Wintry Days

We have had the most amazing weather over the last couple of days. Thunderstorms, endless hours of pouring rain, dark skies and howling winds. It's classic Winter weather, the kind that keeps us indoors. I used to hate Winter but over the last couple of years I have come to love it. I love Winter food, and curling up on the couch with a blanket, and layering skirts and tights and boots, and the fireplace, and mulled wine!

I thought I would share some of the things that have brightened my Winter day, today.

Flowers from my family. The small bouquet is one that Miya picked me from our garden, and the large one was picked by Nath as he walked down to the Post Office to get our mail. I love having fresh flowers on my kitchen windowsill to make smile while I am working.

We stripped the carpet out of the kids' room today, as it was old, stained and still had the faint scent of cat and cigarette smoke from the previous owners. The floorboards underneath are not polished and are pretty marked but I actually like their rustic charm. We picked up a loft bed from Freecycle so we have moved Miya onto that one, Eden onto the pink bunk and Brannen will stay in his cot for now. The loft bed is great because we can utilise the underneath of it as play space. The kids love their updated room.

I am working (slowly) on a patchwork bedspread made out of vintage bed sheets. It is taking me forever to cut the hundreds of squares I need but it will look beautiful when it is done. I bought the most luxurious cotton/bamboo blend wadding for the inside so it will be a lovely warm bedspread (that may not be complete until next Winter!)

 The sight (and smell) of fresh, homemade bread baking - you can't beat it. Even though I don't eat it, being gluten free, I still love having bread baking in the kitchen on a cold Winter day!

My Ongoing To-Do List

There is always much to do around here. It can feel like as you tick one item off 'the list', three more jobs pop up. Whether it be housework, keeping lunchboxes filled, garden maintenance or keeping up with the work that animals create, it can be difficult to stay on top of things. I often tell Nath that I can only be awesome at three things at once, and I am definitely looking forward to having him around more!

Some of the things on my list currently are.....

Mucking out chicken pens, and putting the old straw etc onto our compost heap. This weekend we are also doing another cull of our young roosters and old chooks and moving all the other chickens into the one pen up the back. The driveway pen will be dismantled so we can build an enclosure for our goats.

Sewing up a flannelette doona cover for our bed using vintage single bed sheets that my mum gave me, cut into patches. I have finished making winter doona covers for the girls - simply by sewing single bed flat flannelette sheets together.

Finishing (I hope) the curtains for the kids' room. The curtains they have in there currently are a wee bit short and let too much cold air in through the gap. Poor Eden sleeps under the window where the draught is.

Filling up the freezer with bulk-cooked lunchbox goodies.

Weeding some more of the garden.

I'm coming to an acceptance, even a love, of winter clover. It can stay.

Bottling kombucha and making yoghurt.

My kombucha 'mother' is reproducing!

Enjoying the cooler weather! While it is nowhere near as cool as it is going to get, I have been getting into the swing of autumn with blankets in every room, apple with cinnamon sticks and cloves simmering away on the stove, chicken and puy lentil pies for dinner last night, and wearing my slippers around the house! I do think the cooler months are fast becoming my favourite time of the year.

Getting out for a bike ride. (Brannen and I - mostly me, he enjoyed the ride from the back of my bike - rode 12km of hills today to a friend's house and back. The fifteen extra kilos that Brannen provides presents a fairly hefty challenge in getting up and over those hills!)

And, sigh, tackling the ever-growing pile of washing.

What have you and yours been up to?

Treasure Hunting

Nath, the kids and I went on one of our scavenging dates yesterday. We found an awesome website that outlines when and where Perth's roadside collections are, complete with maps of the boundaries of each pick-up. We decided to head out on a freebie adventure to see what treasures we could find.

If this sounds a bit unglamorous or even downright dirty and desperate, I'd like to point out that nearly everything that goes out onto the curb for collection ends up in landfill. So much of it isn't broken, or unusable, and is put out for collection merely because it's owners have no use for it or have replaced it with something new. Roadside collecting is more than finding treasures for me, it's also about reducing the amount of so-called rubbish that ends up in landfill for no good reason at all. If we can truly use it, I'd rather give something a new lease of life than have it end up at the tip!

So, after a trip to the tip to empty our trailer of greenwaste, and a stop at the op-shop so Miya and Eden could spend some of their snail collecting money (more on that later!), we were off.

Check out some of the treasures we found!

With summer approaching, having bottles of cold water ready to go in the fridge is always handy. These are in perfect condition, they just need new seals. Luckily, I have some of those!

A lovely wooden tray, perfect for breakfast in bed.

I couldn't believe it when I saw this gorgeous enamel serving dish on someone's front verge, what a gem!

Sitting alongside the enamel dish was this deep casserole. I loved the design on it, so in the car it went!

There is nothing at all wrong with this wicker basket, and I was after a new laundry hamper, so I whipped up a liner for the inside, and.... voila!

This old wooden stepladder, after a sand back and a bit of paint, will make an excellent pot stand, or bookshelf, or teddy bear storage, or..... we'll see!

We also picked up some old hose to run around the sharp edge of a tin-lined garden bed near the kids' fairy garden, a watering can (yay! I have been asking on Freecycle for one of these!) and a bin with a swing lid that I discovered was full of little jars and lids - perfect for some of the Christmas gifts I am thinking of making.

