2012: The Year of.... The garden

Ummmm.... yeah, so weeding isn't our forté

There are a number of projects still tying up here post-renovation/extension. Just the words "extension" and "renovation" still make me shudder. Sure, the result is fantastic! In the end. That bit towards the end, though? When you see money draining out of your account like there's no tomorrow and EVERY single purchase is in the $thousands, you don't feel so much excited and sure of what you've set out to do, but more terrified you've made a huge mistake.

As the dust continues to settle - literally - and we patch up various natural disaster events and nail marks on architraves and skirting board sections that are still missing, the outdoor part of our humble compound abode is going along swimmingly.

A couple of years back, I joined Gardens For Wildlife. It's a council initiative that I have so far managed to convince two of our adjoining neighbours to try out. For the sake of their lawns/soil quality, the bird and other native wildlife, the insects, and their water bills (the neighbours' water bills, that is, not the fauna's...). What's not to love about contributing to the green belt we actually live in by regenerating our small areas of back and front yards with the types of plants that occurred naturally here until it was cleared 100 years ago??

In 2011, we made small changes to the garden. I have planted a hedge of indigenous natives along our front side fence line. Already, in just three months, the little single-stemmed 20cm tube stock plants have bushed out into beautiful, healthy knee-height specimens.

<------ Look at that! I have clipped this back three times.

And get this: I didn't even water the things in! This is where they grow best. I just bung them in, they will do the rest. This particular plant can be sculpted into any shape you can imagine. An elderly neighbour across the way has three of them. He has his shaped like a sphere, a box and an oblong sort of thing. They are works of art, to be sure (oh to have the spare time! One day...). Now, while I'm not going to go pruning mine into chess pieces anytime soon, it is wondrous to see a native looking every bit like the kind of expensive landscaping plant you'd find in the back yards of my website client's clients (just check these out for incredible!)

One of our random grevilleas, with its crazy-beautiful strange flowers

Lolly's frog pond

So, 2012. The year of the garden here. Over the year, I plan to...

...finish downsizing the roses that are struggling in the front yard.
...reintroduce indigenous native grasses to the front garden beds.
...reclaim some of our beautiful front yard lawn to accommodate a butterfly garden.
...help Steve create a small paved area off the front porch next to the frog pond the LGBB and I made out of her old baby bath in '10 and screen it with fast-growing, bushy feature natives.
...clear a decommissioned vegie patch in the back yard and turn it into a screened "fairy garden" area - the request has been taken from the LGBB to plant "tall grasses that you can't see over so I can hide behind them." Point: taken.
...plant a small (ha! are they ever truly small?!) flowering eucalypt in a bare back corner, away from the house.




How does your garden grow? Have you ever considered investigating local native species?

I would highly recommend you research what grows naturally in your area. For instance, a native in Gippsland could be a noxious weed here where I live, just four hours away. Not all natives are the same! Still Australian native, yes, but not necessarily ideal for your area. Talk to the experts, if you have any at your council or other such body - if nothing else, they might be able to advise what is best *not* to plant. You may be surprised what they recommend!

Good weekends look like this

Our gorgeous Liquid Ambar tree

I chose a colour for my external office wall and hung
the wall plates Steve gave me for my birthday last year.
THANK YOU for your input, dear readers!

I'm very proud of these doors - my $70 French door Ebay win! Cha-ching!

Work break: home made meringues for afternoon tea,
looking out from my new office/workspace to the family on the (messy) deck

A spot of painting: Beautiful sepia colour for the internal walls.
I feel calm already! Looks like a good window to sit
in front of to finish writing a book....

Finished off by a stunning sunset (which I only thought to try
and photograph at the last minute.... Darnit! It was gorgeous)

And to top it off, the safe arrival of our newest family member. What's better in life than that?

So how was your weekend? Do anything productive?

Renovation Rewind reminder

I have no idea how fifteen months have passed since I posted about the ongoing, daunting, exciting home renovations we began in October 2009.

I can thank Altait from Life In A Pink Fibro for rewinding this weekend to December (of any year), because now I have been given a little boot up the backside about taking some After shots.  For now, though, please be my guest and come and see (or be reminded) what we were living in - December 2009.

