July 2018 – Page 2 – Head in the Clouds

Room Ready!

Hello there!
I am still fussing about doing this and that in preparation for the girls arriving.
We managed to get the room finished with the extra bed made up (I think I mentioned before that we got an extra student because one of the host families fell through)

I think there is still plenty of room for them to spread out with their stuff even though we put an extra bed in!

I cleared out some of the shelves so they can put things there if they need to.
Our Japanese boys ignored this completely and had an impressive spread of stuff all over the room!!! 😀

I have spare blankets, hot water bottles and a collection of extra scarves and beanies for them to use as necessary.

Back out to the fallen tree!
Jeff got out the chainsaw and made a fabulous dint in the cleanup process

I’ll eventually work my way through the smaller pieces to clean up and put aside as kindling – which will last us for the next millennia!

My garden is slowly being unearthed!

Apparently the macrocarpa burns long and hot! It will take about 6 months in the drying process, but it will be great to have.

One of our new young hens lays a perfect little brown egg daily! I used a couple tonight and the yolks are lovely, big and yellow!

Well… thats midweek done and dusted!!
Raining a LOT at the moment!
Time to snuggle into bed with a book!
Cheers

Window Dressing

Hi there!
I am still being rather boringly domestically inclined.
Fired the cat and cleaned out the pantry to disillusion the mice.
Sigh. Country living!!
Everything in there is now in glass or heavy plastic containers. It was a long tedious job, but another tick off the list.

Another thing we had to attend to, were curtains in the top room

Not having any neighbours – just cows and the odd possum or two, we have never bothered with taking time to get any curtains up there. Poor Mum and Dad staying in summer get the sun in at about 4.30am so I haven’t been a model daughter in this respect.
However, when the fellow who is organising the international students came to inspect the house and room he was concerned that teenage girls might feel a bit vulnerable with a big open window to their bedroom/teenage retreat.

So…. off to the op shop (thrift store) and hardware shop.
Got 4 matching curtain panels for $12!!! Bargain huh?
Some stretchy wire, 4 hooks and a tall husband and we were in business!

They worked out looking way better than I imagined for a ‘dodgy brothers’ job!! Not that they will block all the light but they will help with retaining heat in the room too. As these students are coming from a country that rarely drops below 10C and right now they are in mid summer… we don’t want them to freeze!

We only used three of the four curtain panels so we cut the remaining one up and made two table covers and also used the shortened top part to hang in the bathroom window and in the laundry. So we got good use out of it all.

I have bought extra hot water bottles so they have something warm to snuggle into bed with too.

I am also working on a little ‘Welcome to Australia’ pack for each of the girls.
My lovely friend Maureen gave me these fantastic bags she made – I wanted to buy them but we have settled on a trade (she gets 5 litres of plum pulp when she is ready to make sauce!!)(Gotta love a good barter!)
I am putting a few things inside the bag for the girls, including chocolates and I have made up a journal each for them. I just got a plain sketch book and covered them with some of the pretty art paper I have. I will write something on the first page for them to encourage they use them to keep a diary of what they have been doing every day. Something to look back on later!

Of course the evening knitting and crochet is muddling along – I am making a pair of navy blue cuffs for one of my cousins who is in the police force.

And – Tah Daahhh!! Blanket done!

In a fit of something or other, I even tucked those dreaded tails in this evening!!
I think this will officially be my first Christmas present this year done as I thought it would be suitable for one of my young nieces.
Now… do I have time to do one each for the other two nieces???? Hmmmm

Still, its cosy and I am happy its done.

In the kitchen, casseroles & soups are orders of the day, not to mention some fresh baked herb and garlic bread!

It may be dark, cold, windy, raining and generally miserable, but I am loving it all!!

Cheers!

Beetroot Search & Rescue

Well! Forget anymore housework! Perfect winters day!
Time to get out there and so some real work! Yay!

Can you see my beetroot?
Its under there somewhere.

After a bit of cutting and hauling…

I rescued quite a good number of beetroot. Basically they had just been covered and not pulverised.

Some of the wood was struck into the ground like javelins!

