a little bit of washing

Its been a very productive weekend. Although I didn't manage to cross much off my ever growing To Do list, I feel like I actually accomplished a lot of things.

We started off today with breakfast on the deck - the weather was perfect today. Warm and sunny but not hot or muggy. A bit of a breeze, but not windy. Gorgeous. I made french toast with bacon, banana and maple syrup. Yum.

Its funny, but years ago I was reading a book by Michael Connelly where the main character, a detective named Harry Bosch, went into a truck stop for breakfast and ordered a short stack with bacon and maple syrup.

I'd never had bacon and maple syrup together before. I'd never had bacon with pancakes before for that matter. I thought 'OMG! Bacon and maple syrup, together! What a wonderful idea!'

I couldn't wait to try it. A couple of years ago I went to a cafe for breakfast (something I lurve doing but rarely get to do) and guess what they had on the menu? French toast with banana, bacon and maple syrup!

I became addicted. For a while I made it every weekend. In fact I made it so often I got sick of it. Today was the first time in months I'd made it and it was like meeting an old friend.

With such a great start to the day, its not surprising things went well. I put on some washing, removed the glass from the new old front door. Hung out the washing. Put on more washing. Cleaned up the broken glass. Knocked the top off the old table I'm doing up for the kitchen. Hung up washing. Put on more washing. Cleaned up broken bits of plywood. Pulled apart the table frame from the top frame. Hung out more washing. Put on more washing. Sanded the table legs. Straightened the crooked table leg. Glued and nailed the table frame back on. Hung out the washing. Put on another load of washing. Went to the supermarket to buy ingredients for borscht, picked up chaff for the horses. Brought in all the washing and tossed it onto an armchair in the living room. Chopped up the vegies and put them on to boil for the borscht.

You get the picture.

I had a productive day. Among all the washing I managed to make chocolate muffins and borscht (which I'd never made before and only tasted once before in my life) out of the excess beetroots we had.

I would have vacuumed the living room and tidied it up as I did the kitchen and office, but I couldn't open it to change bags. Its a sign. No more cleaning for today!

I think I deserve a break. An ice cream and some TV is in order.

However, before I go I'll share these photos of a couple of my old drawings. I found these while looking for something else yesterday.

z

dances with spiders

Its been a long hard week. There were all kinds of exciting things happening at home:

We got our new gutters. With a bonus new leak over the front door, inside the mudroom-to-be. Now it seems we can pee without getting our feet wet, but we still need an umbrella to get to the toilet.

Hopefully that will be fixed on Tuesday when the roofing men come to finish the flashing.*

We have new 'austerity measures' at home now due the tenants moving out of my house in Fentonbury next month. With them gone we will be broke paying off two mortgages, but I can clean up the place and actually be able to present it to potential buyers as a home I'm proud of. I believe the tenants were a major reason we lost the sale the way we did. I will move back in and keep the house clean, neat, tidy and welcoming and I believe I will find someone who loves it as much as I do.

We have a new front door. Or should I say old new front door. I went looking at tip shops this week to find a new door for the mud room. Due to the austerity measures I couldn't buy a new door cause they're over $300. Anyway, I wanted a farm door. A door with character.

I found one I was sort of happy with for $25 at one tip shop, but it had a plywood veneer and we hate that stuff. Especially for an external door. I figured I could change that but still... Then I saw another, much bigger and totally solid timber door. This one was $60 and was an 1920s deco door. Yeah. That was nicer, and who doesn't love solid timber. But again, it wasn't quite right. Not for $60. I'm becoming a cheapscate.

Then at the last minute I found my door. It was at the South Hobart tip shop.The front is panelled (which I love) and when I put in 2 glass panes, the windows will give me the light I wanted in the mud room. Best of all, I got it for $20!

We've put the door on top of the kitchen table I'm meant to be doing up as the door is more important than the table. The plan is to get started on it tomorrow.

I wanted to get started today but we decided to make it a tip day. We went for a trip to the tip to get rid of the unsightly pile of rubbish I'd been collecting near the wood shed. Sad when our fun outing for the day was a trip to the tip. At least the tip in New Norfolk has the best views!

Then we made a trip up to the bush at the back of our property to get some firewood. This involved gettng into Blue, Wayne's decrepid old 4x4 which backfires more than it drives giving us whiplash, then, pulling my old trailer behind us, drive out onto the road then up the neighbour's driveway, up an overgrown old track and through a hole in our fence back onto our land and our own overgrown track. (We haven't been able to afford to fix our original fix on the ford so we can use our own road to the top of our property).

We have plenty of firewood up there. Wayne felled two dead trees yesterday and today I went up to help him chop and load the trailer. Love the great outdoors. Hate the spiders!

