Well, firstly this is my 300th post on this blog, so I'd like to celebrate by raising a glass to you all, dear readers. For some, (Jonathan) it will be a dirty martini, for others an iced tea - whatever your tipple, thank you for reading. And, whoever the annoying anonymous person is, I wish to heaven you would send me an email and give me a blasted clue as to who you are. Thinking about my readership, I can honestly say it is international and I've become friends with people in some surprising places, that even feature in song titles. Happily, the numbers from Cardiff Council have declined considerably although there appears to be a hard core of about 15 of you who are still reading - most annoyingly, when you should be getting on with some constructive work. Consider yourselves chastised.

One of my favourite bloggers, the Calico Quilter, recently wrote about her home: this was prompted in part by exciting adventures with her neighbourhood squirrels. They suddenly developed a kamikaze mindset and decided to bring power cuts to the neighbourhood by chewing through live high voltage cables. You have to admit those little squeakers have STYLE - if you're gonna go, go out big. Cue James Cagney in "White Heat" moment for the squirrel - shouting "Look at me, Ma, top of the world!" before exploding in flames. Anyway, I tell you this partly to show that quilting blogs are often much more exciting than you would first think and secondly to respond to something that was posted by the CQ quite recently. CQ posted some pics of her house and neighbourhood, and some of the local Council workers who were doing some tree works. She invited other readers to join in and post some pics of their own homes. So, with no further ado, a bit about Woodhouse Towers.

We bought the house as a new build from Persimmon, the developers in 2005. We had decided to go for a new build (or very nearly) as at that time I had just come through cancer and had gone back to work full time so neither of us wanted to be spending precious time on home repairs and maintenance. Neither of us is particularly DIY minded. What attracted us to this estate and the house was that the houses were not as closely packed together as is often the case in modern estates, and this house has a reasonable sized garden, again particularly for a new home. We saw lots of developments when we were house hunting where the house was fine, but set into a tiny little plot. Even though we weren't then greyhound owners both of us love gardening so we wanted to maximise the space available, and this house seemed to do that.

Inside the house, I love the fact it is so bright and airy and also very warm. When single, I lived in a succession of Victorian flats, and although there is much to be said for sash windows as an architectural feature, in the winter they are drafty, freezing and rattly. Downstairs, we've got a big kitchen with utility room (a feature that was on my shopping list, and I am grateful for it), a spacious dining room where we can comfortably seat eight or squeeze in a few more if we want to be cosy, a living room and a downstairs loo/cloakroom. From the hall, which is a decent size, you go up the stairs, passing a large window on the turn of the stairs, to the first floor where there are four bedrooms, master with en-suite, plus a "family" bathroom. One of the many good things about having the en-suite is that when we have guests, they can have sole usage of the main bathroom, thus avoiding worries about queues and so on. Since moving in, we've fitted a shower into the main bathroom, above the bath and tiled/decorated it. The house was painted throughout by the developer in a bog standard magnolia when we purchased, so we have been able to take our time in decorating. Before moving in, the living room and dining room were done, along with our bedroom and the main guest bedroom. Since then, we've also decorated the third bedroom (our study/craft room), the main bath, and the downstairs cloakroom. Remaining - the hall/landing, the kitchen, utility room and fourth bedroom. The other main change we instigated was to fit wooden flooring on the ground floor, when we decided to adopt a greyhound (looking back fondly, we imagined we would have only one...). The kitchen has floor tiles in a soft grey/cream colour, but elsewhere we have a very pleasant honey coloured wooden floor, which fortunately is easy to clean.

The house has a detached garage, on a shared driveway with our next door neighbours, with sufficient room for two cars and our growing collection of wheelie bins. From the side of the garage, there is a door to the back garden, which we don't tend to use much, except when bringing in heavy items to the garden such as large pots or bags of compost. However it was a godsend when we were doing all the landscaping/planting in the garden.

Under the eaves at the front of the house are the house martens, tucked into their little mud nest and making the most lovely sounds, rather like a digital ringtone. I've posted a picture of their home, along with the front of the house, our greyhound hanging basket bracket, and the new post box which regular readers will recall was fitted after Andy decided to start eating paint. If I get sufficient interest, I'd be happy to show some pics of the garden and how we went from the bare plot to the current setup. Readers, over to you. Let me have your views. Look at this way, at least it's a change from greyhounds. And, why not show some pics of where you live?