Spring Is Round The Corner.....!

Don't you love when somedays your head is full of these great idea's and projects you want to do and create. Then a few day's later your brain is void of all creative inspiration and you wonder where do i go from here with this idea? Well i think i have had this "creative block" off and on over the past few weeks, which has been highly frustrating considering i have all these projects i want to complete and my poor little brain has no idea what i should do with them at time....  most frustrating.

I did however pat myself on the back with a bargain find the other day at a garage sale. After voting on saturday i came across a garage sale ( i love garage sales) and picked up 4 photo frames for $2.00. Now you may think i am a little nutty but being on a bit of a budget these days this was the best & cheapest way to complete one of the projects i have been talking about. We have some gorgeous pencil drawing prints we picked up in france when we there a few years back. We have been meaning to frame and hang them but have been sitting in a cupboard waiting to do. So the frames will be perfect for the four small prints we have and i have something special for the larger one, which i will show you later. These frames i am currently in the middle of painting white to bring them together in uniformity and i am also on the hunt for some matte board off cuts to frame the prints with inside the frame (another great way to save money) . So this is a work in progess and i cannot wait to show you the finished product...... when that happens! HA.

A great way to bring together odd matching frames is to paint them the same colour.

On the upside i did get the front flower garden finished. The "bonica" roses that i ordered about a month ago arrived early last week and i was able to plant them out before the nice rain we had. If you want to see my vision for the front garden click here. I have tweaked a few plant ideas from my previous plant due to some of the plants being unsuitable for the garden size. I have gone with the "bonica" rose for the informal hedge and underplanted the roses with "aphrodite alyssum" seeds. For the border along the front of the garden in the little ledge i have sowed seeds for Cat mint, which will look like lavender but is more of a compact plant which will suit that space nicely.

"Bonica" Rose

Aprhodite Alyssum

Cat Mint

The roses came bare-rooted which means they were in "hibernation" of sorts for winter and had not developed a deep root system yet. Perfect way to buy roses as they are cheaper to buy and ship.
 My sweet husband marked out the exact space between each roseplant to give a even spaced hedge. I had to do the hard work of digging and planting 14 rose plants. I loved doing it though! Can't wait till they start growing and flowering.

Planting the roses out - there were 14 to plant out!

All lined up ready to plant out! Don't look much at the moment!

Two down... 12 to go!

Nearly done!

After i had planted out the roses i sowed about 1800 alyssum seeds throughout the top garden and sowed the cat mint along the bottom front ledge. I did it just in time as the next day it rained cat 'n' dogs!

Bevan has continued having fun cutting tree's down. He got his brothers round on the weekend to help him out. It was a old dead tree attached to our chook pen fence so we didn't want to cut the thing completely out. I wasn't around to witness the event but i think they did it without any drama's.

Tree is straight behind chook pen

Shaun (bevan's brother)  holding the rope to guide the tree away from the chook shed.

Job done without incident!

Our nephew riley - thinking he did all the hard work!

Our vegie garden is taking off nicely with last weeks rain, our carrots, beetroot, snowpeas, rocket, broccoli, and radish's are all sprouting and taking off. I will have to get some update photo's on here of things taking shape. It's exciting to see things your planted yourself actually sprout and grow - i am not a total brown thumb!!!

As you can see above - Bevan set up a frame and planted out our raspberry plant that we purchased a few weeks ago. I am very very excited and hope to get a good crop of rasberries in the years to come! Mmmm!

If your stuck for morning tea or afternoon tea idea or just want to whip something up check out my yummy recipes on my "Simply Tea" blog.  Love to hear any comments or suggestions on anything i have written about today or in previous blogs! :-)

Agapanthus Madness

What a windy and horrible week it was last week. I am glad that things settled down a bit over the weekend and we were able to get some garden time in. After moving 3 fridges saturday morning..... yes you heard me right... 3 fridges, we went to one of bevan's work mates house who kindly offered us her garden to dig plants up from. She had a HUGE patch of agapanthus that we were able to "borrow" from to use at our place.