I promise I will do some before and after shots this month sometime using the photos in that old December post, so you can see how far we've come .... and how much painting we still have to do *groaaaaaan*

I need your opinions!

I need your opinion please. Always welcome, on all things.

Today, very important question....

Which paint colour should I use on my office exterior walls?? 

Our home is a green-tinted cream weatherboard with lovely dark green-grey accents. From the east side of the house, we will be able to look across the deck and see the office from all windows. So it has to be a colour that we're not going to be offended by in the near future. I am partial to red, as you may have seen if you were reading my blog back in the day (when we did the kitchen reno) but for those not familiar with it, here are some shots of my splashback:

It's a bit brown, it's burnt, it's a good red

So I had wanted to carry that red through to the back yard. I'm thinking this colour mightn't look too shabby. A nice, earthy brown-red. But I don't know if I should do a less "in your face" colour.

What are your thoughts? Have you seen this sort of red or another bold colour work well over a large area outside like this? Got any photos of it?? I was thinking perhaps a deep green. But think it might start to look too much "the same".

Here is the wall we'd be looking at the most - all those blue areas you see are what I have to paint. Given the muted greys/greens of the rest of the house, I want a really strong feature colour.

And no... we're not remotely interested in keeping the blue....

Opinions please: Metal or tile roof?

Time for your good self to weigh in!

It's crunch time. Steve and I have to replace our tired old "biscuit" tiles with.... something. We are undecided as to precisely what. The choice is down to either a concrete roof tile OR a coloured metal roof and we are decided on one thing so far: We are going to get a dark charcoal colour, either way.

As you may have read in this post earlier in March, we got hit with a doozy of a hailstorm, which has completely annihilated our already disabled original old roof to the point of needing to be removed.

Now, a bit about aesthetics:

We live in an old suburb. Yes, yes, overseas readers can chortle into their cuffs at this point. "Old" to us here is late 1800's. Still, that's pretty old anyway, I suppose. This is an area of national heritage significance. Many new, young families have been moving in over recent years and are lovingly tending the old residences, retaining their character and charm [at least, on the outside... I am certain that past occupants of our house alone would be baffled to learn it could probably get to the moon and back if it weren't tethered to the ground, given the wiring and technology Steve has injected into the place with the help of our electrician mate].

We have an old weatherboard. Our extension out the back is a mixture of continuing this weatherboard and features of rendered flat wall. It's all very noice and luffley so far. Now, we have an opportunity to introduce the new external colours we have used at the back of the house and get away from the *cringe* overly-done heritage green and burgundy of its current facade. We want to get it back to more green-creams and deep charcoal tonings, with a sort of eucalypt shade of mid grey-green as an accent.

So.... with all that information (and it may not sway you at all, especially not without sample pictures - which I will get to in a later post, promise, but there is at least one here in this post).... can you please share:

• Have you lived in a house with a metal roof? (We haven't)
• Is there much of a difference, rain-noise wise? (we're thinking there must be) I must admit, I loooove the sound of rain falling onto a tiled roof, I find it so soothing....
• Would you sacrifice inside noise aesthetics for external profile?

And the all important one, which I am most interested in:

Which look do you prefer, given that this is an old house (early '40s)? Your opinions would be really appreciated. Do you need photos? Do you need to see what you're opinionating on? Or do you know, hands down, what you'd go for, regardless of brick or weatherboard?

Hot diggety bedrooms, kids, it's a smash!

Just last week, the LGBB got up after we had said goodnight, for some excuse or other (one of the usuals - "I need a drink/to go toilet/my light on/my light off", etc.) and we had turned on the video monitor in the kitchen. We've always had it, it's something I am not exactly sure when we'll not feel the need to use anymore. It's been such a huge part of our routine in parenting Lolly. Watching over her. Waiting for her to leave too. Then relishing her growing, comical, sleeping and waking moments over these past years.

So she sees it switched on, peers at it suspiciously from across the room, then says, "What's THAT?" What's whaaat? we both say, as nonchalantly as possible and thinking dammit dammit dammit we are so busted. "THAT!" and she points, then goes over the monitor, inspecting the screen which clearly shows her bed and Scraps and Bunny as she's just left them to come out to us. "Is that for you to see in my room?"

