Up the garden path
We're back from our northern soujourn early. The rain drove us back south. I'm quite gloomy about it actually. I didn't get to spend much time with my dear Dad or my friend Heidi.
However, while we were there, my Mum, Dad, the children and me visited one of my most favourite-est spots, the Rockhampton Botanic Gardens. They are celebrating their 140th anniversary this year.
As usual, the gardens were looking spectacular, even on an overcast day.

At this point, I must apologise for the photos. They have all been taken on my mobile phone because I forgot my camera.

My very most favourite part of the gardens is the Hugo Lassen Fernery. It was built in about 1938 and it's spectacular.

Above is one of the entries and inside it looks like this. It is made from slatted timber which is now beautifully aged and overgrown with moss.

The botanical gardens also has one of the largest and oldest frangipani trees I've ever seen. You can see an old Banyan tree behind it which is over 100 years old, probably more like 140 years.

The gardens also has a zoo. I so wish the Mt Coot-tha gardens would get one. Each day the gardens workers take the dingoes out of their enclosures and give them a walk, just like our domestic dogs, although the ones still enclosed give the most agonising howls.

My favourite animal however, is the humble emu.

I showed the children the old butterfly collections housed at the gardens. The reason for my life long obsession with butterflies.

The collections are old and beautiful, and ornately displayed.  If you ever find yourself driving through the beef capital, stop and have a look at the gardens.

Also, I mentioned a few posts ago, about my delivering a note when I was a little girl. It was a note saying,'If ever you want to sell your house, please call me'. The note went into the letterbox of this house.

I still love it, and it still looks exactly the same. The paint job is now old and peeling, but the appeal is the same if not more.

My Dad is the most gifted gardener I know. He has gone through many phases. Firstly, orchids. One of which I believe he named after me? This is his 'bush house'. He wholesales to nurseries, landscapers and private collectors. Let me know if you're after a special brom. He may just have it.

He is now madly into bromeliads, or 'broms'. Here's a few snaps.

While I was there he gave me three frangipani cuttings (yellow, red and white), two clivias and some old man's beard.

Tomorrow I will take a photo of our nearly painted front and back doors. Most satisfactory.

The fab four
I wasn't expecting a lot today, but many wonderful things happened.
Our front stairs were painted. Val, who worked for our builder, built these stairs from scratch. They are the third set of stairs in 105 years, and are similar to the very first stairs. This is them before....

And after....

They have white ballustrade, white risers and stringers, and grey treads in a colour called Chicago, by Resene. Originally we were going to have a lighter grey, but when it went on it looked a bit weak. These look great now because there is so much contrast between the treads and the risers.

Secondly, today I ordered our awnings. When you are getting quotes for something you know little about, the first quote or two are difficult because you don't know what questions to ask really.

The first awning quote we got was from a small company who actually make the awnings themselves. His quote was incredibly less than any of the following companies. By about the third quote, I knew what mechanism needed to go on a very large awning we need. 

I ended up contacting the first man again, and asking him to requote on the other style of awning. He was still $1000 less than the others. I felt confident that he knew what he was talking about. I checked to make sure his awnings would have all the bells and whistles like the other companies, ie Colorbond hoods, etc.

They should be fitted around October 5. If all goes well, of course I will share his details with you all.

When we were in our last house we got plantation shutters installed in the living area. I got a quote from a local guy, who made the shutters in Paddington. He was very nice, but his quote was just a bit more than another larger company, who advertise on tv. I went with the slightly cheaper quote and was told they'd be ready in six weeks.

Six weeks passed, then I called. I was told another two weeks. After ten weeks had passed the shutters arrived. The installation was very average, and the quality of the shutters was very 'Made in China', if you know what I mean?

The moral of the story is, I should have gone with the smaller guy, and got a better quality product, made locally for only a little bit more.

Thirdly, our painter is almost finished so it was 'Time'. I had to go to the paint shop and get the colours for the front and back doors. I shall keep them a surprise for when they're finished.

Lastly, our friends down the road did some turfing today and gave us some leftovers. It ended up being quite a bit, so now we have some grass, unexpectedly early.

The children ran on it, they lay on it, they took their shoes off and ran on it some more.

Now I'm off for a break on Sunday. Will be gone for most of the week.

Hoping everyone enjoys their school holidays.

x

Yellow doesn't have to say Ikea
The whole awning thing is getting tricky so I thought I'd distract myself (easily done) with a study on yellow.

There's so much to detest about yellow (just like it's polar opposite, purple), but when it's right, it's really very good.

As requested, I'm working on some 'befores' and 'afters', but it takes a bit of coordinating. There is also very few areas of the house completed, so I've been putting it off. I'll see what I can come up with.....it'll take time though, doesn't everything?

Decisions! Decisions!
With renovating, it's always crunch time for a decision to be made. At the moment I am in the process of talking to awning companies about some canvas awnings for the back verandah.
As I've mentioned before, the punishing western sun drives us crazy in the afternoons. I've only spoken to one company so far, with more coming tomorrow. I get the impression already though, that it's a bit of a competitive area.
It's only a matter of time until I have to give the colour to ...whoever. Í've always thought yellow and white. It's been one of those thoughts that came from nowhere and seemed to be right. Now it's time to choose, I'm wondering about my new found love of yellow and whether it's here to stay?

