A handmade gift

Toni turned 21 on Monday. We have this fabulous photo of her standing on the ledge of a mountain, which I thought would be inspirational for her to have as a print with a meaningful quote on it. So, Damian cut and sanded down a piece of Oregon we had here, and then I set about transferring the image to it. It has turned out really well, and Toni really loved it.

While at the time I was really cranky at her when she showed me this photo, as I was terrified that she had stood out on this ledge so high up, it has created an awesome photo for her to take through her life with her.
Happy 21st beautiful lady xx

Rained out...

We have had a LOT of rain here over the last 24 hours, with more to come today they are saying...not as heavy as it has been though....

(Our car parking area at home...hmmm...just a bit of water!)

Damian has been rained out up at the property, so no slab pouring this weekend unfortunately...so as long as they can get out, they will be heading back home today. It's my birthday today, so I hope they can get home...Damian is probably sorta hoping that they don't get back today, otherwise he will probably have to organise a pressie..hehehe... :o   sooo...I am heading out this morning to have my haircut, and then I am going to go and have a relaxing morning at the shops....just me, so I can wander around at my leisure. There is nothing I am really going to buy, but I do love to get in to Loot and the homeware shops, and I may go and do a little opshopping as well...and take myself out to lunch....a good day coming up... :)

It's been a bit busy....and a celebration cake...

Wow....it's been so busy...ridiculously busy actually. Have had lots going on the last few weeks. Got back from our cruise a week ago, and have had Michael's 21st birthday party at home the next day, have also had Damian's mum's 75th birthday the weekend just gone, as well as our niece's 18th birthday, and did the flowers for 3 weddings on the weekend as well, oh, and Fathers Day yesterday! Today, I have decided to take the day off. Damian and Michael will be away for the week at work, so just the 3 of us left here at home, so some peace and quiet. Today I have had too many cups of tea to count, and I have been lazing about on the lounge catching up on computer land...this is the first lazy day I have had in...I don't remember, I have still done the washing and cleaned the bathrooms, but that has been in between being lazy...during all of the chaos and busyness of last week, I spent a couple of nights doing a celebration cake for Damian's mum's birthday.  It is certainly very bright and colourful, but I figured it's a celebration cake, it needs to be colourful! It has given me lots of experience now in the fundamentals of putting a 2 tiered cake together, and I got the cake thickness much better for this cake, than I did for my first cake.  It also gave me some more experience in the decoration side of things, so I am gradually getting a bit more confidence with this cake decorating thing.

Today...

Just got home from going out to dinner at the Sports Club. We haven't been for a long, long time, and the food was really, really nice. I had a beautiful seafood laksa, absolutely yummy. We will definitely go again as the standard of food was great. We had a really quiet, lazy day today. I spent most of the day reading and catching up on blogs....I have started a new Christmas blog so I can keep track of that, as well as a birthday blog so I can keep track of those...it will allow me to put all of my ideas and lists in 1 place, with a current to do list etc etc...I have a couple of apps on my ipad for this, but find them too hard to navigate around, so the blogs will be much easier, and I have made them private blogs so only I can access them, so that family can't see what I'm doing and ruin the surprises! We have had the fire gently burning away all day, and I bought a new stovetop kettle a couple of days ago, which has taken up residence on top of the fireplace, so that we get free boiling water on hand for cuppa refills...it has so far saved us many, many electric kettle uses so it should pay for itself in no time at all (it was only $10 from KMart) I actually have a nice quiet start to the week this week, nothing too much in the diary at all...yay...I have a preservation coming in the morning, but that's about it until a wedding at the end of the week...this will be the quietest week in soooo long....absolutely lovely. Actually, I think Kasey has her sports day on Friday, so Friday morning will probably be at the school, but it's nice to sit in the sun and watch the kids on sports day, but I won't be able to stay all day as I will have the wedding to prep....so the house is lovely and quiet, Toni just went to bed, Kasey is in bed asleep and Damian is asleep on the lounge (how unusual!! not! )  so a bit more time doing some reading for me, then off to bed....oooh...nearly forgot to add...we've been getting a few eggs over the last week and a half or so, seems like just 1 of the girls is laying, but we have about 8-9 fresh eggs, so hopefully the others will start to come back on as well soon....they have been off the lay for months!

