A lot of water under the bridge

My blog is really out of date.

I haven't posted since early February.It was all about the gorgeous pendant necklaces available on Etsy.
I've been making my own and they've turned out lovely
(but that'll have to be another post as I don't have my camera with me).

According to my sidebar, I'm 32.I'm actually closer to 34.

I no longer have 5 chickens.
One chook is all that remains and she's going senile in her old age. Thinks imaginary monsters are chasing her every morning and runs screaming across the yard....almost like clockwork. There's no monsters, I've checked.....the first five times. Now it's a case of the hen who cried wolf.

But I guess the biggest change in status is that the husband and marriage that I thought was a dream come true has turned out to be more like a bad dream. We've been separated for three weeks now and it's certainly been a rollercoaster of a ride. But it's good to say that I've mostly been on top of the ride and from that high up I can see the view in the distance, and even though it's far away, it looks pretty.

Can you believe I'd never been there before?

To Etsy that is.

I'd heard many a mention of it for ages

but finally went there yesterday to check out Dottie Angel's notebooks.

This morning I got an email with many things to drool over

but the one that caught my eye was this.

 HidenSeek

I've loved pendants ever since I found this in an op shop last year....

one of my favourite bits of jewellery.

And I've always loved images of old ships in rolling waves,

maybe it's a hangover from childhood days of reading

Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

The pendants were sold out.

So I explored further and found

this......

 xPiebaldx

and this.....

 thependantemporium

and these.

  all thependantemporium

Be still my beating heart.

But which one to choose.

Which one would you choose?

I got a wild idea...

did a bit more exploring

and purchased a set of 10 blank pendants.

So now I can make my own

and I've collected many vintage childrens books with the intention of one day making cards from the images.

I think some of them would be perfect for this project.

I'll let you know how it goes.

More white floors

About two years ago I painted Ella's room blue, furnished with white furniture. I left the skirting boards off though because I always had the intention of polishing the hardwood floors first. Of course two years later they were still the same, with their blotches of paint and huge gaps between the floorboards.

Before - hardwood floors that are a nice colour but they are very uneven and gappy.

After the success of Rosie's white floors I was inspired to do the same in Ella's room. So after a lot of gapfilling (some of the gaps were HUGE and always used to bug me because of all the dirt that would get caught in them), and putting on of skirting boards (I'm getting better at cutting mitres) I put the layer of primer down yesterday.

Halfway through painting the primer.

And I'm loving the result already. The room is on the dark side of the house and the white floor lightens it so much.

Primer is finished - a taste of the final result.

I'm off to paint the first layer of paint. Is it silly that paint can make me so excited?

When do you go?

I picked my daughter up from school early yesterday. She'd vomitted. Okay, that's no biggy. I can handle that. Just give her lots of attention and rest and water and let her watch TV, which is usually banned on school afternoons.

But this morning I got woken at 2:30am to her upset and clutching her stomach. She's in pain, she's crying and the hot water bottle isn't cutting it. A little questioning and I discover it's a sharp pain, below and to the right of her belly button. Uh -oh. From memory, isn't that where it hurts when you have appendicitis?

This is where the dilemma comes in. Does anyone else hate making these decisions? I HATE making a fuss. And I know gastro can give you tummy pains. What if I go to the hospital and it turns out to be wind? Will they think I'm an idiot?

I took her.

I had to carry her from the car park, she seemed all lanky arms and legs, because it hurt too much to walk. The doctor prodded and poked. He seemed to understand my concerns because of the location. Took a urine sample, gave her some pain killer, left her curled up on an emergency bed and waited to see if the pain eased. An hour later she was giggling at our attempts to draw portraits on the magnadoodle from the toy corner.

It turned out to be gastro.

I just have to monitor her and if the BAD pain comes back, go back to the hospital for blood tests.

So I'm home for the day and Ella's laid out on the couch, eating honey toast and watching "Robin Hood".

And I'm glad I went, even if it was a false alarm.

Looking like a fool is nothing when it comes to my daughter's wellbeing.

 

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.