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Meet Joyce

My name is Joyce Barnaby, and this is my blog.

Except that my name obviously isn’t Joyce Barnaby.

When I first conceived of the idea of blogging about our home renovation exploits, I wasn’t quite sure how to set about things.

First, it took me ages to come up with a name for the blog. Then I had all sorts of questions about websites, and things like hosting and WordPress I was completely clueless about previously.

To cut a long story short, my son and husband finally convinced me to give it a shot, so here I am, giving it my best one.

To return to the pen name at hand – I am simply not all that comfortable with using my own name on the blog. Well, not yet anyway.

Joyce Barnaby put herself forward as the obvious choice during a Sunday morning rerun of Midsomer Murders, having reminded me that not only is my husband actually a Tom, but that the village we had moved to does have that Midsomer feel to it. Sans the murders, one hopes.

Like Joyce, I am a stay-at-home everything: mum, wife, chef, drudge. When our two kids had flown the nest (the daughter we married off, while the son is at Uni), we decided the time had come to move to the country, something we’d both wanted to do for over a decade.

Moving meant house hunting, furniture shopping, working with contractors (a grand total of 5), making sure the cat does not leave paw prints on the new walls, and that her bed and the dog’s were at least 15 feet apart at all times, choosing colours, finding mats and coffee cups, et cetera, et cetera.

That’s sort of when I got into writing everything down (the everything being what has turned into this blog). I am hopeless with making decisions unless I have a pro et contra column for every option on the table – and am now the proud owner of no less than seven Cath Kidston notebooks full of prices, materials, energy consumption levels, and everything else I could think of.

The Confused Nester was born out of these notebooks, and is meant to be a hobby slash passive income source I can tinker with in my spare time.

So far, I’m enjoying how it’s going – but then again, no one has really read anything yet, so I might get spooked and take everything down one day.

But until then, make yourself a mug of tea (Twinings Earl Gray for me, with soy milk), grab some shortbread (preferably Walker’s), and enjoy your time at The Confused Nester.

I promise I’m not all that muddled.

J.

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