The Next New Beginning

At the end of the year / beginning of next year (all things going to plan health-wise) I will be moving back out to the country.  Three hours east of Perth. 

MR's parents have retired and moved to the coast and he is currently back at home running the business with his brothers.  And we are renting his parent's house from them until I move back at which point we will buy the place off them.  Yes, that means we are currently running two households and yes it is a terrible, terrible idea.

Our new home is such a well thought out building.  MR's dad built it 20 years or so ago and they designed it themselves.  It is north facing so lots of beautiful natural light (unlike our current home which has the north side featuring the laundry, bathroom and one of the spare rooms and has verandahs on all the other sides of the house so is so dark inside) and it has an elevation in the ceiling with windows all along it into the kitchen and dining area which is on the south side so that it has just as much natural light as the north side.  It has a super huge kitchen with a walk in pantry.  It is very open throughout the kitchen, informal dining area and living room.  They were very ahead of their time.  It really is a beautiful home.

And home is the key word.  This house we are in currently was never going to be home.  I knew we would be moving back to the country eventually, although it is sooner than I imagined, and I just didn't know enough about house choosing to be aware of high on the list of importance natural light is to me.  I like bright, airy spaces. And they are in abundance in our new place.

Even though we're renting, we have the green light to start changing things we want.  MR's parents haven't really updated anything from the original style so there is a lot of 80's style bathroom things happening and the kitchen could use a new oven and new benchtops.  Bathrooms and kitchen renos are a  bit out of our price range at the moment though so we need to start small.  A lick of paint throughout the house and some new curtains in the master bedroom (which is currently featuring some lovely peachy floral numbers, eek).

Ideally, I would love to paint the master bedroom or a feature wall in the living room this Easter long weekend but we have left it a bit late I think.  I'm in Perth and have just got some paint cards to look through.  MR is not in Perth, is actually in the middle of driving a truck back from Port Hedland with his Dad and then will be out bush and I don't know that me emailing paint colour ideas to him and him choosing them online and me not seeing how they look in the natural light of the home is really going to work.  So I'm thinking maybe we I just need to ease back a bit from this full throttle urge to do all of the things right now and maybe just get MR to pick a couple of colours and get some sample pots to take up and explore with.  A little bit more sensible, right?

And while we are deciding there are an awful lot of wallpaper border strips on the bedroom walls that need removing...



 
What are your tips for painting and freshening up a room on a small budget?

Run for a Reason 2014

This will be my third year entering the HBF Run for a Reason.  My sister and I have got ourselves fitbits and are trying to be inspired to get out there, get training and get a bit fitter and hopefully knock a big chunk of time off last year's effort of 37 minutes 21 seconds (for 4kms).

If you have a few spare gold coins lying around and can see your way to sending them my way, I would be ever so very appreciative! 

https://hbfrun2014.everydayhero.com/au/megan

Things that happen when you watch too many movies

MR and I are often found of a weekend on the couch watching a movie. We have 4 drawers full and overflowing of movies and 2 shelves of TV shows on DVD.  MR likes to watch movies to unwind after a busy week working way too many hours and I like to feel like I am efficiently and productively multitasking by watching TV and crafting at the same time.*

While we may or may not be as bad as some when it comes to movie quotes making up a part of your everyday conversation, we do have a few we use on a regular occurrence.

I'm not going to tell you what they are right away, but I will put them down the bottom.  It's always nice to have a guess and feel excited if you know what movies they are from.  Well, I think so anyhow.

"Aziz, light!" or just "Aziz!" (mainly when I don't turn the bedside light off because I'm not ready to sleep but MR is.  And it is ALWAYS me who is never ready to sleep.)

"Llama face"

"ChickUN"

"Uno mas"

"Iiiice" - this one originated whilst in New Zealand and was shouted by the first person to spot the latest ice capped mountains of the day/hour. Needless to say, it got a lot of use in the South Island during our October holiday and caused much hilarity. 

I don't actually use this one but it is my all time favourite movie quote: "I shall go down in history as the man who opened a door!"

