It's begining to look a lot like Christmas..........finally

Hi all, again thank you all so much for all of your lovely messages, I am well and truly well again now, just feel like I'm running around like a chook with my head cut off madly trying to get ready for Christmas.

The Christmas decorating around here is a bit sad this year I have nowhere near as much done as past years but it will have to do. As you will see I like to decorate in a different colour in every room and normally every room including the toilet and laundry are decorated. Here are a few photos to show you. Here are the lounge room photos black, gold and cream/white.

Just before I got sick I repainted the family room this is what it looked like before.

and now I have repainted the green walls in grey and the kitchen in white -

I loved the bright green, but with the rest of the house now slowly becoming more pastel colours it was a bit of a shock to the system walking into the room the grey seems to make the transition smoother (I hope that all makes sense).

Here is the front enterance way. (cream and gold)

Hopefully I might get a bit more decorating done before Christmas, so until then.

Cheers,

On the road to recovery

Hi everyone thank you for all of your kind words lately I have still been fighting with this bug for the last two weeks now and for someone who never ever gets sick it is a big challenge. Each time I think I'm better I get a chill and high temperature again the doctors are baffled. Anyway enough of that stuff I am starting to at least feel normal in between bouts of fever. LOL

I have had to cancel our annual Christmas party this year as there is just no way that everything will be done in time, I haven't even gotten into the Christmas mood yet which is very unusual for me I think I might go with tradition this year and wait till 1st December before decorating I think once I start I won't be able to stop.

I hope everyone has a wonderful week, and I will catch up with you all soon.

Cheers,

Wow what a week

Where to start? Wednesday the 12th November is properly the best place, It started with me getting a temperature on Wednesday that turned into viral gastro so bad that I ended up in at the doctors Sunday who sent me straight to the hospital for re-hydration and numerous tests. But the worrying part of all this is if you read my blog regularly you would know that I had my Mother in Laws 60th birthday party here at home on Sunday. Well all I can say is that I have the best and I mean the best boys, my 10, 11 and 13 year old sons cleared out the back shed on Friday so that they could remove all the furniture out of the rumpus room to set up the "Diner" and then the set it all up by themselves. Here are the photos.

All I Had to do was sit there and tell them where to put it all, I'm so proud of them if they hadn't of done that for me the party would of had to of been cancelled. My Mum came up on Saturday that's her in the background of the above photo and she was such a big help too, I am so luckily to have such a wonderful family.

Anyway as I was saying about an hour into the party I told Paul that I had better go to the Doctor and when ended up at the hospital while we were there there was a large storm although we couldn't see it we left at about 5:30 pm after the storm had passed and OH MY GOODNESS!!!! This was not just some storm but a major one. We had to dodge flood water, fallen trees and power lines it was scary.

When we got home there were a couple of hanger ons left from the party have a party in the candle light, to cut a long post short we were lucky a broken glass table and 6 trees down but no damage to the house.

This is the yard before the storm.

And this is the mess after.

It can all be cleaned up, one of the trees that we lost was planted for my youngests 1st birthday, but we can replant. My prayers go out to the residents of "The Gap" who were hardest hit and many are now homeless.

Cheers,

November Already

Ok now that is getting scary, I don't know if I have mentioned this before but I am a bit of a Christmas lover I would go so far as to say I'm a Christmas aholic. LOL So it already being November and I haven't even started decorating for the season is very scary, you see I start my inside decorating for Christmas on the 1st of October except for the 6 Christmas trees (this year there will be 7) which are done on the 1st December. Our outside light display is always started on the 1st November (my youngest sons birthday, I can't believe he is 10). Now here we are the 4th November and I haven't even pulled out the boxes of decorations.

Now some of you might think that I am a bit mad starting so early with my decorating but you see we have a little bit of an annual Christmas party at our place (last year there were 86 people) so in order to have everything ready and organized I have to start early. This year the party is on the 20th December and as I am not working at my second job this year I am hoping to get the decorating started on the 17th November, I can't start before hand because my Mother in law is having her 60th birthday party here on the 16th so I am still trying to finish painting and plastering before the party.

We are having a rock n roll diner theme for her party, the menu will consist of mini hotdogs, hamburgers, onion rings, hot chips, milkshakes, ice cream sundays and of cause banana splits. Can't wait no one is allowed to be on a diet that day. LOL

Wow I just realised how much I have written, now I'm going to add some photos of last years Christmas decorations, them I'm off to visit all of you to catch up with every ones news.

Bye for now

Cheers,

Just a quick note

Well so much for getting back to you all last week, wow where has the time gone. I'm still busy finishing off my renovating hope to have it mostly all finished this weekend, then I can show you all the finished product.

Paul and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last week on 23rd October 15 years married, wow I don't know where all those years went either.

The last two Wednesday nights have been spent up at our oldest sons high school one night for academic awards night and the other for sports awards. The academic awards night he had to wear the formal school uniform with tucked in shirt and tie, Paul and I couldn't help but laugh along with him he looked so strange dressed like that since he is such a jock.

We are all proud of his achievements he received the Year 8 Rugby League award as well as a merit award for his B grade average (not bad for a jock).

Here are a couple of photos from my craft room which I promised (it's still not finished yet).




