Back home after a weekend of scrapbooking

I have been away a couple of days on a scrapbooking retreat.  Had a great time, will post pics tomorrow hopefully. I am pretty tired tonight, so will update the blog in the next few days.  I have come home to a bit of a disaster though unfortunately...the whole place falls apart when I am not here...  Kasey had hayfever when I got home, and a bit of asthma, and was soooo tired, and would cry at the drop of a hat, Damian is pretty tired as he had a really long day at work yesterday, and Toni had left dishes all over the bench in the kitchen, clothes all over the floor in the bathroom and her room is a mess.  There was no sign of dinner being cooked, so baked beans on toast for dinner.  It is very annoying to go away for a cople of days and come home to a disaster zone.   So the first part of this week will be trying to re-organise things here...stop the world...I need to get off for a while! 

No more ball and chain

As of today the mortgage is gone..........woop, woop

The mini bathroom makeover

A couple of weeks ago, I did a little mini bathroom makeover.  I purchased a couple of stems of tall silk flowers, and some potpourri, and some vanilla scented flowers, and a balinese type "Relax" decoration on special for $5... total cost of the makeover was only about $40, as I already had the tall spaghetti vase and the flower arrangement...and it made such a difference, it seems like ages since I have spent some time prettying up an area of the house, and the girls have managed to keep it tidy (well...mostly) for 2 weeks now....this is a miracle in itself....here are a couple of pics

I am getting itchy feet with wanting to pretty up the house and do a bit of renovationg here and there, and start spending some more "home" time, and also start to spend some time in the garden....maybe it's spring fever setting in.....   :)  It has been 30 deg here today, so Winter seems to have said it goodbyes....it's still quite cold at night though...I woke up during the night last night freezing, and it is starting to cool down quite a bit now as well....but the day has been beautiful.  I had sewing club today, I have started making a Xmas table centre, using prairie points, and next months project is matching placemats.  I will post some pics once I have finished it,which I am hoping to get to tonight,  it is in lovely gold, red and green tones, and is very regal and rich looking, and will set off the Xmas table setting really nicely.  Well, better go and organise dinner, and the fire and water the vege garden, and hang out some more washing,  and all of the other usual daily chores...it gets a bit mad around this time of the day...

Back home...

We arrived home from our short break yesterday at about 2pm. Had a really nice time. We drove out to Yeppoon on Thursday from Rockhampton, it is a beautiful spot, really liked it there. Had a drive along the coastline, we stopped for a play at a playground for Kasey, and then went and had some lunch and a look around.

  The Singing Ship in Yeppoon, honouring Captain Cook sailing through the area.

 The Kookaburra's waiting for some food at Tannum Sands.

There is so much to do around Rockhampton and in the areas nearby, but we just haven't had the time to do them, but would definitely look at coming back and spending a couple of weeks looking around. We moved on to Tannum Sands just outside of Gladstone on Friday, another really nice spot.  On our way there, an emu appeared out of nowhere on the road in front of us, Damian had to swerve a bit to miss it, it was very surreal seeing this huge emu just appear in front of us, and trying to miss an emu with a huge caravan on the back was a bit tricky...We went for a walk along the waterfront at Tannum Sands and Kasey had a play in the playground, there was a flying fox here so she was very happy.  We think  it would be really nice to come here for Xmas other than the signs warning about stingers and crocodiles!!  They seem to have a dedicated bathing reserve, so need to find out a bit more about that before we would look at heading there for Xmas. On Saturday morning we packed up and headed to Bundaberg. We typed in "shortest route" on the GPS and ended up doing about 40 klms on a gravel road, which was a bit of a worry as we were hoping it wasn't leading us in to a dead end where would end up in someone's paddock, but we managed to get there in the  end. At one stage we were following a huge Brahman bull that was running along the road, which was quite funny...it didn't know what to make of us....We pulled in to our friends place about 1.30 in the afternoon, and had a really nice catch up, and they cooked us up a beautiful BBQ for dinner and breakfast the next day.  We said our goodbyes about 9.30 in the morning, and got home a little before 2pm. We were both pretty bushed last night, travel takes a bit out of you, especially Damian as towing a large van definitely keeps you on your toes and wears you out pretty quickly. I have been confronted with a huge pile of catch up work today, which I will need to get stuck in to this week, as I haven't been spending much time in the office lately (trying to avoid it) so now have lots to do. I need to go and drop back some library books, and quite a few other bits and pieces, luckily I have a fairly light diary this week, so this will definitely be a catch up week for me.

Garlic, embroidery and the garden expo...