And MR, his brothers and friends have a habit of quoting Team America sayings to each other as greetings on the phone. I haven't seen it though so it loses a bit in translation.

So how did you go?  Did you recognise any of the movies?  Are any of them your favourite movies as well?

"Aziz, light" - The Fifth Element

"Llama face" - The Emperor's New Groove

"ChickUN" - The Fifth Element
"Uno mas"  - Shangai Noon

"Iiiice" - Cool Runnings

"I shall go down in history as the man who opened a door!" - Ever After

What movie quotes make it into your everyday conversation?

  

 

* I've somehow almost completely fooled myself that TV watching and craft doing simultaneously does equal efficient productiveness so please don't tell me otherwise. 

Difficult Situations

A few weeks ago my best friend and her husband found out they had lost their baby when they went for their second routine ultrasound.  The doctor wasn't able to find a heart beat.

I got a text from her cancelling a planned catch up for the weekend, letting me know what had happened and telling me she'd call soon.  I replied saying I was here if she needed a shoulder, someone to talk to or someone to take her mind off things. 

Such terrible news :(

I hadn't heard from her a week and a half later so I thought I might go and drop flowers off at her place.  I would have had them delivered but they are living with her parents at the moment while their new home is being built and I couldn't remember the street number.  I dropped them off and messaged her to let her know I'd left them outside the gate.  I didn't want to encroach if she wasn't ready to talk but I wanted to let her know I was thinking of her.

She replied that they had been at the doctors but had still not got any answers about what had gone wrong and wasn't up for a chat yet. 

That was a week and a half ago.

So my question is, what do I do now?  I want to text her again to see how she is going, obviously really not good I know, but still.  I want to be there for my friend.  But I don't want to bother her if she is not ready.  I've never been pregnant and I can't even begin to imagine how she is feeling right now.

From my own experience, talking about my illness was a pretty hard thing at first.  I only told very few people and it was very stressful and difficult.  That sort of news can change a relationship, particularly if a person doesn't respond in an expected way, it can feel quite hurtful when you don't receive the support you need at a time like that from a trusted friend.  I know an illness is nothing at all in comparison to the grief of losing a baby but it can certainly be just at relationship changing.  My point is, sometimes it's easier to talk about things when someone else brings it up.

 
Yes?  No?  Thoughts?
  




  

Lovely days

The end of Summer and beginning of Autumn are some of my favourite days. I get so excited by the brisk mornings and the need to put on a cardigan. Today was the first cardigan morning for me and I decided soon after it wasn't actually necessary. 

Autumn starts late here in WA. It really is still the more the tail end of Summer than the luxuriousness  of long pants, cardigans, couch blankets and Winter pyjamas. Soon, but not quite yet. What it is though is the onset of cool evenings. Perfect for crochet on the couch. My Bertie blanket is getting longer. 

Today was Brown Owls and I got another two stripes done. It's 33 stripes long now, so very close to half way. 

While it's hard to drag myself out of bed on the third Sunday morning of each month for Brown Owls (9am on Sunday is not a time I'm well acquainted with), once I get going on my craft and chatting away to friends I've made through the group, it really is a nice way to start the day. 

Today I followed craft with lunch out in the Swan Valley at a local brewery with MR, his cousin and her boyfriend. We sat outside and caught up and enjoyed yummy food and beautiful weather. And then on the way back home MR and I stopped off at Yahava Koffeeworks for a coffee, a hot chocolate, a muffin and an escargot. 

MR is quickly mowing the back lawn because the bins are being emptied tomorrow and the we are couch and DVD bound. We're thinking Zoolander. We've got veal mignons and roast veggies planned for dinner which doesn't involve much prep so all in all, it's been one of those lovely slow, relaxing days in which you still manage to get a bit of stuff done. Just lovely. 

How's your weekend panned out?

  

Lately...

Crafting...
Sewing date and lunch with some lovely friends at my place.  I almost got this quilt that I started at the beginning of last year finished, only about 20 cms of stitching the binding on to go and I'm embarrassed to say, it is still not finished!  I put it down after the girls left because I had some school prep to do for the next day.  Must. Finish!

