White Christmas

We could see the storm clouds coming and there was a severe weather warning...
















We didn't imagine anything quite like this...
















































Can't complain though, there is water running into the tank, the dam is filling up nicely and apart from the garden being flattened not too much damage. Is this what I get for dissing Xmas?

Slackness abounds

Yes I've been lazy. We have been doing bits and pieces on the house though and the good news is that two whole rooms are completely finished (ooh three if you count the pantry)! The others are all pretty close, like if we paint the kickboards in the kitchen it's finished, paint the window in the ensuite and grout around the mirror it's done, paint the doors in the kids' bedrooms they are done etc. Lots of little jobs that we keep putting off because we are crap.

Having Xmas here has helped galvanise us into action because we have to show off a bit. Especially for the out-laws who are still finishing their house. Now into it's 35th year of finishing with no real end in sight yet. Our first anniversay of building comes up in January, not bad considering D has done most of it himself, while still working full time and for all of it I was either pregnant or with a brand new baby. So we've done all right. We are hoping to do more during the Xmas-New Year break with all those lovely public service days off. Or we might just eat too much and sit around groaning. It's nice to have options.

Unfortunately I can't post any photos because our camera had an altercation with Charlie and Charlie won. Actually I think he just dropped it, on the lens which was one of those ones that moves and focuses itself. Needless to say it doesn't do that anymore. The guy in the camera shop said it's probably cheaper, easier and faster to buy a new one. So we will see what is left in the kitty post Xmas. Could be a while.

New Kids on the Block

Since we got our first pet together, D and I have trawled the lists of classical names for our pets. So we've had Julius, Aphrodite, Persephone, Attila, Nefertiti, Cleo(patra), and Dido. We always threatened our families that we would name our children after historical figures as well. We did like Trajan as a boys name, but decided that our families might never forgive us if we named our firstborn Trajan, so we went with Charlie.

We haven't gotten any new pets since the babies came along, so naming pets hasn't been an issue until now. The other day we got two chookies. More as pets than egg producers, so any eggs that don't get 'toddlerfied' will be a bonus. So we needed to name them. Charlie isn't quite up on his ancient historical figures yet, so let me introduce:

Chookie and Buckaboo.














Because chookies say buckaboo apparently. No, I don't know which is which. Sorry about the dark photo, they didn't want to pose for the camera.

Willy willy gives me the willies

The weather gods must hate me. This is the second time this has happened in a couple of months. Our question now is do we replace the part again, for about $30 and hope it doesn't happen again too soon, or spend about 10 times that amount to get a new steel clothesline?

The obvious thing to do would be to move the clothesline, except that we don't have anywhere else to put it that won't have exactly the same problem, or that wouldn't be right in front of the house. Effen weather gods. We want rain! (I could regret that statement).

There is nothing like coming home

So we've been out all day planting some of the 400 trees hubby went mad and bought at the Murrumbateman Field Days. Dusty and tired we come inside to relax and discover, upon trying to find space to put the baby on the floor, that the toddler has been busy playing and spreading stuff far and wide all over the lounge room. It really wasn't what I needed after a day of holding in curses about silly people buying 400 frikkin trees without thinking about needing to plant and then hand water 400 trees in the middle of one of the worst droughts on record. We've only got about 200 to go. I hope.

