Spring is coming (or so I thought)
09 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in Garden Tags: garden, home, Spring
Last week we had unseasonally warm weather – beautiful days above 20 degrees and I was at work. On the weekend, the day when I spend a lot of time standing at soccer fields, it rained – heavily and it was cold. The top temperature was around 8 degrees at 8.30am, and then it just got colder.
But in the hope that spring was coming we started to get the garden ready. I feel very blessed by the garden that has been left to me by the previous owner of this house. While the front yard is a blank canvas, that I am currently trying to ignore, the backyard is well established. There are a couple of large decidous trees and the neighbour’s peppercorn tree towers over all my yard, providing some frost protection.
So far there has been something in flower constantly, so while the trees are bare, there are flowers popping up. At the moment I have flowering in the garden camellias (which have been going since autumn, each tree after the other), daphne ( though a little bit beaten up by the frost), violets both purple & white, daffodils, and azalea, and hiding in a sheltered spot is an iris. Other shrubs are looking pregnant with buds – they are just ready to burst.
This is the camellia I view as I sit in the sunroom. It is full of blossoms and they are the most soft pink.
The daphne that isn’t looking too crash hot. It has the most gorgeous flowers, and its smelling so sweetly, but the middle of the bush is shrivelled & brown. It amazes me that the same bush can be so very ugly and so very beautiful.
Violets tumbling over the rocks. There are violets all through the garden – maybe too many.
One of the more than 30 rose bushes we pruned into submission. There are roses with the most amazing thorns in this garden – definitely not friendly roses at all. Once they flower I will be able to determine whether some of the old thornys really deserve their spot in the garden.
There is lots of cleaning up & weeding to do, but they are jobs they make my heart fill with joy as the beauty of this old garden, and the hidden gems, become apparent.
Prestige
30 Jun 2011 2 Comments
in Family Tags: Family, home, money
This week at my Home Friendship group we were talking about prestige – what we and society see as prestigious, and what should be our priorities. We talked about how giving can also link into that prestige.
One of the things that we talked about was how we all waste money – how it just seems to disappear. And so we have set ourselves a challenge – for the next 31 days (all of July) we have to write down everything we spend. Every coffee, every bit of takeaway, bills we pay. Once we have done this we will then be able to identify where we think we have wasted our money. We then talked about giving an amount equal to the amount we consider we have wasted – money that we haven’t been a careful steward of. I am also thinking that if I am mindfully not spending on something, then the amount I have chosen not to “waste” should also be given.
I am terrified as to what I am going to discover – I know I love shopping, I love sitting down for a coffee and a chat with friends at a coffee shop and lately takeaway has become a regular occurrence. Probably will show me why I end up at the end of the month with no money!
Will report on the outcome of the month of recording. I may even save some money.
Moving…..
14 Apr 2011 3 Comments
in Family, Home, Loo Tags: home, House, Loo, Renovations
Blogging, stitching & all things enjoyable seem to be taking a back seat right now. Life is very very busy – work is at its busiest, we are camping in my parents house as we get our new house ready to move in to & I have been busy sorting out under 9 soccer teams.
Just want to show how busy we have been with the house – so far it has been painted inside, the floors are half laid, carpet replaced in my bedroom, heating & cooling installed and then this morning’s emergency resulted in a brand new front door knob – the front door lock hadn’t been used for a long time apparently & there was no key for it. Becomes a problem when a tradie locks it as he leaves!
So here is the original lounge room:
And here is is half way through getting it livable:
I’m not doing to much to the kitchen, but it is amazing what a new floor & paint can do:
And finally, my boys just couldn’t have pink bedrooms
And so Loos now has a flame Orange wall
The true horror of the previous paintwork can not be seen in these pictures – imagine the outside of the laundry tub painted a dark green, and the hall the same colour!
Still lots & lots to do. Floor should be finished sometime in the next week, and furniture will be moved over the weekend. The kitchen is basically unpacked, I have started on my walk in robe & I have a cleaner coming tomorrow to clean the bathroom area – the previous owners didn’t even bother to wipe out a cupboard when they left & I can’t bear to use the bathrooms until I know they have been properly cleaned.
Looking forward to spending our first night in the house..