Its so messy and tangled! My aim was to cut and remove all the smaller bits that I could to make it an easy task to get back in with the chain saw to cut away the bigger pieces.

Couple of pieces of my rebar were a bit bent!

I extracted them in the end and I am sure they will straighten out again.

I was beginning to see a lot more ground

Some surprising things survived – like this little fennel plant I found

I was quite heart-broken to see my beautiful sprinkler that my best mate made for me had been flattened

I was really delighted that when I cleared away all the branches, it came out intact with only a little bend to one of the feet!

All the connections look good too! Amazing!

By the time 3.30/4pm rolled around I had some nice big piles of branches made and some space in my veggie patch created. By then it was getting quite chilly so I gave up, went in and cleaned out the fire and started it anew.

Hoping to get back into it tomorrow if Jeff stays awake after his nightshift. (Sometimes he does sometimes he just can’t! 🙂 )

Enjoy your weekends!
Cheers

Upcoming Stuff

Hi – Feels weird. Two days, no photos taken!
Got the house looking reasonable for when the coordinator of the international students came over to check us out!
He was pretty happy with the upstairs room and took us up on our offer to take a third student!!
Apparently one of the host families had fallen through because they didn’t get around to doing their paperwork and applying for the appropriate registration.
SO – next weekend is the start of a busy and interesting couple of weeks with three teenage girls from Taiwan!
They will be at school most days which includes trips out to most of the places we would normally take visitors.
Weekends the girls get to hang out with us, so will try to get them to some of our favourite beaches, a couple of hikes, maybe some sapphire panning and a little shopping so they can get some presents for their families at home.
Not to mention doing the whole “Mum” thing by organising school lunches, getting kids to school etc etc… something I haven’t had to do since dropping Emma off at day care as a toddler (horrible experience!! She cried so much at us leaving I felt miserable all day, then found out she recovered within 15 minutes haha)

Anyway, tomorrow I might be doing something that is worthy of picking up the camera for – I have a list of things I am working through

Until then – hope your week finishes on a real bright note and the upcoming weekend is fabulous!

Cheers!

Spruced Up

Did I mention that Kirrily, our boarder is an apprentice hairdresser?
She gets chances to have clients in so she can practice and today was the first chance I have had all year. It was lovely to get my hair washed, dried and fancied up!
Lovely way to start the day! (Photo taken after battling through the rain, so not too bad!!!)

A typical winters day – dark and lots of rain, thankfully no more crazy wind.

Can’t get used to seeing this mess every time I go down to visit the chooks.
We haven’t had a chance to get back into doing anything since the first day. We did cut off some of the mess and remove it out of my garden.

One of these new girls is laying! A cute little brown egg. Three so far. Very proud!!

The white garlic patch has started to show green shoots! Will probably be another couple of weeks before they will be up high enough to mulch.
The early garlic is going along beautifully and the seaweed is keeping the weeds at bay

Oh and the cabbages!! Getting nice hearts on them!

Signs of spring already. I am seeing the bulbs from the daffies starting to pop up, also the tulips and today I noticed the day lilies!

Even though I pulled up most of it, the onion grass still persists in returning. It is rather sweet though.

Plenty of new buds on the Protea too!

Another couple of ‘single’ cuffs! I very much like the colours on the above glove.
Eventually I will get mates done for them although I knitted a completely new and unrelated cuff tonight.

A lot of today consisted of driving Jeff to an appointment (when he comes off a night shift sometimes its better I do the driving!!) and a few things in town before buckling down to finish a bit of tidying up and cake baking.
The coordinator for the international students is due in tomorrow morning to see if our place passes muster to host them. There is also an information night tomorrow night to go along to.

