In preparation...

I'm a little excited.  Okay, make that very excited!  The Little Big Fella and I are flying down to Melbourne on Monday.  I'm going to the P!nk concert with my brother and youngest sister on Thursday and we'll be visiting with family (both mine and the Big Fella's parents live there, and my sister and brother-in-law, his sister and her partner, and my brother) and friends.

In preparation, I've been looking on the internet to see what awesome activities are on that the Little Big Fella might enjoy, because hanging out with people who don't have kids, and being dragged around the shops isn't a huge amount of fun for him (I have no idea why not!).  He's really good about doing those kinds of things, but I want this to be a fun holiday for him as well.  And I'd imagine being spoiled by grandparents, aunts and uncles will definitely have some enjoyment for him too ;-)

My other sister mentioned ScienceWorks - a hands-on science museum I guess you'd call it.  They have all kinds of fun things to learn about, but also things to play with like a real digger!  Pretty sure that will be a hit!

I found out that there's a place in the city that has an ice rink.  (For those who don't know, there's very little snow or ice in Australia, even in the winter.  You have to travel to the mountains (even that is a debatable term compared to other continents), and they often use snow-makers on the ski slopes to supplement the natural snowfall.)

Anyway, the ice rink has an under 8's morning where they allow the kids on the ice with their shoes, and they have special learn-to-skate props/toys, and piles of snow to play in.  I think that might be a fun morning for us!

For those of you who know anything about Melbourne, it's a bit of a foodie city, so I'm very much looking forward to partaking of some deliciousness.  One thing we'll definitely do is go to the Queen Victoria Market.  It'll be weird going there without the Big Fella (he's a massive fan of the deli section!!!), but I'm sure we'll cope ;-)

Because we'll be flying, and the Big Fella's not coming, I decided to buy myself a suitcase (with wheels, of course!).  Normally when I travel, I have a bag of my clothes, a bag for the Little Big Fella's clothes, my toiletries bag, sometimes a bag with shoes, a bag of toys and things for the Little Big Fella and other clothes (like jackets) spread over the top of everything in the back of the car.  Obviously, that's not going to work on a plane!

So I bought a big suitcase in the hope that I can get it all into that plus my carry-on bag.  I've made my lists (you know how much I love lists!) and I think it will work.  I'm trying so hard to pack light though, because it's pretty likely we'll end up with more to bring back than what we take.

Now to remember to pack my tickets(!!!), chargers and all the other bits and pieces, make sure all the clothes we're taking are ready to go, copy my every day files onto my tablet, make sure the house is in good order before we leave... no problem!

I'm adding this a bit later in the day, just to show you another bit of "preparation" for the trip.  See, it's going to be cold in Melbourne (well, at least in comparison to here).  So, to add a little cheer when I have to pull my nice, warm socks off, I've put a little colour on my nails.

No doubt that will help me feel warm :-D

Living area reveal!

I know, I know!  The furniture arrived on Tuesday and it's taken me this long to show it to you!!!  So instead of wasting more time writing about it, I'll just show you the pictures :-D

Here's when we first moved in.  Bit of a mess and hard to see the actual furniture, but it gives you half an idea :)

And here's where we'd moved pretty much everything out:

I think everything is gone in this pic:

And here's the new stuff :)

The plan is that we'll sand back the coffee table and stain it to match the rest of the furniture.  The TV is loving being on a proper stand, rather than on top of a box (albeit a lovely box) with the stereo stacked on the side looking very untidy!

And yes!  That is a wine rack over there :-)  Looks like I'll be stopping in at Dan Murphy's next week (darn!).

You can't see it very well, but there's a rather large buffet in the corner behind the dining table.  Somehow it fits SO much more in it than the last one (probably partly because of the huge drawers!!!), to the point that I still have room in it.  Between the new kitchen and the new furniture, I feel like I actually have space for all of our "stuff", especially now that we've purged a lot of it anyway.

So there it all is!  We have a plan to replace the lounge suite some time in the next 12 months, and I'd like to get some new table cloths and runners, an up-light (we only have flouros and sometimes you just want a bit of mood lighting), and some art for the walls.

