Our weekend

Thank you for all of your messages on our good news last week.

I am continuously amazed at the generosity and support of the blogging community and it makes me so happy that I started my little blog and joined in.

After the big announcement on Friday I unintentionally stayed away from the laptop nearly all weekend. 

I did see emails coming through on my phone though :-)

We managed to get outside and get some more work done while the sun was shining.

We have had this horrible spot in our yard that has been waiting for a solution for years now. Yes we are still renovating almost 4 years on, it seems we just keep finding more to do.

Anyways....  this slope has been a big eye sore, we wanted to keep the slope to allow easier access to the back of the yard for garbage bins and wheelbarrows etc but nothing grows except weeds. 

 

We finally decided to concrete the path and finish it to match our crushed limestone courtyard. 

Nick was very inventive and poured the concrete then levelled and then added crushed limestone to the top and patted it in. I think it turned out really well and because the stone is set in the concrete it won't roll down the hill or end up anywhere it shouldn't. 

I went out more for moral support rather than any usefulness to Nick but I did manage to weed the veggie garden and mulch it. 

I have been so slack over the last few months that the garden was a bit of a mess. It is quite amazing that we have some veggies growing. 

I don't really know what I am doing in the garden but I am working on it 

We often find things growing that we haven't planted and usually they are weeds but sometimes they're not. If in doubt I let it grow for a bit to see what happens.

We had a very productive day, the path is finished but I didn't take a photo of the finished path because it was dark. Once spring comes around and the backyard looks prettier I will have to take some updated photos. 

There are a few projects I haven't really shared properly that I would like to.

One is our pizza oven, we love it. I love it the most I think. Nick cooks in the pizza oven which means I get the night off and there is no oven to clean,  yay!

Here he is getting it all ready for our roast chicken dinner on Saturday. Yum!!

We have chicken and chips most Saturday nights and cooking the chicken in the fire outside is quicker and it has a fantastic smoked flavour.

I am really looking forward to the weather warming up and getting outside a bit more. How about 

you?

xx

Long weekend and a winner

We have a long weekend here in NSW for the Queen's Birthday so we are taking advantage of the extra day and we have been playing with concrete.

If you have been around for a while you will remember that just over two years ago we ripped up our back deck that used to look like this

Bit by bit we cleared and levelled other areas in our backyard and used the extra dirt and old pavers, etc to fill in the void below the old deck.

We worked and worked with lots of dirt and rubbish everywhere for weeks

We spent some time researching paving options and in the end decided to make our own using this plastic paving template and concrete. 

It was a much cheaper option and the result was just what we wanted.... rustic. 

We decided early on to go with a rustic and aged style that way any mistakes could be passed off as part of 'the look'

Finally it was all done, you can read more about it here. 

Over the the last two years some of the pavers sunk. We knew this would happen as the dirt underneath compacted further and we knew that the paving would need to be redone.

Fortunately not all of the paving has to be replaced just the area under the pergola where the deck used to be. 

So that is what we have been up to and what we are doing today. It isn't pleasant because it is so cold out there and really, I have no enthusiasm for this project considering we've already done it once before :-(

But it will be nice when it's finished.

Before I head out to brave the weather a big 'thanks'  for all of your lovely comments on my art work. 

It was a bit of fun and very easy to do. 

Tamarah from Shabby Vintage Junk is the lucky recipient of the set. 

Thanks Tamarah for your lovely encouragement I hope you enjoy the art.

I hope you all enjoy your Monday and I do hope you are doing something more pleasant than I am.

xx

Our Backyard

It's been a while since I took you on a tour of our backyard 

it is a beautiful day outside so I thought I'd wander through 

and take some carefully selected photos of our yard.

It is surprising how hard it is to take a nice photo of our yard at the moment. 

It is a mess. 

I may share the reality shot at the end.

 The chickens are not laying at the moment

 I am waiting on some new ones to arrive at the store but that has been weeks. 

The magpie hangs around pinching the dogs and the cats biscuits, clever thing ;-)

The seedlings my nephew planted are coming along nicely, he was so excited to see the growth when he was here last week. The sticks are my improvised markers. 