I had a huntsman on my shoulder at one stage. I smacked it off, then danced around in the ferns waving my T-shirt over my head screetching like a girl at the top of my lungs. Wayne's disappointed he missed that.

(In deference to aracnophobe readers, the image of the spider has been removed)

So, having displaced a few huntsmen today, we have a stack of firewood. At least one week's worth. Now we just have to get another 433 loads to get us through winter.

Sure, we left our run a bit late. But its not like we've been sitting on our butts, is it?

This having our own firewood and not needing to buy sure has its downside...  

z


*The porch was a great idea and one inspired by the decision to sell my house in Fentonbury. As things tend to do, this one thing lead to another. (Like my gardening in Melbourne: I trimmed the ivy in the back yard then had to replace the fence when it collapsed once the ivy was removed.) Building has a deck necessitated new gutters. In hindsight, spending money on the deck and enclosing the porch to create a mudroom could have waited till my house was sold... but then I thought I 'its rented, I'll sell it, we will manage fine'. Hightsight is a good thing.

memory like a sieve

Used to be, years ago, I had a reputation as being the only one in our family who always remembered to send birthday cards and maintain contact with friends far away.

That was back when we wrote letters using actual pen and paper!

Now that I have Facebook, email, mobile phones and technology at my fingertips I can't seem to remember anyone's birthday. Not Wayne's, not even my own at times. Its like once technology stepped in, my brain stepped out.

So, when I saw this birthday calendar idea on Pinterest, I thought I must make one!

Birthday calendar

However, I couldn't just copy that one. I had to make my own. I gave it some thought, decided how I was going to do it, then did something completely different.

Only kidding. My first plan had been to find a nice old frame, buy some pinboard material, then paint it up and use pins to add birthdays.

What I did was based on that but adapted when I found an old framed corkboard at a tip shop a couple of weeks ago.

As usual, I didnt take any photos of the 'before'... Trust me. It was pretty ordinary. It was a lavender painted frame with corkboard in the middle. Nothing special and with a few flaws in the frame.

And I apologise for the bad photos. I was having a bad photo day.

Step 1: I undercoated the whole thing, cork and frame.

Step 2: I painted the cork a light beige colour I had in a sample pot. Twice.

Step 3: I painted the frame limed white from another sample pot. Twice.

Step 4: After the paint had dried I drew a grid, having divided the width of the corkboard into 12 parts, and then drew lines across as well to create boxes. Not so easy when you're mathematically challenged, the calculator is in the house and you're too lazy to go up and get it.

Step 5: I painted each of the squares in a darker colour, leaving a fine line of cream showing through between them. I had to paint them twice as well.

Step 6: I painted every second line a different shade, again, thank you sample pots! Two coats.

I then remembered that I didnt actually need boxes, just stripes. So I painted over the lines.

Step 7: I wasn't too happy with the shiny look of the paint so I sanded it back a bit. It took the shine off on the corkboard which was good. Then I sanded back the frame a bit too. It allowed some of the lavender to show through, as well as some of the timber. That's fine as I planned to use other colours on the calender.
 

Step 8: I used my brand new stencil to paint the letters for each month. I used a dry brush and burnt umber artist acrylic to achieve a sort of uneven finish.

Step 9: I sacrificed one of my many paint swatch catalogues, cutting up the colours I liked. Using a black marker and my diary for reference, I started putting a number (for the day) and a name of each swatch. I then used some cool pins I'd bought at Officeworks last week to pin each birthday into the corresponding month.

Step 10: I found a spot to hang it where I might see it and be reminded of upcoming birthdays before I have to apologise for forgetting!

 I'm pretty pleased with myself. Thats one of my 'Things I want to try when I have the time' items off my list! Only about 546 to go...

However, I did manage to do a few other things over the weekend despite the miserable weather. It poured. Not as bad as the floods in NSW, but it rained enough to flood our toilet again.

I'm kinda over wading in to go to the loo.

I think the guys managed to fix the problem on the weekend by putting in a new long sheet of corregated roofing iron. I'm glad. I did manage to refrain from asking why this wasn't done in the first place...

I was polite and thankful.

So, this is what I did: I organised my workshop! Its now neat and clean and organised and I can use it. I hung all my paint brushes and scrapers etc with jute string onto an old rake head.

I screwed two old drawers to the wall as shelves and screwed jars to the top to hold odds and ends. I put a trestle table between the windows as a work bench. This used to be the shearing shed, as you can see the fences are still partly there. We decided to keep them.

I have an old office desk as an extra work bench on the other side and some old kitchen cabinets to hold tools and 'stuff'.

