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!