Kelli
What we did this summer
30 Jan 2011 Leave a Comment
in Family, Home, Loo, Noos Tags: home, Loo, Noos, school holidays, Summer
The very very long summer holidays are nearly over – 1 week until school goes back. We didn’t take a lot of time out this summer – a week down the coast for me & an extra week for the boys in Sydney. Otherwise it has all been about work & juggling places for the boys to be.
What we did manage to do was lots of fun.
We spent some quality family time on a wet afternoon before Christmas catching up with our extended family and exchanging gifts and finding out what our cousins had been up to during the year.
We found some beautiful weather at the coast. Christmas week at Kianga, with a day trip to Tathra was the remedy for the very wet days leading up to Christmas.
We didn’t totally escape the horrible weather that battered other parts of Australia
This 1/2 hour hail storm just after New Year caused a lot of localised damage, including my poor little car & my friends car & pergola. This is so very minor compared to the devastation in Victoria & Queensland.
When the boys came home from Sydney the weather improved – it became hot! We headed off for a river swim – a very Canberra past time in Summer and something I had never done before.
It was fantastic. Except I was expecting the river to be the same as last time I visited – a slow moving trickle which the boys would have been able to splash around in. Didn’t think it would be a full on swimming hole and so I forgot to take rashies, hats or sunscreen. So ended up being a quick visit, but lots of fun.
We headed back to the coast for Australia Day and had fun in the lake entrance at Burrill Lake
Noos also had fun playing with a snake – Loos was game enough to pat it only.
And as the summer holidays draw to an end I am looking back and feeling so blessed to have been able to spend time with all of the people important in my life.
For Sale
14 Jan 2011 4 Comments
in Home Tags: Family, garden, home
My house is now really truly for sale. We have the shiny yellow sign out the front and the pictures on the internet. The building & pest reports are done and the energy rating has been determined. My agent has a contract ready for a buyer and the auction date is set.
I have never sold a house before – this is still my first home buyer house. And I have never bought a house before either. I decided one day 10 years ago that I would build a house – the government announced a lovely initiative to assist first home buyers who were buying a brand new house as their first home. It sounded great to me and meant that we would finally have our own home and not be subject to the whims of the Department of Defence as to where we lived. Over a coffee with my Dad I worked it out. I spoke to my then husband, who was on deployment in Singapore & told him that I was thinking that we should do this. By the next phone call (a week later) I had made an offer on some land & been accepted, picked out a house plan & organised the solicitor to do the contracts. I think he was stunned at the speed I moved! Despite this being the house my ex husband and I lived in, I have always felt it was just my house – I picked the design, the bricks, the cornices & architraves & the colours. I chose the plants for the garden and have looked after it ever since. My Dad and I painted the front fence one very very hot day after my ex husband left, as he wanted it to remain unpainted wood as he couldn’t be bothered to paint it.
But the time has come for us to move on – move closer to where our lives are based, closer to family and away from the past. It has been hard work – bags and bags of broken toys, miscellaneous clutter, old clothes and general rubbish has been tossed. Walls have been painted, cupboards cleaned out and things repaired. The garden has been mulched, weeded, mowed and edged. Dead plants have been removed, last weeks hail damage has been cleaned up and paths have been swept. And we are ready for tomorrow – our first open house.
I am excited that we are taking the first steps into the next stage of our lives, and I am anxious about so many things. Will anyone turn up tomorrow, will anyone bid at the auction, will I be able to get the right price for my house & importantly will we be able to find the right next house for us.
While I am sure I can find many more jobs to do to finalise the getting ready stage, tonight I am going to curl up with some stitching and then a great book and relax before the mayhem of final preparation tomorrow.
Fingers are crossed.
Kelli
Spring has sprung!!
22 Sep 2010 1 Comment
in Garden Tags: 12WBT, garden, home, Spring, Weight Loss
One of the things I love most about living in the nations capital is the way we can enjoy all four seasons. And we are now moving into one of my favourite times of the year. The frosts are becoming lighter and less common, the darkness is closing in later and the daytime temps are slowly warming – they are predicting 22 for Monday!!!
My garden is springing back to life so I thought I would share a couple of pics.
The daffodils have been blooming for a few weeks now and so I think their time will soon be ending. Does anything scream out spring more than a heap of daffs? I always think of William Wordsworth poem when I look at them -
I WANDER’D lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
- A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
It makes me feel happy!
