Happy Holidays!

That's all really. Have a safe and happy Christmas and New Year!

See you in 2012!

Picture from...
Get all the Animations you need for your web pages and emails at Free Animations
 And it's all FREE!

Last night I cooked dinner!

Not a super thrilling statement in itself, but given poor A has been lumped with most of the cooking for the last, oh, 3 months, it was pretty exciting that I actually felt like doing it!

So, Japanese it was. And it was pretty awesome if I do say so myself!

In the very middle, tofu with soy sauce, ginger and spring onion. On the left Nasu Dengaku from momofukufor2. Really simple, but could possibly do with a bit less sugar?? And on the right, soba noodles with tofu, carrot and zucchini - hot for A, cold for me. 

A quick hello from Axel - he has an obsession with bags/boxes/tiny-Axel-sized-spaces and will happily clamber his way in for a sneaky nap. Very cute.

Anyway, today is get ready to go on holidays day. Get new tyres, clean out the cars, finish staining and sealing the outside of the doors in the picture above, set up watering system and so on. If yesterday's effort is anything to go by I predict I get less than half done and need about three naps so I best get to it!

The 'tip' chairs finally meet the new table!

So in all the excitement of finishing up the school year and spreading the word about little Baby A I never finished the chair and dining table story.

After about 6 friday nights of A being out during the football season and me ironing, stretching and staple gunning I finally finished all the chairs! Phew! The very next day we went out and bought ourselves a new dining table. I think that it is actually the first brand new piece of big furniture that we've purchased (flat pack desks and office chairs don't count). We'd seen the table a while back and both agreed that it was what we wanted. We checked out prices online but they turned out to be more expensive than buying it locally so that's what we did. The lady who served us was an absolute riot and spent most of the sales time telling us about meeting footballers when she worked in a store in St Kilda. So funny.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the table and chairs, together, in our dining room!

The table extends out at each end so we can fit 8 people easily and 10 at a squeeze. It makes such a difference to the space from the round table we had before and the chairs are much more comfortable. 

Table and chair project - complete!

Liebster Blog Award, holidays and those cookies

Firstly, thanks to Natalie over at inthenightsky for the blog award. You should definitely go check her blog out if you haven't already! This award is for bloggers with less than 200 followers and in accepting it you are asked to do the following...

1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you.

2. Reveal 5 blogs you have chosen for the award and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog

3. Copy and paste the award to your blog

4. Request that people you have sent the awards to forward it on to their favourite bloggers

As my corner of blog world here is pretty small I'm passing it on to just two blogs at this point.

1. Sammie at Marriage Renovations And...

2. Relatively new blogger Yaeli at Mummy In Progress

In other news, I am now on holidays! Cue fireworks and happy cheers. No more work until February 1, 2012. Gosh that feels good to say. And even better than that, then there'll only be 10 working weeks until I start mat leave! 

The cookie in a jar thingys were a hit! They were easy to make (once we hunted down the right size jars)  and they taste pretty good too. How do I know this? I got to the last of 8 jars, was about to put the lid on and thought - hang on, did I put the baking powder and bicarb soda in this one??? So I tipped it out, added them (possibly for the second time), made that batch of cookies for us and refilled the jar correctly! All's well that ends well! I also got inspired and made Christmas cupcakes to farewell my year 7s. They were meant to look like santa hats - not too bad I guess although I could do with some piping practice! Sorry for the grainy iPad photo but you get the idea.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

And there goes another two weeks.

Time really does fly at this stage of the year.

Thankfully I've now finished reports and am feeling pretty darn excited that I won't have to write any more probably until November 2013! There are 4 days of work left until the holidays. Life is good.

Today I'm making Christmas gifts for my staffroom. I'm attempting these cookie mixture in a jar thingys from Bakerella. I hope they work out OK. I'm going to try substituting some things to make different flavours so some cranberry and white choc instead of milk choc and m&ms. Cross your fingers for me (and my workmates)!

A quick yet exciting update!

