Saturday 31 January 2015

As I looked through my photos to see which ones to edit for the blog, I saw us being pirates for a fun visit to the STS Leeuwin, I saw our fish and chip dinner with these labels J:




 











I saw photos of our dessert pizzas; sunflowers; new bathroom screen doors (fire-resistant and “one-way” viewing-extra-strength mesh); massive piles of boxes and bits for our major shed, hobby room and front hall tidy ups!  And I saw Michael swapping over our water pump after the first (little one) decided to stop one afternoon; I saw a 15th birthday celebration; corn stalks growing tall; cards I made; new shelves in our pantry; cane chair cushions re-covered and pretty hooks on our walls.

But none of those photos told the stories as I remembered them…

So I choose to share this one instead:

 



 










Our bench cushion recovered too – with a recycled table runner and some fabric we got from the op-shop for 50c! 

And I choose to share this photo:

 




 















The heirloom tomatoes are coming along J.  I cooked up another batch of passata today with nearly the last of the regular tomatoes – and included one massive zucchini in there!  They just keep growing of course and we have had our fair share of zucchini frittata, zucchini and potato bake and vege (zucc) soup!  More to eat too – will be resorting to the chocolate cake recipe tomorrow I think J.

Today’s photo was:

 

 
















Shelves in the front hallway!!!  This man is an absolute legend!  The shelves are so lovely and will make all the difference to being able to store blankets and winter clothes – yay.

And finally:

 



 














The gorgeous light I am sitting under to type up this blog post.

Just because it is pretty.

 

 

Monday 12 January 2015


Friday, I took photos of sunflowers at sunrise, trees at sunrise and shadows at sunrise too:



 




 



 



 



 



 


The exquisite joy of an early morning walk.

Friday 9 January 2015


Last Monday was an interesting day!

Good = 37o outside, 23 inside J.  And that’s with us all just coming and going as usual – these strawbales are doing lovely things to keep us cool and cosy.

Not so good = bushfire alert L.  We could see and smell smoke in the late afternoon and while we were searching for info on the internet, got the phone call to put our survival plan into action.  The kids and us followed through our survival plan very well and were ready for evacuating if we needed to but we are very glad to say the bushfire was under control within an hour.  This was a perfect outcome all around – we got to test out our practice bushfire drills – and confirm their worth.

(And blow me down – I look outside after typing this up on Thursday – and see smoke again!).  Luckfully, it looks like it is blowing away.

Here’s another sunflower photo instead:



 












Did you know sunflowers don’t follow the sun?  Can you see it glaring there in the side/background?  Its late afternoon in this photo so the sun is approximately west – these sunflowers are therefore facing approx. north and the one in the back, east!  They seem to like east best, most are facing that way.  I do reckon they moved with the sun when the tiny flower buds first formed, but once the head was ‘set’ they seem to stay put.   Will have to observe closer with the next batch.

So, it’s been some time (again…).  It’s been some busy times, relaxing times, happy times, normal times.

We’ve had end of school events (lovely celebrations) and our first Christmas in our new home (just the six of us).  We waited until the big girl got home from her school trip to get a Real Christmas tree and then it got all decorated – isn’t it beautiful?


 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



And the Santas got sat out in the entry hall:


 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


And a wee little display on our drawers:
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


So, Christmas was our relaxing time – it’s been the usual busy otherwise – and mostly with (you’ll never guess!) paving of course!!  Michael went the extra mile this time – in fact extra 200 miles – to pick up 12 tonne of pavers from a property in Mandurah and relocate them to our verandah – and that is the literal pick them up off the ground too! 

 


 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


I tell ya, this house sure has been a paving adventure – and still not quite finished yet – but getting oh so close…

We have also updated the garden beds – we have been harvesting so many tomatoes and silverbeet and just the last week, giant zucchini:


 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

So, they are on the menu today to be cooked up into passata, spinach quiches and zucchini relish – yum!

And because I was inspired to take an ‘artistic’ photo of the sunflowers in honour of Vincent van Gogh – here they are:

 



 

 
 
 
 

Now I don’t say I know much about van Gogh, but the Dr Who episode is very touching – so touching that I added a “For Amy” to the famous sunflower print (it will hang in our library, after going to college with the eldest I think, she’s the Whovian) and it led us to buy a beautiful book, ‘Sunflowers for Van Gogh’, by David Douglas Duncan at a garage sale, which has in turn inspired the photo.  More photos to come I think…really would love to get the wild, unkempt look of the paintings…