transforming

Over January I usually get stuck into a lot of gardening.  It's like a new year thing - fresh start, weed purging, time to do it, pruning emotionally and literally.

The derelict garden bed on the side of the house needed a little attention.  Some love and some tidying.  Possibly a new retaining wall - but the budget didn't allow for that.

Before:

I have gone for the type of plants that the Brisbane City Council puts in the middle of the road - I figure they can survive me - lariopes and agapanthus.  I left the weeds on the ground as a kind of green ground cover.... If you blur your eyes it almost looks grassy.

After:

I also updated my herbs in pots that all died in the 40 degree day we had a couple of weeks ago.  I love having fresh herbs from the garden for cooking.  I feel all Jamie Oliver.  Plus when you buy herbs from the shops you get a massive bunch and often you only need a few leaves.  Everything seems to grow well except coriander.  Coriander and I have a weird growing relationship - I keep buying it to plant and it keeps going to seed and dying.  It's like it is telling me 'you can have me in your garden but you can't own what I do'.  Coriander is such a 14 year old girl herb.

Note the 'no-mats-over-concrete-old-style-trampoline'.  It makes them jump in the middle of the mat and have good proprioceptive boundaries.  At least that's what I tell myself..

The girls were also desperate to make a garden.  They were also desperate to not have the chickens kick it everywhere.  So I said they could make a fence from whatever was lying around under the house.  I think they did a pretty good job!  I am waiting to see if their pleading promises of watering the garden every day actually eventuate.

Gardening always makes me think spiritually.  The pruning, the weeding, the growing, the watering.  Let's hear it for dirty hands and the smell of the hose on freshly mown grass.

babies grow up

When my girls were small I had several mothers of older children say to me 'it will go too fast, remember this time'.  I scoffed internally and continued to try and deal with the toddler issue of the moment.

I believe those mothers now.  I have a highschooler.

Uniform policy is quite strict at her highschool.  She has even polished her shoes and worn a ribbon every day.

This was Annika on her first day of grade one.

Gab at the start of 2014 - she is looking happy and confident to be a grade 6 kid.

She was a little bit more nervous starting prep.  (sniff sniff)

Then...

Now...

My other furry baby is not going to school though.  She is just happy to pick them up at the end of the day.

Soon they will be taller than me.

dyeing a bean bag

I deliberately titled this blog post 'dyeing a bean bag' - because the search on google turned up next to nothing on the subject - so I was flying a bit blind here.

We are undertaking the Great Teenage Room Renovation over these summer holidays.  The new colours for the oldest daughter's room are white, black, aqua and yellow - as opposed to the colours we had painted it when she was a baby (yellow and bright purple - I thought that was quite dashing and daring for a baby room).

We wanted a chair to go in the corner of the room as a sort of relaxation space - but I kept searching and armchairs are, like, expensive.  So I mooched around at council pickup in a neighbouring suburb, vaguely hoping there was a black armchair in perfect condition out the front of someone's house.

No chair - but two perfectly good condition chair shaped bean bags!  They didn't even smell weird.  The only problem was they were mission seventies brown.  I scooped them up and squashed them into the back of the car all over the youngest daughter.  The bean bags muffled her complaints.

I was determined to dye them black to match the colour scheme.  After fierce consultation with the lady at Spotlight I bought some black iPoly dye - one packet for each bean bag cover.

I emptied the beans from the bean bag (NB - do this in the bath so those little pesky yet expensive beans don't fly off everywhere around the house), washed the bean bag covers and then got ready to dye.

Did I mention this is what I did on New Year's Eve?  I know how to PARTAY

Here is the original brown bean bag cover.

Fortunately my massive saucepan that I found at a garage sale a few years ago and picked up to use as a prop one day was the perfect size to fit one bean bag cover on the stovetop.  I am not sure how else you can boil something for one hour as instructed on the packet.

I boiled the dye, the little packet of dye conditioner, about a cup of salt, a saucepan full of water and the bean bag cover for an hour and a half - stirring it all the time (I sacrificed a wooden spoon to the blackness).  It felt quite medieval and smelt.......fairly medieval.

After rinsing it out heaps I dried my now BLACK bean bag cover outside in the fresh air.

 And now it sits in the re-decorated room like it belongs.

Cost - bean bag from council pick up - free!
Dye - about $12
Labour - fun times on the last night of 2013
Sense of smugness - high

Much cheaper than a black armchair.

quick trip to Sydney

Jetstar had cheap flights to Sydney.  So I impulsively booked them for our family to go down and visit the cousins in January.

We had a great time.  Stood in front of many iconic Sydney landmarks.  Ate much delicious Sydney food (is it wrong to wish a Sydney Lebanese restaurant with side businesess in Italian Gelato, Turkish Pide and Greek Baklava would open up in our suburb in Brisbane? - this is my regular diet I Must Eat When Visiting Sydney).

(warning - long photo blog post - smooshing in photos from a whole week into one post...possibly not wise)

Six cousins on the steps of the Opera House (the seventh cousin was small and at home).

Watching 'Wind in the Willows' in the Botanic Gardens - excellent! (thanks Aunty Katie for the ticket presents!).

This cruise ship was enormous.  I'm not sure I would like to be on such a large ship.  I would be disaster managing the whole time.  Pretty sure they don't show 'Titanic' as their on board movie.

Lunch in the back yard with all the fam.

Smiley boys!  Love it.

These are the three second born cousins.  In their own families they are a bit of an outlier - but put them together and the genetics makes sense.

Granny and all her grandkids.  In the sun.  Squinting.

So lovely to see the cousins playing together - even though we are states apart they get on well.

We visited my friend's farm in Gerringong.  Completely gorgeous and lovely to see them for an all too brief catch up.

Some of her chickens.  Producing tasty eggs in their chicken caravan.  The is truly organic and free range.  Impressive.

I pretended to drive the quad bike.  This was tolerated.  I didn't want to take off and dump all of the children out of the trailer.

A man and his pigs.  Or, as I visualized them, tasty sides of bacon running around.

Thanks for the lovely catch up Fi.  If you like, you can live close again.  Because I miss you.  Although I am pretty sure Brisbane cannot compete with your farm view.

On the way back from Gerringong we went to this awesome trampoline park.  I didn't jump (after two children I felt I couldn't adequately guarantee the wiseness of doing a lot of jumping) - but the girls and Chris had a hard core hour of jumptastic fun.

A special shout out to Aunty Katie and Uncle Matt, who had our children for three days extra in Sydney while we went back to Brisbane.  I guess it is our turn next to send us your children!

Did I mention I love the food in Sydney? mmmmmm Gelato...