Er. Yes. About that, we go to tell her... But she's distracted by trying to weazle another few minutes out of bed and it's forgotten and we get away with it. The monitor survives detection for another day!

Anyway, following on from my last post, little did I know that yesterday, I would be put upon to get not only the rest of the skirting board painting and the fairy done as well, but also the curtains.

I delivered.

The poster is a really cool retro-looking thing that Steve ran once on a job,
this was an over that was going to be thrown out so I said Yes please! I'll take it!

Last night, our girl spent the first night in her new bedroom. And the delight she had was matched only by mine as I watched on that same video monitor my dear little one wake up, early this morning, then sit up and look around her room for the first time. I watched as she lay back down on her pillow and listened as she sighed a really satisfied sounding sigh. Then she smiled. That familiar wide-mouthed smile that takes over her entire gorgeous face. And I smiled too, still watching her. She stayed like that, beaming and looking around her room.

And I heard as she whispered to herself, "It'th. My. Bedroooom!"

I tell you, I nearly dropped all my tears all at once while my heart burst. She likes it. She's comforted by it. I am so relieved. The lounge room where she has been for the past six months has been okay. But it's no little girl's bedroom. It's scared her, it hasn't been somewhere she wants to spend time on her own. A little kid needs somewhere they can feel like they can be alone. She hasn't had that since we moved here (so, basically, the entire time she has been able to walk).

Happy, happy day today.

The fairy commands the central corner of the room. Lolly's tall white shelf unit will go underneath (its top comes up to the knee height of the fairy... a new unit of measurement??? Knee-height to a fairy?)

Close-up so you can see the purple flower centres (of course) and also the kick-ass lips/facial profile... Man, it was a killer to keep my hand straight but I did it. And I think it looks good. If (ok here comes Ms Self-Critical ....again!) you don't look at the proportion of the forearms to her thighs.... she looks like she could be a contender for the East German Women's Olympics team (throwback to that classic line from Top Secret - don't shoot me! It's a movie quote!).

I love that by 12pm on Day 1, the LGBB was already treating this as her kick-about room.
Shoes kicked off, socks tossed, drink shoved to the side....

The curtains worked - I removed the pins from the backs of these delicate butterflies and sewed them by hand onto the curtain. The blockout fabric is the highest grade - I bought it from Spotlight and sewed it onto the back of these tab top curtains - giving a really deliciously dark room...
which is lit up, of course, by every little girl's favourite accessory: the Glitter Lamp.

Bought this from Ebay a couple of months ago and have been positively ITCHING to put it on the wall. I put it up this afternoon and tonight, Lolly was lying in front of it, feeling it and saying, "This is gorgeous." I love that we have stirred a sense of wonder within her with these finishing touches.

Painting the fairy

No. No witty euphemisms here.

I seriously am, today, going to finish painting the fairy on the LGBB's new bedroom wall.

Also on the list for today: just one thing.... Filling the 12m skip. For the rest of the long weekend, I gather, judging by the mess we have to get rid of.

Still, once it goes, we will have an area ready to be excavated (next Wednesday) and then it's Systems GO for garage and office/work room! Steve and I have already also begun discussing what we'll do for our entertaining area. Given the wildlife corridor we're in (and the backyard full of dogs and now a cat), we want to create another spot for a garden. We were going to go for the rather obligatory 5m deck, from door to fence. But now we're agreed that we want to incorporate a centre island of native garden - something we did at our last place as well, in the front yard, instead of lawn.

This way, we can move the 'entertaining area' off to the back side of the house, which will also mean the views are better. The area won't be directly in front of the doors to outside, but we think we'd rather look out over a lovely bit of garden than at an outdoor dining setting.... Besides, the view from the back end of the house is the money shot. And moving the decking/dining bit to here is a win-win, really.

