Year 6 Graduation Dinner and Dance..

I've been getting in to trouble from my Mother for not keeping my blog updated, sorry Mother :) so I thought I had better stop being a slacker and update it ;). A LOT has happened in the last few months, including a move back down to Brisbane, as work died off immensely up at the farm township, so decisions had to be made.  A lot of people up there have been affected by a lot of mines closing and money is pretty short, which of course has a flow on effect on small businesses such as ours. We still have the farm, and the cattle, we just have to head up every few weeks to take stock of what's happening up there. We still also have our business up there, we have put a casual guy on to do the jobs that come in, and I am running that part of things from down here, and Damian has gone back to project managing for a company down here...regular income is lovely.

Anyway, tonight is a big night for our youngest, Kasey has her year 6 dinner and dance tonight. This is the first year they have put on such an event, and the kids are all really looking forward to it. Kasey spent weeks designing her outfit, then we had to provide the $ to make it all come together...lol... but she looks beautiful, and is looking forward to a great night.

2015....ok....I'm getting ready for you....slowly.

I have been away from the farm for 5 weeks and I have come home to an overgrown jungle. It's amazing how much the rain affects things, and how much better the landscape is once we get some. The property goes from depressing and dusty, to lush, green and full of life. The rain has been wonderful. The tanks are full, the dam is overflowing and  there is lots of grass in the paddocks and the cows are looking full and happy. LOTS of weeding to be done... This arrowroot plant has more than doubled in size in 5 weeks and is now over 2 metres tall!

 

Everything has grown so much, Damian got back to the farm 2 weeks earlier than me, and he came home to our small front yard looking like this:

My gardens are in there somewhere! He even resorted to bringing in the heavy artillery to bring the grass down to a mow-able level.

I have managed to make a small dent in the weeding, and the grass is back to being nice and mowed, now with the added benefit of being green and lush. The rain makes the weeds fairly easy to pull out as well, even though when I was weeding yesterday I got stung by a nasty wasp...nevermind, I am loving the rain! In the 2 years we have been here, the only good rain we have had was from the floods in Jan 2013, so to have had some regular rain, and to have our tanks full again has been fantastic.
While down in Brisbane, we made the house quite Christmassy and even put up a few outside lights this year!

It was  Grace's 1st birthday party on the weekend, this first year has gone so quickly. It was ridiculously hot, but Grace had a great day.

We did a visit to Lollipop Land at Old Petrie Town before coming home, I took Kasey and her best friend Bethany for a day out. It is about "Lollipop Land" a town of the North Pole where all of the lollies and sweet things are made for the world at Christmas time. It is only held for a few more days, so if you haven't had a chance, go and see the displays before they disappear, as they won't be back until the end of the year. The show is put on by doll maker Chris Boston, and visual display artist Jule, from Whimsical Imaginings.

So, now we're back at the farm and Kasey is back at school next week... Time to get back in to the swing of things and see what 2015 brings...

Snakes, New Life on the farm and other stuff

Someone up there certainly likes to make my life interesting that's for sure. Damian's parents and sister came up to the farm for the weekend to see the property and for my birthday. Toni also turned up to surprise me on Saturday afternoon and stayed until Tuesday. I was having a real downer of a birthday missing the big kids until Toni turned up, it made my day immensely. I ended up having a lovely day. Damian and Toni bought me a really nice pair of western boots, they even have purple stitching!

Love them! So on Sunday we had just finished having breakfast, when out of the corner of our eye a snake was noticed slithering along the concrete in the shed. It was quite small and had a head similar to the red naped snake, but the underside of it's belly had the orange spots of a brown snake. Needless to say that snake was quickly relocated. Then a bit later on that day Damian was searching through a box of poly fittings so he could hook up the water trough, and nearly put his hand on a snake hiding at the bottom of the box, luckily this snake was not a dangerous one. Here we are trying to ascertain what we are dealing with.

We really wanted to try and identify what we were dealing with before calling a snake catcher. So we googled the snakes found around our area, and found that it was a brown tree snake.