I ordered some garlic yesterday.  I have ordered sprouting seeds, so they already have the shoots started, which should guarantee 100% success, and because they are already sprouting, it shouldn't matter that I am planting a little later than usual. I have read that I can plant out garlic until the end of July, so hopefully all should be good. I also had a look a chest freezers yesterday, and now just have to decide between a 500 litre and a 360 litre..I want to get rid of the 2 door fridge freezer in the shed, as it is probably 20 years or so old, and probably uses a heap of power...the 500 litre will cost about $60 a year to run, and the 360 litre will be about $40 a year to run, so very cheap compared to what the other older 1 is probably costing me. I am going to pick up a power monitor today, and work out exactly how much the old fridge is costing me ro run so I will have a more accurate idea. I also got some small knitting needles for Kasey yesterday and started teaching her to knit, I think it will take a long time, and because she is left handed it is really difficult, so I can only show her the right handed way, and she finds that really hard...so I think I need to find a left handed knitter to show her. I also went to sewing class last night, and started embroidering out the flowers for the front of the bag. They are constructed using a wash away stabiliser, so will end up as lovely little individual flowers. I will finish sewing these today hopefully, and then post a couple of photos of the finished flowers, they are really pretty. I am currently making some passionfruit jam, I am just waiting for the skins to cool and I can scoop out the white pulp and add to the mix and start to cook it off. I want to make some lemon curd as well, not sure if I will quite get to that today. I am hoping to go to the Nambour garden show this weekend, they have a giant kitchen garden setup that works on the organic and permaculture principles, so I am really interested in having a look and sitting through a couple of the demonstrations.  I will have to make sure Kasey brings her Nintendo, I may have half a chance of her sitting through a couple of demonstrations that way, as she doesn't have the patience to sit through those. Ok, off to make jam and get through my list of projects for today...

Home made Woolwash

I have made this wool wash, rather than buying it, and it works brilliantly. It leaves the woollens really soft and smelling lovely, and I also use it when I am wanting to freshen up sheets and doonas etc, and for sterilising these items while they wash. It's also great for towels. I have had this 1st batch for at least 6 months, and I freshened it up a week or so ago by adding some hot water to it, as it had hardened up and was becoming hard to scoop out. It is now really good again, and should last many more uses before I need to make any more. This is the recipe:

Home Made Wool Wash
200ml methylated spirits
300g lux pure soap flakes or grated laundry soap
100ml eucalyptus oil

Mix all ingredients and store in a wide necked jar.

Use 1- 2 tablespoons per wash.  Mix with hot water and then add to a warm wash.

Friday Wrapup

I picked most of the chillies today. I wanted to leave them until they had started to turn red, but something has started invading them, and has started to chew on a couple, so thought it best to pick them all and leave them on the bench to redden. With what's already in the freezer, plus these, I will have enought to fill Christmas requests for Chilli Jam....it is very popular with family members!

I was quite out of sorts this morning, I have lots of things I could have been doing, but just couldn't seem to get myself started. Finally, I decided to bake an orange cake and that seemed to be enough to get me moving. I put on some pizza dough in the breadmaker to mix, I made a double batch so I could put half in the freezer. I did a few other banking errands, wrapped a bouquet preservation being picked up next week, started the hardening process on one in process at the minute, put on a batch of yoghurt, vacuumed and did a bit of dusting, did a few loads of washing and a quick tidy around. We had pizza for dinner tonight, there is heaps left over, so can probably have that again tomorrow night, we have heaps of quiche left over from last night also, so that's another option also, but I may end up freezing that for a quick easy meal for another night yet.Ann came over tonight as she wanted a bit of help with some internet advertising, and stayed for a couple of hours with cuppas and chats, so that was a nice catch up. I was going to try and start on my vegetable garden planning, but didn't get around to it today, so will put that on the list for the next few days/weeks....I am going to go and get some yarn from the American Yarn shop tomorrow, for some of the sugar n cream yarn, to knit up some more dishcloths, and look for some other lovely yarn for my crocheting plans, and then we are going to go and pickup Toni's formal dress, and may have a nice lunch while we are out, so hopefully a lovely day coming up tomorrow :)

The best laid plans....