Cheers,

Under Construction

I thought that I would just quickly let you all know what I have been up to, I'm trying to finish off my youngest sons bedroom but it is a very slow and tedious job, I hope to finally show you the results next week. Also the old formal dinning room is under some pretty major construction at the moment, with new dividing walls being built so that now the room is divided into a display area for my bone china, my craft table in another and a large storage area for all of my craft items.

We had a large rumpus room built onto the back of our house three years ago and we use the table in that room all the time so the formal dinning room was just not getting used anymore, so instead of it just being wasted I thought that I might put it to good use, If we ever do sell the house (I would have to be in a pine box for that) the room can be used as a prep room since it is just off the kitchen and it will be set up just like one.

I had planned to tease you all with some photos but for some reason I can't get them to download today, so I will have to show you all later.

Also I have a tag from Kris @ tagalongteddies that I have to complete.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and I will catch up with you all next week.


Cheers,

My Favourite Tree

This would have to be my favourite tree in our garden, (the photo doesn't really do it justice) most of the year you don't even notice it but come Spring time WOW you can see these trees when you turn into our street they are just stunning. At the moment we have about 6 of these trees (if someone knows what they are called please tell me, we call them yellow trumpet trees, my Dad brought the seeds down from north Queensland.) they propagate really easily and I just keep putting more through the gardens.





I have been working on the "M" of my home but it is taking longer then expected here is a sneak peak.




My youngest son is 9 and just completed his first swapbot swap "kids ATC's" I let him loose in my craft room and this is what he came up with. I was so proud I think that he did a wonderful job and he did it all by himself.





Hope that you all have a great week and those of you that have the children home for the school holidays aren't going to crazy.





Cheers,

Gardening, Gardening and some more Gardening

Have a guess what we did on the weekend. When the boys were younger Paul and I use to work on the yard every weekend, landscaping, building, concreting we are no professionals but we are proud of what we have been able to accomplish on our own. But the last 3 or 4 years the boys have been doing a lot of weekend sport and the yard and gardens are starting to show the lack of attention.

I love the lichen on this small tree.

We decided that this Summer the boys were not going to do any weekend sport so that we can spend more time at home on the yard, and that is what we did on Saturday 4 huge loads of green waste to the dump later we managed to clear out down one side of the backyard. I love living on an acre but every job always seems to be on a grand scale. Now we have only the front yard to do, which will take 2 - 3 weekends approx.

I did manage to find while cleaning up 6 tennis balls, 3 footballs, 1 baseball, 1 cricket ball, numerous golf balls, a ping pong ball and numerous other small toys that the boys grew out of a long time ago, thankfully we didn't find any snakes although we had a scare but it was only a lizard.

The only problem is with all this clearing out is that we discovered that one neighbours yard is even messier than what ours was. I hope to get up to the local markets maybe next weekend and get some native tube stock to fill in the holes left in between the shrubs to block some of their yard. I have found that due to the drought the only thing worth putting in the garden now are natives otherwise you spend too much time watering and pulling out dead plants.

Oh it wasn't all gardening on Sunday we did get to go to a football breakup, yeah. LOL more sport. I hope you like the photos in between of what is left of our garden.

Cheers,

Yeah It's Finally Spring

If you have been reading my blog for a little while you might of noticed by now that I'm not to fond of Winter, in fact I hate the cold. It wouldn't be so bad if it was cold enough that we got snow here then it would be worth it, but I'm afraid that would never happen here, and yes compaired to the extreme cold that some of you girls put up with I know that I'm just a sook.



It is now finally starting to warm up here, last night at touch football I only had one jumper on, and my nose wasn't cold. Now if only we could get some rain to green up the grass I would be a very happy girl. So enough about the weather, I have been busy with a few more swaps here are some of the things that I have been making.

Black and White ATC's

Zoo Animals ATC's

and some more inchies
Now on a sader note a couple of weeks ago we lost two members of our budgie family, Snowy and Sunny were a lovely couple, and I have know idea what happened Sunny was fine one minute then just died, Snowy went the next day, I'm only new to budgie keeping and I have know idea what happened the others all seem to be fine, the boys were a pretty upset and we have left their cage empty still. At least now they are still together in Budgie Heaven.

Beautiful Snowy
Handsome Sunny

Now I know that it has been a while since I last did any of the ABC of my home, but at the moment I am stuck on M which is my youngest sons bedroom and it is not yet ready to be photographed as soon as it is I will continue on with the rest of the alphabet.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful week and I hope to pop in to you all soon.

Cheers,

I have to confess

I have become addicted, to swapbot. I first heard about swapbot on Suze's blog, and decided to check it out since I had so much fun with the parasols and paper swap. I have now discovered a world of ATC's, whimsy jars and inchies and my sons postcard, stamp and coin collections are growing very quickly. I have meet and swapped parcels with some lovely ladies all over the world. So again I apologise if I haven't caught up with you all much lately, but since I have now finished all the business paperwork (yeah) I can put more time into blogging and swapping.

Here's a couple of the ATC's that I have made ( sorry some of the photos are a bit blurry, my camera is acting up a bit lately) -

and my first inchies -

Cheers,