All images (c) Lou at Whimsical Wonderland Weddings ↑ G + My Dad getting their hands dirty!

It struck me as pretty peculiar when i was editing these images for this post today, that i was preparing something grim, dirty and frankly horrible to feature on WWW. Usually its pretty, sunshine and happiness but unfortunately life gets in the way doesn’t it?

You may have seen already that last Thursday we had a fire in our home. G woke me at 4am with the apartment filled with smoke and the alarms going off. I opened my eyes in the haze of confusion when you are in a deep sleep and confusingly sat up, turned on my lamp, grabbed my phone and popped on my dressing gown. I remember none of this, only that i heard G shouting there was a fire and me saying “a fire?!” in disbelief back. Our dishwasher had caught fire,

I ran into A’s room next door, bundled him in his duvet and hauled him out of bed, holding him in one arm. How i managed I’m not sure as he is no baby anymore. G was running around trying to save our home. He turned off the power before i had found the keys. This was the moment i really panicked as i couldn’t find the right key or get it into the key hole and luckily G kept his cool and opened the door.

I collapsed in a heap onto the doorstep and rang 999, whilst asking G to save the laptop! Trust me, they always say what would you save if your house was on fire… i wanted my laptop. Yes i was thinking of WWW, but mainly of all my treasured images of my little family. The fire wasn’t bad as this point so it was safe for G to go back in, although i still feel guilty for asking for it.

Time seemed to stand still while we were waiting for the fire crews. I left G with our lovely neighbours whilst i ran around our estate bare footed attempting to wake those us that joined our flat. I hadn’t seen the fire at all, so i had no idea what it was like. G assured me now it wasn’t too bad, but it was worsening rapidly.

There wasn’t much we could do but stand back and wait for the fireman to do their job. The way our flat is designed is that there are no windows on this side of the property, so we had no clue what was happening what so ever. All we could see was black smoke billowing out of the front door. I still have a vision of a fireman coming out of our flat removing a mask, which made me feel scared for these brave men trying to save our home.

And yes at this point i took a photograph on my phone! ↑

It felt like a dream, well a nightmare, almost like an out of body experience. I was so grateful we and our neighbours were safe. And at that point i did cry for a moment, before making a joke, not that i can remember what it was now. It was a matter of laughing or i wouldn’t stop crying and i had to be strong for A.

Then the fireman started dumping parts of our kitchen with embers of fire falling off of them, before bringing out the pesky melted dishwasher. Then someone came over and told us it was out and we could go back in.

It was no where near as bad as we expected and we were so so lucky, and so so grateful. The relief was unreal.

The fireman left us and we collected ourselves, we rang our loved ones and headed to my parents which luckily is 5 minutes away.

Our kitchen was a mess, and the smell was awful. Then came the stark reality of not really having a home that was habitable. We contacted the insurance and started cleaning ourselves. With family assisting G and me and my mum looking after A.

The whole house does not look like this above, only the kitchen did thankfully. There was just a layer of soot and smoke smell everywhere, mainly in our open plan living area. Our bedrooms were not too affected and we have managed to sleep overnight in them with the windows open all night.

Poor little A’s new tent and toys were covered, and have had to be removed bless him. We are now at the point where we have cleaned everything we can and things are safe for us to use. Now we just need to wait for the insurers to piece our home back together.

Things could have been so much worse. The worst part for me was dealing of the trauma of the actual night, it was just terrifying. I can’t even to begin to think what may have happened if we didn’t wake up.

I want to let you all know a few things that could prevent what happened to us happening to you, and also some of the things we luckily had that prevented a worse outcome.

* Don’t put your appliances on a timer/leave them unattended while they are on. We have always used a timer on our dishwasher/washing machine, and i never ever will again. They are on machines and they must be safe, but that one time was us and id never do it again. It’s just not worth it.

* Check that your fire/smoke alarms are working. These could have saved our lives, we believe they woke G up. They are so essential.

* Get insured. We had insurance thank goodness, but we could have been in a financial nightmare if we didn’t. Unfortunately sometimes you need to use it.

* For more fire safety information see the Government site here.

Thanks so much to everyone that has supported us this past week or so. I am so so thankful to those amazing brave firemen that saved our home. And i just want to take a moment to think of those who have experienced fire and were not as lucky as we were.

XOXO Lou

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