Live Life

4 Comments

This blog is not about my life laid bare for all the world to see.  However, I have alluded to the fact that I have been very busy recently so tonight I wanted to share a little of that with you.

About 10 days ago I was part of a gathering of my extended family.  Like many families, sometimes it seems as though the only times we connect with cousins and others beyond our immediate family is at funerals.  Some months ago I came up with the idea of gathering on the centenary of our grandfather’s arrival at Gallipoli.  He was not in the first contingent of Australian forces who landed on 25th April but was in some of the reinforcements who arrived in mid-July.  A series of events led to him meeting his future wife (our grandmother) in England, and so, our branch of the family grew and flourished.

After much anticipation, family members gathered from near and far for a day of celebration and reminiscing.  The weather was kind, memories were shared and connections rekindled.  We had an amazing day.

2015-07-22 01I think this photograph captured the essence of the day perfectly.

Keeping it Clear

Leave a comment

At the risk of boring you, I have one more post about the new desk.

After years of an open table top with no storage, it is a novelty to have 2 large drawers on the right-hand side of the desk as well as the storage above.  The top drawer has some paper that I salvaged from the IKEA packaging which our grand-daughters will be able to use for drawing as well as last year’s Christmas cards that I need to sort and file.  The lower drawer is designed to hold suspension files and there is nothing in there at the moment.

2015-07-20 01This is a close-up of the left-hand side of the shelving above the desk.  From the top – monitor for solar panels, modem, phone and stationery items (pens,paper clips and bulldog clips).  There are 2 speakers on the centre shelf but the remainder are empty.  How long will that remain the case?

I have a couple of lists and a notepad in the small drawer on the left.  I really like the idea of being able to put them in the drawer so that they are not lying around on the desk.

My plan is to keep the desk looking pretty much as it is and I see no reason for that not to be the case.  It is a great opportunity to start with minimal stuff and keep it that way.

A New Desk – Part 2

4 Comments

Well the desk is all assembled but not without a hiccup or two.

This morning we opened the box containing the hutch and it was the wrong colour!!  Yes, we had managed to pick up the wrong one.  So, it was off to IKEA again which really threw our plans for the day into disarray.

The traffic was a nightmare on our way home but we finally made it back and set about assembling the hutch.

Here is the final item all completed and in position.  It is shorter and narrower than the old table so creates a bit more space in the room.  I have been able to conceal almost all of the cables behind the desk which is much neater than before.

2015-07-18 01I moved the pictures that were above the old desk to the other side of the room now that the second bookcase has gone.

2015-07-18 02Now I need to find a suitable chair to place in the corner to create a comfortable reading nook.

I am really pleased with how this room has been altered and redefined.  I have some plans for minor alterations to a couple of other rooms in the future.  No doubt, I will post about those when they happen but please don’t hold your breath.

A New Desk – Part 1

2 Comments

I have just checked the date and realised that it is 10 days since my last blog post.  I have been busy – in that time my mother has come home from hospital after having undergone heart surgery, I have attended a gathering of my extended family which I organised to celebrate a milestone from my grandfather’s life and been away for a work conference for 2 days.  That has all been in addition to running a household and holding down a full-time job.

There will be some blog posts about some of what I have been doing,but that is enough of my excuses for the moment.

GMan and I both had a day off today and we decided to make a round trip of over 200km to IKEA to buy a new desk for our home office.  I had searched online for either a new or second-hand desk and the one we bought was definitely the best to suit our needs.

indexWe arrived home this afternoon with 3 large packages.

2015-07-17 01GMan and I have spent several hours assembling the desk.  We are very happy with how it has turned out so far.  It is currently sitting in the middle of the office.

2015-07-17 02Tomorrow we will move all of the stuff of the existing desk and position the new one in its place.  The next step will be to build the bookcase/hutch section which attached to the desk.

Watch out for tomorrow’s post in which I hope to show you the completed desk and revamped office/library area.

A Visitor

3 Comments

When we arrived home this evening this fellow was sitting on the lid of the rubbish bin beside the driveway.  This is a tawny frogmouth which is often mistaken for an owl.

2015-07-07 01Despite the car driving past and then reversing into the garage as well as the dog barking he did not move.

I went upstairs and collected my camera and took a series of photographs getting increasingly close but still no attempt to fly away.

2015-07-07 02We see these birds from time to time, often in family groups of 3 or 4 on tree branches or perched on the gate or even the clothesline.  However, tonight I think that this lone one was searching for dinner.

The Patch – An Update

4 Comments

In my post from yesterday I mentioned the new garden hose.  GMan unpacked and set it up today.  Here it is.

2015-07-05 01The hose retracts onto the reel inside the case which swivels on the black spindle.  Here is another view with the hose slightly extended.

2015-07-05 02The 30 metre hose extends from the existing tap to the vegetable garden area.  We do need more hose to reach the blueberries and the yet-to-be-built beds on the far side.  We put some of the new fittings onto one of the old hoses and hung it inside the garden area.  That way we can extend the new hose, attach the extra bit and we can water the whole of the vegetable garden area with ease.

