Nurse Nancy essentials

Liongirl has completely been swept up in the love for her favourite Little Golden book about Nurse Nancy. It has been given pride of place on her bedside table for weeks. It appears to actually be a reference book for nurse-hairdressers (she plans to do a double degree) in training. She has been bugging me for a little shelf just like Nurse Nancy has for weeks.

See Mama, Nancy has a tea set and bandages and a little red phone......

Since we had most of the accessories already, all we needed was a little shelf. Look what popped up at the oppie for $12 when I was dropping off bags of declutterings. Well, this is after a good clean and some undercoat.

A sample pot of a new Dulux colour called Tapioca and a little organising and voila. Apparently all we need now is  a little red phone.

All the goodies on the top two shelves are op shop finds, the little toadstool money box turned up the same time as the shelf. This baby doll has already received her full quota of  bandaids, needles and wet nappies. I am getting daily blood pressure checks and applications of yellow eyeshadow and glittery lip gloss.

Meanwhile the boy has been doing quite a bit of this,

and I have been spending my spare time trying to finish this two year cushion (oh the mortification). Can I add that crocheting in 30 degree summer heat is completely bonkers. At least it's not a blanket.

Aside from the de cluttering, I am on a project finishing frenzy. Watch this space.

Lucky

I would never have thought I was a lucky sort of person. I think back when I was fourteen I did win a plant in a raffle. And maybe $50 once on a scratchy. With hindsight, I have now revised my thoughts on being "lucky". What if lucky is not actually winning things or exceptional good fortune, but the absence of significant or catastrophic adversity. Having spent thirty plus years of my life without catastrophic adversity, I never appreciated at the time exactly how lucky I was.

Now that I have been on the receiving end of a high tide swell of adversity that was so bleak and so persistent that I felt close to drowning, I have a whole new perspective on luck. When the tide finally went out, boy did I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. And now every day without significant adversity is a lucky, lucky day.

And do you know by some freakish coincidence that supreme luck and catastrophic adversity sometimes go hand in hand? I know this because I have personally met not one, not two, but three people who have won Lotto. (I have a job where people confess all kinds of secrets) And one of those families, won Lotto in the same year that the husband/father of young children underwent a bone marrow transplant for leukaemia. I would guess that the odds of these two events occurring in one family would be around one in ten million, I wonder how they felt about "lucky".

So, now that I spend every day feeling lucky, how do I explain these prizes that keep arriving in my letter box? Lovely  Ellen Giggenbach had a giveaway of a choice of any print in her collection a while back and this is the one I chose. She makes all her  prints by hand from cut paper art  and the colours and patterns are retro-licious.

I am hoping to order this one for Miss Liongirl when Ellen re opens her shop.

With this flurry of new year sorting and organising I finally grabbed a handful of nails and threw up all my favourite prints and thrifted paintings and embroideries. This wall is going to be demolished in a short while so I did not even need to be precious about all those holes.

And there is nothing better than winning the prize of a book you really,really want to read. Elaina from A Little Bit Country NZ picked my name out of a hat for her prize of A Home Companion by Wendyl Nissen. I am about half way through but can say I feel very positively towards any author who advocates that all mothers need to escape for a few days in their own vintage caravan several times a year and if this is not possible, to at least harness a "caravan attitude" and carve some space for just themselves.

Thanks so much Elaina, this is a most wonderful and timely gift. The other books, well they were my heavily hinted for Christmas presents, this is a time of year for reading and new inspiration. The little book bottom left is indeed by the lovely Ellen who sent me the bird print, David Jones also stock some of her notecards and journals and I was lucky enough to stumble across one.

At the very start of the year I was lucky enough to win a beautiful calendar from Jodi at Che and Fidel.
Pop over to Ella Leach Designs if you need a family style calendar for this year, I thoroughly made use of mine in 2012 and they are beautiful.

And even the boys were not neglected in the giveaways this year. We were the lucky winners of a Lego City Alarm game from Em at The Beetleshack and every time Roboboy gets me on his own, we have been playing it.

Now all I have to do is find four things to send to the op shop so Betsy and I can remain in a neutral stuff balance for the year.

