It's Raining, It's Pouring.....It's Flooding



The Bruce Highway as seen from Aldi, near McDonalds.

The flood disaster that I've been watching unfold in the rest of Queensland has finally hit home.

It was rather ironic that for a town that so easily floods, it took this long, but from Saturday the warnings were flowing in. I and everyone else in town were frantically stocking up with groceries.

I knew that my house would be okay and I'd still be able to get to the shops, unlike others, but as all roads out of town are cut, I knew the shops would run out quickly.

I got up early Monday and spent the morning helping the staff at Best and Less clear out their store (I was thinking of you, Amos).

The afternoon was spent helping the convenience store down the road clear out everything. No one knew how high the flood was going to reach, estimations were for a peak of 20m but no one wanted to take any chances. Both places had flooded 1.5m deep in the last major flood.

Breaths were held overnight but the news was good... a peak of 19.24m.

There was flooding but not as bad as feared.

 Best and Less was fine although the water filled the carpark

Memorial Lane, and the shops along it, was a canal

and there was one huge lake stretching from the river, over the highway

through the park and pool

drowning some shops up to roof level

and through Memorial Park.

Close to home the park across the road was flooded.

You could just see the tops of the swings sticking out.

The convenience store was just spared

but my old Indoor Netball centre next door wasn't so lucky.

The Soccer fields were swamped.

All in all, I feel we've been fairly lucky, although if we get more rain it will rise again.

This has certainly paled in comparison though to the disaster that has hit Toowoomba and the surrounding areas. 9 dead and 66 missing at this time. And Ipswich and Brisbane are preparing for major flooding.

My thoughts go out to all those affected. I hope it doesn't get much worse and the missing are found safe and sound.

Rosie's Room is Done!

After long last, I put the final coats of paint on the sleepout last week and I've been painting furntiure and moving all of Rosie's things into the room. And seeing I love before and afters let me give you a short history of the sleepout.

This is what it looked like pre-cleaning and painting, when it was my sewing room. Neat, but look at those awful walls. Looking back, I can't believe that I lived with it for so long.

When we moved in, the floor was "carpeted" with fake grass. Beautiful.

That immediately went, but the floor below was painted green and covered with bumpy glue.


So in the meantime, we put down carpet from elsewhere in the house.


Rosie chose a really pretty pale spearmint for the walls. We were going to go for a shabby-chic look BUT halfway through Rosie decided that she wanted an Indian themed room instead. A darker green would have been better for this new look, but the paint was bought so we stuck with it...and it went well anyway as you'll see soon.

Walls painted...I now needed to tackle the floor. Paint stripper didn't work too well so I turned to my beloved hot air gun.

It wouldn't get all the glue off but rather spread it out, but that didn't matter too much as I just wanted it smooth enough to paint  white.

I LOVE white floors.

I painted the furniture a glossy black (which was Rosie's idea) and it holds the room together really well.

The bed was pine

The bedside table was white MDF from Aldi which was painted and papered
(I just used scrapbooking paper glued on with PVA and covered with two layers of clear varnish)

and the dresser was one I picked up for $15 from an Op shop which also got the black treatment and new glass handles.

I still have a desk to paint and paper and I'm making curtains out of saris bought online to add some more of the Indian feel, plus I was also going to add some picture frames painted black  and lined with Indian paper.

The furnishings and decorations were chosen by Rosie.

This has been such a fun project to put together and I'm amazed and so pleased by how well it turned out.

I think Rosie has an excellent eye for deisgn and has really sophisticated taste, especially for a 12 year old.

So again, before......

and after.

  

I'm joining in show and tell parties on The Shabby Nest and My Romantic Home.

vintage pillowcases

It seems that lately I've taken to collecting vintage sheets and pillowcases.
You know how these collections creep up on you. You buy one by chance, then another, then before you know it, that's the section of the store you go to first. You see a floral corner peeping out from behind an ugly '80's quilt and you realise that your heart just went pit-a-pat.