Last night we were watching a little TV and the Big Fella says to me, "you know, it feels like a real house now".  I guess that means we've chosen the right stuff for us :-D

MORE Changes!

If you've been following along, we've obviously been making some changes to furniture and use of space in our little house.  This has been partially inspired by the new paint and kitchen provided by the company the Big Fella works for, who own the house.

Well, this coming week our new dining table and chairs, buffet, TV stand and wine rack should be arriving!  Yay!

Obviously, that means getting rid of the stuff we already have, right?

Well, I took photos of the furniture we wanted to sell and put them up on our local Buy/Swap/Sell page on Facebook.  And it's nearly all gone!  We are dining table-less for the next day and a half, which could be interesting :-D

Added to the furniture that's now gone, we've moved our massive bookshelf from the lounge room to the office.

My living area looks so bare!  Wanna see?  It's a bit messy and desperately needs to be vacuumed, but I'm thinking you won't care about that :-D

That big, empty space over there?  That's where the table and chairs were until lunchtime today.  And the window closest to the door?  That's where our buffet was.

Obviously the space at the front is where the dining table was.  The chair thingy with the bags on it and shoes on the little shelf (on the left) will be going tomorrow.  That big space on the wall behind the couch is where the big bookshelf was and where the new TV unit is planning to go.

And here's the little disaster my lovely new office has temporarily turned into. The bookshelf on the right is the one from the lounge room, storing not only books but items that will go in the new buffet, and the bookshelf on the left is the one that matches our new desk etc.  It has a couple of filing drawers in the bottom and is rather useful!  All that crafty stuff all over it needs... re-packaging ;-)

So there you go, more things changing in our house!  I think we're nearly done though.  Which is kind of good, because having everything so messy and all over the place really does my head in!!!

Re-styling the office

When the Big Fella and I were discussing what we'd like to do this year, we decided we'd like to replace a lot of our furniture.  We had realised when we moved here that a lot of it was kind of cheap and wasn't surviving well in the sub-tropical humidity.

So we started with the Little Big Fella's room, replacing his $10 bed with a king single, and getting matching bedside and drawers.

The Little Big Fella wanted me to put this one in for you today as well :-D

While we were back at our old town, we had the chance to look at some office furniture and decided on a very smart looking set.  I was very tempted by a $2000 desk, but in the end couldn't justify it and wouldn't have been able to match any shelving with it, which is where I'll be keeping my crafty bits and pieces.  We actually found a set of drawers for some of those crafty bits that's a little different to the desk set, but still works and looks great.

Hmmm, let's see if I have a pic of the way the office was.

Okay, this one is from when we first moved in.  I'd moved things around a little but basically this is it.  This room has no built-in storage, which has made it practically impossible to keep it tidy.  I've had to keep some things in their moving boxes, and there's just not enough room to get to them all.  It's been a source of constant frustration for me.

Well, this is what I see as I walk down my hallway now!

Isn't that gorgeous and cheery?  One of the large drawers is where I've started putting the Little Big Fella's kindy paintings, which is SO much better than having them all around the place.  And a friend suggested using them as wrapping paper for gifts to family, so they're easy to get to for that too!

The desk and drawers came in boxes and I got to put most of it together.  It wasn't difficult, but it was really complicated!

Alright.  Are you ready?  Are you sure?  Okay, here's the new desk and drawers!

I think I'm going to tweak it a little bit more, and I still need to stick my calendar up on the wall, but I'm loving having a real desk again!

When we moved from Victoria, we got rid of our big, heavy desk that we'd been using to study.  We haven't had a real one since then.  That's seven years ago!  Seriously, put this lovely desk with my new double sink and I'm just about in heaven!  :-)

Okay, and just so you know that I'm completely human, here's the rest of the office at the moment:

We still need to put together a bookshelf with filing drawers at the bottom and then see how much of this fits in it.  I'm thinking I might need to buy another bookshelf, but we'll wait and see!  I'll let you know how it goes, of course ;-)

A trip to the sawmill

When I woke up this morning, I'd intended to do the food shopping today and clean the floors.  That is, after I'd had a yummy healthy breakfast and done my workout.


