In my Bedroom this time...

Ripping up carpet, that is.  The last room in the house to have the carpet removed.

I really should have taken a 'before' photo to show you what complete knuckleheads the previous owners of the house were.  Most of the carpet was an ugly green colour, but in the very centre of the room was a patch of cream coloured carpet.

When we first moved in to our house, the real estate agent explained that the owners had a water bed and didn't think you could actually move them.  So when the green carpet was laid, they left the water bed where it was and carpeted around it.

Yup.  Clever!

 I was very pleased to see great looking floorboards again.

 The carpet in the house is now ALL gone!

 ...but there are a gazillion little annoying staples to pull out.  I'm still pulling the rotten things out!

Looking very pleased about a job well done.  Back to staple removing!!!

There's a Party in my Laundry!

Seriously, there is!

Phil decided for some random reason to install a party light in there.  Goodness only knows!  I certainly don't have a party every time I do my laundry, that's for sure.

The problem is that I can't do any laundry at night - because I can't see well enough in there.

It is also where our outside toilet is...and for goodness sake I don't want to see what is glowing... (I'll let your imagination do it's thing there!)

 Phil's Party Light Bulb in the gross light shade that is in my laundry.  Goodness knows why we didn't replace that when we replaced all the other light fittings in the house.

 My hand towel glows really well!  Apparently my camera likes to have parties in there too, and glowing objects make blurry pictures.

Who would have thought that the inside of toilet paper rolls, Phil's underwear, Pink Napisan containers and power points switched on glow under a party light bulb?

Now the question remains.  Is Phil going to remember to take the party light bulb out before my family come over to celebrate Jacki's birthday in a few weeks, or are some of them going to get the surprise of their life?

To Sand or Not to Sand, That is the Question.

Our carpet is green and gross.  I'm not sure why it has taken us so long to actually do something about it (probably my husband's lack of enthusiasm to do anything about the house until we actually purchased it), but we're going gung-ho now!

The carpet is sitting either in neat rolled up piles outside (my handiwork), or in a mishmash heap (Phil's) ready for the Council Clean-up next weekend.

All that's left to do now is remove more annoying little tiny staples from the floor, and figure out whether we want to sand the floors and lacquer them, or put down floating floorboard.

We're still deciding...

 Bunnings had a really good deal on these floating floorboard last weekend.  Phil bought 10 of them for $10 (an opened slightly damaged box) to see if he liked the look, and to 'play' with them.  My guess is that Bunnings might be out of stock on these ones by now - just my luck.

 He even played with a roll of underlay.  He was able to get an estimate of how many packs he would need to do the hallway.

 *Sigh* MORE annoying little staples to remove!  Seriously, these things are the absolute worst part so far about ripping the carpet up.  If we were to put new carpet down, we'd just hammer these down but as my Grandfather says; "If you're going to do a job, you may as well do it properly" and the last people definitely didn't do a proper job.  We're going to a good job *crosses fingers*!

 My tools of the trade for this task.  Can't forget the all important ipod docking station!

THE best invention ever!  I can't believe how much easier this makes pulling out those staples.  We were using a screwdriver and pliers to remove them, but this does it much faster.  Should have bought two of them Phil!  One end is a hammer, the other end is kind of like a pointy screwdriver.  The middle acts as pliers but the curve in the head means that you can 'rock' the tool to get the staples out.  Brilliant!

Stumpy Is Getting Bolder

This Eastern Blue Tongue Lizard is getting bold!  It no longer hisses at me but tries to jump up on to my hand instead of waiting for grapes to be put down on the concrete in front of it. I didn't even know they could jump!

 Mmmmm grapes!

 Swallowing grapes and dribbiling.  They crush grapes up in their jaws then wait until they have two or three lined up, then gulp them all down.  It freaked me out at first because I wasn't sure what was wrong.  You can see a mass on the outside of their neck moving down internally.

 Trying to eat hair and struggling.  I pulled it out and it gagged.  Are they even supposed to have a gag reflex? - gross!

 Back to grapes.  Much better.

These were juicy grapes.  They squirted whenever 'Stumpy' crushed them.  I hope it's tail heals.  It is still weeping a little, and I'm not so sure that's a good sign.  It seems happy enough though, and will continue to be looked after as long as it visits.

Saturday Family Chores

Recently I have been organising a Saturday chore for the family to do together (or at least for the children and me to do if Phil is out working).

A few weeks ago I decided we were going to have some water fun aka cleaning the garage door and fence near it.

 One of the tools of the trade...a soaking wet sponge.

 While the children were occupied I took the opportunity to do some gardening.

 I don't think Jacki was soaking wet at that stage, but it didn't take long for the children to end up with suds running down their arms, and then the sponges started flying!

 The ground was soaking wet, and so were we!

 The children weren't quite finished with soaking each other...I mean...cleaning things, so I moved them to the front porch where they cleaned the bars.  Ahem...

This was 3 hours later and there was still a lot of water around. My camera isn't waterproof, so I didn't get to actually take photos of everybody soaked, but the children definitely loved this project.

Mildly Renovating

Faced with the prospect of having to move if my son doesn't get into the High School we know he needs to go to, we have started to tidy the place up...which we were going to do anyway.  But now there is a deadline.  Eek!  Phil and I (mostly "I") have come up with a schedule of things that have to be done around the house.  No ifs, no buts.  Bit by bit they will get done!

The first job was ripping up the carpet in the hallway.  It was gross green stuff that really should have been removed long ago, but we didn't.

 I did this much all by myself!  It took me 10 minutes of solid work, but boy were my legs and arms wobbly for hours after that!

 The floorboards are in excellent condition!  The carpet is so very green!

 Then Phil stepped in to help.  He does a much better job.  He has muscles, you see!  It took him half an hour to do the rest of the hallway.

 But he says when he got to this part of the hallway, he was feeling that jelly-like wibble wobble in the arms and legs.  I got the job of clearing out the carpet and underlay, and sweeping up the remains.

Just the carpet in the two bedrooms to go now :D (and a time frame of one week to remove all the little 'staples').

Having one of those days?

I'm having a slow morning.  You know the ones?  When your alarm goes off and even though you know you've had what should be enough sleep, you're bone dead exhausted. (Phil had gotten up 2 hours before I did - poor him!!).

I had to get up so I could wake the children up.  It took them half an hour before they even put their feet on the floor.  Definitely a slow morning.

Piano practices were done, children showered and dressed, hair brushed, lunches made, breakfast was on the run today, prayers said, hugs and out the door.  Well, the children were out the door.  I love being able to say goodbye to them at our gate.  It takes them 5 minutes to walk to school across the oval at the top of our street.  There are no roads to cross, and with other children walking to school at the same time, I feel it is safe.

Now I'm sitting here in my dressing gown and ugg boots with leftover raccoon mascara that I thought I had completely removed last night, contemplating the never-ending list of things I have to get through today and wondering where to start.

;D So I started on chocolate mud cake.