tales from Janzi's World

my screen name is Janzi and so I shall use this one to be identified online for this blog..

I live in the middle of England and with my second husband,live in a Georgian Rectory. It is a lovely house that needed a lot of work done on it, which is why we were able to buy it on the open market. We moved here in 1998, the longest I have ever lived in one house. During my first marriage, I loved moving, and despite having five small children, managed to move over 20 times, each time the houses got better and better. So with this second marriage with two children left at home, we have moved much less, this time only 5 times in 25 years, which is a huge drop from the 23 times in 22 years**

I love the whole experience of cleaning the house, decluttering, and renewing items that will be saved in the house we are moving to... When we moved here , I only really planned staying two or three years, and then planned to move another time afterwards and ending up in a serviced flat which could provide security and safety in old age. However, we have now been here for over 17 years, and I don't think my husband wants to move again, which has rather stymied my plans!  This house is late Georgian/Regency period and has loads of lovely features that we have kept and renewed. Having been used by Church Families over the years since it was built in 1823 and relied on the parish people to help them maintain the house and its gardens. This resulted in all sorts of different things that happened, the most dangerous being the fact that the metal sink was live with electricity and meant the house had to be rewired immediately we moved in.  The shutters were all painted in place, so that was my first job, to free them and see if they still worked... which they did, then I got the flooring to be stripped back from carpeting to the original Georgian wood floors. Lovely, but needing to be varnished again soon. With dogs of course the floor does get scratched from their claws. We have noticed now that we have one dog left, life is a lot less dusty and difficult to keep clean. We have 8 bedrooms, but three of these are sectioned off into an annexe with its own front door and totally separated from the main house. This was done in the late forties of the last century to accommodate the Curate who assisted the Vicar.  When we moved in, we renovated next door, the annexe, so that my husband's parents could live there... which was a godsend when they both became ill in their last years and we could look after them closely. which we did until they died several  years ago.. now we have a little family living there and renting from us.With the five bedrooms, we have ample space for us to have guests stay over, which is so useful at Christmas with all the family coming to visit. With 8 children between us, this is quite a full time of partying...