A Rant

There is a very popular home furnishings place I know you all know. Starts with I. Ends with A. KE in the middle. I bought 3 wardrobes, two bedsides and one large chest of drawers on my one and only ever, in my life, visit there. They've moved house once and have been in storage for the last year and a half, doing nothing. One wardrobe quite literally fell apart today. The chest of drawers frequently loses the drawer-bottoms, the drawer runners have lost screws, and the whole thing can be pulled onto a slant. One bedside flat pack came with two left sides but no right side. The stuff is not cheap, and you have to select it yourself from the shelves, which can be really bloody awkward.

What is the big appeal? I don't get it!

 

 

 

Chasing my tail

Oh how remiss I've been. Poor neglected blog. I haven't known whether I was Arthur or Martha this week. Bathroom renos? Check. Two sets of visitors? Check. Frantic cleaning up before the first set? Check. 3 lots of BAS reports, teething baby, migraine? Check Check Check. Ahh you get the picture. And now it's feet up with a glass of wine, a belly full of cheese and crackers, and spaghetti bolognaise bubbling away on the stove (which I have zero interest in due to aforementioned cheese). Absolute bliss.

 

As I sit here, another "home improvement" project is bubbling away in my brain. I think that will make a major project or two for every single room in the house. Nothing like biting off more than I can chew, right? I won't bore you with the details just yet, except to say that it's creating a sleepout area on an unused stretch of enclosed veranda, with stretchers from the shearer's huts. Still mulling over the details of that one.

 

The bathroom is continuing to take shape. I reattached tiles onto the walls, using matchsticks as spacers. Check 'em out...

Yeah. I know how to tile! I was a bit disappointed at how they turned out, sort of crooked and uneven. I have to remember that the wall underneath is crooked and uneven too, with a great big crack splitting it in half, and almost no tile is straight or even, so I'll just need to suck it up and get over it. Oh, and wouldn't you know it? The day after I stuck these tiles on, two tiles in the other shower fell off at my feet, with two more threatening to do so at any minute. Typical!! And, I recant my comment about not believing in the rules. The rules can be good. The dark inky blue that I love in my bedroom looked appalling in the bathroom. I felt like I was in a deep dark cave, slowly being suffocated. I dug out the vintage duck-egg blue paint quick smart! It's so pretty, so I'm really glad I changed it. This little bloke had a great old time helping me. He liked the dark blue (it was much darker than this pic shows)... at least one of us did!

 

I have found I am a failure at the 'no baby monitor' thing. If I thought I was short on sleep before, I was wrong compared to no monitor. I couldn't sleep until I turned it back on! We experimented and we have to really strain to hear Vicki cry when we're awake, so there's no way she'd wake us while asleep. I just can't seem to do it! Oh dear. Paranoid mother.

In other news, we have a horse here! Now it really feels like a farm. Blue is very quiet, so Harry and I will be able to learn to ride, which will be good, although I find the idea a little unnerving. There's just so much animal there. But yes, it will be fun, I'm sure.

 

And here's one more image I just had to post as it makes me giggle so much... oh the innocence of youth! It's the shoes that kill me... lol...

Looking at that lawn, you'd never guess how dire the rain situation is. We pour the bore water onto it, and with the exception of the hammering the lawn grub gives it, it's coping well. There's got to be some green somewhere, else I think I'd cry every time I went outside. Given the choice between 3 or 4 inches of rain and a Louis Vuitton Mon Monogram bag, I'd choose the rain 1000 times over.

On that note, I might go google curtains. At least the house is something within my control, unlike the rain. Or lack thereof.

 

5 ways to destroy your manicure.

1. Prise old towel rails and fittings off the wall.

2. Scrape heaping piles of old yellowed silicon off tiles and shower base.

3. Chip away at tile adhesive

4. Sand patches of No More Gaps on the walls

5. Scour tiles to remove...well...everything.

 

So guess what I've been doing? Bathroom reno is well underway, and I'm loving the process. Every time I remove another rundown broken and green thing, the more pleased I am with the progress. I just can't wait to finish! When we do the renovation properly, the feature tile will be the one below, so I've decided to use the leftover dark blue paint from our bedroom for this round, rather than the pretty vintage/duck egg blue I was going to use. Otherwise when we do it properly it may not feel new.

I know dark colours are a no-no in small spaces, but I was never one for the "rules", and besides, there's going to be loads of white in there, so I'm sure it'll go ok.

Aside from a little help with the demolition (ie ripping the old shower screen off the wall), it's all been solely my own work, so I'm feeling very proud, and it's not even finished! I think I was born to do this type of stuff. Making over. Good for the soul.

Actually, I lie. I did have this little helper. Note the silicon slung over her arm like a handbag. That's my girl!

