Healing Art

I have finally finished renovating Christmas Cottage, Church, Godshill, the Isle of Wight. The cottage is 400 years old and has been a family home for me since 1996. Typically it has never been this comfortable, tidy, warm or beautifully decorated the whole time I have lived there! When I first moved in everyone thought  I was mad, as the place was very run down. We spent the first Christmas with no heating, had to cook our turkey up the road, use a drain as a toilet and manage a cat that was insecure and  peeing on everything. At one point during the renovations you could look up from the cellar and see the roof. At another time the entire chimney from an upstairs fireplace fell through the floor below. It was chaos and was never really finished until recently when a second wave of energy, time and money meant that I was finally prepared to take on saga no 2. The last year has given me permanently gritty hair, broken nails and a whole wardrobe of paint splattered clothes, bu