Some pictures of today, and new ones of the house

Tea Parties.

I've not blogged really since Judy has been as we have been all quite busy and enjoying her company. She has only 3 days to go and Stevie and I are really not looking forward to her leaving. Its been such a joy having her here and we've loved having her chirpyness and artyness around the house.
Since shes been here she's made me into the 'vintage cardie'to match with my vintage gardner and vintage cook persona's, we went to the quilt fair together last week and had a great time. We did a workshop for card making and I was hooked! I spent about $150 at the show buying supplies and then last monday we went to Spotlight, a huge shop dedicated to all things material, sewing like and arty and I bought up another $50 which was ALOT of things considering it was 20% off. At this rate, everyone I know needs to atleast get 2-3 cards of me for it to be worthwhile. I've made our lounge room a diaster area many times over the last few weeks making cards, its a good thing I have atleast 5 birthdays coming up with close loved ones already!
Yesterday was my birthday and It was probably the best I ever remember having, its been my first one at home for about 4 years which meant double the presents...yay! heeh, my luuuurvely husband got me gorgeous presents including a SEWING MACHINE!!!!!, Hermes perfume set, a huge beautiful book on Sweedish designers, a cherry blossom craft punch: love those things!, some lovely paper, some folders for me to put my art scraps in, and a lovely pea-sagey green jag purse so I don't lose all my cards and money as I normally do with my old purse.
From Judy and Jim and Rach and LouLou I got a vintage egg cup and a murano red and white blown glass basket: I collect 60-50's glassware/ceramics(great finds from judy), a vintage washing/peg bag for my laundry, a gorgeous handmade broach, a vintage kitty that Judy made for me which takes prize spot on my bed on her own mini hot waterbottle, such beautiful things!
My mum got me two pairs of shoes from Novo, there matching but in different colours, cream round toed closed sandal/flats with a strap around the ankle, also the same in brown. I had spied them earlier this month. I also got 5 lovely sparkly pens from Sniggle for my cards!
My brother got me a gorgeous memory board which is up in our room with some vintage cards.
I also got some beautiful bunting which is on my patio from my other family members!
My dad got me a big box of thrifted and vintage wares that he's scouted over town for since we've been back! He also got me a cake made for me for tea party this afternoon.
I was thoroughly spoilt!

I have a cold and a hacking cough which unfortantly has kept myself and everyone else in the house up, so yesterday I woke up pretty early and got all my lovely presents :) Mum came over around nine and we went to Bunnings and I got a whole heap of gerbras for my wheelbarrow in my garden and some bouganvilla's for my hanging plants and some lil cottagey flowers for my 1950's kitsch planters of a rabbit, an elephant and a lovely hand painted bird bowl I have. My patio and garden are looking very nice!
We then did a lil shopping for my tea party this afternoon and then went out for lunch at Shorncliffe which is a really nice seaside suburb near us, they were setting up for a 'moonlight' concert of mozart, though mum thought it was originally a roy orbinson night! We all had beer battered barramundi fish, salad and chips and it was HUGE and beautiful. I couldn't eat it all which is saying things! Both Judy and I didn't have anything for the rest of the night.
We came home and my furniture arrived for our room. When we moved in one of our buffetts which is in our study broke, so we claimed for replacement for it, I thought we may have to get it repaired and had difficulty finding someone to do it, but my insurance lady said no, I could find a replacement. I was a lil sneaky and got a washstand instead (sideboard written on the reciept :) ), as I had said it was worth about $300 I couldn't believe it when she said I could get one that Stevie and I had spied a month back at Annerley Antiques for $1100! Well it takes pride of place in our room as our new dresser, we also splurged on new silky oak bedside tables which were $600 the most I've ever spent on furnitre I think! Judy and I set up the room yesterday afternoon with the new curtains and quilt she made us, and some of the ornaments we've collected.
Skip to today and we got up really early and went to Lilys Cottage for a Xmas preview and I spent a fortune buying lovely lovely things that completed my room just beautifully as well as a gorgeous pink wreath. We had a lovely breakfast shop and chat with three other ladies for about an hour and a half in the sun, it was such a HOT HOT day today, about 35 degrees atleast! We were all sweaty at 8am! We then came home and cleaned a little and got dressed for the afternoon tea we had for my birthday with my Aunty Marion and Keith and my gorgeous cousins Madeline and Courtney. We played the best cd, which had all songs about tea party's and cake and tea and coffee. We had sausage rolls, brownies and ice cream, and my FLAMINGO cake that dad got made for me when Stevie came home from work. We forgot to break my flamingo pinata which we will do tommorow at my mum's bbq. Mum, Dad, Judy, Stevie and I then went to my favourite mexican restaraunt Montezuma's for a BIG BIG dinner which was fantastic and the way home was us all squished in the car singing Roy Orbinson songs, well it was more like mum and me deafning everyone else!
So overall I've had a fantastic 2 day birthday celebration!
As the house is spotless we are having a crafty day tommorow and a BBQ in the afternoon, I just hope it isn't quite so hot tommorow.

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!

Complete with desa in bushes beside plant and isis on couch!

Another day of bargain shopping.