We loaded it in to a bin with a lid with the help of a broom, and Damian took it down to the dam and put it up a tree down there.The 3 snakes we have seen in the last couple of weeks have all been down the end of the house where the snake detector seems to be a bit dodgy, so I think we will return it for a replacement. This morning I went out to check on the guinea fowl as she was due to have her babies, and I found 3 babies under her, and another 2 by lunchtime. I have relocated all the babies in to a brooder to look after them, as they will only get picked off by birds or snakes if I leave them out with the mum, and guinea fowls have a reputation as not being the best mothers.So far we have 4 cinnamon pied ones, and 1 lavender pied. I don't know where the cinnamon comes in as our adults are all pearl and lavender..I found 1 dead one under her this afternoon, it had managed to hatch, but either suffocated or was squashed by mum...I have heard 2 other eggs either cheeping or rustling, so we'll see if any more hatch over the next 24 hours.

They have all started eating and drinking, and all seem pretty healthy. These little ones will more than double the guinea fowl numbers after we lost 10 to the fox massacre last year, so hopefully it will start to build up stocks again, and hopefully lots of these are girls as we currently have 1 girl to 3 boys! Mum can have all her babies back in 6-8 weeks when they are big enough to look after themselves. I have started back at work this week after school went back, so I have been busy catching up there. Kasey is really happy with her class so far this year, and when we turned up to class on day 1, her friends had saved her a desk next to them, so she was pretty chuffed. Kasey has also asked to start earning pocket money, so I have done up a chore chart for her, and will laminate it and put it on the fridge, so she can tick off her jobs each day, and then re-use it over and over. She will earn $10 a week for completing all her jobs, and nothing if she misses jobs. This is the chart I made up for her, she has daily chores which are smaller ones, and a few larger weekly chores. We have decided to make it an all or nothing deal, otherwise she will just get slack and not want to stick to her deal, and in the real world once you start work, if you don't do your job, you don't have a job..and a good work ethic gets noticed these days.

I also received my dvd from the library that I booked, River Cottage Australia. I have watched a few of the episodes online, but this way Damian and I can sit down and watch the whole series.

I am possibly heading down to Brisbane this weekend to meet with the real estate agent to finalise renting the house out down there as the real estate market it still slow for our type of house. I am hoping to go to a basket making workshop while I am down there as that is something I have wanted to try for a few years now. And catch up with the kids and pop over to catch up with how much little Grace is growing. xx

School awards

Kasey's school had their yearly awards ceremony this morning. Kasey received an excellence in behavior award, and an excellence in English award. The school really focuses on rewarding good behavior in their students. We are very proud of her achievements this year.

Craft show and home happenings...

Had a busy weekend...it's flown by...had a wedding yesterday, some lovely bouquets with delicate lily of the valley

Did a little bit of embroidery on some towels for Mum last night. Went to the craft fair with Mum today, picked up some lovely goodies. some lovely bling for my wedding bouquets, some well priced stabiliser for embroidery, a gorgeous little panel, some lace flowers and flower embellishments,

And I just couldn't resist...a little addition to my Christmas collection...I just LOVE this, santa on a cow with a duck...it stands about 25 cm tall, so is a really good size...very vintage looking, and the wheels even move... 

Kasey had a lovely day while Mum and I were wandering around the craft fair, she spent the day with her cousin Gemma, wandering around Southbank, and they also went to the Maritime Museum, and Kasey also had her face painted...the face painter did a fab job on the face painting...Kasey did not want to have a shower tonight and wash it off...

The clucky hen must be nearly due to have her chicks I think...I am hoping to head out tomorrow afternoon and pick up a chicken tractor to move her in to, so I can make sure that she and her chicks are all safe and sound, and away from the other chooks while the babies are so little....they currently nest up high and baby chicks wouldn't be able to get in and out of the nesting area...so maybe some new babies to add to the brood this week...I wish I had known about egg dowsing before she went clucky so I could have tried to eliminate some of the male eggs...but nevermind...I know for next time...not too busy a week coming up hopefully, I will see if I can get the office painted this week....and organise a tiler...Michael had a mate lined up to come and do it, but we haven't seen hide nor hair of him, so I will just organise it myself I think... I planted some strawberry plants, some rockmelon and some lettuce this week, one of the chickens got in to the vegie garden and scratched up the rockmelon plants though,,,,grrrr...so I managed to replant 2 of them, but not sure that they will make it....

Roar...