Another thing good for the soul is sleep, something I've had precious little of the last couple of nights. Last night I was lucky to get two hours, and about the same the night before. Teething babies, and I don't know what Harry's excuse is! Hopefully tonight it will be much much better, because I think I'll be too comatose to know if it's otherwise. At what point do you throw the baby monitor in the bin and let them fend for themselves?

Have lovely days... I'm off to paint a wall!

 

 

 

 

The hunt for the right knob...

Oi! Get your mind out of the gutter! (And if you don't know what I'm talking about, good for you...).

I do love a pretty drawer knob and found myself hitting a brick wall in my search for knobs "right" for some painted furniture. Exhausted eBay Australia, found myself in eBay UK, and there they were. Look!!

 

Aren't they gorgeous? I could just eat them up. No, really...

I can't wait to use them!

 

Meanwhile, it's been all action down on the farm. My kitchen ceiling is painted! Yes! The ghastly shower screen is gone, ripped down with much pleasure. Felt so good. I have a new one on its way...it's going to be heaven.

We have a second bathroom which we never used even though it's in better nick, just because it was a bit of a dumping ground, the floor was black sticky under-vinyl substance, and it gets really hot of an afternoon. But I cleaned it up for the duration, put in a hose-able rug I had here, some shelves, curtains and doo-das, and it's looking so much better that it's actually rather nice to use now. In comparison to before, anyway. I even unpacked a few "bathroom" boxes from out of the wool shed which have been in storage for what seems like forever (since August 2011), and discovered that I now own three times as many towels as what I thought. Bonus!

Tomorrow we oil the deck and start on the kitchen floor. Having that floor done? I. Can't. Wait.

 

 

 

 

Champagne Tastes

Ok, so I'm one of those girls that gets a bee in her bonnet about finding something, and then, quite by chance and not at all by design, the version I find tends to be expensive, exclusive, or downright unavailable. And when I've allotted myself a beer budget for it, it gets a little frustrating. Take for example the apothecary bottles I was searching for this morning. I thought a row of old-looking bottles would be nice on a shelf in the bathroom. You know, the one that I haven't done yet, because I haven't painted the kitchen ceiling yet. That one. Anyway, I digress. I found these lovely bottles.

Vintage apothecary bottles with lids. Perfect! Price tag... $75. Ok - so they're worth considering, a bit more than what I wanted to spend, but they are lovely, and there are plenty of them, so they'd make a good display. But then in the description? Each. Yep, $75 each. So it was back to the drawing board.

 

And then the realisation hit. I have so many bottles already, all found in the paddocks and the dump here on the farm. I have these...

 

And these...

 

And these...

 

And these...

 

And these...

And these.

Why oh why oh why am I looking on eBay for bottles?

 

Sigh and swoon!

 

I absolutely love this. It's just gorgeous. Guess who's about to be frantically combing eBay for a sad dresser in need of sprucing up? See the wall colours behind? Exactly the same as our room. I think this would go beautifully. Obviously shipping from the US makes it impossible, hence the eBay quest.

The colours! The handles! The distressing! The peacocks!

 

You can see this (and many other awesome furniture makeovers) at The Turquoise Iris.

 

Which of these ones is not like the other one?

Today we headed off to a property just over the border in Queensland for a bit of an open day and discussion with other graziers who were accepted for a mentoring program offered by the government. It's all to do with holistic management of the land, improving and taking care of it, whilst also improving our bottom line - win win. Oh - we are "mentees", not mentors! Hopefully it will be a valuable program - we certainly have a lot to learn, that's for sure.

After lunch we took a bit of a tour around the paddocks, looking at groundcover and whatnot, and as I scanned the group, I couldn't help but notice something.

The others, in the country "uniform" - big hat, jeans, workshirt, boots...

And yes, I wore my big hat...

But what happened to the rest?

Oh dear. You can tell I'm a city chick. Look at that super-protective footwear, great for warding off snakes and burrs. Oh well. I guess I'll march to the beat of my own drum. And not trek too far from the car!

I do like photos like the top one - that laconic bushie pose - I always picture them as paintings. Sean (against the fence, second from the back) has perfected it beautifully.

There's Auntie Jan, second from the left. She educated us as to the significance of pockets on work shirts, today. No pockets = super lazy, one pocket = still lazy, two pockets... now that's the goods. You heard it here first, folks!

And that was our day, other than a quick stop for dinner in town (yay to no cooking...gotta take the opportunity for a meal out when you can). Unfortunately both Sean's and my meals came with a sauce that would be more at home on ice cream than on steak, but hey, the oysters were delicious.

 

Sean is home with the gyro, check him out! I was so excited (and scared) to see him up in the air. I've decided to let him get good and experienced before I have a go - I can't help but be slightly terrified at the thought of being up there all alone. Would you do it?

 

I'd like to say that tomorrow it's on with the painting, but I have BAS due in a couple of weeks, so I guess I better knuckle down. While the paint dries...