I can't believe it's been a month since I posted anything! Talk about slack. It's been a busy time I guess. Marking and reports are starting and we've been trying to finish the front yard. Our efforts so far have been severely hampered by the cold, rainy weather we've had for the last week though. I went to work today back in my winter coat, most of the day I wished I'd worn a scarf as well - you wouldn't believe it's only a month until Christmas!

We've celebrated our first wedding anniversary.

And the end of our first trimester - Baby A is due in the first week of June 2012!!!!

Now I'm starting to feel better (and believe that it is actually happening) I'm pretty excited!

I've no doubt that report procrastination will see me pick up the pace of posts again in the next couple of weeks but for tonight I'm going to leave it here, go lock up the chickens, and go to bed!

Hope all is well with you!

Paving progress

As promised here are some paving progress photos. It took so long. We are still not completely finished but here is what unfolded 2 weekends ago. And a look back at what we started with here.

Last weekend we filled in the gaps, compacted, brushed paving sand into the gaps. As there were only two of us on the job I didn't take any photos. It's blowing a gale and raining at the moment - first test to see if we got the levels right, fingers crossed there's no puddles - but I'm not going out to take any photos now either!

Jobs still to do...

-sand and paint retaining wall

- put in small drain and permanent supports for edges of paving

- stain new bifold doors and give the front door some love

- paint front step

- replace plant that got squashed by 5 falling pavers - doh!

and in an ideal world, get rid of the bottle green fascia, drain pipes and window frames.

It's looking pretty good though, if I do say so myself! Can't wait to get some furniture out there and enjoy it!

So much to tell

Phew. Where to start? Holidays I think.

We had lots of visitors over the school break and it was so lovely. We are often the ones heading down to Victoria to visit but this time people came to us!

One of my good friends from uni, who was around when A and I first met (and told him in no uncertain terms that he'd better be good to me or he'd have to answer to her) and her husband came to visit. I love it when they visit as they always know what they want to do and where they want to go so I don't feel like I have to entertain too much.

First on their list was a visit to Floriade and second, a bike ride around the lake. So much fun. 

Beautiful tulips at Floriade

View from the Ferris Wheel. The theme was food - much easier to identify things from the air!

Watermelon!

Look who we met on the bike ride! So, so cute.

Once they left, the weather turned good and I got to finish my garden painting, plant the new veggies and generally sit in the sun and relax. Nice.

We had mum and dad up this last weekend and as the weather held, we set them to work paving. OMG, it was such hard work. I am so grateful for them always being willing to help with this kind of thing. It would have taken us weeks without them. Thankfully the hard work is done and we just need to finish off the fiddly bits next weekend. In the meantime, praying for no rain! I'll put pics of this up later.

In other news, new window/doors going in today and tomorrow, we finally got onto the ACT Housing fence people (as we share two fences with government housing) who are putting together a fence quote and a quote for our bathroom reno is on it's way. Yikes, hopefully so is a lotto win!

Hope all is well with you!

Game of skill?

I've married a gamber! Not a problem gambler, just a bloke who likes the odd game of poker, plays on the stock market and is not turned off by the improbability of winning something on a timezone game machine. A went off on a bucks extravaganza last weekend and got home late last night. I was asleep but woke up when I heard the car pull in. This was our conversation...

A: Hey sweetie.
Me: Hey.
A: How are you?
Me: Sleepy (roll over and close eyes again)
A: Want to see what I won at timezone?
Me: Mmm, sure. (expecting some manner of ugly soft toy)
A: (holds up iPad)
Me: what? You won an iPad at timezone?
A: yep, game of skill. I was this close at winning a PS3 as well.
Me: what?! How much money did you spend trying to do that?
A: About $40. But most of that was trying to get the PS3.

So here I sit testing out the iPad. Unbelievable. I didn't think anyone ever won those things.

Another sewing challenge

I think I mentioned the other day that my friend J, has just had a baby boy named Oscar (such a cool name). So after my chair success I got all sewing inspired and decided to make a hooded towel from this tutorial. I was skeptical to begin with but it was easier than I expected and I'm so proud of how it turned out! Hope both J and Oscar like it too!

