Rain

We have had a lot of rain lately, hopefully this will be the beginning of the end of the drought. Anyway the rain has been wonderful and it is great to see the green grass and the flowers thriving, well doing the best they can with our limited (but growing) gardening skills.

I have all of these new plants to put in the ground and photos to take so that I can share our progress in the backyard but I haven't been able to finish due to the rain, not that I am complaining. Just saying that I need to get more top soil and it is hard to get top soil when it has the consistency of soup.

I did sneak a few previews in, the rendered retaining wall and the new fence colour........ if you look closely.

Je t'adore

I love you, those three words have my life in them....

by Alexandrea to Nicholas III

A simple 'I love you' means more than money...

by Frank Sinatra

I love thee, I love but thee, with a love that shall not die till the sun grows cold and the stars grow old...

by William Shakespeare

One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life, that word is love....

by Socrates

Love doesn't make the world go round, Love is what makes the ride worthwhile...

by Elizabeth Browning

Photo source: McCarthy Designs

Wall Decals

Guess what was waiting for me when I got home today? I was so excited. My birthday present had arrived!! My birthday was a while ago and I got some money so I decided to use some of it to buy some wall decals. I have been eyeing these off for quite a while now and finally I had a perfect reason for buying some.

I ordered my decals from Leen the graphics queen you can find her at www.LeentheGraphicsQueen.com and I am really impressed with the delivery and service.

I knew that I wanted to put one of the decals here on the wall (support beam). I had originally planned to put the quote 'The Will of God will never take you where the Grace of God will not protect you' however I didn't measure before I ordered and the letters were too tall. So I had to reassess my plan.

After some deliberation I decided to re-configure the second decal and use it here instead.

As it turns out I am very pleased with the result. The two little blue bird were thank you gifts (from Leen) and I think they set it off perfectly.

The decals came with instructions on how to best apply them to the wall and it was very easy.

I ended up placing the other decal above our TV in the lounge room.

I am really happy with the way the decals look, thanks Leen you have one satisfied customer!

Retaining Walls

I will warn you now that this entry will not have any finished photos (I still haven't been out to take some) but I thought I could do some progress shots. Just to prove and remind us that we have been busy and we have made progress. This is the side of our house, this side faces North and when we moved in it was a mess. We don't understand why someone would build half a wall and then stop. Where the wall stops they placed rocks in an attempt to finish it off???? It was not nice, wood chips and little terracotta rocks, weeds, blue fence and blue gate. So we started the long process of cleaning this area. Given that this mess was at the side of the house and out of the way it was a job that kept getting put aside for other jobs. On the other side of the gate at the front half of the house we had this mess. More rocks, more blue fence and the neighbours driveway. First we cleared the rocks from the back half and moved them to the front half. We decided to work with what we had and create a rockery on the front side of the fence. We used all of the good sized rocks to create our edges and our wonderful Nan and Pop provided us with cuttings and plants from their garden to get us started. We bought some Pittosporum that we planted as a hedge along the neighbours driveway in order to create some privacy as it grows. Pittosporum is a fast growing hedge (about 1 metre a year from memory) that will grow 4-5 metres high. We will keep it trimmed at about 2 metres high. With some help from our brother Tom we began to finish of the brick wall. Tom dug and poured our concrete base then started us on the brick work. The brick wall that we began working on at the side of the house runs right to the back of the house and looks like this. This part of the brick wall is right outside our bedroom window. One day we will replace our bedroom window with french doors that will open up onto a little courtyard just for us, only big enough for a three piece table and chairs. Picture morning coffee and paper reading. In order to have a courtyard we need to make space so we started digging and knocking out bricks.

This photo gives you an idea of the layout. My WH is pouring the concrete footing for the new wall in the courtyard.

After a few Saturdays of work we finally have a brick wall all the way to the fence. Yes it is a bit wobbly but it was the first go and it isn't in a highly visible spot and we have rendered (photos of that another time) and I will be planting creepers over the wall to disguise the crookedness.

We also have a courtyard.