And then there us the rosemary – it smells amazing. And it is full of buzzing bees.
Finally the grape hyacinths. They make me smile everytime I go to the front door. I think these will also soon be fading fast.
The weather and the flowers have inspired me to do more in the garden – I have forked some grass, thrown around some grass seed in desperate hope that we will continue to get enough rain for it to grow, fertilised, weeded and pruned. I feel so inspired that this weekend I am even going to paint some outdoors bits on the house.
What do you love about spring?
Kelli
PS first 12wbt weigh in today – after only 2 days on the program I achieved a 1.1kg loss. Very happy with that, though a bit sore from the exercising.
A Fear of cooking
21 Aug 2010 Leave a Comment
in Family, Home Tags: baking, Books, Cooking, home, Loo, Noos
I enjoy cooking and I enjoy eating the results of my labour. I have a cupboard full of cookbooks and keep buying more, always looking for that elusive book that will turn me into a great cook.
I buy a new cookbook filled with enthusiasm to try out new recipes and seem to find lots of recipes I want to try. And then I bring the book home and it sits in my cupboard. I pull the book out, flick through and it all seems too hard or will take too long, or have too many ingredients, or ingredients I don’t have, or it seems to be something the boys won’t eat. And so the book goes back in the cupboard.
I have a fear – if something looks to hard I won’t even try it. If the recipe seems complicated I get scared of it. If I see things like egg whites (what if yolk gets into the white?), knead dough (what if it sticks to everything and makes a big mess), blind bake (what if I don’t put enough rice in? The rice will make a huge mess and end up everywhere or burn) or sautee, reduce or any other tricky things I convince myself I won’t be capable of doing this. I roasted my first ever chicken earlier this year – the first one worked OK and the boys enjoyed it. The second one wasn’t so successful. And I did not like doing it at all – handling a chicken carcasse was not appealing, nor was breaking up a hot chickem to eat. Think I will stick to buying them!
At the end of a working day I also want to make things quick and easy. On weekends I also want quick & easy as I generally have the “can’t be bothereds”. I love having dinner over and done with & being able to sit down with a clean kitchen to veg in front of the tv or collapse on the floor to read the paper. Spending hours cooking & preparing for the 3 of us all seems too hard. Hence tonight we are having hot dogs for dinner.
But Noos has informed me he would like a pavlova for his birthday cake. And I really don’t want to just buy a prepared base. So this afternoon I have started making my first ever pavlova. I am really really hoping it works. He is having his birthday dinner next weekend, but I figure a practice run won’t hurt. So fingers are crossed that the sticky blob I have put in the oven will somehow resemble an edible pavlova base.
He has also informed me that he needs 26 small cakes for school on Monday and that everyone brings cakes in for their birthdays! So tomorrow afternoon I am going to have to conjure something up – I have suggested meringues or mini muffins. So far not a terribly overenthusiastic response. He would like me to make cupcakes, but they are yet another thing I am scared of making. I have no idea why, but suspect creaming butter & sugar turns me off. And icing them too. Luckily Loo has told me that as he is not a baby he doesn’t want to take cakes to school for his birthday – going to keep him to this!
So I think I need to challenge myself to make something new once a week. Expand the recipes the boys will eat and build my cooking confidence. Also use some of those books. Will report back on how I go with this.
Baking
10 Aug 2010 1 Comment
in Friends, Home Tags: baking, home, Noos
As well as whinging about how hard life is and pretending to do some sewing, I have managed to find some time to bake. I had bible study at my house last week – found out Monday night, did a mad crazy crisis clean and baking session on Tuesday night, finished off with a bit more cleaning and baking before people arrived on Wednesday night.
Anyway, the top picture is my first ever attempt at meringues. And they were so easy! I don’t know why I haven’t ever attempted them before. They just seemed to be a bit tricky. But they were a big hit!
The second picture is the portuguese tarts that I enjoy making. They were great on Tuesday night when I did a taste test, but by Wednesday the pastry was a bit soggy. The custard still tasted great though! Also I used Aldi puff pasty, rather than Sara Lee butter puff pastry, which I have used in the past. The Aldi pastry did the job, but was not as nice as the Sara Lee one.
