Rain Rain come again.

It rained a lil today, yeah! all my pretty little plants at the front got a drink. Dad came over really early at 6am and mulched the front garden with sugar cane and then did the rest of the work on the backyard. He picked up these awesome old ice cream bowls and spoons from a retro shop and also a little watering jug for the patio. He is becoming retro shop king! and he's got a pretty good eye, he found another little rose plate for the wall above the sink.
Desa has taken to eating some of the leaves of our palm tree in the loungue, this supposedly cleans his gut which he decided to do on the kitchen pink mat. Grrr he has huge amounts of wooden floors to be sick on but he decided to do it on my lovely bright pink rug which was a clearance sale buy which I can't get again. it wont fully come out and I AM SOOOOO PEEEVED. My last try is with some carpet foam in the next few days, I think I will just have to throw it out, I hate walking past it knowing its got stains on it. I've tried so hard to make things nice and bamm, kitty breakfast everywhere. I can't find many remedies on the internet, anyone got any suggestions?
I had a big talk to my boss today, as my work is sending me on a managerial course, after the course I'm going to hit the company up for a major pay rise and also a transfer and it would have to be quick, my boss told me how impressed the Regional Manager is with me. I am only one of two who are going to the course, and one of them is already a manager.
I went to buy a BBQ today but they had sold out, so I got a rain check for it, hopefully it comes in this week.
I was thinking one of the only things I really miss about the UK bar people, is GRAZIA magazine, I used to love my fix of fashion on a wednsday. All the mags here bar the house ones I buy are all just gossipy rubbish bar vogue. I might write to them to make Grazia trans pacific ocean. Less than a week!

Summer days

I am sitting in the study with the fan on and the windows open. The only problem with this house is that because its an old cottage, we have no windscreens and we have inside cats so when I want all the windows open I need to put them into the study. I've just spend a few hours cleaning the house and doing all out washing and the garden. I'm really enjoying gardening. The front garden is mine, the back one is dad and stevie's, they have ponds and palms in theres whilst I want mind to be sorta cottagey like with pink, white and purple flowers. I have only started it this week and have planted about 3 punnets worth of cute little pink and purple flowers. I want hydrena's my favourite plant in the middle parts of the garden and I am also going to have some bright pink and red boganvilla's in the wheelbarrows. They arent really cottagey but they are good with the drought. We are at level three drought over here, the worst in the last 100 yrs so your not allowed to water yr garden with a hose, you need to use waterring jugs or buckets. I am actually quite water conscious so I want to have a garden where the plants dont need to much water and can sustain through a long hot summer. Speaking of which It has started already, its still offically winter but this whole week has been 27-28 degrees! Its been beautiful, Im sitting wearing a denim skirt and short sleeved cowboy shirt on and flip flops. I went down for a walk to the beach afetr doing my odd jobs and there were so many families down there soaking up the rays. Where did winter go! We barely had a week of cold weather, the nights were brisk but the days were like 17-18degrees!
We are really looking fwd to Judy coming next week, its gone so quickly! I have saturday, sunday off so I will just be pottering about the house and going to the markets next sunday to get all the lovely summer fruits which have started already. My mum is down at pottsville now for 4 days! I so wish I was there, I wanna go for a swim in the beautiful water. Its definatly BBQ season and I think we will be using our deck alot when Judy comes over.
My aunty di left to go home yesterday, who would have thought that she would be so well that she could go home before the 3 months was up!She was so excited.
Being a perfectionist I wish we could have done up our room and the other spare room before Judy came, well the other spare room just needs curtains and bedding and acessories but in the end it really doesnt matter. Hopefully if they come over for a holiday maybe next year, they'll be able to see the house looking very spiffy, painted with the enclosed front porch and pool!they better not ban new pools with the drought. Hopefully we may have a wet summer with some tropical storms, but I doubt it.
When judy is here we'll complete the front garden, I want to go up to the Caboulture markets and get all my plants from there, they are sooo cheap! The markets are sooo huge! Mum and I went there a few weeks ago and got some really nice things.

We'll the next post we'll pobabbly be writing will be when Judy is here, excitement!