I dearly love planning gardens. Properly, from scratch. It stirs and satisfies something in me. And what better time of year to plan than Autumn! We won't be up to planting til after Winter, and we need to put down the paving and decking first. We're planning a wide boardwalk with a shallow step down onto paving with the garden taking centre stage in the middle. This way, the deck/boardwalk will be able to hug the house and it means we can maximise our view (which is best over by the house - the closer to the fence, the more we lose because of the neighbour's garage and, of course, the fence!).

Looking forward to today. I love when combined effort sees great change in something that has looked the same for so long. Heh. Sounds a bit like a metaphor for something else! Perhaps it is.

Now I'm no expert...

...but I'm guessing that sickeningly loud cracking noises emanating from one's ceiling/cornice area are NOT anything to laugh about, considering the amount of water that got in the roof and onto the ceiling this past weekend.

Add to that a bowed ceiling now in the kitchen that you swore wasn't there a couple of days ago AND a new damp patch appearing in a different corner of your bedroom alongside a cracked cornice...... and uh, I'm feeling rather like a sitting duck here.

Jumping at every shadow I see this week. I seem to be waiting for a groaning, giving way. I sooooo don't have the time or nerves for this! Not right now!

Please bear with me. We seem to be having the dwelling equivalent of major technical difficulties. Consider this the white noise or test pattern you are possibly about to receive from my blog for a while, as I have no further pre-scheduled posts. But lots I wish I had the time and energy to say!

More soon...

My search is over!

I finally found them. The curtains that are going in the LGBB's new room!

Now, this is no easy feat. The girl has gone from All-Pink-No-Compromises to... well, exactly the same obsession but just swap the "pink" with "purple". Kind of tricky when you've been painting and decorating a new room (complete with green walls).


So here was her room a few weeks ago, Steve is still using it as his cutting room at the moment so it looks like a bombsite now - can you believe, we were HALF a measly box short of finishing the whole 63sqm of bamboo timber flooring. Half a box!! And they were out of stock! So that has held just about everything up. We now have the box. Steve is doing the last of his cutting this weekend. And then, the finishing touches are ready to go in Lolly's room before we can get carpet laid and then.... she's IN! Five months she's been sleeping in our lounge room. She has done remarkably well (although since about halfway through, she has been beside herself with fear about the fireplace - who can blame her, really - and other shapes and things that go "Bump" in the night in there).

Her bedroom window view, lucky girl
(the sun - and the glorious full moon! - rises over that ridge)

I looked everywhere for some plain white curtains. The closest I came (complete with child-strength blockout) was a $100 eyelet curtain - just one! For $100!

So then, I found this really lovely plain jacquard tab top curtain on Ebay. Excellent drop (I'm going to put them right at the top, near the ceiling) and a Buy-Now price of just $35. After visiting Spotlight last week with the LGBB, we came away with some blockout for $20-something, a really cute set of sheer purple (of course) sequin curtains to jazzy up the window a bit and I also found Lolly's decoration of choice: Butterflies. I am going to snip off the wire and hand stitch these somewhere so they can be easily removed for washing. The photo doesn't do the big one nearly enough justice. It is an exquisitely delicate, dusty pink with glittery edges that sparkle in any light source. To finish the curtain off, I also bought 1.5m of the cutest, funky, girly ribbon - white with pink and purple "squashed" squares - which I am going to sew on near the bottom. Some curtain weights for added effect when hanging and.... voilé! The entire lot cost just under $90.


AND I get to have some fun too and bring out my sewing machine!

Yes!

The last plinth board went on the house yesterday. Our builder has finished the inside of the house and all the external touches!

All that remains to complete is the porch off the new laundry door entry and the garage. That starts in about a month. We still have heaps of painting to do (skirting boards, architraves and all the nail patches - urgh, fun job), but who cares? I can live in a room with raw timber for a while!