Proof that we finished this a while ago, there is only one old shed in the background.

At this stage of the backyard we left the walls as they were and then worked on replacing the rotting deck. I have already blogged about our weekend with the Dingo Digger and then our shed erecting.

So we have been working hard on bits and pieces, sometimes it feels like it will never end but slowly , slowly it is starting to come together.

Let there be (nice) light!

When we bought our house the first things we did were, paint - ceiling, walls and trims, replace all of the doors and hardware and we bought new light fixtures. We decided to get the same light fixture throughout most of the house (it was hard enough to find one style we both liked). We ordered our lights (and paid in full) in December 2008, our lights kept getting delayed for one reason or another. At the time we were so busy doing other things and the delay didn't worry us too much. Finally our lights arrived in May 2009, lucky we had lights that worked however they didn't look very good. It is amazing what you get used to and just don't see anymore. We pulled the old light fittings out of the ceiling so we could paint it and given we had ordered new fixtures we never ended up fixing the existing fittings so for almost a year they hung out of the ceiling..... (oops, excuse the washing basket and the cat, and the towel hung over the chair)

Until one rainy day, when we had time my WH climbed into the roof and installed our new lights. He did such a good job! Fortunately my WH is very talented and having a father who is a qualified electrician is great when you want to double check that everything is done right (don't want anyone getting hurt).

Doesn't that look much better! Most of the light fittings were simply switched over. Some were moved to a more appropriate position and left little holes that needed patching however the lights in the family room were originally big down lights and when removed left big holes in the ceiling. The holes were too big to patch easily without leaving an obvious mark so we decided to use a ceiling mould to cover the hole. Easy, or so we thought until we discovered that they aren't easy to find in Australia. On one of our many trips to Bunnings we were walking through the craft aisle when we spotted the round discs made from MDF. A bit of white paint, some liquid nails and voila.....

No holes and nice subtle ceiling moulds.

We have been really busy over January and we managed to get the paving finished, fences painted and walls rendered. Our feature wall is almost done and we are half way through planting all of our new plants. I have been slack, tired, busy, disorganised but I will get photos organised soon to show all of our progress.

Shed - Part Two

After our lovely, extra long weekend spent with our families it was time to get back to work. We took advantage of the Public Holiday on Monday and decided it was time to build some sheds. First thing was working out how it all went together. The instructions that came with the sheds made it really easy to put it all together. The most time consuming part was looking for the right pieces and then finding somewhere to put everything as we went. One shed up and time for lunch (a late lunch anyway). It was so exciting to see some progress. We are very happy with the quality of the shed and the cost. We bought the sheds on line from www.buyashed.com.au and had them delivered to the depot in town for free. As we traded (down graded.... a long way) our BMW for a snazzy truck (KIA Ceres) we were able to pick up the sheds from the depot and save money. We were going to replace the existing shed with one bigger shed 6m x 3m however when we looked at the space where we were going to place the shed we discovered that 3m was too wide to fit. In order to comply with our local council regulations the shed had to be a minimum of 900mm off the boundary/fence and we have an existing brick path in front of the other shed that we preferred not to move so we needed to find a shed less then 3m in depth. The best we could do in order to get the biggest shed for the space was to buy two and place them side by side. Each shed is 3m wide and 2.56m deep. Perfect! At the end of the day we had two sheds built and we were very pleased with the result. They line up and look nice and straight (we were a little bit concerned about our paving efforts). In the end we are happy with having two sheds as all of the gardening stuff and power tools can be locked up in one shed and all of the bikes, kids stuff etc in the other, that way children don't need to access the shed with all of the dangerous items. It is so good to have a project finished. We still have a long way to go though. The pile of pavers on the left hand side of the sheds is to pave the area behind the sheds in order for our bins and wood to get stockpiled. We ended up with a space 6m long and about 1.2m wide. We will keep the wood on the left side and construct a colour bond roof/covering (of some description) below the fence line so that we can stack the wood for our fire and it won't get wet. Behind the right shed we will hide all of our wheelie bins so that they are easy to access but out of sight. The pile of old bricks on the right of the sheds will be used to pave an area just below the vegetable garden. The area is about 5m x 5m and we will put a gazebo there to provide another sitting area. This is still a big job as we will need to build some more retaining walls around the area. This weekend we will hopefully begin paving our outdoor area immediately outside the back door. We used to have a deck that was rotting and we ripped it up, built retaining walls, filled it in, ripped up the existing paving (that sloped towards the house) and levelled the area. We extended the space and we will end up with 65m2 of paved outdoor entertaining. Still so much to do..... As promised this is where my Eiffel tower lives for now. It came with the cute little lights that I have left on it for now but I am not sure that they will stay for long.