Anyway, I really need to not be up all night (again) My sleeping habits are ridiculous!!
Hope everyone had a fantastic day!
Cheers

Bits and Pieces

Hello! Start of the week again.
Desperate times at Norwich House. We were nearly out of sweet chilli sauce!
I was waiting for Jeff to get up to tell me where he stashed his handsaw so I could tackle the garden, so I started on cooking. Took me hours and never got back to the garden. A double batch takes forever and I still think its probably too runny. Oh well.
It used some chillis out of the freezer and a heap of the garlic and the house smells pretty good. Also meant that I cleaned out some of my bottles from the cupboard. (Stern words to myself for putting them away with their old labels on them so that added a heap of time to my job)

In a much less arduous task, I made up a new batch of laundry liquid.

Yesterday’s wood gathering activities were slowed up when I found a new resident in my work gloves.

It was quite at home and in no hurry to come out!

I eventually relocated him/her to a pot of parsley.

The potted garlic are looking quite happy! I am torn between planting more or just dehydrating the lot that’s left.

The rescued leek! Now will have to look up a decent recipe to make use of all of these!! I have cleaned and cut them and they are in the fridge waiting their turn!

The local gift shop hasn’t sold any of my berets, but can’t keep up with gloves! So putting a few together to try my luck there.

This pair I just finished I really like so am trying to sell via my facebook first before putting them into the shop where I will lose 30% commission. Pure wool so really cosy and I quite like the slight mismatch of them.
Anyway… will see what happens.

That’s about all from me – been on my feet too long today! Will be nice to snuggle into bed with a book
Cheers!

Extreme Mulching!

Hello! Wow… this post was going to be about crochet and lizards.
However…
I suppose you recall me whinging about the weather recently? Including rather severe winds? (like everyday for a week haha)
Well… above is my main vegetable garden!! Several tons of Macrocarpa have obliterated it.
Mistress of Understatement, Kirrily comes in to say there is a ‘branch’ down come and see!!

We weren’t prepared to see this!

These trees are absolute monsters. The big worry now is that the whole stand would be unstablised now that a big swathe off the front has fallen.

Two of the raised beds survived, along with the asparagus and celery. No sign of the third raised bed & lettuce (I don’t hold out high hopes to be honest) and the beetroot is slightly buried. Will try a rescue mission tomorrow.
Salvaged the leek. (somewhat broken)

While top branches hit the far fence and sent the gate off kilter, we were lucky in so many ways.
Firstly, because its all about me, I was lucky I am a sook about working outside in high winds. Not because I feel in danger (although from now I might) but because it just drives me batty. So I am pretty grateful I am not dead.
Secondly, apart from some guttering on the shed and a long disused aerial that was sheared off, the shed and cars were missed.
Thirdly – it fell into our yard and not over the highway

We are really going to have to look at getting them taken out much as it pains me. (Not least the thought of the potential cost) However – now the whole system is probably unstable and we don’t want to be responsible for major accidents/deaths.

Raised bed and bean trellis under there somewhere

Once the winds dropped we went out for a closer look and started to cut and move the more manageable pieces. (Ahhh the sign!!)

This is no mere ‘branch’ !!

It was a tragic moment to realise that Jeff’s wonderful new gate is now a twisted wreckage 🙁

Most of the pallet fence survived! Just a few sections flattened.

On the bright side, Macrocarpa is quite a valuable timber. There is a lot of millable wood in there so we will be looking to salvage some out of the main trunk. Of course, there will be some firewood in there somewhere too I guess!!

The above photo is looking back from the top corner of my garden. Lots of parsley has survived…

Did I need a new hobby? Not really.
Getting my veggie patch prepped for spring has brought up a whole new set of challenges far beyond weeding!!

Kirrily sitting pretty on top of the wreckage!

So far I really can’t say that 2018 has been boring hey?
I hope everybody elses Sunday has been slightly less exciting than ours!

Cheers!

Bathroom Day

Hello!!
How is everyones weekends going?
Its still filthy weather here. The rain has been insane – it gets really really loud at times. The wind is also howling – a lot!
I did go out for a short time to feed the chooks some treats and load up on firewood, but wow – icy cold and not nice!
Best plan of attack these days is to get through the house jobs.