When there aren't enough shelves an old coffee table on top of the cabinet creates that extra space! I have old crates under the table (framing tools in one, crafting odds and ends in the other) and a collection of tins and other stuff on top for other projects I might do one day.

You can see the birthday calendar drying too! :) That's Step 1.

Well... my workshopWAS neat and clean for a day, till I started my next project - concurrent with the birthday calendar only a lot more optimistic. My new kitchen table! But more on that later.

z

the dog compromise

My dogs live in the house. They are part of the family. In Fentonbury they had their own bedroom but here they sleep in the living room, on the couch or armchairs. But then, they're poodles and they don't shed.

Wayne's dogs shed. Lots.

I hate dog hair. I hate cat hair even more, but since I don't have cats thats not an issue.

Ever since I've had dogs I've had containment areas for them in the house. In Fentonbury I had a combination of gates to keep dogs in or out of areas of the house. Nothing as banal as baby gates for this little chickie.

I made my own gates using materials I found or had on hand. Old shed doors, old doors, gates, crib sides. You name it, I've probably used it.

Here are some of my dog gates, both in Fentonbury and here at the farm.

First is the old door I brought over from Melbourne. This was the door on the bathroom in my house there. It had a large frosted glass panel in it originally. I replaced the door with a regular one and had this just sitting there. You can see it below on the room which was the dog's bedroom.

One day I was walking down the street when I saw this old gate tossed on the pile to be collected by the council. I grabbed it of course. What self respecting DIY-er would let something like a wrought iron gate go to the tip?

I got the carpenter who was at my house putting in new door frames and a new floor to board up half the door and insert the gate into the middle of it. I LOVED it. Ok, so I didn't do the hard work myself, but it was my idea! And I carried the gate, cleaned it and painted the door!

Its the perfect door for an area you want closed off - the dogs can't get over it, under it or through it. It allows the warmth of the heater or the cool air of the airconditioner (I had one of those in Melbourne!) to circulate between the rooms. The dogs can see out and aren't isolated if you close the door. Its the ideal door. Needless to say it comes with me from one house to the next.

Next are the old shed door gates. I have two of these which I made while living in Fentonbury. They're only low which means they're easy to step over. Yeah, that means that a dog can jump over them, but MY dogs would never do such a rude thing!

These gates were made by cutting down the shed door, sanding it back a bit and adding the big hinges and a gate latch. As you can see, they're not very high but they do the job. I don't have to worry about dirty dog pawprints on the sheets. Not that I mind so much... but these are the compromises you make when you live with a man who doesn't really like dogs in the house. And we all know that ain't gonna happen! So we compromise.

The next dog gate is one I custom made for my house in Fentonbury. It has an open plan kitchen/dining/living room. That meant that I wanted to be able to restrict the dogs to one or other of the spaces. Sometimes I wanted them out of the kitchen. Other times out of the dining room. Or out of the living room. So I came up with this idea to use some cot sides I'd gotten at an auction.

You know, one of those things I bought thinking 'One day they'll come in handy'.

First, I cut down the crib sides so there weren't any large gaps. I joined them up using small hinges so that they formed a folding 4-panel 'screen'. Finally I painted it antique white USA like the rest of the woodwork in the house and hinged it to the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.

I know you cant see it well in that photo but I can't find any other photos. In this photo its folded up against itself out of the way. Cause of the hinges and latches I'd put in it could be moved and latched to either the kitchen bench or the other side of the opening between the kitchen and dining room, thus keeping dogs in or out of the spaces as needed.

Last, here is the last of the crib sides. I put it to use here on the farm as a way to keep Wayne's dogs (the shedding ones!) from the couches. I did the same thing: cut it down to size, hinged it to the wall and added a gate latch to it. Here you can see Romeo and Montana modelling it for you. This is a higher gate and much harder to step over when you're getting older...

I added a gate latch so it would close automatically when you pushed it behind you. As you can see, I got lazy. This one hasn't been painted yet.

However there was a problem. This was the first gate I'd made which actually swung back to a wall. It would bang into the wall as you opened it and leave a mark there. Ugh. Not so good. Till today I piled a couple of cushions on the floor against the wall to stop the destruction of my paint job. Not the best solution.

This morning I got off my butt and did something about it. I took one of those foam holders I get when I buy a certain brand of soft pastel. I'd been eyeing them off for a while now thinking they were just the right size to make a 'bounce pad' for the gate latch.

Yep. Perfect fit. So I sliced one up, filled it with silicon glue and popped it onto the gate thingy. Now... if this stays on it'll be the perfect solution.

Fingers crossed!

z