Heaven on Earth
If I had a lazy weekend, today was it's antithesis. I got so much done it was crazy. The pouring rain has still been keeping us inside. This morning I decided to dust a shelf in the kitchen, which led to me dusting all the shelves, washing everything that was on them and dusting the kitchen lights.
Just like Patricia Field (the costumer designer for Sex in the City) never likes to repeat an outfit, nor do I see the point in repeating a shelf  'installation'.
Here are my new kitchen shelves. If you look carefully, you'll see they are different to the others.

We also hung a lot of paintings. Sorry a lot of my photos haven't turned out very well because of the light (or lack of) today. I love how this worked out.

The horse painting, Carnival, was above our piano but we've moved it to the dining room and hung three smaller paintings underneath. The smaller painters are by my husband's father. I've just put them into some simple white frames from Target ($9 each) and they've come up trumps.

We've got quite a few of John's paintings. I took some photos of the others but they didn't turn out. I'll try photographing them again soon.
We hung our old plans of the house from 1904 in the hallway. They are beautifully hand coloured.

We also took a trip to Bunnings today. I'm not usually a fan, I think it's a big shed of landfill, but today I found some gold. I got a stick-on mirror for our w-i-r, two great front door mats.

Front door mat $30.

Back door mat $20. I've been studying door mats, yes studying, them for a few months now and I was very happy with these two.
Also at Bunnings, we picked up a much appreciated toilet roll holder for the ensuite.

See, there's absolutely no need for anyone to be using their imagination on my blog.
Now I'm off back to the kitchen to crumb some pork schnitzel, and whip up a sauteed red cabbage side bit with some creamy mashed potatoes.

Then after dinner, as if this day couldn't get any better, we're watching season 3, disc  1 of Mad Men, while sipping on a long cold glass of wine. Aaah! Heaven.

Bumper crop
What's with this rain, and now the howling wind? I know it's just because this year I packed up our Winter clothes early, and Mother Nature is getting a laugh at me having to sift through the storage bags constantly for warmer clothes.
Despite the cool temperatures the jacarandas seem to be pressing on with their dramatic purple displays regardless. We have two jacarandas at the front of our house and they are turning on quite the show. They are even sprinkling some of their lavender petals over our new grass to secure the extra points for pretty. They are gorgeous old girls, about 45 years old as far as we know.

That's the back of our old house you can see behind the trees actually.
I have heard that the jacaranda trees at the University of Queensland were planted to remind students that when they see the purple flowers in September/October it's time to start studying for their end of year exams. Although, I'm not sure if this is true or not.
I had big plans for the wet weekend; moving furniture, hanging paintings, cleaning out cupboards (I know, already), dusting lights. Unfortunately, my plans fell flat due to a lack of interest and motivation.
On the upside, I helped my husband do some weeding today. It was ten minutes or more before I lost interest in that too. I also picked some ripe yellow cherry tomatoes off the bush. The poor little thing is going to kill itself if it doesn't slow down production. We've had an absolutely bumper crop.

I love poking around $2 shops and cheap department stores like Big W and Target. The perils for our world of over consumption aside, you can pick up some real gems. Like these cereal/noodle/pasta bowls for only $2 each from K Mart. I got the black and white ones and the green and white stripe. They are extremely well used.

I'm off to compose my weekly 'To Do' list. Firstly, I transfer the 23 jobs I didn't get done last week, to this week's list.
Here's hoping for a more productive day tomorrow.

Quack!
This is great weather, if you're a duck. It's been pouring rain for days. We haven't managed to do much in the past week.
I'm still looking for my pots for the front and back doors. I had no idea these would be so difficult to find. Maybe they haven't been around since the 90s? If anyone comes across pots that look like these, however vaguely, please let me know. Preferably in South East Queensland.

I realise that these ones pictured are all a bit special, but it gives you the idea. Bear in mind....like the ginger jars....but pot planters instead. Need four, but would be happy with two.

So much for a rainy day...
My husband is possibly classified as a workaholic. He goes to work all day, then comes home and works outside. One day this week he even did an hours work on our landscaping before he went to work.
This morning, although a lovely rainy Saturday, he had a truck of dirt arrive at 7am. He spread the dirt out and was finished by 8.55am, for the truck full of turf to arrive at 9am.
Our yard looked like a quagmire this morning and now it looks like this.

You can see the gravel driveway at the bottom of the picture.

 There are garden beds along the house which we still have to plant up. The Glauca pencil pines below will be going along the driveway.

