Spring has sprung, about 3 weeks ago.

Or possibly longer. I can't remember when I took these photos now, but the iris have pretty much finished for this year it seems, and the daisies all need dead heading, but the violas are still looking good. Hopefully they will self seed like crazy and go all over the garden next year. Might help if I did some weeding, fertilising and stuff. It is entirely possible that the picture of the iris is in fact upside down. No, wait, looks like you can see the stem at the bottom. Phew. In other house news we are looking at Ikea this weekend for a bathroom cabinet. Aren't you glad I told you that. I know I am. The test will be getting out of Ikea with, if there are any, a bathroom cabinet, two children (preferrably my own) a husband (ditto) and my temper without a whole heap of other stuff that we don't really need impulse buying. Wish me luck.

Tara Dennis I ain't

So here is the painted cat litter hider. As you can see Tara Dennis is quite safe from me taking over her job anytime soon. Especially since the first thing I managed to do was drop the paw stamp and make a mark on the background paint, which I then rubbed to cause a lovely smudge. Just to the left of the cat hole. But close up it doesn't look too bad. Well that's what I'm telling myself anyway.

What my sofa says about me...

Surprisingly it's not - "you have allowed me to be systematically destroyed by your cats over the last 10 years and you don't vacuum underneath me enough, you let the kids spill food and drink all over me (and worse) and don't mop up the spills in a timely fashion, you let them jump up and down on me, let your pissed mates sleep on me, allow cat hair to accumulate all over me and never once let me squish a cat using my sofa bed mechanism even though they were crying out for it. I hate you!"

Apparently it's this (plagiarised from the Sydney Morning Herald, which got it from the Herald Sun). (click on link for quiz)

Mostly Bs: Empire Builder
Family and status are of equal importance and this is reflected in your taste where tradition and comfort carry great weight. As an Empire Builder, your decorating style is elegant and refined, although it sometimes lacks creativity.
In your choice of fabrics and finishes, you aspire to five-star hotel luxury, which is always pleasing and comfortable but sometimes bland and never challenging. You are inspired by a range of classic styles including town and country, British colonial, French provincial and romantic Victoriana.
Empire Builders like fine furnishings, elegant window treatments, formal wallpapers, Oriental rugs and matching Far Eastern antiques (from reputable dealers in upmarket shopping districts with certificates of authenticity).
You keep a clean house and like nothing out of place. Your feminine side, however, makes exceptions for pretty textiles, wallpapers of toile, moires or ticking and lots of family photos.

Elegant, refined, 5 star hotel, luxury, Far Eastern Antiques? How did I end up with this? Perhaps it is my penchant for English Manor houses which I am never going to own, but perhaps courtesy of a National Heritage Trust membership may one day get to stickybeak in.

and

Mostly Fs: Refuseniks
Refuseniks object to convention, so it's not surprising that in your approach to interior design and decoration, anything goes. You are a rule breaker, some say trendsetter, who may be an artist, a writer, an intellectual or a never-quite-made-it lazy bohemian bum.
Refuseniks love to explore the wellspring from which art and design is inspired. Their homes can be grand or modest, but a visitor will feel they have entered unfamiliar territory. The Refusenik decorating style is an exercise in extremes.
You are an adherent of chaos theory to the extent that it might provide a new way of dining, sleeping or entertaining. You're convinced that in a past life you lived in Prague Castle or Beijing's Forbidden City.
In a perfect world, Refuseniks would live in a sanctuary of unique furnishings, kind lighting and curious antiquities and art. At worst, your style is a conundrum; at best it's too cool for school.

Unfamiliar territory, chaos theory, well this is closer but probably not in the way they intended.

Thinking back to the reality of my house as I left it this morning at speedso I wouldn't have to look at the mess anymore because I was running late it was more like this:

Your ten year old sofa bed is displaying signs of being a scratching post and sleep station for your numerous cats over the years. Your children like eating sausage rolls as evidenced by the scattering of crumbs all over the loungroom floor. You are too lazy tired to pick up after them which is why there is a trail of discarded clothing, cutlery and plastic dinner ware strewn around the floor. Artwork is likely to be of the 'naive preschool' school and stuffed under the spare bed in the computer room. Attempts to call it a study only confuse the children. It too shows signs of sausage roll addiction, with added unidentifiable liquid stains on the carpet.