I also quickly whipped up my stand by – muffins just to make sure there was enough food. In order to make sure that they would be eaten by someone apart from me, I made Choc choc chip. This is the only flavour Noos eats – so can be frozen for lunch box fodder.
I love baking and eating the results of the baking. I would love to have more time and also be a bit more adventurous and try to make some new things. Noos wants a pavlova for his birthday cake – I am wondering whether to go all home made on this or just buy the base. Have to think further on this one!
Lucky!
02 Aug 2010 3 Comments
in Family, Friends Tags: Family, friends, home
There have been a few posts around the blogosphere today in relation to Jacinta Tynan’s article in yesterdays Sunday Life magazine, including on the lovely Chaletgirls blog. I read the article, after reading the blog post, and was also incensed by the seemingly naive views of a media darling. After watching Jacinta being interviewed on Mia Freedman’s blog my views on what Jacinta was trying to say have changed somewhat. Her intention seems to be to celebrate her enjoyment of motherhood and her success. And to paraphrase her in the interview, it is so rare to hear someone say that being a mum is not hard, but enjoyable and so she felt that she needed to put that out there. And I understand why she says that.
Her views may change when she has a rebellious preteen who glares dark looks at you, refuses to do as you ask, and really – what can you do about it when that preteen is bigger & stronger than you. Her views may also change if her little 9 month old baby develops a learning difficulty and she has to become his advocate to battle through the bureaucracy of the Education Department. Her views may also change if her little darling becomes the school bully. But at this stage in her life this is how she feels. And it is only her opinion.
However, at my current stage of mothering I don’t agree with her opinion. Being a mother is damn hard, and an incredibly tough 24/7 job! Make a mistake and it can be life lasting. I spend a lot of time telling my clients not to worry about making mistakes in their bookkeeping or tax – anything can be fixed or sorted out. You stuff up with your child though, and you could be paying for that mistake for a long long time.
This article has brought about an interesting discussion with Sheridan from Chaletgirl and has given me some time to think. How do I feel about being a mother? What can I celebrate?
And what I decided is that I am lucky! I am lucky enough to have a job where I am able to pick my children up from school 3 days a week and be able to support ourselves reasonably comfortably. I am lucky to have 2 very healthy, bright boys. I am lucky to have a wonderful network of friends and family around me. I am lucky enough to be able to bring up my boys on my own, with very little interference from their father. I feel blessed with my life.
So while, being a mum is hard, it is also a joy. And I don’t think any mother has any right to judge any other mother who is giving her all to give the best she can to her children, even if the way she is doing it isn’t in a way we would. And Jacinta Tynan has every right to express the joy she is finding in motherhood too!
Some Reading
24 Jul 2010 2 Comments
in Uncategorized Tags: Books, home, Reading
I generally don’t like spin off books much, especially if they are by a different author to the author of the original favourite. There is a lot at stake and I worry about what this interloper will do to my much beloved characters. I am also suspicious of movies of favourite books – thinking of the Anne of Green Gables series, have never ever seen a movie of these beautiful books that has come close to how wonderful the pictures in my imagination are, and there is no actor that could fulfill my idea of Gilbert Blythe.
So I have been putting off reading March for a very long time. I loved Little Women, it would be right up the top of my list with my very precious Anne books. So it was with some trepidation, and also a complete lack of anything else to read, that I picked it up. The other offputting factor to me was that it had one a big prize – so many of those books are horribly boring or heavy reading, not something to relax and enjoy at bedtime.
I was wrong. March was a fantastic book and put a whole new spin on Little Women, and put the story so much more in context for me. Marmee was no longer the perfect mother and March himself now had some substance. I think the reason it was so terrific and did not damage the original story was due to taking a completely different viewpoint, and not trying to rewrite pieces of the original story. It was also one of the few books I have read which take the northern side of the US Civil War, as opposed to the story of the Glorious South.
Interestingly, the book I read before this was Rhett Butlers People – again a spin off and again a book I read with some trepidation, especially after the disaster that was Scarlett. I enjoyed Rhett Butlers People, and it also took a slightly different angle to the original Gone with the Wind. Not a book to take too seriously, but a nice light before bed read.
So after 2 books about the US Civil War, I am now reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and am enjoying that one too…..and then have plans to jump into the future with John Birmingham’s latest book after that.
Does anyone have any other reading suggestions?
And sorry for the dreadful photography!
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