A white cottage

What the?

Did I mention this blog is my first step towards world domination? Mwahahaha.

Not really. To be honest some days I'd be happy with just conquering the housework. But don't worry, I'm sure we'll be back to regular programming shortly.

Have I ever mentioned my love of white? No? Well the secret's out, I love white. All shades of white. Everywhere. In fact, this little cottage dreams of being a white cottage when it grows up (although last month's Country Style magazine cover did cause some angst over whether to be a charcoal cottage with a sunny yellow front door!). When we moved in it was all colours of beige, with blue, aubergine and chocolate feature walls, definite no-nos in a house this small and dim. The perfect place to indulge my love of white.

I have been leaving any major work on our house until we decide what to do with it. Will we extend or won't we? If I win the lottery this week then that question becomes substantially easier, but just in case I don't, I have decided it's time to get started regardless. I can live with the status quo no longer!

I have already done a little painting but as soon as the weather warms up I will attack it with a renewed sense of purpose. And to the carpet, your days are numbered.

Here's a little inspiration

 

An all white cottage - Source


An all white kitchen, although I am considering timber worktops -  Source


Perhaps a little black in the bathroom? Source

A little pop of colour in the bedroom? Source 

Ahh white, you make my heart go all pitty-pat!'

And in case you have never seen it (and unless you know me well, you haven't because I have refused to show it before now), here is the cottage when we moved in...

Argh, the purple! The not quite matching posts! The stick on house numbers! The crappy looking and totally not matching anything aluminium windows! But at least it has a white roof to get me started,  I told you there's a little white cottage in there just trying to get out.

xx

The Etsy shop is back in business

What's this?

Two posts in two days. The sky must be falling in!

This one is shameless self promotion, but who cares? It's my blog so why not?

After taking a bit of a break to complete a baby blanket for a friend in Canada I have re opened my Etsy shop.

This is the blanket, I adore the finished product but as it was made with very small stitches (all 17,113 of them) it seemed to take forever. Details Ravelled here.

Anyway, back to the shop. I have replaced almost all my hats with a new pattern featuring a stretchy ribbed edge for a perfectly snug fit. There are plenty of patterns out there for hats similar to this but this was my own pattern.

I've added a lovely wooden button to the unisex/boy's hat and the usual flower to the girl's. Available in lots of colours, with more being added.

And lastly, this is one of my old ones but the customer wanted a scarf to match and I was tickled pink with the outcome!

Somewhere in France there is a little girl wandering about in a hat and scarf made by me looking tres cute, mais oiu?

My Etsy shop is here.

xx

Our front fence, well half of it anyway...

Although have yet to really make our mark on our little 5 acres one thing we have done is build a few new fences, particularly part of the front fence. This is what the old fence looked like:

Complete with dead shrubs. And don't get me started on the fake grass.

This is what it looks like now:

Not a great photo as it was taken on my phone (but as a bonus I have included the girls, having just gotten off the bus), but a gorgeous fence nonetheless! And I'm sure it will look even better when the hedge has grown.

We are still only about half way along the front boundary, but this certainly gives us some incentive.

Cheers

Backyard Bees - they're back!

In April we experienced a horribly violent East Coast Low on the mid east coast of NSW. The death toll wasn't as high as it was during the Pasha Bulker storm of '07, but still several lives were lost.

The storm hit us pretty hard, winds equivalent to a category 2 cyclone the first night, torrential rain the second, and we had no power for several days. Being on tank water, no power also means no pump and therefore no water either, so it was a bit of a nuisance. We also had some damage on the farm but nothing serious.

The brand new trampoline made it's way onto the top of the rainwater tank and eventually ended up leaning against a tree in the front yard

What was sad though, was that the area where the bee hives were situated was flooded and the hives were washed down the creek. The hives were able to be salvaged but unfortunately the queens didn't make it so eventually all the bees were lost.

One of the bee hives in the creek

This month the hives are back. It will take time to build the numbers of bees up again but at this time of the year there isn't the profusion of flowers that there will be in a few weeks so the low numbers aren't a bad thing. We have situated them in an area much higher than before, and although we didn't think they would be harmed where they were before, if the water gets high enough to get them in the new spot we will certainly have bigger things to worry about!

xx

Where does she get it from?

Miss 12 has always been a naturally good runner, placing in many events at school athletics and cross country carnivals over the years. A few weeks ago she was first in her age group at high school for cross country and last week also became the zone age champion.

Crossing the finish line

So yesterday Miss 12 represented her school zone at the Hunter Regional Cross Country and came an astounding 7th! She missed out on going to state by just one position but is first on the reserve list in case one of the other place getters is unable to attend.

Trying out shirt sizes for state, just in case

But what is most amazing about her performance is that she has never had a day's training in her life. Not a single session.

So now it looks like we are going to enrol her in the local Little Athletics group because this much talent deserves to be nurtured.

And we already feel guilty enough about not having done something before this...

Cheers

Meet Olly

We have a new puppy!

When I say puppy I mean the-biggest-six-month-old-dog-you-have-ever-seen!

Olly is a Maremma, a breed of sheepdog indigenous to Italy, and the perfect companion to our chickens. The cats not so much...

xx

Glorious garlic

As we slowly set up the permanent raised beds in the veggie patch I reserved one solely for the garlic as I wanted to have a largish crop this year. I purchased 6 bulbs of garlic from Diggers but when it came to planting them I was sure I was going to have to buy more, 6 bulbs just didn't look like it was enough.

Until I separated the cloves.

And ended up with 93.

93 possible bulbs of garlic. If that's not enough I don't know what will be!

So I planted them in mid March and they are doing very nicely now. There is a tiny bit of room left at the end of the bed so I might pop some leeks in too.

Have you planted your garlic yet?

xx