It's my prerogative!

Guess what?! Naww, you won't believe it. No really. Well ok... I've kind of changed my mind on the guest room again. Well, you know how it is. You're looking through pictures and one thing jumps, and next minute, its another. The wallpaper will now be saved for another time. The chest of drawers will stay, but instead of being turquoise and gold, it will be ...different... you know what? I shouldn't even say till it's done. You'll all think I'm totally fickle, (and I totally am) but what can I say? Too many ideas, not enough house! (Don't get me wrong, there's more than enough house. You know what I mean)

Most importantly, I will still need a patchwork quilt!

On another note, what do we think of coloured or patterned ceilings? Too too much, or a little different but no way, or a little bit cool? I actually rather love these (she says only a month or two after announcing most definitely to hubby that they should always be white)

I've never done wallpapering, but I can imagine papering ceilings would rank as a fairly unpleasant task.

 

In other news, we've packed up and shipped out a bunch of sheep. We were rather overstocked, especially for such dry conditions, so it was time to move some on.

They finished loading last night, and wouldn't you know it? Tonight it's raining. If only we'd known that all we had to do to make it rain was sell some sheep. Turns out those naked rain dances while howling at the moon were totally in vain. Who knew?

I'm heartily looking forward to winter now. Why? I came across this picture again in one of my Pinterest albums.

Add in one cup of hot chocolate or some sticky date pudding and I am there.

 

 

PS: Guest bedroom ceiling. This wall paper. I think I like it!

 

Bless his heart xo

After I had a mini whirlwind of fury today on account of a) being sick, b) being very tired, c) stressed by the mess and chaos around me and d) having children climbing all over me every time I sat down to rest, I retreated to the bedroom with my iPad and Vicki under my arm, and more than a few tears in my eyes.

I was amazed and impressed to hear that after coming in and giving me loads of kisses, Harry came out to his Dad and told him that he should come and get Vicki and look after her because I was very very tired. He's such a perceptive boy for a two-year old, and very compassionate. I hope he never loses that.

 

Day #25639 in the House of Infectious Bugs and Plagues

Muh. I am well and truly sick of being sick. Tolerance level is at an all time low. Look at me wrong and you might lose your head! Just kidding, I'm 1000% more likely to burst into tears.

Oh. And that "Big Cloud" on the Weather Channel? Nothing. Nada. Not a single drop squeezed out of that miserable cloud.

Where is our rain? Oh wait. It's over on the coast with all the rest. Sorry sheep, no grass for you just yet.

Muh. That's the sound of a sad and sorry groan, by the way.

 

However, there's always tomorrow, right?

 

Oh and another thing.

Bananas. I'm not convinced. Texturally unpleasant.

Do you like bananas?

 

 

And in other news...

First it was the wallpaper, and now I have sourced the chest of drawers for the guest room. I had to go head to head with the enemy to win it on eBay, but here she is, in all her stripped-back, ready to be redone glory:

She's perfect. Curvy in all the right places. And even scraped back, so the not-so-fun bit is done. I can't wait for her to arrive. I may change her drawer pulls, but we'll see.

I have a cunning plan for the patchwork quilt. Let me tell you a story. A week before hubby and I were married here at the farm, my (quite frankly incredible) bridesmaid turned up to a house in chaos. We had no kitchen, just a temporary "camp" on the back verandah. Clutter and crap and builders and boxes and stuff everywhere. You couldn't imagine. You would cry to see it. We nearly did cry when realisation struck that we had only a week. She walked in the door, grasped the situation immediately and the conversation went like this.

Beth: "what can I do, give me a job"

Mum: "could you make your bed"

Beth: "ok, where are the sheets"

Mum: "no, I mean actually make the bed!"

Two minutes later, Beth had drill in hand, putting together the slats for her bed. What a trouper! And she didn't even get offered a cup of tea after her early morning flight and 3 hour drive! Which she likes to remind me of, often... lol...

 

So anyway, my cunning plan? Invite Mum to stay. When she walks in the door, hand her a pile of charm squares and suggest that she make the bedding. Think it'll fly? (Michelle thinks not. She thinks Mum will see through it. Hmmm.)

 

 

 

 

In the pink

The House of Infectious Bugs and Plagues continued its coughs, sniffles and generally lethargy today, which practically forced...forced I say!... us to park on the couch with magazines and our Dear Friend Google for most of the day.