I got up early this morning. I had sewing class today and wanted to get nice and organised first up so I could have time for a cuppa before leaving, and wanted to catch up on emails etc. Well...things didn't go quite according to plan...after waking Toni up..(this took quite some time!) I ironed Kasey's uniform and made her lunch, then woke her up and got her dressed etc. While in the kitchen about to make some breakfast all of the chooks appeared at the back door, which made it obvious that Max had gone up and broken in to the pen, and left a big hole for them to get out. So I donned the gum boots and went up to put them away, only to find the black chicken out and sitting on the ground..Max had knocked her over again!! She is the only one he goes near, and I think because she sits as soon as he goes near her, she is an easy target. She is fine though, I picked her up and put her away, and didn't let her out this afternoon when the others were out. I will give her a few days to fully recover before letting her out again. So, anyway, I grabbed some corrugated iron and set about repairing the door, but the piece was too large for where I needed it to be, so I put it in front of the door and put the big feed bin in front of this to keep Max out while I was out today. Kasey came down while I was doing this, and because I mowed a couple of days ago, and the grass was wet, she ended up with big clumps of wet chopped up grass on her shoes, which she promptly walked through the house, including the carpet. So after fixing the chook pen, I needed to vacuum the house again....and in between this Toni decided to have a bit of a meltdown about me insisting she take her proper bag to school which was insisted upon by the school....so much for a rush free, relaxed morning!  Lucky I got up early, or I would have been running very late. Michael came around this afternoon and cut the corro to size and screwed it to the chookhouse door for me. So this should keep Max out now, unless he finds another spot to push through. I want to go around the bottom of the chook pen all the way around with corro about a foot high to stop him or anything else from breaking in. Tonight I have been working on a silk wedding that I need to finish this month. I have sewing club tomorrow, we are making a clutch purse, so I am going to make this for Toni as her formal is coming up next month. I am going to make it out of silver satin, as she wants to wear silver shoes and accessories. I'm heading off the bed shortly, I have been having a few late nights, and need to catch up on my sleep so I can continue on the with the early mornings, hopefully less hectic than the one this morning!!

My kitchen is on the Down to Earth Blog

My kitchen was featured on the "Down to Earth" blog today. Thank you Rhonda, and thanks everyone for all of the lovely  comments.

What is that creeping around in the meter box???

I wandered down to the gate this afternoon, quite late, to take the bins down for collection tonight. On the way back I checked the meter box, to see if the gate lights had flicked off at the circuit breaker, as they haven't been coming on lately. A little gecko ran along the meters, and out of the corner of my eye I saw something else moving, and assuming it was another gecko I ignored it. Something made me look a little closer, only to see a black snake slithering it's way back in behind the meter box board.....eewww.... made me shiver. Damian says it is more scared of me than I am of it....he definitely underestimates just how terrified I am of snakes.  Why do I always seem to find them, not him??

Solar happenings at last and our new Caravan.....

Today has been very busy so far.  This morning by 8am  I did the washing, put a red wine beef casserole in the slow cooker for dinner, had the caravan people out to value the Coromal caravan, and had the solar people finally arrive to put up our solar. We have been waiting just on 12 months for this to happen, and it finally has. We are just waiting now for the electricity company to come out and hook up the meter and we are ready to go, goodness knows how long that will take....

We have also finalised the purchase of the new caravan today, we have decided on a triple bunk Galaxy Odyssey offroad caravan. It is absolutely beautiful, and has a shower and toilet as well....(quietly clapping hands) The triple bunk takes up the same amount of room as a double bunk, and means if Michael comes he has somewhere to sleep, or if one of the girls wants to bring a friend when we go away, that they can do that also. They gave us a good trade in on our Coromal van, so overall we are quite happy, and saves the hassle of selling it privately. I also went out this afternoon and sorted out wireless access for Damian while he is working away, so he can check his emails and go online when he needs to. I had a lady come out this morning for a wedding quote, and have done that one up and also one from Saturday and sent those off, as well as ordering the flowers for next month's weddings.  I have flowers arriving tomorrow for Friday and Saturday's weddings, so will get started on the Friday one tomorrow and Thursday. It is going to be a busy week, but by Saturday afternoon, I will hopefully be able to have a break for a few weeks, as I don't have any weddings until mid June. I also need to unpack our current caravan tomorrow, so that it can be taken to the caravan yard on Thursday when we pick up the new one.  I also ordered Toni's formal dress today...she is happy about that, don't think my wallet is though.....

Pumpkin Soup and a quiet end to the weekend

Last night I made a yummy batch of pumpkin soup for dinner. I have modified a cookbook recipe, which I have listed on my recipe blog here 

We had this with home made bread. I made the bread in my break maker, but I find the texture of the bread is much better if I make it completely by hand, it seems much lighter than with the breadmaker, more like the commercial bread texture, so I find Damian everyone  accepts it much more. Yesterday was a relatively quiet day here, I had a sleep in as I didn't get to sleep until nearly 2am, as Kasey kept interrupting my sleep, and both Damian and I were quite tired, so it was quite a lazy day. Damian did go up to the chook pen in the afternoon and improve the access ramp to the chook pen as Sam has had a lot of trouble trying to get in, he's not very good at climbing up or flying up on to things, even flying up on to the perch is an issue for him, I don't know if this is normal for silkies, or if it is just him. Today I have had the pest control people come out and quote for termite barrier protection as we had termites a couple of months ago, and we want to ensure they don't come back, and they are going to include the general pest control in the price. We had a company come out on Friday as well, and I think I will end up going with them, as they seemed to know what they were talking about a bit more than the people today. This afternoon I need to get some paperwork and maintenance manuals done for Damian, and I am getting through the never ending mountain of washing that we seem to produce here again. It's back to school for the girls tomorrow, so things will be back to the usual hectic morning pace again, but it gets me going a lot earlier in the day, which is definitely a good thing.