Today on our day off we went with my mum who had a suprising day off (she turned up for work and they didnt need her today, so she took it as a rdo) who came out and spent the day with us. We first went to the council buildings in redcliffe to get a jp sign our rates bill so we dont have to pay the transfer of ownership for our house being 1st time home buyers.We then checked out a few houses for her, she is going to buy a little cottage and is looking out in our area, she likes it so much. Houses are quite hard to come buy in Scarborough so she's looking in Redcliffe and Margate which are just down the road. We saw a lovely little 2 bedroom cottage which is blue and white which is she is having an inspection for tommorow. Speaking of white and blue, we are going to get some painters out next Tuesday and get some qoutes on how much it would be to paint the house. We are looking at possibly white with dark and mid blue trim. There is a gorgeous house near ours which is a small workers cottage which has been done up and its a dark blue on a few walls and a gorgeous fresh aqua blue on the rest with white trim. It really looks fresh and inviting. We are heading towards white with the blue trim, though I wouldnt mind it blue with white trim either. We'll soon see. We are also hoping to get the front driveway paved and the back area, a few paths pathed, but that can wait until next year.
We get our carpet put in tommorow, yeah! and we got the greater majority of our pictures up so its really looking like a home. Hopefully if we can save most of this and next weeks pay, we can pick up our big rugs layby and then get our wood blinds and curtain materials. We want to do our room up, and get some art deco bedside tables but we'd rather wait and do it well. No one will see our room!
Judy's room is looking very nice. My mum got some beautiful royal doultonware the other day, reduced by 75% at a huge sale at myers (I went there a few days before and got some great kitchen and glass ware goodies). She got a small cup and saucer and a beautiful rose plate which we will display on the wall. At a garage sale that morning I picked up a meakin saucer plate with beautiful roses which matches it exactly. At the markets on Sunday, mum came across these gorgeous rose curtains, very cath kidson for only $20. They are pink and purple and green and look really well in the room, so we cut them off and made some cushion covers with the rest. My aunty also bought me this silk vintage dressing gown with hand stitched roses which is hanging up behind the door. I have an antique lace embroided lace embloss bedset and a huge knitted patchwork quite that my nan knitted.

Today we went to a St Vincent De Paul charity shop in Brighton on the way to our favourite antique shop at Sandgate. There are SOOOO many retro and second hand and antique and charity shops here its fantastic! Stevie scored a great lamp on the weekend for $40 which looks great in the longue room.
We were in this shop for 10-15 mins and spent $35 on about 20 things! We picked up a Junghans suburst clock for $4 which regularly go for on Ebay $100 upwards! Bargain. We also got some great german pottery candle sticks, a globe for our study (at another 2nd shop down the road for us, I think Im going to get a huge old globe lamp for $40), a religious picture, another japanese planter..the list goes on. I took some pics of the latest finds.

We then went to a place called the Full Moon for lunch, its overlooking Shorncliffe and the bay and was lovely. We got some bruschetta, parmesan garlic bread, I had a seafood basket which was massive with fish, scallops, calarmari, crab and prawns with chips and salad, stevie had reef and beef steak with morteon bay bugs (like small crabs) and prawns and mum had the seafood platter which had oyesters, crab, calamari, fish, scallops and prawns.

When Judy is over we will go over to Morteon Island for a night, its the island straight across from us and the ferry goes there every day from Scarborough. Its great for whale watching and dolphin feeding. You can stay at a cabin there for only $100 a night which is really cheap (about £30). I have two weeks of holiday due so I am taking every monday and saturday off, so i get a 3 day weekend every week yay! and then in mid sep and mid october an extra three days. In that time we will go down to pottsville for a few days and then the other have a day at morteon island, go up to montsville in the mountains and then make our way down to noosa and eumundi on the sunshine coast, here we may even go see steve irwin! (not to make jimmy jealous at all :)
http://seemoretonisland.com/
Stevie took some pictures of his handy work on the deck.

kitties and a joey.

Here are some pictures of picture of my previous animals.

Milo, our little kangaroo joey. We had her for nearly 8 months, her mother was killed and friends of ours were looking after her but were going on holidays, they didnt know what to do with her,so we took her in and didnt give her back as they hadnt been doing a good job. At a year old she went to a protected sanctuary to live. She was the cutest lil thing ever, we needed to feed her every 5 hours and she slept inside a pillow case hanging from the door. When ever we took her outside she'd always try and burrow under your shirt for hugs.


Bella, she was such a beautiful cat who unfortunatly was run over. She had one set of kittens and she was killed when I was living in Melbourne. It upset me so much I dont let any of my kitties outside. She was very quiet and affectionate and such a lady.



Isis, she is my first ever kitty, shes now 5 years old and is purebred Russian Blue. She still remembered me after being away for so long and comes and gives me kisses when I visit mums. She is coming to live with us today! Yay!

House pics

Our bathroom is pretty much set up. Just needs a victorian jug and basin set to put on top of bathroom cabinet. I had a lovely spa bath this morning, at some stage next year we will need to replace the window and we are thinking of doing a stained glass one as you get lovely sunlight through it in the mornings.










Our study/computer room. We have to get some geometric mod curtains for this room, we know the material already, its navy, light blue and white. We want a small book case to go beside the suitcase and need also a new computer chair. Looking for a 60's like one, also am waiting for two prints from scotland to go on the walls. The day bed I got re-upholstered and its come out great though is desa's favourite spot in the house now.













Front Longue room. We are getting brown/beige carpet for this area, have a chocolate brown shaggy rug for under the table. The painting needs to go up as does the other wall knick knack holder behind the green chair. We have tiki cushions to be made and we are going to get some bar shelves made in the corner behind the orange bar for an assortment of retro bar accessories we have to display.





Kitchen.
Our kitchen table finally in with some flamingo salt and pepper shakers. We are both getting flamingo tattoos soon to commerate our new home.
















Living room.
We have a shaggy creamish rug to go in here, wood blinds on all windows and some german pottery lamps in reds and orange and greens to go in here. We are also awaiting another matador brass hanging to go behind bar.