Adventure under the house

I was under the house finding a screw that had dropped through the verandah, and which was essential to getting the window holder thingy back on the window, after I took it off to paint the window. We have just put a timber wall around the bottom of the house with a gate in it, to make the house look nice and keep the council happy, so I was hemmed in so to speak. So I was on my hands and knees, moving slowly and painfully across numerous bits of rock, hard dirt, rusty nails etc. trying not to think about having to make my way back again. I finally found the screw and on my way back saw a roll of shade cloth, which I thought would be good to use on the Chook Palace. (chooks arrive tomorrow). There was a dead spider on it, but I thought I'll just shake it off, then we'll be right. Just to be on the safe side I checked the distance to the gate in the fence and tried to crab walk, but decided I liked the skin on my back more. So I picked up the roll of shade cloth and banged it on a handy piece of metal support bar, and the bloody dead spider was stuck and it didn't move. So I banged it again. Still didn't move. I was determined not to take a dead spider outside with me, for the life of me I can't remember why, so I hit it one last time really hard. Then the *&%$##%$ dead spider suddenly sprouted eight legs and ran down the shade cloth. At this point I bravely decided to leave the shade cloth under the house for the husband to retrieve. Hopefully this will be my first and last adventure under the house.

Bless Him

He's off on a jaunt management course this week, so, before he went, he painted the second coat of paint on the pantry all by himself while I veged on the lounge watching Australian Idle. It could only have been more perfect if Ricky had been voted out.

Virtuous if tense

Last night instead of cleaning and relaxing in this,

we got our act together and painted the first coat of paint on the pantry.

We've been meaning to do it for weeks now, but there was always something else, like some crap on TV to watch instead, and it started to bug me that it wasn't done. Not enough to actually do it myself of course. I did that with the laundry and came away with a much more realistic sense of how much of a pain in the arse painting a room by yourself is. And the laundry isn't that big. Not surprisingly the laundry is still awaiting its second coat. Any week now. Luckily for me the painting (oh the pain the pain) is nearly done. If by nearly done you ignore the fact that we still have to paint all the tricky bits on the windows (lots of windows) and french doors and around the top of the tiles in the bathroom because we decided not to tile to the ceiling (fools fools!). And the kitchen, but there isn't much of that because most of it is covered by cupboards or non existent because of the huge window or because it will eventually be covered by a splashback. Once all that is finished all we have to paint is the hall cupboard and we're done. Inside. Outside is a whole nother problem that I just don't want to think about now because I might cry. And don't even get me started on the garage. If there is a god he'd (she'd?) let me win lotto. Okay, well probably not but it's worth a try.

The outside of the house

It's been a long time coming I know. I've just been looking through the house photos and realised that most of them are out of focus or too dark or generally crap. I'm going to have to go through the house and take some more pictures so you can really see what it looks like. Anyway here are a couple of pictures of the outside of the house, which isn't painted yet, so it still looks pretty much the same. Except the clothesline. It was blown over by a big wind when it had a drop sheet hung on it, and we haven't fixed it yet.

Sorry about the lack of comments. I didn't think about what I was doing when I went for a change of look. Normal transmission will hopefully resume soon.

My Construction Project and things made by my clever friends.

This is the construction project that I have just finished. I'm pretty pleased with it myself. My very talented friends have sent some gorgeous things for Gemma which you can see here. I don't know where they find the time, but I'm glad they did. I also have to thank everyone else who has sent things for Gemma (and Charlie). We were told after Charlie that when you have your second baby no one gets as excited and you don't get given much stuff for the baby. Well our lovely friends have really proved that wrong!

Mother's Day Tradition

Belated Happy Mother's Day to all Mums out there. In the family I married into there is a special tradition on Mother's Day. It's called the 'Tip Run'. I'm not sure if my MIL has had the opportunity to indulge in this tradtion for a while, since not much producing lots of rubbish has been happening on their house lately, but I do fondly remember her commenting loudly that it was a lovely present to drive to the smelly tip on Mother's Day over several years when D and I were first going out and in the early years of our marriage.

This year was the first year that I got to do the Mother's Day tip run in my own right both as a Mum and home owner with a lot of crap to get out of the backyard. It was a proud moment. D was particularly pleased to be able to continue such a proud tradition. At three Charlie may be too young to realise the importance of such a traditon, but his future wife need not fear, we will ensure that the importance of Mother's Day family traditions are made clear to him. Of course there are still more tip runs to do, but they won't be as much fun.