The Bertie Blankie is going well, I am getting a bit more done most nights of the week.  I'm getting close to being half way there and in even better news, I'm not yet bored of it! 

Watching...
The Block (the first reality TV show I've been sucked into, ever!)


The Riddick movies

Thor: The Dark World


Reading...
The Gentleman Bastard Series, Books 2 and 3.  If you like a bit of a fantasy/intrigue/con artist sort of thing this series by Scott Lynch is pretty great!!  I found out about it via a review by one of my favourite authors, Patrick Rothfuss, on Goodreads.  How exciting is it to see what your favourite authors like to read?  He rated the first and second books with five stars so I thought I'd give it a go and I'm glad I did.

and now back on to the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan.  I got book 13 for Christmas and it's the final in the series but I'm determined to reread them all before reading the last one so I am all up to speed and know exactly where everything has been left off.  No missing important bits here just because I've forgotten them!  I just started book 5 last night.  Do you reread series when the next in the order comes out? 

Baking...
Banana and raspberry bread

My comfort food - sago  

Anzac biscuits for MR, and using my new biscuit barrel for the first time.

Pancakes, the last three weekends in a row!!

Growing...
My pumpkin is looking more pumpkinly every day.  Unfortunately only one flower was pollinated so there's only one pumpkin.  My dad told me (way too late to do anything about it) that I should have pollinated the female flowers with the male flowers by hand but unfortunately I really am a gardening novice and had no idea there were female and male flowers on the same plant and just thought all the flowers should turn into fruit through immaculate conception.  Clearly not.  I will know better for next time a pumpkin plant decides to grow in my garden.  Especially now that I have googled it and know how to do it and tell the two different flowers apart.

What exciting things have been happening in your world lately?

  

Mish Mash

School is back, two weeks down so far and I have to say I'm very much enjoying teacher Pre Primary two days a week this year.  I have taught Pre Primary before and I did love it then too so I shouldn't be surprised.  It is nice though, having my ex students from last year again as well as some others and what is even better is the lack of hard work that the Kindy students bring at the beginning of the year.  Pre Primary students already know how to sit down, listen, put up their hand, follow instructions, behave, cut, count, glue, tidy up and really, everything that you'd need for a smooth running classroom at the beginning of the year.  My one half a day with brand new Kindy kids is putting me in bed by 8pm due to the sheer amount of full-on-ness they bring to the room.  And then times that by 20 little bodies.  

There has been a plethora of school related photos of instagram lately because my life has been taken over by preparation of new resources, planning lessons and neverending checklists.

In other news, my mystery surprise veggie which everyone who commented thought was a pumpkin, seems to be said pumpkin of the butternut variety and has just begun to fruit.  I found this one this morning when I was heading out to the car.  I've been looking each day at the flowers and wondering when they are going to start vegetablising but this sneaky one obviously has been doing so for a while whilst hiding under a nice big shady leaf.  I'm a bit concerned it might bake sitting on the pathway like that but we'll just wait and see.  There are a few other flowers that are starting to look a bit vegetablish at one end too.  It's all a bit exciting.  Pumpkin bread, pumpkin scones and pumpkin and corn fritters might be featuring a bit in however long it takes for them to grow and ripen. 

Finally, in some craft news, there isn't realllly any news because of the complete take over of my life by school work but on the nights where I have been awake past 8pm and not dead on the couch or busy cutting for 3 hours (my Tuesday night this week) I have managed a little bit more of my Bertie Couch Blanket, only the last 2 rows of purple this week but it has still come a long way since you last saw it at just two rows long in total! It's getting to the stage where the weather really needs to cool down before I get much further on it.  Hot days and a lap length blanket draped on me are not necessarily too enjoyable.

 

Veggie Surprise

 

There are some areas of our garden that are pretty much just sand.  Hydrophobic sand that is so scared of water that it just shunts it across its surface to a section more accepting.  So we've been working (a little bit, quite sporadically) on improving it.  We've added clay particles and cow poo and I got MR to dig me a hole and I was chucking veggie scraps in it and covering them over to add some nice organic matter so that maybe, some time in the future, we might be able to get something to grow there. 