To narrow it down, I'm considering yellow and white stripes or a plain colour in a pretty turquoise blue. Then I saw this little doodle below, which makes me briefly workshop the most unusual idea of having various plain colours? Good idea? Shocking idea?

Hard to know, and a potentially expensive mistake to make. I do feel as though I've copped out of a lot of my more bold ideas though? Hmm? Yellow and white?

Trash talk
My sister has just moved to the Brisbane suburb of Clayfield. Yesterday I went to see how she's settled in the new place. As luck would have it, it's Clayfield's turn for the kerbside collection. My sister's neighbour had a pile of things on the footpath including this beautful timber lamp base.

As we were popping it into the back of the car, the lady came out to add something to the pile. She said it was good quality, and English? Judging by the weight of it, I believe her.
It's difficult to maintain one's dignity whilst sifting through someone's rubbish in front of them. I think I may have had an out of body experience, to overcome the embarrasment, but I really, really wanted the lampbase.....to add to my other timber lampbase, also awaiting restoration.
Soon I will be popping off to Target or some such chain store for a plain drum lampshade to recover myself. I'll let you know how I go.

A Tonia moment
Remember Tonia Todman? She is my spiritual leader at the moment as I make my way through a mountain of old souvenir tea towels, presumably collected by Doris and Gwennie on their Aussie travels.
I am making them into pillow slips for day beds on the front and back verandahs.
Here's my first two. The front features Queensland's beautiful Wide Bay region, and the back is made from what can only be described as a Hawaiian moo moo I found in the house.

The pillow above was my second attempt. The front is a tasteful scenery collage of the Katoomba Skyway in the Blue Mountains, while the back is a smart cotton drill in navy blue with white spots.
These are merely practice. I am working my way up to the master project, where I will utilise my crisp linen teatowel depicting Coffs Harbour's Big Banana. Gorgeous.
It's not rocket science, but it keeps me off the streets.

Our builder Jeff
Sorry for a longer than expected absence from blogging. I have been busy doing 'non-housey' things would you believe.
I've been quite social hosting little ditties at our home, plus going out to dinner (Libertine at The Barracks), and catching up with people I haven't seen in ages due to our renovation haze we've been in.
I've been to Seaworld, and started Bikram yoga. My very good friend Fi has been urging me for years to try Bikram. She swears there's nothing better to rip the fat off the body. It's a series of 26 yoga poses, done twice each, in a room which is heated to 40 degrees, although at times during the 90 minute sessions it feels like 240 degrees. It's not for the faint hearted and is more of a mental endurance test as much as a physical one. I've only been twice so far, but I feel remarkably at home there.
I've also been busy cooking and baking. When we first moved to Euphemia my kitchen was just a room with a kitchen sink and this beast.

Now it looks like this....only with things in it.

My mother is heading north again on Wednesday, so I'm baking up a storm for her to take up to Dad for a belated Father's Day. I'm making my specialty, lemon butter, an almond and passionfruit cake and this afternoon I whipped up these triple chocolate biscuits for him. They're a bit ugly, but they taste good - butter and chocolate'll do that.

Craig the painter has about one more week of work, basically just the front now, although today he was missing in action. The top side is all done.

There's also a fair bit of undercoat already on the front. The lattice doors were on the house when we bought it, but they were not on the house when it was first built. My guess is they're probably from around 1920?

My husband has removed the decorative bit from the room at the top of the stairs, the name of which escapes me at the moment.

This is it on the operating table (above). It's not in great shape and is even missing bits here and there. We went out Saturday morning to try and buy a new one, but the repros are not good. The problem is they're too perfect, precision laser cut, and do not closely resemble this sort of job which would have almost definately been done on site when the house was being built.
Our first lot of stones are in place now, and will hopefully soon be filled in with top soil, then grass, then apparently a trampoline.

Meanwhile, amongst all the work a very leisurely kitten the size of a cat is 'treating the place like a hotel' says my husband. This is him snoozing in the lobby.

Teddy comes and goes as he pleases via our bedroom window. Last night at around 1.56am I was woken by him out in the lounge room rolling a glass marble across the timber floor as a game.
He meows constantly to be fed, seemingly three times a day.
He also seems to be losing his hair as the weather warms up, which I'm sure I was told wouldn't happen.
Then this afternoon he caught our Jack Russell, Mary Agnes, eating from his bowl. The poor thing was so startled she ran into the pantry and became trapped since there is only one way out and Teddy was blockading it. I managed to break up the scene, but she was even more of a nervous wreck than usual. 
Since we don't have a fence yet, Mary Agnes lives over the road with our neighbours who lost their Shetland Sheepdog earlier this year. She is being spoilt rotten, and will probably never want to come home I suspect. 
Our front footpath has been picked up by the radar. It currently looks like this.

I'm seeing a miniature mulberry bush right down in the bottom corner, some sort of formal hedge along the fence and some lemon trees either side of the front gate. That is, unless someone can come up with a better idea?
P.S. Many people have asked for the name of our builder. His name is Jeff Mair and his number is 0412229630. There! Have been meaning to do that for ages. He has seven sons, most of whom work for him, and he specialises in old Queenslanders. We highly recommend him and his work.