So we are movin' in! I have begun stocking the shelves of our cupboards and I am so excited to discover that an entire huge suitcase full of linen looks pissy and lost on the shelf space - so much storage I could cry for joy. There is more to go in there, but I will still have room to spread things out. And the large cupboard (first photo) doesn't even have all the shelves put in yet - we are using this cupboard as the media hub (printers, networking stuff, TV servers, etc.) on one side and on the other is all of Lolly's craft/paint boxes, as you can see. The shelves above are for board games and other family fun things like that. Something I have ALWAYS, always wanted to have in a home - a family cupboard. And yes, there is actually room for us to stand in there with the doors shut, would you believe! So a *real* family cupboard. We are just daft enough to hide in there together and jump out, 'Surprise!', at unsuspecting guests too, because we can tend to be goofy like that.... Hmmmm, wonder if the parents in-law would cope well with that little prank *finger to chin*

The tiler comes next week and then the LGBB will also have her bathroom and toilet ready to use. More photos a bit later, when I have more "spare" time....



It feels so good to be moving out of the cramped space we've been living in for five months and into this lovely, light-filled new part of our home. Ahhhhh, expansion. I can feel it, our horizons are beginning to broaden.

I have to say...

I am just BESIDE MYSELF at how awesome these photos I took on the weekend turned out. They're for my darling SIL and her upgraded website/business identity (I did her one a couple of years back, hastily and half-hearted, though with lots of love, and it is time for a major snazzing-up of her 'joint' on the www). She is a naturopath extraordinnaire, specialising in - who knew - natural fertility education.

I feel very privileged to have this girl in my circle (or rather, to be so firmly placed in hers) and we all in this house love her dearly. On Saturday night, she, Steve and I all but snuggled up together on the couch - with laptops on laps and Steve in the middle with his iPhone, not wanting to be out-tech'ed - and we worked on some themes. The SIL decided on old school: Paint Shop. I laughed a maniacal, if not condescending, MOOOO-HAHAHAHAAAA and drummed my fingers on my key pad, whipping up some delights in Photoshop and Indesign.

But the stealer of the show, for mine, was the photography. Taken in my kitchen, in fading evening light, I painstakingly picked a dandelion to pieces, tweezering the last few and then taking to the underside with some nail scissors. The result needed no photo touching at all, bear in mind what is below is the real, raw deal, no cheaty-type flares or colour corrections added:


I took about 60 shots - amazing how carried away you get, especially when you've taken a while to set up. And then, inspired, I grabbed a HOME GROWN granny smith apple (awwww! so little!), skewered it and got Steve to hold it in front of our kitchen splashback. It looks very crisp and fertile, to me!...


All I have to do is blot out the skewer and we're apples! Heh!

A very productive weekend. We even made progress on the house. Which reminds me.... must update on that soon, it's been months!

Well... it only took 2 years

...but today, we actually sat as a family at the table. Before then, we didn't have the room.

Not that the extension is finished (we're laying the flooring this coming week, Steve and I - all 63sqm of it, yikes!), but we whacked the big old wooden dining table in there. And whaddaya know? The room dwarfs it!

Utterly stoked. Stoked to have a sense of normalcy back (it's fun to eat a casual meal here and there together at the island bench but, seriously, every friggen day and every meal? Bit much... bit toooo casz), thoroughly rapt that I can sit and work this afternoon and look out the windows at green, glorious, majestic, commanding bush up on the steep hills that rise the height of the entire window, from my seated position, and really blessed that I have a family to share it with.

Am a happy camper today. Life is full.

Major design flaw

I guess we didn't really consider the downside to living in an old riverbed until we tried to dig to find solid ground for the garage wall.

Two metres down, the excavator conceded defeat for the day. When our next door neighbours arrived home, it was to discover our shared side fence down and a trench right alongside their usual car parking point/s. They also informed us that when the graders came to dig out for the asphalt on the road (the neighbours have been here for centuries, I think...), the huge machines were up to their roofs in the pit they were digging to find foundations. Gee. Great. Yeah, we have no hope!

We've had two mini landslides overnight - not helped by destructive yabbies doing their.... yabbying.... - and now we're urgently trying to locate a fire rated replacement boundary wall material, other than the brick we were counting on. Any suggestions?

See all that junk up on the deck? That'd be the contents of my laundry. And some furniture we can't fit anywhere else in the 2.5 rooms we are living in.

