About

I'm Rachel, and this blog documents our family's life and adventures in the UK, where we moved in 2018. We moved from a big city in the USA to a little rural village in the Cotswolds. We homeschool our two kids, so in addition to adventures, I also write about crafts, cooking, and little bits of daily life as we live and learn together. Welcome!

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Where We Live, Part 3: Our Cottage

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We're finally settled enough to take pictures of the inside of our house without me tripping over boxes in the attempt. The cottage has been here since the mid-19th century, with a lean-to added on in 1963 when indoor plumbing came to the village. It's semi-detached, meaning we share one wall with neighbors. Fortunately the walls here are really thick, so unlike in our American condo, we can't hear a thing! Anyway, without further ado, here is our house from the inside: Standing at our front door looking in, the first thing you see is our big chest freezer. (Doesn't everyone put their chest freezer right in the middle of the kitchen and dining room?) Our dining table is in what used to be the fireplace but has been plastered over. (If this were our house, I would unplaster it!) Looking to the right from this same position you can see our kitchen area, with oven, laundry machine (which also serves as a condenser dryer), and sink. Some modern houses have utility ...
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Laundry

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I know this is a topic you've all been waiting for with bated breath: dirty laundry!! When we moved here, our house had a washing machine but no dryer. This is very common for houses here--even in our very affluent village we frequently see wash hanging out to dry (and, to be fair, sometimes getting rained on.) I think moving here as a home-manager and mother has made me notice more the habits and norms. When we lived in Syria Eric and I didn't have kids and I didn't spend much time thinking about running our home (to be honest, mostly because we had cockroaches and there were worms in our shower--I just sort of survived our home that year....) Anyway, coming here as a homemaker has made me think about things like laundry. And that means you lucky readers get a whole post on it! Our washing machine that came with our cottage was on its last legs, and so we replaced it with a washer-dryer combination. But since we don't have a vent we had to get a condenser...
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Tea and Crumpets

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Have you ever had a crumpet? We saw some at our local grocery store, so we bought a pack of premade ones to try them out. Of course, we served them with tea, since it seemed like that was the thing to do. The kids liked them a lot so we bought another batch for this week. I'm wanting to try making them from scratch but I haven't done that yet.  We put a lot of whipped cream (sweetened with maple syrup) and some big juicy berries on top. I didn't have any because I avoided anything sweet for two weeks to kick my sugar cravings (it totally worked, by the way...I was amazed! I don't crave sugar at all now!) Anyway, I can't comment, but it was two thumbs up from everyone else. So now we've had crumpets, scones, shortbread...I think we're slowing mastering the British baked goods :)
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