One of my office chairs :-)

Another favourite spot to work or just drink coffee and read my magazine, during my morning tea break of course ;-)

and now the reality  shots, 

the mess that really lurks in our yard. 

We have made a start on rendering the house so everything is moved out of the way. We just ran out of mixture (see top right), sand in driveway, truck full of rubbish waiting to go to the tip, fly screens still waiting to be replaced, seat over dirt where the dog loves to lie and keeps killing the grass. 

Oh dear, the work that still needs to be done.

Do you have messy/ugly spots at your place that you carefully edit out of your photos?

xx

Thank you

Just popping in for a quick one today to say thankyou so much for all of the lovely and encouraging feedback I had from last weeks post.

Today I am feeling really good and in fact this week has been so much better. I think that becoming aware of how I was feeling and that I was not coping well has helped alot.

So thank you my friends

In yesterdays post about our backyard makeover I mentioned that my wonderful hubby went out and planted the mondo grass just before it snowed.

Well this is what he looked like....

So dedicated.....LOL!

He tells me that he was nice aand toasty on top due to the four layers of clothing however he may need to invest in some long johns!

xx

A work in progress - backyard

I hope you can bear with me through this post, I think I had to include so many photos just to emphasize how big this project has been and how long it has taken!

Our backyard has been a work in progress, we started in January 2010 and my last update was the chook house in November 2010.

You can read about it here at the Chook House

It all started here you can read about it all at

"The beginning part 1, part 2 & part 3"

Then in November 2010 we started working on this area again.

We levelled it and we built retaining walls and we moved an awful lot of rock!

During the work we also installed the new sheds

read about it  

 here  and here 

you can see them in the background.

We worked hard and just in time for our Christmas Party on the 23rd December 2010 we left it at this.

 

In April 2011 my wonderful hubby started work on it again

We also decided it was time to finish the other unsightly areas that we had left around the place.

We had uneven surfaces around the new sheds, we had dirt around the side of the house, drain that still needed to be installed and messy areas that were just hard to mow and looked unattractive.

After much deliberation it was decided that the best way to fix this and avoid lots of back breaking digging was to use crushed limestone.

Is it really sad to get so excited about a finished path and an installed drain?

Hubby worked hard yesterday in the freezing cold and today just before it snowed to add some finishing touches

and were done....

except for all of the plants that need to get planted in spring and the lattice that needs to go in the veggie garden to support my climbing plants.......

 and I am sure there is still more......

but I was just too excited about our progress that I just had to share it with you.

What do you think?

I think that if you made it this far you deserve a big hug for being a great friend and sharing my excitement!

I may follow up with some more detailed explanations in the future including some really interesting stats like how many tonnes of rock, dirt and sand we have moved. LOL!!!

How much money above mentioned stuff has cost us and how much I have saved on gym fees by working hard in the yard! : )

xx

Chook House

This old cubby house was a bonus we got when we bought our house.

2 years ago this is where is stood.

Last summer we did a lot of work in the back yard and replaced out rotting deck with paving.

As part of the work we relocated the cubby to the back left corner with plans to one day turn it into a chook shed.

During the October school holidays I managed to get out and give the house a mini makeover.

I gave the house a new coat of paint and young Nicholas helped me make some window boxes out of old pallets we had.

We still have some work to do before we can let the chickens move in but for now it looks

Much better and the total cost of this project was $10 for the petunia's, everything else we already had left over from other projects.



Thank you to all of my lovely friends for being concerned for me and asking how I am going, I had an exciting weekend with an overnight stay in hospital. I started bleeding quite heavily on Sunday afternoon and Nick took me to ED. The gyno on duty removed some more tissue and after consultation with my gyno believe that it may have been a large piece of placenta left. They think that it could have been what they were seeing on the ultrasound and mistaking for the AVM. I was kept overnight because I lost a fair bit of blood and my blood pressure was low so they monitored me, I am back home now and having a few days off work to rest. I have a few more tests over the next few weeks that will hopefully confirm that I am on the mend.

I hope you are all having a lovely day and I aim to spend some time catching up with your blogs this afternoon.

xx

P.S  I just went back over to check my spelling and realised I could include another before and after in this one blog, in the first picture you can see a little puppy running around. It was taken in October 2009, here is that little puppy now.