(Why vintage 60's and 70's patterns now when a few years ago I would have groaned at their ugliness? Who knows? That's worth a whole other session on the couch.)

If you're a collector like me, you'd also know how rarely you find them.
So you can imagine my delight when two weekends ago I stumbled not just on one or two, but piles of pillowcases.

I showed restraint and bought just two piles of them for $3 each. That's twenty pillowcases, in one spot, for 30c each.

The colours, the patterns....be still my beating heart.

Of course, some went straight on my bed.

Some others, I'm keeping to cut up and make banners from.

The mirror I also got from the same garage sale for $3, but that's another story.

Relishing the small pleasures

Things have been a little difficult at home lately and at times I've been feeling full of despair. So the little pleasures have been very important to me. That little bit of happiness I can get from creating something, especially if it's homely, can be enough to get me through the day and let me know that life can be good and beautiful. Making tomato relish is for me one of those small pleasures.

First you need 1 1/2 kilos of juicy red tomatoes, the more ripe, the better.

You'll need one old, stained recipe book that used to belong to your mother.....

some empty jam jars.....

and some of this.

Cut a little cross in the top of each tomato and cover them with boiling water for a few minutes. This makes them easy to peel and this is where the ripeness helps. The skin peels off easier, the more ripe they are.

Chop up the tomatoes and two large onions and put them in a large saucepan.

Cover with brown vinegar and bring to the boil. Simmer for 30 mins.

Add a heaped tablespoon each of dry mustard and curry powder, 1 teaspoon of salt and two cups of sugar.

Simmer for another 20 minutes.

Thicken with 1/2 cup cornflour which has been blended with 2 cups white vinegar.

Pour into jars which have been cleaned and heated in the oven on low heat.

Arrange in a row and admire your handy work.

Tasty with burgers and sandwiches or with oven baked potato wedges for an after-school snack.

Or do as Rosie does and just dip your finger in and enjoy the flavoursome tanginess.

What are your small pleasures?

More Procrastinating, This Time in the Pantry

When we first moved into this house, it wasn't very clean but I only had time to clean one room properly and that was the pantry. It had mildew all over the ceiling and walls and revolting lino on the floor. I wasn't going to put food in there. I ripped up the lino and gave it a wash down but four years later it was back to looking like it had never been cleaned. So I got out the sugar soap and the bleach this time. Then I thought, "While I've got the shelves out and it's clean, I might as well fill the gaps. That won't take long."

(before and after cleaning)

And you can guess what happened next.

"Well, while I've cleaned it and filled the gaps, I might as well give it a coat of Primer so it's ready to paint when I am."

"Now that it's cleaned AND filled AND primed, I might as well paint it."

So I did.

(With Dulux Aqua enamel in Antique White USA for those who like the details.)

Here's an after picture of the same spot of the first photo.

It's a bit hard to see the difference in the above photos, but in the next photo you'll see how shabby the rest of the house is, and what a difference a coat of paint makes.

You'll notice that I painted the floor too.

You can imagine that after four years of being walked on and having food dropped on it, unsealed floorboards wouldn't look, or feel, very nice.

And not to mention the large gaps between the floorboards which had 60 years of accumulated gunk and dust congealed in them. It was a nightmare to clean.

But filled and painted......aaah, it's so clean. And easy to keep clean too. I can sweep the dirt right out of there now and any marks come off easily with some vinegar on a rag.

The white makes it look so clean and fresh

and with all my foodstuff back in, it's like the pantry that I always wanted.

I always wanted my pantry to kinda look like an old general store, with everything stored in old glass bottles, which I've picked up here and there. (They also keep out the grubs and moths better than anything else I've ever used.)

I've been making swing tags for labels to keep with that feel, but I'll show you how in another post...to come soon.

And if you're not sure why I call this procrastinating, when it seems like a lot of work, have a look here.

Thanks for stopping by.

I'm taking part in My Romantic Home Show and Tell Friday