But we went to bed late last night (the Big Fella worked until about 11) so slept in this morning (as much as you can when your toddler is being rowdy and lets the dogs in to jump on your bed).


I did get up and make a yummy healthy breakfast.  And I did (eventually) do my workout.  But the plans changed, as they often do when the Big Fella has a day at home :-D


My husband is very enthusiastic.  He gets an idea in his head and totally goes for it!


So when he woke up this morning, as well as smoking his meat for jerky,

This is an old deep freezer from the tip - perfect as a smokehouse :-)

he wanted to take a trip to the sawmill (about 20-30 minutes away) and find a nice big piece of timber to cut into chopping boards.


Now, there's something you need to know about the Big Fella.  He loves to cook but he hates little chopping boards.  His idea of a perfect chopping board is a big bench made out of good quality hardwood and just chop on the bench.  Your standard, 20-30cm (about a foot) x 15-20cm chopping board is completely inadequate for the task when he is involved!


The Big Fella told the Little Big Fella they were going for a drive to the sawmill.  My lovely son came and told me that I couldn't come! :-)  But I was invited and decided to go.


(Side note:  Yesterday I noticed that we finally have grass sprouting in our driveway.  Yay!!!  This morning it had definitely grown.  Check it out!

Then on our way out this morning I saw this:

Our lovely puppies had been digging.  This hole is about 35cm wide and about 10cm deep.  Thank you very much, you lovely, annoying little things!)


At the sawmill, we picked up a lovely piece of Bluegum,

Measured it up...

And cut it into a "small" chopping board for the kitchen, a large chopping board for downstairs (making jerky and such), and a table/stand for our microwave so that we can fit our spices in the kitchen (although, it's the size of a small coffee table and I'm not sure how long it will remain in the kitchen!).

This will be the microwave/coffee table.

 The next stage was to plane it nice and smooth.

The piece on top that's being planed will be the upstairs cutting board.  The one under it is for downstairs!

I went upstairs to do some other stuff and the Big Fella kept working on the chopping board for upstairs.  I was part way through cooking dinner when this arrived:

Isn't that just gorgeous???  I love this kind of wood timber!  And it's so nice to go into the kitchen and see something that makes you smile!  It's so smooth and shiny and just makes me want to touch it!


So I got to use that lovely new chopping board to finish making dinner.  And it was a yummy dinner too!

This is a Jamie Oliver inspired dish.  There are pork and fennel sausages, tomatoes, zucchini, mushrooms, capsicum, red onions and garlic.  Then I poured a tin of tomatoes over the top and about 1/2 a cup of beef stock to keep it moist.  The croutons on top are sourdough bread soaked in olive oil with garlic powder, salt, pepper, fresh thyme, fresh parsley, and the zest of about 1/2 a lemon.  I put them all in a casserole dish and baked it, covered with foil for a bit, then removed the foil to allow the croutons to crisp up.  Mmmmmm!  Not quite a healthy recipe, but not too bad either... and definitely good for the taste buds!


The Little Big Fella decided we needed to have a fire this evening so I took our dinner down to this:

It's such a hard life!!! ;-)

The guided tour

So I thought today, seeing that the house isn't completely trashed, I might give you a little look around our new place.

Here's the view from the driveway.  I love sunrise and sunset here.  It feels a bit like we're in the bush and the sunlight on the gum trees is definitely food for my soul.

Here's the front of the house.  To say I was underwhelmed when we arrived is probably a bit of an understatement.  And this is after it's been mowed and whipper snipped.  Yep, there's a bit of work to do outside.

Here's the western side of the house.  The Big Fella just bought a roller shade to put on the verandah and keep the house a bit cooler.  We'll get a little table and chairs too so we can sit out there and have breaky or a drink in the evening :-D


You can see (just behind that mango tree at the back) a little garden shed.  We'll possibly put the chicken coop on the left side of that (so that they get plenty of shade on the hot days).  Although, I quite like the idea of a chicken tractor - a coop that you can move around the yard so that they can fertilise all over the place and dig up the vege garden or whatever.