I found some beautiful things. One day when I am In The Money, I will do up the back verandah (which is kind of at the front?) and make it a little quiet private sitting room for lounging around on lazy weekends while hubby is watching the cricket/rugby/whichever sport happens to be on. It will be painted white. It will be climate controlled for all seasons. I will get rid of the aluminium frame windows and put in wooden framed ones that will suit the house, perhaps bi-fold so that the perfume of the flower beds I'm looking out over will waft in. *snort*... you would chortle too at that after seeing the current view. I know. I'll need a gardener too. My thumb is definitely not green!

This will be my sofa:

My Ottoman:

My Cushions:

My lamp table:

My lamp:

My snacks:

 

I will decorate with these enormous paper flowers.

A stack of mags, a good book, a cup of tea... and that will be me.

 

 

 

 

Much Ado About Nothing

How neat is this? A little spot for a kiddie to read, made out of a re-covered cot mattress. Love the mozzie net with it too. They called it a reading nook, but I have to confess I have a loathing for the words "nook" and "station" when used for spots around the house. Way overused on Pinterest. Ok, pointless rant over... lol...

Today was paperwork day. Not my most favourite of past times, though I did have a lovely assistant:

What a sweetheart. And very helpful.

Not a lot happening out here in the bush. We keep getting sick with some sort of virus, reinfecting each other over and over again... doesn't that sound lovely. Want to come visit? lol... but seriously, we're all getting a bit sick of it. Sick... get it? Ahhh I kill me. On any given day one or more of us will have the runs, nausea, vomiting, extreme lethargy, headaches, muscle aches, chills... any suggestions on getting rid of it once and for all? It's been going on for about 3 weeks now... enough already I say!

And with that, I'm off to loaf in front of the Weather Channel. We have a "Big Cloud" on our 10 day forecast tomorrow, with any luck it will actually happen for once! Bring it on, I say...

 

 

 

Let the sourcing begin...

I unearthed my stash of vintage wallpaper yesterday, I think it will be perfect for the guest room. I've had it for years, carting it around everywhere, now I know why!

Hopefully this will help in the patchwork decision-making process, which has gone precisely nowhere. I also decided not to make the room quite as "busy" as the picture...plain curtains for one. And I love this idea:

The frame with either wallpaper or fabric as the "picture" is really pretty. I have a great big frame I could use, only it's got three divisions, not six. It used to be the top of a coffee table.

They're predicting rain for Friday/Saturday, and more next week. I do hope they're right this time, some lovely steady soaky rain would be heaven sent. At the moment its all a bit dry.

 

 

 

 

Indecision of the Patchwork Kind

 

Well you can see what I've spent the day doing. And you can probably guess which room it's for. Yup, the guestroom. I'm hoping to use that aqua/turquoise colour on some of the walls, so I would like some of that in there. I like Cameo, Gypsy Girl and Marmalade, but then dammit, I like them all! Help!!!! What would look best as a patchwork quilt, and work well with turquoise? I'm thinking (with the guidance of Mum) of doing 6" squares.

I showed hubby the picture yesterday and he's happy to give me free reign. Yes! He said any truck driver/musterer/stock agent would be more than comfortable in a room like that. So, time to start sourcing stuff. Because you know, it's not like I don't have enough unfinished or even unstarted projects!

Speaking of unfinished projects, we completed last night's mustering project this morning. The result:

Water!!!

 

Right. Back to deliberating over patterns and colours and fabrics and wallpapers.

 

 

The best laid plans...

Sometimes, things just don't go to plan. Tonight for example.

The plan: settle on the couch with a movie and a bowl of popcorn - a bit of R & R post-muster.

The reality: discover this... 14 silly sheep bogged in a dried up ground tank.

Not long after this discovery I found myself in the ram paddock mustering sheep to move them on out, while hubby rescued these silly twits. Now, I wasn't kidding in my earlier post when I said I was no good at mustering. If you were to give the option of, say, mustering, or walking down Queen Street Mall naked, yodelling at the top of my lungs, I'd seriously start practising my yodel. Nevertheless, I jumped on the two-wheeler, gave myself a very quick crash course (not literally, happily) in riding it, as I've only very minimal experience and that was 18 months ago, and set off to muster the paddock. Alone. In a 500 acre paddock (this is the small paddock). And you know what? I didn't fall off the bike. I did muster a mob of sheep together. I did get a little lost, but managed to follow a fence line, so it wasn't too bad. And I didn't burst into tears! We ended up having to abandon as it was getting too dark, so my efforts ended up being in vain, but I did discover that I can still ride the bike, I can manage to get a bit of a mob together, and my biggest challenge is knowing where the hell I am.

