived in Callington.  We had a picnic lunch up on the moor and then went for a walk in the sunshine.  I took a photo of my husband standing in the sunshine beside a tor.  Ten minutes later, the heavens opened and we had a monsoon.  We had cagoules in the backpack but there was not a dry thread anywhere not covered by the cagoules - literally.  When we got back to where we were staying, I had to empty the water out of my walking boots : )

Last week, we found a house with a field.  It is about 12 miles from where we live now so we could still see our family but too far for them to animal sit.  We have been to view it and have spent the last few days trying to work out if we could afford the house and do the repairs needed.  This house ticks more boxes than any we have seen before but there are a couple of big negatives. 

Decisions, decisions.  I'm not sleeping, have permanent indigestion and I'm not happy.  Anyone got £100k to spare that they don't want because then I could buy the house AND do the necessary repairs and still have enough money left to eat.

And really big thing - my new grandchild is due next week : )

We had a bit of a disappointment recently.  We found a derelict barn with planning permission.  It had only a small bit of land with it but in an area where there are fields that can be rented.  The barn is a few miles away but not too far from where we live now so we'd still be able to see all the family.  It all sounded great but there was the dreaded question of money.  We'd worked out that we could almost buy it and still live in this house while we built the new one.  Except that the banks would not lend us anything like enough to build the new one.

The auction was last week and we didn't go because we just could not raise enough finance and it would have been torture to watch somebody else buy it.  It is the best chance we've seen in this area so far and ticked so many of the boxes.  Still, we are obviously not meant to move to that property because things just did not work out.  I'm trying hard to be positive because at least this has shown that there are still some possibilities around.  I had not found anything even remotely suitable for so long.  Anyway, I am still a smallholderwannabe for a while longer.

Our livestock have increased in numbers. A friend of ours rang up and said that the date had been fixed for their emigration to the Antipodes and please would I have the last two of their rabbits. They had rehomed the other four but these two were still in need of a home. So the animals now are: three cats, three rabbits, four Warrens, three bantams and Mrs Speckledy Hen. I am going to need more than my little bit of hay to cope with three rabbits over the winter. It is just as well we have an allotment and can provide lots of greens and other veggies for the bulk of the year. I tend to buy a 20Kg sack of rabbit food from the feed merchant where I buy the hen food and it works out way cheaper than the pet shop - just a few pennies per rabbit per week.

We've just been away for a few days to stay in a friend's caravan. It was a kind offer to let us stay there and we've really appreciated it. It was not far from home - just 40 minutes to drive there but it was a wonderful rest. I kept falling asleep and so did my husband. We are two poor old souls! We read and pottered and went for a little drive to a pretty village and then had a little walk round and did nothing very much really. It was really wonderful! I had taken a few tins from my stock cupboard with us as reserve supplies and then went to the nearest Tesco at the time when I thought that fresh and chilled goods would be reduced. If there were no bargains to be had, then the tins would have come into play and I was going to bake some quick breads with a bag of flour. We were fortunate and got lots of their nicest bread reduced to 10p. We froze it in the caravan's freezer and it lasted all week and we even brought a bit home with us. We also got some salad stuff reduced and the sort of veg (eg baby sweetcorn) that I can't ever bring myself to buy unless reduced but love eating and had a great stirfry and a pastabake the next night. So even our holiday food came at a bargain price. I had baked a cake to take with us and we bought a tub of nice icecream so we felt we had lots of treats and ate like kings. But the rest was the best thing. We really needed a time to recover because the end of term was just frantic and the moving of the Library had drained me.

And now we are back home and need to make a list of all the jobs that need to be done before we go back to school at the beginning of September. I will need to rank them in order of importance to make sure that none of the urgent ones gets overlooked. Sometimes a job has needed done for so long that it just blends into the background and somehow becomes "normal". But - I still want a few times to "play" with some of my craft stuff. I'm hopeful that I might manage to produce something that will become a Christmas present for someone. And I definitely want to prune a little stuff that is sitting in piles round the house. Maybe I'll be able to sell one or two things on ebay and put a little more aside in the coffers.

While we were away, we naturally looked at properties for sale that had most of our requirements. There was absolutely nothing in that area within £100,000 of our budget. Very disheartening. We talked around the possibilities of mortgages, staying at work and commuting and every way we could think of because we would be close enough that our children would probably visit us more than an obligatory once a year - but it is not going to be possible with the kind of prices that properties are going for in that area. Ah well, back to looking at Wales again.

I also talked seriously to my husband about ways to prune our spending even further. We really need to have as much money (ie cash) behind us as possible so that we can repair any property we find. We are thinking that any property that we find that "feels right" is going to have a lot wrong with it if we can afford it... He is not thrilled about me paring any more off our budget but he knows that most things that I try, work. He is helping as best he can. He sat down at the computer when our car insurance was due last month, and managed to knock £50 off the renewal premium with our insurer from last year. Our house insurance is due next month so he is keen to reduce that payment as much as possible. I'm happy that he is willing to do this as I seem to be in charge of squirrelling away pennies from day to day living expenses. After all we don't often get an opportunity to reduce a bill (and therefore not spend) by £50 but there are hundreds upon hundreds of opportunities in a year to save (and not spend) 10p or 20p or 50p and these can really add up. Also if we develop the mindset of trying to reduce the spending on small things, it carries over into larger things as well.

Time to make dinner. The cats are certainly telling me that it is dinner time!