A Smokin' Sunset

This was the view out the back of our house yesterday evening. I hope its nothing too serious and just a control burn. But the girls thought it looked great, like the sun was on fire!

Random thought

Chai tea and My Little Pony bikkies are a fabulous combination. Seriously, try it.

Swing set makeover!

Happy Mothers' Days to all the mums. I had a nice day with brunch out, a brand new handbag and of course, some goodies from the school stall. I still marvel at how they source such lovely things for such small change!

Earlier in the week, I tackled a quick projuect. We were given an old swing set years ago, but I'll be honest, the daggy green and yellow colour scheme always irritated me. So I finally got around to spray painting it. Now it's much more in keeping with the rest of the house.

Before: After:

Much better!

A visitor

We had a cute little visitor to our house this week. Not exactly sure what species he (she?) is, but a more unusual bird for us. We usually get magpie larks, magpies, doves, ibis, crows, wagtails (my favourites).

FarmWorld

Some pictures of our weekend adventure. While visiting family in Victoria, we headed for the annual Farm World at Lardner Park. This was always one of my favourite events as a kid, although then it was known as the Field Days. Lots of agricultural fun!

Gardening weekend

Yes, the insects are attacking my garden, but at least the pretty gardenia still offers a few last flowers for the summer.

I've been doing lots of work on the garden this weekend. I've been removing the orangey pebbles from around our front garden, and replacing some of the plants, cutting back the yukkas quite dramatically, and putting down sugarcane mulch. It's the most neglected part of our garden, just in front of our garage, so I only really drive past it, and it's not until I had visitors that I realised how bad it's looking.

Pebbles are, quite frankly, a stupid idea in the subtropical garden as they always end up full of weeds, and it's been such a frustrating time trying to keep them at bay with all the rain we've been having.

I know some might think it's ridiculous to put sugarcane mulch out on show in the front of the garden, but I'm crazy like that. I've found it so fantastic in other areas of the garden. It keeps the weeds at bay really well. I'm essentially a lazy gardener. So I like to 'set and forget', with just an annual bit of maintenance. Thankfully the sugarcane mulch fades in colour to a more natual grey and it's almost unnoticeable.

Here's the first section complete, another section to go.

Here's some pics from the backyyard where I'm persisting with pebbles around the pool area, with long term plans to extend our deck, so we don't want to do anything too drastic or costly. The weeds are still an issue, especially the dreaded nutgrass, but at least in one small area, it's not so bad.

Our not-so-new new bed!

Here's a shot of our recently improved bed. It's not my dream bed, but for now I think I've changed the look enough for me to be quite pleased whenever I enter the room.

You can see from the picture below that it was a little bit on the twee side of country and had that orangey stain that grates on me. So I decided to saw off the top of the bedposts and stain the wood with Black Japan. I like it a lot more now, and combined with some new bedside tables and new bedlinen, I feel quite happy with the room.

Before (in our old house) :
The new bedsides are from Freedom, but of course, I didn't pay full price. One was 'damaged stock' (just a mark on the inside of the draw) and the other on sale anyway. Oh, and the faux leather trunk is from SuperAMart of all places - I'm almost embarassed to admit that as I hate their furniture and their store and their general business philosophy - but hey, the price was right!

Happy Valentine's Day

I hope everyone's having a nice day. I received two cards this morning - a handmade paper one from each of the girls. Very sweet. My husband and I just said "Happy Valentines' Day' to each other. It's not something we make a big deal about, although I did decorate the bottles above in keeping with the Valentines theme.

I had ideas of doing a fancy frosted version, but in the end, I left it to the last minute and slapped some white paint on, with some crackle medium I had lying around since about 1994. And excuse my hastily picked flowers from my garden. I planned to buy some pretty ones from the supermarket, but the usual cheap bunches have been replaced with very expensive ones! I wonder why...

Blame this:

Well, Happy New Year sounds quite lame, considering it's February already. I'm very embarassed about my lack of blog posts, but we have had a very relaxing time over the Christmas/New Year period, and it's taken a while to settle back into routine.

That handy little device above was my Christmas present, and I've been busy acquiring lots of great reading (including free classics!), so have become even more of a book worm than usual. I promise I'll be a better blogger from now on. Right after I finish this novel...