New Sheds

It's all over for another year. School finished on the 10th of December with our Nicholas getting the award for academic excellence in Year 4. We are so proud of him and really pleased with how well he did.

When school finished we were lucky enough to spend a week at the Central Coast relaxing on the beach and hanging out together. We stayed in a Holiday Rental, 2 bedroom Cottage just four houses from the beach, just lovely. The house was pet friendly so we took Boss, took our bikes and all the beach gear. Quite amazing how much you can fit into a little hatchback when you try. We highly recommend the house we stayed in, we found it via the Take a Break website and it is called the Umina Beach House.

Last day at the beach house, enjoying the front porch

Boss is learning to pay attention, particularly when you have food

Back home and it was time to get back to work. We decided to build some sheds. This is where the proposed new shed site was left off. So far we had roughly levelled the area with the Dingo (digger) when we hired it for the weekend (mid November).

The existing shed was old and rusted so it will get pulled down and we will put up two new ones. The plan was to lay a paved area next to the existing concrete slab that will house the second shed so we would have two alongside each other.

In order to keep the cost down and given that one shed would be for bikes, skateboards and generally storage for kids stuff we decided to pave the area with offcuts of granite pavers I bought on EBay for $54. The pavers were 50mm in depth so we were pretty sure that the area would be sturdy enough.

Once we finished levelling the area as best as we could (or had patience for, I admit that levelling is such a horrible time consuming job) we then lay some weed mat down in order to reduce the likelihood of bits of greenery growing between our pavers.

Then one by one we laid out our pavers, given that they were offcuts they were all odd shapes and sizes so it was abit like a big (and heavy) jigsaw puzzle. This is about the time we started questioning our decision, we weren't quite sure that our paving was going to work. The whole process seemed very unscientific, we would place a paver in place and if it wobbled one of us would hold up the corner while the other one either shovelled more dirt on or removed dirt as required. We would then put the paver down and jump on it until it stayed it place.

After all the pavers were in place we shovelled in some blue metal road base and swept that into all of the cracks. On top of that we scattered some cement and hosed it all in, prayed and then waited to see if it worked.

While we waited for the cement to dry we started to dismantle the existing shed. Why is it that when you seem to progressing at a good rate and you actually start thinking that you may actually get a job finished in a day you hit a snag? It seems that our existing shed was concreted in and wouldn't budge. Out came the power tools and my WH used the angle grinder to cut the shed away. Of course this meant that we needed to make a trip to Bunnings and purchase more grinding discs and before the job was finished a new angle grinder (guess what WH got for an early Christmas gift).

This is where Day 1 of the new shed project finished. Half an old shed, a drying paved area and a big mess all over the lawn.

Day two: we managed to pull the rest of the shed down and then had to leave our yard in a mess due to work commitments and then while we celebrated Christmas over the next few days with both of our families.

We had a great time and my favourite gift was from my WH. He had remembered my admiring an Eiffel Tower in a gift shop months ago and then in a catalogue a few weeks later.

Happy 2010

What is it about a new calendar that makes us want to re-invent or improve our lives? Is it the "fresh start" an opportunity to begin anew? Anyway, like may others my resolutions are to do with improving my fitness levels and finding more time for the important things/people in my life. Wishing you all a Happy 2010, may it be truly blessed! xx