Making the hood - step 1

Hood - step 2

Hood - step 3

All sewn together

Folded up with 'O' taggy toy

I made an 'O' taggy toy as well with the left overs. It's not quite so polished but I'm
thinking that Oscar will be far too busy playing with the tags to look at my wobbly stitching!

I'll definitely make the towel again. My confidence with the sewing machine is growing so I'm on the lookout for new projects too!

Taste test

Once we were sure we had an egg from each of the chickens it was time for a taste test! Rolled omelet with spicy eggplant relish. Mmmmm.

Delicious. And so nice to no longer need to support the commercial egg industry, especially with the recent discussion around changing the guidelines for 'free range' farms from allowing 1500 chooks per hectare to 20,000!

Rain, rain, go away...

You're making my outdoor jobs unpleasant, if not impossible. The pavers and sand are still sitting out the front waiting and I had just one coat of paint left to do out the back...

Looks like I'll be waiting until next Tuesday to finish it now :-(

Hello Holidays

A quick celebratory beginning of holidays post before I go and collapse into an exhausted, sniffly heap. I just can't kick the cold but at least I've got a bit of time to relax now. We don't have any big plans for these holidays but we do have lots of people coming from Melbourne to visit us for a change! So apart from entertaining I plan on ....

1. Hanging out with the curious chickens. They are far to brave for their own good. More and more often I am finding myself chasing them back down the driveway and off the street. The other day two of our neighbours were standing on the sidewalk having a chat and the chickens marched straight up to them to say hello and started scratching around their feet!

2. Planting some more veggies. This is our first home grown carrot. A little pale in colour but delicious! I've planted seeds for corn, cucumber, eggplant, celery, pumpkin, spring onion and some marigolds and nasturtiums which are supposedly good companion plants in terms of pest control. Waiting patiently for them to pop their little heads through the soil!

3. Heading out to Floriade if we get some decent, warm weather.

4. Visiting friend J who just had a baby boy called Oscar. Such a cool name! I have to finish her baby gift first though.

5. Painting and paving.

For now though, I'm going for a nap before the first lot of visitors arrive!

OMG!

We have an egg people! One perfect little brown egg!

Amazing! I thought we were at least another two weeks away.

I'm home sick for the next couple of days as I have a cold and no voice - so annoying as I was meant to be off to Sydney for 3 days with group of kids which I was really looking forward to. But finding this egg just made my day 100 times better!

Will there be another one tomorrow?

What we've been doing - the front yard saga continues

It's possibly a bit over the top to say our front yard landscaping has been a saga. It hasn't been overly dramatic. Just a really long process when you can only dedicate weekends to it.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

We are having a weekend off this weekend as the pavers and sand won't be delivered until next week. It'll be nice to not feel like we should be working even though we'll probably find something else to do!

On a different topic I went to see my school year 7 and 8 drama last night. They did Andy Griffiths' Just Macbeth. It was hilarious. I was so proud of them. At one point I was nearly crying with laughter. So much fun

Have a lovely weekend!

Dressing up

I don't often do a 'what I wore' post. Mostly because it's just never been my thing. However, I've been MIA for a week or two so why not start back with one?

A's work has a ball each September and as we haven't been for the last couple of years, this year we decided to go. 

So I splurged on a new pair of heels and an Alannah Hill bolero. The dress was from Christopher Chronis in Melbourne. A got his wedding suits there, saw the dress and insisted I try it on. And then insisted he buy it. Despite my "I'll never wear it" protests, I do really like it. I even stopped working on the landscaping long enough to play with the Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail polish strips. I'm a fan! I'm no good at waiting for nail polish to dry and usually end up ruining it before I manage to leave the house so these went on well, a little fiddly to start with but no waiting! Will definitely be looking for an excuse to get some more!

Please excuse the messy spare room in the photo. We've been working so hard on getting the outside of the house looking good, some of the inside has suffered! The shelf in there has since been replaced with a new bookshelf and is looking MUCH more respectable! 