This is under the house.  Still a work in progress but it's going to be quite useful.  We can fit two cars and the motorbike on the one side.  The other side has the laundry (against the wall, behind the blue tool box - you can just see it) and will be the workshop area and possibly hold our gym equipment too.

This is the back yard.  Lots of space but kind of un-useful at the moment.  It gets shade for most of the day between the house and the washing line so I'm thinking that might be where we'll spend time in summer.


In the corner, behind the washing line and near the fence, is where we're planning to put the vege garden.  I'm not sure if we'll do much more because we'll have to undo any changes we make before we leave.  We'll see...

Here's the eastern side of the house.  This side is shaded in the hot parts of the day so gets the most use as an entrance.  We're probably going to take out that straggly bush on the right and the two tall plants and possibly put a herb garden along the fence - the kitchen is at the top of the stairs.

Here's the dining and lounge rooms entering from the eastern stairs.  On the left is the kitchen.  And yes, the Big Fella does his own ironing for work (although I do it for him sometimes, just because I love him).

Here's the kitchen.  You know, I think we have way too many kitchen items!  The cupboards and drawers are chockas!  But it's so much better than our last kitchen and works pretty well.  I'm going to have to get some kind of sliding storage system in the pantry because it's deep and stores lots, but is useless for finding stuff.

The hallway - facilities on the left, bedrooms on the right, office at the end.

Yucky old loo, lovely new bathroom.  Although, the bathroom is impossible to keep clean!  I wipe it over all the time!  I think I'll either be cleaning it every day or lowering my standards or I'll go nuts.  Mmmm, probably lowering the standard a little - cleaning constantly would probably drive me nuts too :-D

Master bedroom.  We are going to have some serious issues in here.  We have too many clothes for the storage space.  And there's still at least three boxes to unpack in here.  Sigh.


On the bright side, we're due to replace our bedding, and probably our bed in the next 12 months or so.  Yay!

The Little Big Fella's room.  There are no cupboards in here so he has the tallboy, a bookshelf and the bedside drawers.  Luckily his toys were already in stackable boxes or it would be a complete disaster zone!  But it's so much bigger than his old room and will work well for us in the end.  It's fairly cool in this room and nice and dark during day time naps, which are, unfortunately, becoming more rare.

And last, but not least, the office/craft/playroom.  Again, no cupboards but we'll work out a solution for that.  We'll replace the "desk" at some stage but the current plan is to have the office basically where it is, a craft storage space on the opposite wall, and possibly use the floor area as a play zone with the Little Big Fella's road mat on the floor, and the "toys of the day" in maybe a small 4 or 6 box cube shelving next to the craft stuff.


Great things about the house:

• fans in every room (including the kitchen)
• floorplan works well for us
• lots more storage in the kitchen, bathroom, and hallway/linen press
• air conditioners in the bedrooms/office and space for one in the lounge
• nice, new bathroom with awesome hot water and lots of pressure in the shower head :-)

Not so great things about the house:

• prickles in the grass :-(  The Little Big Fella still hasn't learned to put shoes on when he goes outside
• the floor creaks so walking around quietly is actually impossible - really sucks for the Big Fella when he's doing night shift and trying to catch some daytime zzz's
• the carpet is average (but serviceable), the tiles in the loo and bathroom are ugly
• not enough storage in the bedrooms, and the wardrobe doors in the master are falling to pieces
• no curtains!  We brought a few with us but we'll have to get some more pretty quickly

So there you go!  A look around our place.  I've been dreaming of lovely storage solutions and have a Pinterest board with some of the great ideas I've come across.  I've just ordered an Ikea catalogue and we'll probably visit the one in Brisbane in a few months so I'll have my shopping list ready :-D.  I think most nights I go to sleep dreaming of beautiful, practical options for the various areas in the house, which pretty much means I go to sleep smiling.  I love organising and sorting and setting up systems.  I wonder if that's an illness???  ;-D