Example Picture Of Agapanthus

We ended up digging up about 50-60 plants.  I love agapanthus, they are a GREAT border plant for large area's, drought tolerant and generally can grow anywhere plus they put on a beautiful display of flowers during summer ranging in colour from purple or white. We were also able to get some clivia's as well to put in a shady spot in our garden.

Example Picture Of Clivia's

We hadn't really prepared ourselves for the work involved in planting our these little babies and spent all saturday afternoon doing so. We planted them along the bank at the front of the house. This is a large area that needed something doing to it quite badly and we didn't really want to have to landscape it with pavers or rocks, which we of cost a lot of money, so we thought we we would use plants to create the border that we wanted, no fuss and the best thing it was FREE! We still have to decide what to plant on the actual bank, something that is hardy, drought tolerant and grows vigorously but also looks nice, so if you have any suggestions we would love to hear them... just leave a comment! :-)

Bevan digging the holes for the agapanthus

Me, planting them all.

Finished product

Mind you the agapanthus don't look as pretty as this now.... bevan gave them all a "hair cut". Apparently it helps to establish the plants, concentrating on taking root instead of maintaining there leaves... so they all look a bit sorry for themselves at the moment.

Finished product for the Clivia's

We had a bit of a rest for afternoon tea and i had a bit too much fun teasing our dog abby with a peanut butter and chocolate cupcake i made for bevan.........

As you can see by the tongue she was licking her lips.....

One thing i have noticed here at our new house is the HUGE worms that are in the dirt. They gave me a bit of a fright when i first come across one.I guess it's a good thing that they are in the soil, doing whatever wormy's love to do! Abby loves to dig in the dirt when we're gardening and when she comes across one she pulls it out of the dirt with her teeth and continues to play with it by throwing it up in the air or rolling over it on her back. It is quite entertaining to watch and it give me a laugh!

Our gigantic worms

Abby loves to play with them.

Lighting It Up!

I picked up a layby i had at Target yesterday and it was all Lamps that i had chosen for our house (yes they were on sale). I was very excited to finally put them out around the house. Light is a very important aspect to interior design and decorating and it can make or break a room's "feel & ambience".  Lighting 101 says: "Good lighting, in a home or business, is one of those things that's invisible - if it's done well. You only notice the lighting of a room if it's too bright or too dim, not if it's just right. To light a room so effectively that no one notices whether you're using florescent or incandescent lights, track lighting or standing lamps. They'll notice only that the room feels comfortable, and that they want to come back again."

When choosing your lighting for a particular room (not only light fixtures but freestanding lighting such as floor and table lamps) you first need to think about the "function" of the room and what you will be doing in that room and what type of light you require.  I thought about this for our lounge room as it was going to be one of the darker rooms in the house as it does not get a lot of natural light. I am a lover of light - i cannot stand being in a room without the light on, i need light to function whether it be natural light or manmade. Ask my husband... he is always reminding me to turn the lights off in our house!

Lounge room before we moved in.

Lounge room after we moved in

Lounge Room Currently

Lamp i have chosen for the loungeroom

We have placed downlights through out the lounge room as part of the "everyday" lighting, but we only use a lamp when we watch TV. So i thought i would update the lamp now that we have moved to fit in the new theme. As you can see in the picture above it light's the room up nicely creating a nice ambience.


Now i am not going to say i am an expert by any means in interior design.... i have done a course in Interior Design & Decoration, which has given me a helping hand in decorating my home and helping my family decorate as well. Sometimes i get it right and sometimes i get it wrong... very wrong! Ha Thank goodness for "returns". I enjoy creating a room and trying to make something out of nothing. 