Staying sane in the rain

We are working on not losing our marbles over here at Betsy's. In fact they are part of our new sneaky parenting strategy. The gift that keeps on giving is a fish obsession that we plan to milk for all it's worth. Roboboy LOVES his new tropical fish but there is plenty of room in that tank for more fish and aquarium accessories. And that means we have some high quality leverage.
So every time we catch him being kind to his sister, spontaneously helping with chores, perhaps eating the least favoured parts of his dinner, he gets a marble. Those marbles have an exchange rate too,  5 marbles equals one actual dollar to spend at the Aquarium shop.

In the last week he has set the table numerous times, emptied the dishwasher every day, played nicely with his sister and accumulated $4.60. He is also practicing his maths every time he counts his stash and converts to fish dollars. We use other strategies for dealing with poor behaviour, there are no threats to take marbles away. We also don't given marbles for routine chores he is expected to help with, but he has  now started asking for extra jobs. We are pleased with how well this is working and look forward to seeing what he purchases with his fish dollars.

We ignored the weather on the weekend and set off on an adventure to Ipswich. It was the final day of a fantastic lego exhibition at the Ipswich Art Gallery and we did not want to miss out.

There was an unlimited selection of wheels, plates and axles to create a vehicular masterpiece. Liongirl and I finished our prototype first. Time to test it out on a stunt ramp.

This one had flashing countdown lights triggered by the red button and a starting block that you could lower when all vehicles were in position.

But this one was very steep and had a cutaway section for stunt driving and essential jumps.

Unfortunately, the girls prototype vehicle whipped up by me in about 5 minutes, was no match for the Legoman 2 wheel masterpiece.  I did feel better when I noted than none of the other kids or dads could beat it either (he is not called Legoman for nothing).

We did manage to drag ourselves away from this awesome place to check out the other exhibition but were struggling to keep our hands to ourselves in this room of painstakingly created vehicles.

On the way home we stopped at a gorgeous little native animal zoo in Queens Park. For a gold coin donation you can travel around a boardwalk while spotting wombats, quolls, wallabies, emus, bilbies, dingos and native birds.

The Queens Park playground is pretty spectacular as well. All in all a great way to spend a dreary day. Back soon with some wonderful pyrex finds and a little makeover project.

Thrifting the rain away

With all these grey skies and constant rain, I have a mouldy back door and the endless hum of a dryer keeping me company at Betsy's. So I decided it had to be time for some midweek sunshine, oppie style. Time to bring home some colour to cheer my soggy spirits, so to speak. And boy did those colours find me. The orange salt canister was 50 cents, the tray was $1, the sparkly mouse was thrown in for free and the gorgeous floral and mint tablecloth, $5. As an unexpected bonus, I have discovered that I am  completely "on trend" with this purchase as according to this talented girl , MINT is the new mustard.

Today at Betsy's it seemed to be a lot more about orange.

Pyrex with a LID, a miracle really, $5. The Enid Blyton's turned up for 20 cents each and just in time, as Roboboy and I are on the last chapter of The Magic Wishing Chair for bedtime reading. I love these hardcover versions, they match my three copies from the Faraway Tree series that I have had since I was  a little girl and I love that my little collection is growing.

And lastly some things for the kidlets. Any mother out there will understand that finding lego or duplo at the oppie is like GOLD. The base plate, bus and trailer appeared in perfect condition and came to a total of $6. Roboboy whisked them away immediately and has embellished them into all terrain vehicles complete with rooftop gardens. The snippet of blue floral corduroy was obviously, well corduroy. The green lidded bottle is for a plan Legoman and I are hatching, and Pollyanna was on my New year resolutions list to read this year.

So, I know this post was nothing at all like what I suggested was coming next. Can you please just consider it a cheeky interjection from a girl who is coming back down to earth with the demoulding of her back door. Back soon, with a post containing everything this one was meant to have.

Six year olds, lego and waterbombs

Well, my little Roboboy turned 6 last week and on the weekend we had THE birthday party. The only requirements were a few school mates, waterbombs and a lego man cake. Needless to say the gang of little six year old boys that took over our house had a great time and we are still picking thousands of burst water balloons out of our lawn.