I took down the shower curtains a couple of days back and threw them through the washing machine with some bicarb soda to spruce them up a bit.
We have a really awkward small bathroom – quite the over-achiever though when you think of all our guests!
The floor is raised and the roof is lowered. Jeff doesn’t fit so well into the shower while standing in the tub!
Its a silly setup – a lovely bath of course, but those claw baths need to sit in the middle of a big fancy bathroom, not jammed in the corner, where the shower water spills out over the sides to the floor.
I have been taping cut-down shower curtains to the top end (see where the paint is missing above) and to the mirrors so the water goes down the drain and not all over the floor

Oh those mirrors!! Impossible to keep clean, most are marked or chipped and look generally manky.
A major renovation job to the whole back end of the house would be marvellous! Bigger bathroom, practical fittings etc.
A smaller option would be to take out the claw bath (gasp I know) and have a shower wall but no door – just a walk in affair with the floor angled to the drain.
Remove the silly mirror wall and replace the vanity.

The old hot water system had a case built around it. No options of being able to open it. So when it died we had to rip the case from around the wall. And of course never built a new one.
It has remained ugly.
We picked up a screen in the garden section of the local Bunnings then did a kind of Dodgy Brothers Job to set it in place.

I screwed in a couple of brackets then screwed in some timber along the top so I could tie the screen to a frame to keep in in place.

I can live with that!

Three coats of paint later – we used the outside house paint instead of going out to spend more money. This is just a tidy up not a makeover. We also figured if the paint was good for the outside elements it could survive our bathroom!

Instead of my usual ‘duct-tape-the-crap-out-of-everything’ approach, I got some stretchy cord and some hooks. Decided to cover the mirror entirely.

Main curtains back up and we are about done!

There is still a small matter of a lot of unused bathroom products that need to be sorted and tossed, but that can wait a day or so!

Pretty nice to get a job done that has been bugging me for an eon!

Now I have to think of a way to amuse myself tomorrow – doubt this weather is going to clear up yet!

Cheers!

Jeff got a little chilled this evening so I wrapped him in all the blankets and my shawl and dumped Pip on top!! They look too comfy!

New Plans

Check out this lovely big capsicum!! Not bad for the middle of winter hey? It was sweet too – I was a bit afraid it might be bitter.

I decided to keep the seeds, which are now in my net dryer in between the parsley and the thyme!

Well… more sorting today. This time we were re arranging upstairs.
I have just filled out umpteen forms and been registered officially (Working with Vulnerable People) so we can take on a couple of international students.
You know… because the house is always so empty! haha

I heard that the local schools were short a few places for some students from Taiwan to stay so I got in touch with the organisation.
Gone are the days when you just put your hand in the air, got handed a student and went home with them!!
There was quite a lot to the paperwork, even without the registration part, which is basically a background check to make sure you are not too dodgy.
Hence the difficulty in finding beds for all the students I guess.

Anyway, if all goes to plan we will be getting two students who will share our upstairs room (Teenagers love that space!) They go to school during the day, but we get to take them places over the weekend.
Dreadful time of year to visit, but its because they are in summer holidays. Fingers crossed for the appalling weather this week to get it out of its system for a while.

Our house is being ‘inspected’ next Thursday (yeah yeah – there are good reasons to my frantic domestic bliss) and an information night the same evening.

A little different to our usual hosting, but should be fun – lets hope the kids like hiking!!!

I didn’t get out much today. It was twilight the whole miserable day!! I took the chooks some warm mash which they were pretty thrilled with.
I also made pizza’s for dinner.
I was meant to take a final shot of the cooked pizza… but we ate them before I remembered!

Week is about at its end already! Amazing.
Hope your week has more sunshine than mine!
Cheers

My capsicum is a bit ‘Edvard Munch’ don’t you think?

Too Long in Domestic Chores!

Hi!
I won’t bore you with cleaning tales.
We bored Pip enough today as it was!!
Basically we pulled everything out of our bedroom and gave it a good cleaning. The kind of event that means you move furniture, vacuum, mop & dust and sort the odd things that found their way in there to live when they really shouldn’t have!

Since the weather is forecast ugly for the next five days, a few other rooms are slated for a winter’s spring clean!

Hope your day was infinitely more exciting!
Cheers!