This morning I finally, finally put the frill on the children's curtains and hung them. I had made them too short so I needed to extend them. I never want to lay hands on these things again!!

The clear out
I haven't been posting much lately due to my new found love of the tv show, Mad Men. I am quite caught up in the lives of Don and Betty Draper, Peggy, Pete Campbell, Joan and Roger Sterling.
It's on television at the moment, but way too late for me (9.30pm can you believe). Instead, I hired the dvds from our local. It's enthralling. Totally.
In between episodes I have finally uploaded some excess stuff onto Ebay. My username is 'watermelonstarlet'. It's a stupid name which doesn't mean anything. My first fifty username choices were all taken, so this is just what I ended up with.
I'm selling a dress which used to belong to Doris, Gwennie's sister (I assume). I was going to keep it, but I changed my mind.

A couple of things causing a stir, with lots of watchers is this 1946 Castlemaine Perkins Diary, unused.

as well as this 1933 copy of Guinness Alice, which is actually very beautiful.

I've got a few complete newspapers from the 1920s.

Colour lithographs and woodblock engravings.

Two beautiful hand painted light shades. This below is the detail on one of them. I haven't listed either of them yet, but they're going.

Strange things like the Hanimex slide viewer, still in it's box, alson known as the Super Hanorama.  I bet they had one of these at Sterling Cooper.

...and the Pidgin English translation book.

I've barely made a dent. There's still some sewing paraphenalia and various bric-a-brac. It's a tedious process though.

Didn't we have a lovely time, the day we went to Bangalow....la, la, la!!!
This morning we took a trip to beautiful northern New South Wales to go to the Bangalow Markets.
In my mind I pictured us sauntering lazily through a charming country market, sampling the local produce and handicrafts. The sun shining down on us, turning us all golden haired, as we smiled and laughed,
In reality, Bangalow was more crowded than Easter in Noosa, absolutely bumper-to-bumper. The markets were so jam-packed with people it seemed too much effort to squeeze through the masses to look at anything for sale. We just had to concentrate on holding hands, lest we be lost to each other forever.
In the end, a slight nod of the head saw us all short-cutting through some stalls and hurtling ourselves over a high timber fence, like we were escaping the exercise yard at Pentridge.... but more frantically.
As we left town the traffic heading in had come to a stand still. Cars were lined up for about 3km. Poor suckers.
Moral of the story: do not visit Bangalow on a Sunday....during the school holidays.....when the monthly markets are on! Bedlam!!
On the home front, my husband has gravelled our drive way. It's a temporary measure to keep the dust and dirt from being walked through the house. I took a photo of it, but it hasn't come up all that well, so I'll include one when all the landscaping is finished.
I have decided to put our vegetable garden at the bottom of the back stairs, which is quite handy to the kitchen. It's a fairly small area, but I should be able to fit a lot into it. Initially, I had something like this in mind.

Or failing that, this.

I also like....

However, after considering our budgetary constraints, I've decided to go more this sort of thing.

Yes, modest. However, it doesn't mean it can't be pretty. I'll keep you posted.

The red door (that thinks it's pink)
While I was away the painter finished up. One of his last jobs was to put the colour on our front and back doors. Originally, the front door was going to be turquoise or a green like Silk Road, but instead, it ended up being Sensual Red by Resene.

Here it is again...

It's a bizaar colour. The more you try to pin it down as a red or a pink the more unsure you become.
I took my inspiration (or stole the idea, however you want to look at it) from a house we love on Hamilton Hill. This is it.

I think I nearly nailed the colour actually. Very happy. Now I just need to get a front door mat and some furniture out on the verandah.
The back door is shiny, classic black. My husband's choice. It will go really well with the awnings, which should be fitted in a couple of weeks. Ditto for the back verandah, re 'jazzing up'.  Actually, I'm after a couple of large ceramic pots in blue and white if anyone sees some somewhere, the Chinese-ey style ones. I've had no luck thus far.

I also managed to photograph my latest find today. I found these chairs at a charity shop up north, and got drenched to the bone packing as many as I could into the back of my Ishibishi. I've dragged 12 home. Not sure if I'll keep them all or sell half?
They are in ridiculously mint condition. I've got them in a beautiful bluey-green colour, yellow and red. To top it off, they have CWA written on the underside. Not bad for $2 each!!!! There's about 60 more back at the shop. There's 660km between me and them and it's driving me crazy!