On to the good stuff! In that same picture (above) you can see the wall we are going to take down (the one with the glass windows above and the one next to that) - we're not replacing the diagonal part, this will be a wide step down onto the deck Steve and I are going to build between the existing one you see and the point where I stood to take the photo. It's going to create a bit of a courtyard behind the garage and a room where I plan to eventually start consulting (IF WE EVER BUILD IT NOW!). And the rest of it (to the left) we are replacing with some sort of horizontal timber screening.

The temporary fence for the dogs, now that the excavator has taken what was left of the driveway and old garage slab.


I made Steve's week when I told him he should take the spare room and turn it into a games (read: boy) room. I draw the line, though, at permanently closed curtains at the window. So he must compromise.
There is enough room in here, now we've widened it a good .5m, for a couch and we've decided not to put cupboard doors in until we need it to be a cupboard (below) - which gives perfect hanging space for a TV.


Here is the LGBB's room, ready to go.... just as soon as we put on the architraves, cornices, paint it and do the floor. I designed a wide cupboard and an open bookshelf (with space for a small built-in desk) to the right of that, in the foreground there. We'll get some wardrobe internal configuration from a place I found down the road here. Systems are still "GO" here for an apple green and white room, as per the LGBB's request.



Just a little reminder to myself about the lovely view so I don't get too despondent amidst the never-ending dirt, mess, plaster dust, crumbling foundations....:


I'm so looking forward to sitting in this room when it's finished. Early morning sun streaming in the windows, kissing the tops of the trees with the mist rising off them. Ahhh!


When I asked the builder for a cut-out (the back is not on it yet) at the end of the 'hallway' to create a bit of a focal point for some art, I didn't expect him to give me an interim visual - "The Coffee Cup", by esteemed artist Ronald "Ranga" McDonald.

The shower in the middle of being waterproofed. We're having floor to ceiling tiles in here, the floor space is a nice, roomy 1200x900 (our current shower floor is just 800x800mm - ie. crammmmped! - so we'll probably end up using the new one til our ensuite is done, on the 12th of Never, when we have the funds, going by the way we're throwing away money like no one's business right now). I'm hoping to find a nice earthy toned, large tile for the walls and floor. We have chosen chrome fittings and a round-sided bath set in to a hob so there's plenty of space for toys, candles, soaps, etc.


And the down side to locking the dogs inside overnight now that they can't sleep where they usually do up on the deck (because we no longer have a side fence or gates)? Our old lady, Pep, just cannot hold her water for that long anymore. She pissed on the floor, right in the hallway, poor darlin' :( I can only imagine her horror and shame (she has NEVER disgraced herself inside, ever, in all the years we've owned her). And it stopped only about a centimeter from one of our last remaining whole plaster sheets which we really need!

Observations of a day

1. Plasterboard is flecking heaving to lift. Surprisingly, deceptively heavy.
2. You can't risk a sneeze when you need to go toily. Just can't.
3. There is no point whining about weeding. In the end, the weeds will still be there unless you pull them.
4. I saw a false eyelash on the floor of the gym. It weirded me out a little because it looked closed, even though that's impossible.
5. Can someone tell me how to stop saying "That's so raven" every time I see the brand name 'Raven' on the draft flap of my front door please? It's annoying me.
6. Who the HELL wears false eyelashes while they're exercising?
7. Tradies are whiny people if you give them half the chance. And they whine about each other too - "that plumber hasn't even finished fitting it off" (ooookay....), "tell your chippy he's holding us up until he installs the grate" (right-eo and he'll know what that means then?)
8. Charlie and Lola has become ever so firm a friend incredible favourite. If only they'd not teach kids how to cram more words than necessary into one sentence.

9. It turns out, there ARE too many times I can listen to the Xanadu soundtrack *withered look to camera* She won't stop listening to it.... make it sto-ho-ho-hohhhp.


10. Twilight: I STILL don't get it. And I daresay, now, I never will.

The "Get To It Later" spot

Do you have one in your home? I used to. In my last house. When we moved here (nearly two years ago... already!), I had to accept the fact that there was no spare space, no cupboards (we have ONE, yes, ONE narrow cupboard which I use for linen - I'm talking, no cupboards in bedrooms, except ours, no storage at ALL, not even in the laundry). I had to accept that I would move that clean basket of laundry from the couch to the floor to the other couch in the lounge to the top of the washing machine to the laundry floor, etc., if I couldn't get around to folding it there and then.