Your hallway is a statement of why dark blood reds should only be used on feature walls that never have anyone even remotely close to them, and not in busy spaces where toothbrushes loaded with toothpaste, chocolately fingers, and sharp edged items can all damage the paint surface. The bedrooms all scream "for gods sake vacuum woman". The bathrooms say a bit of cleaning the shower and bog wouldn't go astray and maybe even a mop of the floor once in a while you lazy beast. The laundry has given up in disgust after being made recipient of the cat litter box.

The pantry challenges you to find anything, anything at all and the green bags only look like they are multiplying until you try and find enough to fit the weekly shop in. Mostly they just look at you accusingly as you throw another batch of plastic bags onto the mound. The kitchen floor reproachfully shows off its multiple marks on cream tiles which you steadfastly ignore, knowing that any attempts to clean it will be quickly thwarted by a child with an a)iceblock or b) biscuit, c)a cat vomiting (because they will only vomit on clean tiles), or d) a husband.

Your attempts to clean up the toys in the rumpus room, which you like to kid yourself will one day be a library/formal lounge, come undone when the children immediately start playing with all the toys you had slated for giving to charity because the children never play with them. You only have yourself to blame for not sneaking them out of the house immediately. Upon drawing back the curtains to let in the afternoon light you notice that the carpet underneath the curtains is white with cat hair from where the oldest cat likes to sleep in the sun all day, before retiring to your bed at night and trying to sneak between you while you sleep. You regret thinking this was cute when she was a kitten.

The less said about the garden the better. The vegie patch could be quite good, if you were a cow bovine and able to eat all the grass growing in it. Realistically you will probably never dig up and eat the potatoes that are growing optomistically. You will probably never plant the seeds that are currently being irradiated next to the answering machine.

Now that's much more like me.

Garage full of Crap

Sometimes it's not a bad thing to have a garage full of crap. Like those times when you decide that the current system for keeping the toddler out of the cat litter isn't working, and you are sick of the cats knocking it over in the middle of the night with a loud crash, and your hubby can knock up something like this in half an hour. We are still deciding if we are going to get all "Tara Dennis, Better Homes and Gardens" on its ass and paint it with stripes or something. Maybe not.




There is even a cunning cat shaped hole for them to go through. I'm not sure if anyone has been brave enough to use it yet. Maybe they are just hanging on.

Rain beautiful rain

I'm sitting here at work looking out the window at all the lovely rain falling. I hope it's raining at home.

Some photos, finally

Garage and southern end of the house
















Front of the house














Across the front of the house

You know it's cold when

people buying thermals in Darwin make the nightly news, and the landscape looks like this. Oh and the washing steams when you put it on the clothesline. You have to look carefully, but the greyness around the top of the shirt is actually steam. I do have some cool video footage of it, but posting that would involve experimenting with youtube and that is currently beyond me, or I'm too lazy, one or the other.

The painting is finished.

I was just in time to capture the last brush stroke for posterity. The house is painted. For about 10 years anyway. We have also finished painting the exterior of the garage and put up the little blingy bits that are supposed to make it look Colonial or Federation I can never remember. But they are up and not in the way in the garage anymore, so it's all good. All we need now is a cash injection, roll on June 30!, and then we can landscape a bit. Just enough to keep the Council happy, then we can get our completion certificate and it's all good. "oh my god what do we do with our weekends now" time is looming and I can't wait. I suspect it involves a lot of weeding.

On the camera

When downloading the latest lot of photos from the camera I found Charlie had been busy again. I thought this photo of the daisies shows nicely how well the daisies are growing, the newly painted front wall of the house, and the lovely grey clouds that brought the rain. Not bad for someone who is not supposed to have the camera. The next photo is one of me standing on the steps pointing down while saying 'Come here now!' . But I'm not posting that one.