What do you think of my lego dude? He ended up a little bit retro, mainly after a small food colouring issue where all attempts at red turned out pink and was salvaged into a dusky purple for his corduroy pants complete with Freckle belt and stripy snake sleeves. (Freckles are a MUST on birthday cakes, I think they have worked they way into nearly every cake I have designed). For a retrospective of Roboboy's cakes, pop over here.

There was minimal styling at this party, some bright colours, big balloons and a little bit of home made lego bling. Roboboy painted the legoman in order to play "pin the party hat on the legoman" and we made some potato stamp legoman heads which he individully stamped with yellow paint and then glued on some party boxes and then wrote each child's name on for the take home treats. They all got a lego minifigure and a few lollies and a glowstick. Best thing was that he did most of the work for me. Easy peasy. The lego art carousel was a birthday present, spins on its base and has spots for lego erasers, crayons, felt pens and pencils as well as a pencil sharpener legoman head. ( on sale in BigW for $15 quite recently if anyone is looking).

Incidentally, what do you think of the grey wall behind? I have been testing more external colours for Betsy and am quite liking this one. About to go and get a big tin of exterior gloss and slap it all over the back wall of the house so I can step back and survey it on a large scale and make sure I still like it.

Look what a mum from swimming was kind enough to lend me, her complete lego silicone stash which she had not even used yet.( I think she found them on ebay). I didn't use the legoman mould as it was too small and I had my own ideas already but I did make some of the bricks and minifigures in white chocolate which looked very cool. Had a few saved for a photo but the real Legoman of the house found the stash and gobbled them all.

The highlight of the day though was the joy on this boy's face as he played with all his mates and they threw these all over each other. Happy birthday my gorgeous boy with the wobbly tooth. Back soon to show you the birthday present that keeps on giving, a curbside find update and how to keep little girls amused at a big boy birthday party.

Plans are afoot

Well, for anyone who has felt let down by the lack of renovating on this self proclaimed renovating blog, we are finally making some progress. We have some plans. Now, let me qualify that, we have fantastically detailed plans of our current house, complete with feature laundry in the lounge room , least functional kitchen in the entire universe and roofless deck rendered completely useless in the rain. And it has been raining in Brisbane for the better part of the last 18 months since we bought Betsy.

We also have a building designer who as we speak is making various changes to some concept drawings that plan to renovate Betsy on a pretty tight budget. We intend to take out a wall, put in a massive beam that spans the entire house, double the size of our kitchen and rebuild our rotting roofless deck with a new roof. She  also has some exciting ideas to link in the granny flat that was tacked on to the back about a decade ago.

To say I am excited is an understatement. As soon as we have some drawings we are happy with I will share all the details. Fingers crossed in the next week or two. In the meantime, to satisfy any renovation cravings I can heartily recommend a visit over to a very new blog I have just found where real actual renovating is happening daily as we speak. If you pop over to Rachael's house you will find walls that are already white (not custard and whinged about daily), a backload of posts about previous renovations and daily posts about an unfolding renovation of a glorious Queenslander house in northern NSW. Oh yes, and she has great taste in artwork, house styling and very cute children. Don't even get me started on the vintage wallpaper tree in the kids room, I am desperately plotting to replicate it somewhere in my house.

When I am not up late at night obsessing over kitchen layouts, I am finding things to do on endlessly rainy days with the kids.

A spot of baking. Yay for the discovery of dairy free chocolate chips. The pyrex birthday bowl is a gem to work with.

Some paper plane folding and racing.

Growing crystal gardens (lovingly chosen and gifted to me for my birthday)

And trawling the internet for inspirational invitation designs for one upcoming 6 year old birthday party. You'll never guess what kind of cake I have been begged to create this year.

Back soon with news. Could be a party, Betsy related or op shop love. Should be good either way right? Before I forget, if anyone else knows of any other blogs with actual renovations going on, I would love you to share, nothing better than living vicariously through other peoples renos when your own are slow going.