Permaculture course day 1...and some lemons!

Yesterday was the first day of my permaculture design certificate course.  I arrived late...not a good start...I allowed an hour and a 1/4 to make a 40-45 minute trip to allow for traffic...WRONG....it took me about an hour and a half....geez....what's with the traffic! Anyway, I only really missed the intro...but ended up making a grand entrance instead of quietly sitting at my desk waiting for the course to start.  The farm has only the very basics in the way of utilities, so I will know for next week to take a lunch that doesn't need heating, and an esky with ice so I can take my own milk, teabags etc for a nice cuppa during the day. It's definitely an urban hippy existence there, does take a little bit to get used to. Day 1 was a basic introduction to the 3 principles and 12 elements relating to permaculture. There was a bit of roleplay (very embarrasing, but a way for everyone to get to know each other a little) and farm tour.  There was also a food presentation on Bunya nuts, the nuts boiled weren't really my thing, but the bunya nut pesto on the fruit loaf was quite nice, but I think that's because the fruit loaf masked some of the bunya nut flavour. We were also given our plant allocation that we each need to do a food presentation on during the course. I lucked out with passionfruit, and I have some growing here, so I get to make some yummy sweet treats for my presentation. Need to do the research between now and the next fortnight, so I can hand out the information sheet during the presentation. I was pretty bushed (and cranky) when I got home, as I spent another hour and a helf in the traffic, and was still quite tired today. This afternoon I planted out the comfrey in the garden, and as I was wandering around the garden, I thought I would check out the lazy lemon tree, and was delighted to see 5 lovely lemons at quite a good size, and a couple more babies coming along. This is the lemon trees first fruiting, so quite exciting.

I gave the bush a drink of seaweed solution this afternoon, and weeded around the base, and removed the big hungry catepillar on one of the leaves and gave it to the chooks, they don't seem very interested in it though!  I purchased a lots a lemons tree about a month back as this lemon tree didn't seem to be making any progress, it must have scared it in to giving up some lemons. So, tomorrow is Kasey's 7th birthday, so I have a couple of wedding quotes to go and do in the morning, and Toni is going to take Kasey out for the morning to the park or maybe to the beach for an icecream. We'll do presents in the morning, and then a family BBQ in the afternoon. She has a little friend coming to play early in the afternoon, and they always play so well together. So..I'm off to bed, I am pretty tired, so I think I will sleep well. Next week I need to put some serious effort in to expanding my home routines app, I have the rotational house work and daily am and pm routines pretty much sorted at the moment, but I need to now start to allocate days to certain tasks and also some self improvement time (think...exercise...blaghhh) and need to start making set times for sewing and craft, gardening, mowing etc...I want to try and work them in to my routine so I have set days for these things as a rough promptor to each day for me. I have a bit of time in between quotes in the morning, so I may visit Gloria Jeans, and pop myself, my laptop and my ipad in the corner for a couple of hours and try and sort all that out...we'll see how I go....

Declutter challenge day 2

Well, I am still on track.  The 2nd load of clutter from the end of the garage was taken down to Lifeline yesterday afternoon, so now that is all gone.  I also managed to get my clutter plan done up and posted on my blog.  Rebekkah's boyfriend came by this afternoon and picked up the old fridge/freezer from the shed now that I have replaced it with the chest freezer, so that is gone as well.  I have a busy few days coming up, so I probably won't get to day 3 of my challenge until next week, which can only be in the early part of the week, so I will pick something small on my list to keep up the momentum. If I can find something on my declutter plan that will only take a 1/2 hour or so, then I will do it tomorrow or Friday, but I'll just wait and see how I feel.  I went to Kingaroy today with Toni and Kasey for Mum's birthday, and took her out to lunch at a chinese restaurant, which was nice. We also went out last night to Hog's breath for dinner, and then went and saw Despicable Me at the movies, so had a nice evening out, as I was feeling pretty down during the day and even when I got up this morning, but I am feeling much better tonight.

Happy Birthday Michael

Happy 20th Birthday Michael.  We all love you lots. xx  I can't believe we have a 20 year old son, the time has flown by....