The Weather Gods

My sacrifice to the Weather Gods has finally been accepted, and we have had three days of periodic rain. I have found that the Mothers' of the Weather Gods won't let them rain on baby clothes, but my stuff is fine. Which I can live with.















On house news, the insides of the front and back doors have been painted so the inside of the house is pretty much completely painted. There is only a tiny bit of grouting to do in the main bathroom and laundry, and some work around the manhole in the ceiling and the inside is completely done. Three walls of the outside are painted leaving only the back wall to do, plus the outside of the front and back door. Finishing the actual house is really close now. Thank goodness.

Stealth Painting

Actually it's more like when will he notice that I've been - painting, replacing the flyscreen with the hole big enough to fly a jet through, and adding onto the watering system that he's been meaning to do for months. All those little jobs that need doing and which I've decided I can't really fuck up, unless I try really hard, so I've done them myself rather than whinge to him about it. The fun part is waiting for him to notice. It took him five days to notice that I'd changed the screen on the door, interestingly it took Charlie two days. He noticed the watering system about four days after I'd done it, but then he usually gets home right on dusk or when it's already dark so it's not surprising he didn't notice until the weekend.

However, I thought that the paint on me which he noticed last night and the fact that he was looking right at Charlie's wardrobe doors last night when he read the bedtime story might have brought to his attention that the painting had been done. He could also have noticed the hall cupboard doors, that he walks right past, had been painted but no. He said the other day that painting the wardrobe doors was his winter job. I didn't feel like waiting.

I'm guessing he'll notice tonight that only one set of our walk through robe doors have been painted because the other set need some planing off so they fit properly. Now that I really could fuck up easily, so I'm leaving that to him. For some strange reason I procrastinated long and hard before finally finishing the wardrobe doors today. I painted the wardrobe doors in the hall, Gemma's, Charlie's and the guest room yesterday, so I only had to do one set in our bedroom today. I had the first coat finished by 10.30am. All I needed to do was wait two hours and paint them again. About 12.15 I decided to treat myself to lunch in town, then I came home and did some ironing, brought in the washing and folded it, put Gemma's car seat back together after washing the cover, and tidied up the loungeroom. Of course as is always the way, it only took about 15 minutes to complete the painting once I got started. For some reason getting started was really hard.

In other news painting the outside of the house has begun. The front wall is completely finished and one side wall has one coat, and will be getting the second this weekend before we go to Sydney for the Dinghy's 1st birthday party. Hopefully another wall will get started on Anzac Day, and then on the weekend we might even be close to finished the outside painting.

Then all we need to do is finish some grouting in the laundry, put some coloured caulking around the bottom of the wall tiles in the bathroom and ensuite and cover it with silicone, and plane and paint the remaining wardrobe doors and my god I think we're finished! I'm sure we'll find some little job we have neglected to complete that will be the bane of our existence. We still have to finish the garage as well, but it's a lot smaller and less fiddly than a house, and we don't have to do anything inside so it should be much quicker. Then we can start on the never ending landscaping job.

Since I'm here...

We've also finished the kitchen. It was a while ago, actually last year, but I thought better late than never. Who knows when I'll get the free time or inclination to update this again, so best to make hay while the sun shines and before the next thunderstorm rolls over and makes us turn off the computer.

Visitors

Since we'll be having visitors over Easter we thought we should probably build some of these, so that our visitors didn't have to use the ingenious system of levers and pulleys that we have been using to get into the house*.
















I even had the little man in to paint them. The husband even painted them, in fact we painted them together. But I was taking the photo, so you'll just have to believe me.
















Then, immediately afterward it rained so we found a cover for them. Then we went down town as it seemed likely to rain for a bit.















When we came back, we painted them again. Immediately after it absolutely pissed down and stuffed up the paint job. I swear the Weather Gods heard the noise of the paint tin being opened. So this afternoon, the front steps got their third coat of paint. This time it didn't rain and there was much rejoicing.

* may bear no resemblance to reality.

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.