On house news, we have 4 weeks until our lease is up and we still need to paint, carpet, put down the timber flooring, tile, put in the bathroom fittings, finish the kitchen, and the garage. It will be interesting to see how much we can complete, considering that we need to have carpets and stuff down before we have to move out of here, so we really only have 3 1/2 weeks to get everything done. But we like a challenge. Or rather D does as I think trying to paint with a toddler running around and 'helping' could be disasterous.

More eye candy

And here's a picture

Yep I've been slack. And here's a picture.
Once I find the rest of them, I will post them as well. Eventually I might even put up some house photos.

(with thanks to Raman Dhillon for writing to Icon with a tip on how to automatically resize photos, cause I was too lazy to look it up for myself).

Oooooh Splinter

I was watching husbang dig some splinters out of his finger last night. He had gotten to the point where it hurt to touch anything, so he thought he'd better get them out before they got any worse. They didn't look too bad to me, quite little really, but he was really in pain. I had a bit of a go, but these things are always more painful when someone else does them, so I provided moral support instead. Or maybe I'm just a weirdo who likes watching things like splinters come out. Anyway, he finally managed to break the final layer of skin over the splinter, which was in quite deep. Then he squeezed and it rose to the surface. And rose, and rose and kept coming. It was at least 4mm long and deep into the pad of his thumb. No wonder it hurt so much. I've had a couple of the rotten things, just under the skin and they hurt like hell.

Then we went on to splinter no. 2. which was in his index finger. I should mention that he was doing this all left handed because he's right handed and so the splinters were all in his right hand. I gave more assistance this time because this one was more tricky and managed to get under the splinter but couldn't budge it. Husbang got hold of it and about 2mm broke off. He then managed to squeeze out the other 5mm of splinter which once again had been straight in deep into the finger. Gross but fascinating.

The worst bit, for him, is that he's only finished one short side of the all round verandah that's going on the house. There are a lot more splinters to come.

Apart from that building is going well. The frames have been put up by Harkaway's crack team of frame erectors, some of them were even good looking which was a bonus. Husbang and FIL managed to get the garage frame up as well and hopefully we will be at lock up in about 3 weeks. Then the inlaws can go home. Yay!

Screaming down the learning curve

So we've begun. It's not until you start a project like this that you realise how much you don't know about what you are doing. Take digging pier holes for example. We got the man in on the bobcat thingy with the drill on front to drill the holes. So far so good. He then points out that all the dirt that accumulates around the holes and then falls in has to be cleared away so that the council can inspect and approve the holes you've just had dug. So rather than have a fairly relaxed day telling the guy were to dig, husbang had a very hot and dirty day scraping dirt out of holes with a tool not really designed for the job. In the end it was about three days in total, as there were about 90 holes. The cleaned out holes were then fallen down twice by the toddler, (who was immediately rescued and is still talking about it), filled with concrete, drilled and piers put on and screwed down. Bearers and joists have been put on top (after much discussion and arguing) and the floor insulation is ready to go. So far there have only been about ten fights between father in law and husbang, so everything is going as expected. Things that cost money keep cropping up, but now we just pay and worry about it later.

So things we have learned so far: it always costs more than you think it will, there will always be something you hadn't thought of and it will cost money too, there are always plenty of jobs for people who are silly enough to offer to help, FIL is never wrong (even when he is), and toddlers and building sites don't mix but they do have lots of fun together. Especially in specially bought bright yellow gum boots.

LMH and Harry came down to help with the first week of building. They were immediately hard at work, playing in the pier holes. Their help has been invaluable, and it is only due to the unfortunate need for them to work so they can eat and pay rent that they were forced to go back to Sydney with husbang's mum. However, they seem to have survived the frequent retelling of stories they have heard many times before, so well done lads. You should know that she is planning on coming to Newtown with the express purpose of coming to the pub where you work to see you. She thinks you are lovely.

If I can find a good photo of LMH and Harry hard at work I will post it soon.