Toni, Kasey and I were sitting at the dinner table tonight, and I was telling them about the scrapbooking retreat over the weekend. I mentioned that we did some line dancing on Saturday night at the Western Theme night, Kasey looked at me with her hands clawing at me and goes "Roar"....and then giggles....Toni and I both laughed and said ....."Line Dancing...not Lion dancing"....she goes "oh" and giggles histerically.....I love those moments...

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....

The first lost tooth

Kasey has lost her first ever tooth today. It has been loose for about 6 - 7 weeks, and her new tooth has even been growing up behind it. I would have been taking her to the dentist next week if it hadn't fallen out by itself, as I was, and still am, a little concerned about how far back the new tooth is coming up. I have been getting her to wiggle it, and I could see this morning it was only just hanging in there, and she pushed it out with her tongue accidentally about 1/2 hour later, much to her surprise. So her tooth is now sitting in a glass beside her bed, waiting for the tooth fairy to come tonight...

I have downloaded an app on to my ipad called "home routines" and it is based on the flylady principles. It has morning and evening routines, as well as the 5 zones, and the focus zones for each week, as well as weekly tasks. As you do each one, you can click on it, and it marks it as done, and fills in one of the points on a star on the home page. As you complete all of the tasks, the whole star is filled in, showing you that you have finished it. I have finished most of my morning routines today, and the afternoon one is much easier. I have done quite a bit of clearing out in the kitchen, as that has been the focus zone for this week.  The pantry is nice and clean, and the clutter drawer was cleaned out by Damian yesterday.  I am noticing that since I have been focusing on this, that everyone else has been more focused on keeping their own rooms tidier, (a small miracle where Toni is concerned) so things are very slowly falling in to place. I will have to watch I don't overdo it though, as I was pretty wrecked by lunch time yesterday. Ok, I'm off to work out what we're having for dinner tonight, so I can complete my morning tasks....

The firm favourite....and this weather!!

Out of all of the gifts Kasey received for Xmas, there are a couple of firm favourites....the green machine, a set of walkie talkies, and the swimming pool toys. This was the theme I was going with this year, activities and toys that gets Kasey outside, and can be used over and over again. So even though the weather hasn't been very favourable, she has been riding her machine around (and around and around) the verandahs, and been having great fun with the walkie talkies....she also received lots of crafty and scrapbooking things, and this has been getting lots of use also, and I have received lots of pictures and cards in the last couple of weeks from her new stash. She has also been getting lots of wear out of a couple of new items of clothing and some new togs.

I still ended up with sooo many things to try and incorporate in to Kasey's room, which is pretty normal with Christmas and kids...and I can't really go through and take out the things she no longer uses while she is on school holidays as she brings things back in as fast as I take them out!!  Kasey is a major hoarder....so her room will get sorted when she goes back to school, everything is tidy and put away for now...which is the main thing.   We have been having really heavy rain here again this morning, it was so dark when  I got up at 6, I could have easily rolled over and stayed snuggled under the blankets, but I have a courier coming this morning, so had to get up..typical though, last week when I didn't know they were coming they were here just after 7.30 and woke me up and got me out of bed, today when I got up early so I would be ready, they haven't turned up!! 

Everything is so wet again now, I think the grass is going to be a couple of feet tall by the time things dry out enough to get the mowing done....however, I don't mind....we have nothing to worry about here other than some long grass and having to wear gumboots in the yard, much better than having to wear gumboots in the house like our poor neighbours up north who are flooded are having to do. I look at pictures on the news where you can only see the roof of some houses....that would just be devastating, and the clean up would be horrendous, and some people are still waiting for the floods to hit, but at least they have had time to prepare and move their valuable posessions and their livestock, unlike the people up north. Mother Nature is sure reminding us right now that we are mere mortals, and she has complete control of things, and that we had better not forget it!

More water backed up after more heavy downpours today...

Fresh produce prices are going to hit the roof in the coming months, and things have been so wet in the gardens, that most of my produce has died so I basically have to start again, but it has been too wet to plant anything right now, as things are getting too wet and rotting and dying..I have stocked up on a few frozen vegies, and with bananas apparently going to hit record high prices, we will be sticking with the basic fruits for the next few months...my banana tree hasn't fruited yet...hopefully it isn't too far off now..