A bit more craft studio progress

We moved the craft studio today to its' final position. It is now located up on top of the hill, with easy access to the shower and toilet up there, so it will be good for anyone staying in there in the sofa bed.  Once up there, I started on staining the benchtops. I decided on a walnut stain by British Paints.

 The end result, I am really happy with it.

The old cupboard has also been finished. It has come up beautifully, and the black fittings really finish it off beautifully.

I have also put in the first decor item....a lovely set of sewing machine bookends I received for Xmas from Ann....

I will set them up with my craft magazines once I start moving my craft supplies in there. Toni got a bit crafty up here today, helping to make some baskets out of boxes for the shelving units under the benches.

I'll post some pics once they're done. Toni heads home tomorrow, but we should catch up again soon once Michael and Kacey have their bub.

Craft studio progress

Well, after the last few months of establishing the business, Christmas etc, we have gotten back in to getting the craft studio finished off. The painting and floor has been done. So, on the weekend, we started the building of the benches.

We have also pulled out the sofa bed mechanism from a sofa bed I picked up for free last year, and we have built a box for it to go in to. I am going to upholster the box with textured fabric, and then cover the cushion and make it all look good. This way we will be able to use it as guest accomodation as well.

I also have a beautiful cupboard that I was given by Mum and Dad, and I am going to use that in the craft room, but it needed renovating. So I have started painting it.

 I have been painting the hinges and handles as well, in black, as they are all quite fancy and original.

I am hoping to finish putting it all back together today and move it in. So then we still need to stain the timber bench tops, install some shelving, then install the blind and  do the cladding on the outside to make it look nice, and I will be able to start moving things in and doing the decor...yay...can't wait. Toni has arrived up here to visit for a couple of days, so looking forward to spending some quality time with her while she is here.

Neatening up our bedroom at the farm, and a slippery visitor

Damian has been busy up at the farm on his own this weekend. He spent most of the day yesterday in the horrible heat of 44 deg outside in the bobcat removing the slurry from the bottom of the drying out dam. He estimates he has removed about 15 cubic metres of sludge so far, so that is about an extra 15000 litres of water that the dam will take once we finally start to get some rain. He spent today building our robe in our bedroom. We have had the materials sitting ready to go for a couple of months now, he just needed to find a spare few hours to put it all together. We have had the drawer units set up with a rail in between as a temporary measure since we have been there, but it always looked untidy just because clothes hanging can tend to look a bit messy. I am going to paint the doors in a white to match the bedroom, and then I will decorate the shelf above with some nic nacs to finish it all off. I look forward to seeing it in person when I get back from Brisbane.

Damian also had a slithery visitor on Friday. I am hoping it was just passing by...it was a pretty big one!

 

We have been fairly lucky since installing our snake repellers a couple of months ago, this is the first one we have seen since then. Nothing is ever 100% though, and the repellers are meant to deter the snakes from wanting to hang around, so I am hoping it was on its' way away from the repellers! Anyway, if we are going to have any I would prefer them to be black rather than brown, I would of course rather not have any...

Rocking chair makeover

Our first grandchild is due this month, and I bought Kacey a gliding rocking chair for her baby shower in November. The covers on it weren't really in keeping with her nursery theme, so I said I would recover it for her. This is how it looked originally.

We went to spotlight on New Years eve and purchased some fabric that she liked, so I could make up some new covers. I took the padded footstool off the stool, and recovered it as well. I love how it has come up, it looks brand new, and perfect for the nursery, and for Kacey to feed bub in, and it is sooo comfy.

I just took the original covers off, and then traced around them for the new ones, and bought some self covering buttons so I could replace the buttons as well. They have a bit of a jungle animal theme going on, with monkeys, elephants and giraffes, so the giraffe print will go well, and will suit either a boy or girl themed nursery, even though we know we are expecting a grand daughter. It was quite easy, and very quick to recover, and the end result has come up really nicely.

Merry Christmas!

I hope your day is spent with people you love, whose company you enjoy. I am looking forward to spending the next couple of days catching up with family.
Merry Christmas!! xx

 

Tagging the cattle and improving the yards

We spent our weekend here out in the heat, doing some work outside. I am not a fan of summer, I would rather do things outside from autumn through to spring when it's cooler. Damian had to hire a dingo digger to do a plumbing job on Saturday, so we hired it for the weekend and did some things around here. He dug some trenches to bury the poly coming from the dam up to the top tank underground, he also ran a trench from the tanks to the chook pen so I have water there instead of lugging buckets of water over each day. We also dug LOTS of holes for future use, for planting trees etc or burying the odd chicken that dies. We dug holes down at the cattle yards for the corner and strainer posts to build our laneway in to our cattle yards. Most of our cattle will go in to the yards fairly easily with a molasses bribe, but we have a few that refuse so by having the laneway, we hope to be able to force them in a lot easier. We got 2 sections of fencing done, and just have one more run of about 50 metres to do to finish them off.
Our cattle are also being plagued by buffalo flies at the moment, and were due for worming again. A few came in to the yards while we were working down there, so I ran them through the crush and wormed and tagged them. I put hot pink ear tags in to identify them as ours easily from a distance, and I also put insecticidal ear tags in to treat them for flies. I put 4 girls through and the bull. We have 14 to go, so will try and do them one afternoon this week. It makes it so much easier by ear tagging them as I know which ones I have wormed and which ones I haven't. It was very hot, but we achieved a lot.

(Hertie Gertie, our mini hereford, after tagging)

We got just under 30mm of rain here last Thursday, so the cows should have a bit of green pick to eat now hopefully. They have all lost condition over the last few months of dry weather, and with the flies giving them a hard time, they were starting to struggle.
The rest of this week will be spent working on finishing off Christmas presents, and then we will head down to Brisbane on Sunday or Monday to spend some time down there and spend Christmas with family.

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.