I'm here to say, I am COMPLETELY over not having any space. I was barely living with it for the past couple of years. But at least I had the laundry as a fallback crap stack. Now, the time has come. We must be squeezed into even less space as building works encroach on us that little bit more and inch the three of us into the corner. Can you see us? See me? I'm the one cowering, saying, "No! Please, no. Don't take my only cupboard and the only room I have ever had in this house where I can shove something out of my sight and close the door on it til I'm ready to get around to it. Pleeeease!"

But take it away, the builder must.

This weekend, I'm moving everything out of the linen cupboard. There is NO place to put it. Steve's parents are bringing suitcases over for us today. For me to pack and run away to Paris. No, I mean, to pack full of our sheets, towels and blankets. I'll have to stack the suitcases.... I dunno, in the kitchen or our bedroom or something.

Then I have to clear out the entire laundry. The laundry is a really decent size. It's a big, square room of nearly 3x3m. It's as big as the ridiculously small 3x2.4m spare room (which has been enlarged .5m in the process of the extension to the house).... in fact, it may be bigger. We're going to build one of the four household-use cupboards into the space behind the laundry door. There's room for a utility cuboard behind that. I'm so, so excited. I will, literally, be a kid on Christmas morning (for we plan to be finished enough to move back in to that half of the house by Christmas), with all my cupboard space.

What the feck am I going to do with all my laundry stuff? The LGBB's art and craft tubs are in there - pretty easy to shift, they're just big tubs - and all my sewing stuff, there's the green shopping bags (they could live in the car for a month, I s'pose), all the odds and sods of a laundry - they'll have to go into tubs or a spare laundry basket as well. All fine and good... but then where do they go??! Hmmmmmmmm. They will literally have to sit out here in the open, where I can kick them, stub my toe and curse them umpteen times a day.

I made the LGBB and Steve stand in our storage cupboard last week. Each time I go out there, I look at the floor space of this thing and give a silent thanks that it snuck past everyone on my house plan. I've been questioned on it several times by different people, including the builder ("You sure you want a cupboard that big?" "That's a pretty big cupboard." "Most cupboards are half that width.") Yada yada yada. And then I lead them in to the main part of the house, point at the little cupboard I'm dealing with and say, "Okay, there's not even a cupboard in my daughter's bedroom and now, her clothes are at the bottom of this apparently acceptably named 'linen cupboard'. If I'm saying we need a big cupboard, you'll BUILD me a decent, big cupboard." *pant pant pant*

I. Need. A. Cupboard. Just one, I'd be happy with for now, til we're done building. The new design has two linen cupboards, a storage cupboard (the one in the photo here, which I plan to use to store games, crafts, winter blankets, small children, etc.), built-in robes in the two bedrooms and a utility cupboard in the laundry. There. That oughtta do it!

But right now, oh I am SO over the no space thing. Canya tell?

And where is your "get to later" place? You know, the place where you put some chore if you want it out of your sight so you feel less pressure to get around to everything in the same hour/day? Is it a spare room? Your laundry? An out of the way corner, perhaps (we don't even have any of those anymore)? A couch? Your bed?

Two of the loves of my life with my newest love...

Sunday in photos

One of our most favourite things is to give the LGBB control of the camera. These are the photos she took when Steve handed it to her in the early evening while the two of them were inspecting the progress on the extension:

I just think this is hilarious of Jazz - her face doesn't look quite like this for neither Steve nor I.
No, this definitely looks like a Pal Pose, exchanged privately between Jazzy and Lolly.

"Oh, Peppeeeeeh"
(remind me to tell you all about the wonders of human glucosamine tablets on an elderly doggy's joints... she has a spring back in her step and, if I am not mistaken, was even seen to kick up her heels a little, in the midst of jumping off the house extension this past weekend - not bad for an old girl who was born in mid-1994!!)

Then it was Steve's turn to take the camera back off the toddler.
"What shall I take photos of?" he asked her.
"MEEEEEEEE!" she declared, true to her 3.5 year-old form.