Congratulations to the ever beautiful Lou and Rach for their fantastic results. We are very proud of you both. The house looks so amazing, my dad and Stevie worked like trojan horses today, we got a new cabinet (well an old one)for our longue room, Judy's queen sized super comfy bed, the bed and dresser for the spare room and lots of extra's for the house. The garden looks amazing, stevie has become a keen gardner and may have got us an old church organ for the living room like Nana Ruth's for $50.00 from the same people who we got the dresser from. He's excited about them phoning back. Our house is so full of stuff already its quite sad, maybe we need to upgrade and get a 6 bedroom house for all our collections.
I sooo want to post pictures but I'm going to wait until Judy gets here as there needs to be some sort of surprise for her!

Photos!

Our green longue is nearly completed, here is it is with our new (old) curtains and rug and some new finds for the bar, the bull is to hang above the bar near the other matador picture we have. All we need are some cushions, we have some left over curtain material so we are going to make some big ones for the floor/seats, covering ones mum has, and I have found some brown and light green ones which are nice too. Our mexican old wrestling posters haven't arrived as yet. Our front longue is coming together, we got some tiki cushion material ready to use, we need to hem the curtains a lil and also need to build some shelves above the bar. We are going to put up one or two of our posters from scotland up aswell, this room is a lil more work in progress mainly because the tiki thing is very big over here and small items are over priced, we'd rather just collect as we go at garage sales.
The other room is our study and the typewriter and book jewellery box I got the other week, we are going to put up some floating shelves on one wall for some antique camera's and camcords we have.

Updates

We havent updated for ages as frankly we've been too busy. I have been painting the 3rd spare room frantically the two last sundays and to be honest havent got very far! I am going to attack it tommorow and hopefully that will be the end of it. The room was previously lilac with a darker purple wall. It so far has taken two coats and I still need atleast another. Desa spilled over about 2 litres of paint last saturday in his curious kitty ways, thankfully we still had the protective carpet down, it was just a big waste of money! I am painting it promised land white on three of the walls, windows and doors and then a true red on the previous purple wall. I went to a fantastic garage sale about 3 weeks ago and met a really nice family, they were selling their mothers things who was going into a nursing home, she had fantastic parker furniture which I told the family not to accept anything cheap for it. I managed to score for us at that sale, a vintage typewriter, a standing art deco lamp with beautiful white bulb, a jewellery box which is in the shape of standing up books, a globe and also a beautiful bed set which is being picked up tuesday. It consists of an art deco bed which has the side drawers built into it and a lovely dressing table, it also had cupboards but as we have built ins I didnt need them. I went back to the garage sale after measuring our room and offered them $150 for it, but told them if someone was wanting the whole set then to sell it to them as it was the better situation for themselves. I fretted for two days not hearing from them, when the daughter came into my work and said it was mine, they had, had offers for it but left it for me as I was nice to them telling them the worth of their parkerware. Yea! So that was how we accumulated all the things for our art deco room, I have already two big beautiful prints one of the rudolfe salis black cat and another of a 1940's advertisment with an art deco looking lady in it and alot of george barbier prints for the walls. At a fete the next weekend mum and dad scored some great things including a chrome art deco drinks table for the room and some very shabby chic white bedside tables for judy's room, they have carved queen anne like legs with roses cut into them. We pick up the queen bed for that room tuesday aswell.

Today I hosted a morning tea for my cousins Courtney and Madeline to show them the house, I cleaned frantically in the morning so it would be gleaming and smelling lovely and then put on my best vintage wares. They gave us the most beautiful house warming present of a flamingo vase, I LOOOOVE FLAMINGOES and am getting a flamingo tattoo soon! My mum found some flamingoes for the front garden which I think I am getting for my birthday. They stayed for a few hours and we ate lots of naughty food and then I caught a bus down the road to some of wha we call dollar shops, similar to quids in, and got lots of nice lil goodies.
Judy is coming over soon! We are both very excited! We arent planning many things but the town is a buzz with whale watching, its peak season in August/September and I enquired about it today as a day trip. Loooks good! We are definatly going down to Pottsville in october when its going to be real warm: good for kayaking in the river/beach and thing we are going to do the rainforest and noosa hinterland for our few days in September. Make sure you bring sunscreen and yr sunnies! Its getting warmer already, around 23-26 during the day, still a lil brisk at night but its getting brighter earlier in the morning.
I'll post some pictures when Stevie comes home. I have to go peel a kg of prawns and 4 crabs for dinner tonight. Yum!