Creepy Crawlies.....
We had a very nice morning out, on Saturday, starting off at Barwon Valley Park and walking up to a fete held in the grounds of a day centre for disabled people. It was a great place to get Banjo used to pushchairs, wheel chairs, loads of people and noise then after lunch we headed home to start yet more jobs.
James is decorating the family room/kitchen and Jake and I began digging up old, overgrown rose bushes out of the back garden. I want to get this area easier to manage so we have got some trellis to disquise an unsightly water heater and then, once the ground is clear we will put down mulch or gravel and have planters on it. It'll be easier to keep tidy and cut down on watering. We save water everywhere we can and have the rinse water from the washing the machine directed into a waterbutt now.
Anyway, whilst digging Jake and Lewis spotted a skink ( a type of fast moving, lizard thing). Rumour has it that if you pick a skink up by the tail its tail drops off, the skink runs away and the tail remains 'alive' for a while - this is FACT - Lewis caught the flipping thing and then proceeded to time how long the tail wriggled for (about 10mins, if your interested), gross - must be a 'boy thing'.
Later on whilst clearing up dust sheets from the decorating a huge (well, the size of a 50pence) black, spider ran out of the sheet and OVER MY FOOT and I only had flip flops on - crikey it scared the life out of me and had me running for cover. The damn thing went under the couch so I've spent this evening with my feet well and truely up. The boys reckoned it was proably only a baby huntsman, but where there's a baby there's probably a huge mommy and daddy. I'll be checking in the bed before I get in tonight!! There are only 2 spiders in Victoria that are poisonous, the red back and the white tip, both of which Jake and Lew have come across whilst building a cubby at school! They seem perfectly blaze` about it all now - "no worries mom".
Decorating.
Before...
After!
Lewis's room is now finished. The border 'winged' its way from Stourbridge in super quick time and goes great with the colour scheme. The before photo is from when the other people lived here. I made the 'LEWIS' thing on the wall using stuff from Kaisercraft.
Now to start on Jakes room!
A Funny Old Week.....
The weekend started with James, Jake and myself all feeling a little off colour. Jake ended up having Monday off school because he still didn't feel 100%. All better now though.
We have spent a lot of time this week helping Jake and Lewis with school projects. Jake has had to design a poster about the rights of children, this is for International Day on Saturday. He has had to compare his life with that of children in less fortunate situations. There were certain criteria he had to follow, like it must be able to be read from 6feet away and include pictures of himself. The finished poster is below and his teacher loved it and really 'big-ed' him up about it.
Lewis's project is a model of the digestive system. He did this completely himself using things 'recycled' from around the house, including pieces out of the broken dishwasher. I think he has done a really good job and he has loved learning about how the body works including disecting lambs lungs and hearts!
So, what with school projects and the usual round of after-school sports and swimming lessons the week is flying by. Banjo had his first 'puppy class' on Wednesday night. It was bedlam! Fifteen other puppies trying to learn how to 'sit' when all they really wanted to do was bark at one another and stiff bottoms! Anyway, he does now know his name, sit, drop to the floor and stand up again, the poor thing is knackered though and has slept such alot today.
I have spent past couple of days decorating Lewis's bedroom. It is almost finished now just waiting for the border to arrive from England (thanks Mom). Wallpaper and borders here are horrendously expensive. To get enough border for his room was going to cost $110 - daylight robbery so I sent my mom into Wilkinsons (I miss Wilko) and got her to post me 2 rolls of border and all for under £15 ($30).
I will post pics when it is completely finished.
And finally, craft alert - something for my 'craft room' - you never know when I might need to be reminded what my name is so I made this. The large wooden letters were from Kaisercraft, so was the pink paint and the rubber stamp was an Autumn Leave Swirl stamp.
It's Raining
It's raining here this morning, the heaviest, prolonged rainfall we've had since we moved here. This of course, is good news for the garden and bushfire area but a bugger for my washing that I hung out early because it looked like it was going to be a scorcher. Mustn't grumble though it has been sunny and very warm all week. The rain doesn't half sound loud on a tin roof though!
If you're not into craft stuff then you probably won't be interested in the following. I have had a couple of days of card making, the first crafty stuff I've done in months so here are a few pics for my crafty mates 'up north'.
A 'blokey' card for one of the many birthdays we have coming up over the next few months. All the bits and pieces for this were from Kanban, except the ribbon which was from my stash. I just used Distress Ink on
the edges (weathered wood), qu
ick and easy.
The Japanese style card was made using paper from Kaisercraft, silver peel off kimono mounted on black paper from Embsay and the japanese gold coins were from The Stampman in Skipton, edges done in distress ink (fired brick).
The 'muffin' card was made using papers from the Kaisercraft 'sugar,sugar' collection,
mounted on white bazzill card. The 'topping' was inked on the edges using Brilliance (twilight and orange) and then ultra thick embossing power and fine glitter for added bling and not a calorie in sight!
Long Weekend.
It was Labour Day weekend here, so a public holiday for everyone on Monday. We spent the weekend catching up on DIY jobs, went to a local market on Sunday and to Torquay Beach on Monday.
Torquay is only about 15mins from our new house, so we tend to go there alot if we want a nice beachy day. Normally, James and the boys would take the 'body boards' and spend time in the sea but this weekend it was beginning to feel decidedly autumnal so they didn't bother. Some days last week it only got up to 19degrees...brrrrrrrrrr.... I know, we've turned into complete 'wusses' in 6 months!!
Tomorrow once the boys are at school and I've been to the dentist I am going to decorate Lewis's room. He wants it black with red flames so I'm doing it blue and cream! Ahh lifes hard, although black wouldn't show the dirt!
Bells and TasselsI spent yesterday morning at Jake and Lewis's school sewing bells and tassels on to a 30foot long chinese dragon!
Their school is an international school and the dragon is for the International Day celebrations in a few weeks time. The dragon and children will have a parade through the local area and back to school, everyone is to wear national dress from a country of their choice. It really is a lovely school with children from all over the world so everyone learns to get on with one another and they learn about all these different cultures. The idea being that everyone will be tolerant of people with different backgrounds.
So, after all those hours of kneeling on the floor sewing I am aching all over. I'm really not 'into' sewing but when we lifted the dragon nothing fell off so I must have done something right!
If you look closely at the photo you can see the tassels hanging from the bottom edge of the fabric, the red fabric is covered in tiny gold bells, they don't show up too well but sounded fab.
Meet Banjo....Here is the latest addition to our family... Banjo. He is a 9 week old Schnoodle that's a schnauzer/poodle cross and amazingly he is completely hypo allergenic and doesn't smell of 'dog'. We had promised Lewis(9) a dog when we said we wanted to move to Australia - he said he wouldn't come otherwise (yeah, right, like he had a choice!) So, 6 months here and now in our own home we decided we ought to do something about getting a puppy. I had never heard of a schnoodle before but he absolutely suits our needs and James and Jake have had no allergy problems whatsoever.
Banjo is getting the hang of going outside to piddle, he knows his name now - he is named after Banjo Patterson, famous aussie author, poet and songwriter, famous for writing 'Waltzing Matilda' and on the back of a $10note. He has also started to respond to being told to 'sit' and has used the cat-flap today! He is not allowed out for walks for another 2 weeks yet but I'm really looking forward to being able to take him out to the beach and have him join us on our days out exploring.