A few weeks after doing that for about a week and then forgetting, I remembered and went to chuck out some more scraps only to find a little plant growing in one corner.  It looked like a veggie plant to me so I gave it some water and threw the scraps elsewhere.  A couple of months later it is now huge, taking up a whole corner of our garden that was previously just sand and had nothing growing it in.  It is starting to spread its tendrils out across the path to our front door.  And the flowers have opened now too, they are about the size of my palm.  I've been nursing it through the heat, watering it in the morning before I go out and in the afternoon when I get home to droopy wilted leaves and it seems to be coping okay.  I'm hoping that all those flowers do turn into tasty homegrown veggies.

I have no idea what it is, having only ever grown tomatoes and peas before.  MR reckons a pumpkin and that is possible because I do remember throwing pumpkin gizzards into the hole.  I'm hoping for cucumber though because I don't really eat pumpkin very often.  Maybe I'll have to start.

Any ideas what it is?

 

A rose by any other name

This year at work I don't have my own class.  I'm the DOTT (Duties Other Than Teaching) provider for the Early Childhood area.  Which means I take each class while the teacher goes out to do planning.

I still get to keep my own room though and the students come over to me, which is nice not running around but also means I have to make three classes worth of name tags.  Most Kindy kids certainly can't write their names and Pre Primary students often need it written in front of them to copy to make sure they put all the letters in and in the correct order.

So I've got all the class lists in front of me and I'm typing them into my document and some of the names this year!!

There's the names when you look and them and wonder, is that a girl or a boy (it's fun to guess before you look across to see). Brooklyn, Bobby, Darcy, Ghadeer, Jordan - have a guess and see down the bottom for the answer.

And then the names in which you have to guess the pronunciation.  Those are fun too.  My pearlers for this year are Aania (a-NIA ?), Sheinna (SHE-na ?), Jatin (JAY-tin ?), Ginalen (GIN-a-len ?).

And the ones that rhyme or sound similar.  Jaylen and Kaelan (both in the same class), along with Brayden, Hayden and Jaiden, thankfully not in the same class.  Also across the classes I have a Shantae (pronounced Shone-TAY), Jonte (pronounced JOHN-tay), Shenae (Sha-NAY) and a Shanzae (she's new so no idea).

I also have students named Chardonnay and Rhythm.  Who am I to judge I suppose,  it certainly keeps things interesting.  And better than having to deal with Bob X, Bob Y and Bob Z.  Although I do also have two Tristens in one class and two Hannahs in another.

My strangest named student ever was called Ned, surname Kelly.  I kid you not.


 

  

Brooklyn - boy
Bobby - boy
Darcy -girl
Ghadeer - girl
Jordan - girl

Did you get them right?
  

Yarn along

Once upon a time, a long, long, long time ago I learnt how to crochet.  It was one of my New Year's resolution for 2010.  Probably the only one I kept.  My Mum taught me. 

My very first granny square, January 5 2010

I remember being so proud of my first granny square.  I was going to make a big blanket for my queen size bed.  Except I only got up to 27 squares.  Then I realised I had been making my squares in English double crochet which meant they were tiny and took forever and fell out of love with it.  They got packed away in a box and left until the first days of 2014.  Pretty much exactly four years after I first learnt to crochet. 

In between this time I have made various other crochet items, including a large granny rug for my sister to cover her queen size bed in big squares with only one colour per square.  This is called smart crocheting as it involves less stitching together and less sewing in of ends.

However, now I wanted to make a blanket for the couch at my house and these squares sitting in a box were bugging me in their unfinished-ness.  So I laid them out and got to work.  No starting the new blanket until I'd finished this one!

Snipping off the last stitched in end

No big reveal yet though.  It needs a good blocking and I have no foam things to block on, not having ever blocked anything before.  Once I've hunted down one of those foam alphabet puzzles and blocked it I'll be able to show you the results... but in the mean time, I can show you the start of my next blanket.  Crochet mojo is running high around these parts!

Joining in with Ginny's Yarn Along, for the very first time!