This wasn't the end. We'd just settled on the couch when hubby's Aunty Jan rang. Her ute threw a wheel and she needed rescuing. Cue the whole crew piling into 2 cars and heading out into whoop whoop to rescue her and leave her with a car. Aunty Jan is 70, a tough nut, and a real character. She works as hard or harder than most blokes half her age. You could write a book about her. There actually are books written about her. There is a museum in the USA which just requested her old black hat for their collection. For real, people! Anyway, she'd do anything for us, or anyone else she'd happen to meet, so we couldn't leave her stranded. Movie and popcorn night tomorrow, eh?

Auntie Jan and one of her "babies".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh so pretty

Now. I know I've already rabbitted on about the guest bedroom enough, but what can I say, it's on my mind. Perhaps because it's a room that won't be used all the time, I feel more like really letting loose on it, because no one will be in there long enough to get sick of it. Or perhaps because the rest of the place is fairly sorted out, if not yet actually done. Whatever... I'm enjoying plotting and planning.

So to add to my previous mood board... Colour. White and colour, not so much pastel. This first pic is probably my favourite, I absolutely love it. The use of different wallpapers, the gold (I'm not normally a gold person, but it's kind of muted), the iron bed and patchwork quilt... just add in the chandelier and I'm sold!

 

Yep. The first picture is it. Think I might have to sleep there myself, bugger the guests!

 

Only a 2 year old...

Picture this. You're sitting around a table with a group of people - family, workers - having just finished lunch and tucking into coffee and cake, when your 2 year old calls out for his Daddy. His Daddy, being in mid-sentence, doesn't answer, so 2 year old does what only a 2 year old could do, and brings his potty, complete with enormous poo to the dinner table, and proudly shows it off, because it's So Big.

Oh. My Goodness.

 

 

 

 

 

Round 'em up!

It's lamb marking time down here on the farm, always a busy time. I'm the camp cook, on account of the fact that the sheep don't go where I want, I don't like the big bumps when riding flatout across the paddock, I frequently get lost (these paddock are several thousand acres each, and to my city eyes, they all look much the same), oh yeah, and I have two kids to look after. We got smart and brought in a gyrocopter to help this time, and instead of taking 4 days, it only took one. We'll never muster without one again! We have Dorper sheep, and they're cunning wily beasts, great at hiding and taking off on you. Not the cuddly docile woolly sheep you see in a picture book, that's for sure, so the gyro was invaluable in finding the mobs and bringing them together. Much less stress all round!

An aerial view of our place

Hard at work.

The lamb marking team. Hubby must have ducked out of this one. They tag the ears with our property name and number, and put rubber rings on their tails and for the (un)lucky blokes, their ...ahem... nuts get a ring too. I still dry heave when I think of the number of times I've heard that the old-timers used to bite the nuts out, and slice off the tails with a knife. I think that fits into the cruel and unnecessary box. I wonder how true it is? The biting part, anyway.

Waiting their turn

Having a little rest.

There's a whole lot of standing around for the sheep.

Ready to be drafted.

Lamb marking is dusty, thirsty work...

...but this one still looks cool as a cucumber!

I got smarter in the kitchen this time, too. I've always found the cooking to be quite stressful, I mean lets face it, I'm no caterer, and I find cooking for others daunting. But this time, it's been quite chilled - lucky really, as Vicki was quite ill for the first couple of days. The majority of the cooking has been done with one hand, or with her in a sling. By 8am the first day, I had a batch of muffins, chocolate chip cookies and date loaf made up, plus bacon hocks on for pea and ham soup, a 6kg pork roast defrosting (6kg...yeah, I know. Huge!), and chickens and salads organised for lunch. I admit it. I cheated with the chickens. Picked them up from the IGA the day before. Yesterday by lunchtime I had osso bucco in the slow cooker, the pea and ham soup bubbling away on the stove, and a passionfruit cheesecake chilling in the fridge. And today, there are plenty of leftovers from all the meals for lunch. There's even been time for this:

I know. Neat, huh?