2015-07-05 03GMan put this bracket on one of the posts to store the extra hose.  The bracket was one that had come from my father and proved to be perfect for our needs.

I have really neglected the garden for several weeks but nevertheless we still have things growing.  I weeded the flower garden that I made a few months ago and found that I even had some flowers.

2015-07-05 04These heartsease had managed to grow from seed and thrive among the weeds.  I have weeded the bed and transplanted some so that there is now a border of them in front of the sweet peas.

2015-07-05 05Finally, I wanted to show you the garlic that I have growing and also the celery which is now ensconced in cut-down milk bottles to encourage the stems to grow upright in a bunch rather than spreading out everywhere.

2015-07-05 06I hope you have had a great weekend and that the weather has been kind enough to get outdoors.

Tracking 2015 – The Halfway Mark

Leave a comment

 Well, another financial year is done and dusted.  More importantly, I have reached the halfway mark of tracking our variable spending.

BudgetingHere are the totals so far:

January – $5,144.53
February – $1,783.49
March – $4,350.56
April – $2,385.31
May – $5,961.54
June – $2,939.07

We are halfway through the year and our variable spending is $22,564.50 so far.

As I mentioned in the round-up for May, we began June with GMan buying a new pair of shoes.  Other than that we did not spend anything on clothes or shoes.  We bought Christmas gift for our other daughter so the majority of our Christmas spending is done.

The ‘House & Garden’ category continues to be a substantial portion of our expenses with $367 for repairs to the ride-on mower and $237 on a fancy new garden hose system which arrived yesterday.  There will be more detail about that in a future post.

It will be interesting to see how the second half of the year compares to the first.

The Emotional Stuff – Part 2

5 Comments


About 10 days ago I wrote this post.

2015-06-22 01Tonight I would like to follow that up with this piece, also written by my friend, Patty.

 In the town of my youth, behind the double brick home that is my mother’s neighbour’s house, is a hoarder.
The daughter of a very cranky, intolerant almost-100 year old father, (who lives in a nursing home on the other side of the river) she lives by herself with her mother’s memories and furniture.
Downstairs, you are barely able to squeeze past the belongings of her mother’s old home.
The furniture, the tables, the sofas, dusty with age and just covered with plastic, the china cabinets, and boxes, and boxes, and boxes of glassware and who-knows-whatever-else. All stored.
Filling up her house, cluttering her own life.
She moans to my sister as they hose their lawns. “I wish I could travel! It’s too expensive.”
My sister and I would sympathise and suggest she sell some of her mother’s possessions.
“Oh no! I could never do that! It’s too precious!”
And so her life is unlived, her home a rambling, chaotic mess of someone else’s life.
There’s barely enough room for herself. Her mother lives on, in every room.
It’s physically demanding, cramped and unacceptable.
She lives within the shadows, unhappy, miserable, resentful, and unable to move on.

She knows the answer to the situation, she just hasn’t asked herself the question.
Why keep it all, and what happened to MY life!

I have said to my own sons: “When I go, keep what you want, no obligation, and chuck the rest!”

While this is probably an extreme example, it is a stark reminder that we cannot live our lives if we are weighed down by emotional attachments to the stuff of previous generations.

How do you feel about this?  Have you had to deal with this sort of situation?

An Antimacassar

1 Comment

I recently made a new antimacassar (headrest cover) for an armchair which belongs to my mother.

001The original concept of these linens dates from the Victorian era and you can read more about them here.  They were draped over the headrest of a chair or sofa but I chose to use some elastic to hold my handiwork in place.

I cut up a brand new pillowcase which had some promotional printing on either end.  It was in Mum’s stash of new linen but was unlikely to ever be used as a pillowcase and it was perfect for making this.  In fact, this is only half of the story as there were 2 pillowcases and I made another for a second chair.

It is easy to forget how much wear and tear the headrest of an armchair takes.  The other chair is also leather and the ptch at the centre of the headrest had actually worn right through some time ago.  Mum had made an antimacassar for that chair using a small linen table runner but that had subsequently worn to the point where it was almost worn out.

Now the two chairs have new antimacassars, there are two less pillowcases stashed away and I did not have to buy anything new for this simple but effective sewing project.

Gluten-Free Pasta – An Update

Leave a comment

A couple of weeks ago I wrote this post about making my own gluten-free pasta which includes the recipe.

004The fettucine and lasagne sheets were packaged and frozen for later use.

003I made a large dish of lasagne last week and GMan declared that it was really good.  That is high praise indeed, especially since he can happily eat conventional pasta if he wishes.

Tonight was the big test when I boiled the fettucine to add to sliced sauages in a spicy sauce.  I made sure the water was at a rolling boil and I added the frozen bundles of pasta.  Once it had come back to the boil it was only about 2 minutes until the pasta was ready.  My worst fears of a gluggy mass at the bottom of the saucepan were not realised and I will definitely continue to make my own gluten-free pasta.