The next lighting project was in the "Family Room". This room had more natural light in it due to the large windows on one wall. We installed downlights in here for use at night time but i wanted to create a cosy area for our wingback chairs in front of the fire, so we can sit there at night. We had a little lamp table which i put between the two wing back chairs (yet to be re-upholstered) (*Note: I have decided to re-upholster these myself, currently saving up for the materials) and i found the cutest lamp shade to go with the same lamp stand as i used in the lounge room.

Lamp in "Family" Room

Our little relaxation area in front of the fire!

As you can see it looks a little rough around the edges but the "idea" is there - this  will need a bit of refining - re-upholster the chairs and paint the lamp table.

The last lighting project was in our bedroom. Again we put downlights in the bedroom ( i just love the soft ambience that downlights create)but i wanted to update our beside lamps in our bedroom. Our current ones were "clearance" lamps i bought when we first got married and were a bit battered to start off with.

Our bedroom before moving in

Our Bedroom currently

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The Lamps i chose for our beside tables.

 I wanted something a bit modern but have a classic feel to it still. I know i haven't gone very daring in the colour department in the lamp shades but as you know with the "vision" of the house i wanted to keep things fairly neutral so currently i am laying the "foundation pallete" you could say through out the house and hopefully soon i can start adding all the "little bits 'n' pieces" throughout, such as pictures, paintings, photo's, vases, and decorative items. Again it's just time and money holding me back! hehehe.

In the garden department i had a pretty good weekend planting out a lot of vegies ready for spring & summer. I got in just before the good rain we had on monday so hopefully that will get the little seedlings going! I planted out beetroots, lettuce, english spinach, rocket, radish, cabbage, shallots, red onion, broccoli & carrots. So hopefully i have a green thumb and they all grow and not die! Time will only tell.

From Left: Raspberry plant, Red Onions all planted up, Fig Tree

We were in Brisbane on the weekend helping out with the "Go The Extra Mile" walk and on our way home we stopped in at the Big Orange for some fruit and vegies. They had some fruit plants for sale and we decided we would purchase a Raspberry plant and a fig tree (stick at the moment). We have to decide where we are going to plant them and it will be many years before the fig tree produces any fruit...... BUT when it does - YUMMO! I tasted my first fresh fig when i was on holidays around tasmania this year.... it was out of this world! Oh and i cannot wait for my own fresh rasberries.... oh the fun things i can make out of them..... jams, pie fillings, coulis... or simply popped into your mouth fresh.

Top: Bevan enjoying yard work.   Left: Bevan with his mean machine (chainsaw), The kitchen garden after bushes have been cleared.

Bevan has been into the chainsaw again cutting down more trees. Mind you they are tree's that need cutting down in order to clear areas etc... he just has a bit too much fun doing i think!

Veggie Mad!!

Seems i have gone on a bit of a veggie blog binge lately. But i thought i would show you some pictures of where we're up to with the vegie garden.... (not very far) and what we doing with my herb garden. Come across some  cute little garden item's that i loved - i love the little herb name stake thingys. I want to create a bit of a rustic kitchen herb garden that not only is functional but looks good too!

I have delved into the vegie garde a bit this week to try and get ready for spring. I have planted an early crop of tomatoes, silverbeet and a late crop of snow peas. I hope to get in some beetroot, lettuce, cabbage and shallots in the next few days! As you can see below abby loves to help me garden - sniffs everything i am doing and must be involved in the process. Our chookies are doing well... have increased in laying more eggs everyday which is great - we had our record of 6 eggs in one day yesterday! The fruit below is a Lemonade tree. Yet to taste what it is like... have let it ripen some more and give it a go!

 

As you can see in the below  picture collage you can see a bit of a mess of a garden. That is where we are trying to create my kitchen herb garden. Had to cut down a fair few shrubs and there is going to be a bit of work involved in restoring the rock retaining wall holding the dirt against the house BUT i have a vision of what i want so we will se what happens. Our mulberry tree is shooting little leaves so it's nice to see spring is on it's way! I am hanging out for winter to be over that is for sure.

Have a great weekend!