It was a very worthwhile foray into the suburbs, even though it always takes Nath a good few hours to recover after venturing down into 'the city'. I'm really loving the opportunities for creativity that living frugally brings. Over the next few weeks, we will be foraging a bit more for food that is readily available in the local bush areas and learning a bit more about about our local flora and fauna and how it can complement our bought groceries and homegrown produce. I'll keep you posted.

A Simple Room Makeover

We love our new house, but when you move into somewhere new, there's always things you would change. The previous owners of this house were cat owners (as are we) and their cats were inside animals. They had an enclosed run to the side of our house (now our quail pen) with ramps up to the third bedroom window, meaning their cats could come and go as they pleased. This room is now our guest bedroom, and there is a little nook in there that we use for the girls' quiet writing/crafting area, and it is a much used room of the house. Unfortunately, the carpets were badly stained and smelly and no amount of steam cleaning would improve them. The curtains were also stained and smelly, and the room in general seemed dingy and unattractive.

I really wanted to create a space that our guests would feel comfortable in, somewhere warm and inviting. So yesterday, we set about transforming smelly and dingy into fresh and attractive!

This was the room BEFORE the makeover.

We started removing the carpet and underlay...

 ... revealing the most beautiful polished floorboards underneath!!

 A bit of a cleanup and meticulously removing all of the carpet staples from the floorboards....

I made some new curtains out of a pair of vintage bedsheets from my mum's linen cupboard, hung some pictures of bunting that I had made on the wall, and used an old stool that I got from freecycle as a bedside table (with a doily on top, of course!)

I put some flowers from our garden into a vase that was once my grandmother's to pretty things up some more.

Some mismatched vintage pillowcases add some character.

 Even the crafting nook had a makeover!

Every guest room needs somewhere for guests to put their suitcases! This beautiful pine box was once my 'glory box', made for me by my grandfather.

I am so pleased with how this room looks now. It's fresh, and inviting, and cost me the grand sum of...... zero dollars!! Nath is a little concerned that I'm getting all 'granny chic' on him, but I am just loving that vintage-y floral look. It is so homey and unpretentious. I'm looking forward to getting into the kids' room with my makeover on!

Sunday Snaps

Some projects completed...

The pin-up board and glass whiteboard I have been meaning to make for ages. I'm quite happy with how they turned out.

Our table all set up ready for dinner with friends, complete with the pretty little placemats I made for the occasion (in the nick of time - I was still top-stitching them when my friends arrived!)

Some opshop finds....

Brannen in his beautiful vintage highchair I found in our local opshop. The lady told me it was for dolls only as it doesn't meet Australian safety standards.... I might need to tie him in with a belt! I just love it, though.

My $5 opshop dress, so retro! Here's the pattern on it, close up:

Some weekend footy....

Some fun with the kids.....

Miya catching 'fairies' in a jar. Yes, my bedroom is possibly a touch dusty. She would try to catch the 'fairies' and was becoming quite disheartened when she couldn't see them shining in the jar. I'm so glad I snapped this pic of the sun hitting the jar, because she was pretty thrilled when I told her that I thought maybe fairies became invisible when they were captured, but sometimes, just sometimes, you could see them shining in photos.

 Bike ride and a play with friends in the park. It is pretty darn cold here these days but the sun is usually still shining, so we are lucky enough to be able to enjoy getting out and about for walks and bike rides during the day. Miya is an awesome bike rider (with training wheels) and Eden is.... well..... getting there.


Hope your weekend was fabulous!

Lazy Weekend To-Do Lists

I love weekends. They stretch out before me from my vantage point on Friday night like an unblemished landscape, a blank canvas waiting to be filled. I love the promise of lovely, lazy days; or busy days in the kitchen; or time spent with friends; time for sewing or reading; or trips to the park with the playground-obsessed kids in tow - all in between the week's washing, tidying and cleaning.

The problem is, I tend to want to do all of the above. I write imaginary lists in my head, not really accounting for how long each task will take. Unsurprisingly, I am usually slightly disappointed on a Sunday night when I realise my imaginary list has only half of its items imaginarily crossed off. I remember Mike once saying on a holiday we spent with them that Annette likes to 'suck the marrow out of each day'. Well, that's me every weekend.

So, now I make real lists. Not the rigid, 'I have to do absolutely everything on this list' kind. Just lists of things I'd like to do, this weekend or next, or even next month. It's kind of a collection of ideas. (Sometimes Nath has to remind me of this - slow down, Nicole, take a breath, hey, do something radical and have a nap even!)

Taken at 9:00am this morning - it was minus two overnight here.

This weekend? Well, it's been cold here, inspiring me to start that patchwork bedspread I've been meaning to make, backed with the purple woolen blanket that was my aunty's as a young girl in the 50s.

I'm also taking Mezz's idea of making a whiteboard from a framed piece of material - and making a matching framed pin-up board as well.

 We have dinner guests tomorrow night, a belated birthday celebration. I'm doing a curry feast, with dahl, poppadoms, raita, chutney, curried cabbage, saffron rice..... and, the star of the night, this lime and coconut goat curry. I've made it before, and I think it is now my favourite curry.

I bought a lovely cream tablecloth today at the Salvos, big enough for even our oversized feast-worthy table, and I plan to quickly make some placemats and serviettes to brighten it up.

So, what's happening in your world this weekend?

Love to you all.