The Ball turned out to be really good fun. The band was excellent and A's workmates were lovely. I felt so old the next day though. I didn't drink but I was absolutely exhausted all day - must have been all the dancing!

Hope your week is going well!

Yard progress

A (long) while ago I posted about tackling the old BBQ area. The plan was to render the back wall of the old brick BBQ and then put the hand-me-down spa in front of it. Well, we did do that. I have never posted any pictures of it as quite frankly, it's still a disaster area. So the last couple of weekends I've been working on fixing it up. 

Way back when, before the work began

The next job was to render the garden bed in the foreground of the photo above and as the garden bed is empty at the moment it seemed like the right time to start.

Supplies

The offending garden bed

End of day 1 - You can kind of see the spa and other wall at the far right

This last weekend I finished it off so, weather permitting, it can be painted next weekend. The bare patch is staying bare. Eventually there will be decking that comes right up to the edge of the garden bed so while it looks a bit strange, it's strategically saving time and money!

Meanwhile, out the front of the house, A has been tackling the infinitely more challenging retaining wall issue. Being that we want to pave the front area but when we dug it out to prepare the base, we had to dig below the footings of the retaining wall. And, the wall is kind of cobbled together and not flat so rendering as is would be a nightmare. Solution, attach frame and blue board to existing wall and render that. Doesn't sound too difficult...right?

The offending wall

Area to be paved

Wrong! But it's getting there. There's been about 3 days work in getting it built and covered but it's starting to come together now. Next weekend we'll be rendering out here.

Oh to have a shed full of the right tools and 20 tradies to do the work for you, huh Block, you make it look so easy!

Happy 2nd Anniversary House

Okay, so I'm a bit late with this. It was actually the 8th of August but not to worry. We have been here for 2 years now. I was looking around on the local real estate website and found they now show the photos from past sales. Sometimes progress seems so slow so it's nice to go back and see where you started. Here's just one sample of what we saw when we first inspected the place...

Blogger has made this purple less intense than it was! And you can't see the splotches on the carpet. It was a good day, the day we painted this room and replaced the carpet!

Moving on. Last year I posted a wishlist of sorts so I thought I'd check our progress...

• New fence - Lots of talking, no action!
• Painted lounge room + kitchen - Done
• Floating sideboard on lounge entrance wall - Meh, not so enamoured by this idea anymore
• Paint the rest of the doors - Ha! Maybe one day! I'll let you know on the 3rd anniversary!
• Floorboards sand and polish - Chose to carpet rooms but main living/dining/hall still need attention.
• Finish the spa area - in progress again. The spa is in and usable, just not pretty.
• Bathroom/laundry reno - too big to comprehend at this point but I have collected lots of lovely inspiration pictures on Pinterest !
• Deck out the front - Changed to paving and is in progress
• Vegie garden - Done
• Chook shed - Done

I'm only going to add two things to this list for the next year.

• Re-hang pictures that have been down since painting (in January)
• Get old wardrobe doors back on or buy and hang new ones (they have been off since February)

Updates on the 'in progress' projects are on the way!

Axel may not realise but it is most definately spring-ish in Canberra at the moment. I love this time of year, when everything starts to come back to life. I also love it because it's not a busy time yet in terms of doing work on the weekends and people are not yet properly out of winter hibernation (yes, in Canberra this happens. Social events slow down significantly over winter). So, a fairly quiet social scene mixed with 2 weekends in a row of stunning weather means we get things done around the house. More on that soon though. For now, here are some photos from a beautiful sunny weekend.

The last of the Broccoli - this one was as big as my head!

Lucky - all grown up and exploring the spa cover.

Beautiful blossoms in our front yard - ahh

Hope you have also had a lovely weekend!

Dining Chair - Before and After

I've completed 2 and a half chairs! Enough to show a before and after. After considering a range of fabrics from spoonflower I found a simple, neutral coloured linen in a local shop and went with that. It's slow going but I'm happy with the way they are turning out and at an estimate they'll end up around $50 a chair. 

So, without further ado...

Before

After