Street Shopping

I adore Council Clean Up! Truly someone else's trash is often my treasure! I know how much my street scavenging irritates my husband though, so in the car as we make our way through a neighbourhood that is having Council Clean Up, I very discreetly move my eyes over the piles of inviting treasure rubbish until I spot something that has potential. I am then forced to abandon reserve and screech "STOP THE CAR!!!" at my husband. A mad dash follows, incase one of the dodgy old men in trucks gets to the must-have item before I do. Then there is either joy (from me) as I lug the item back to the car and insist we take it home and excessive eye rolling (from husband) as he futilely attempts to prevent me from taking my treasure home! Or there is disappointment (from me) when I approach the item and discover it is damaged beyond repair or not actually what I thought it was, and annoying smug looks (from husband) as he is delighted that the item truly was rubbish. As much as my love for Street Shopping annoys my husband, he is forced to admit that I have found some gems over the years and this is my most recent wonderful find:

I love it!

NB. Please disregard ugly 1980s fabric on the cane lounges. These are yet to be re-upholstered and I have decided to wait until after we finish renovating to have them done. Researching outdoor fabrics in the meantime though!

The SNOW!

We have just got back from 4 days away! Best snow that I have seen in NSW since I was a little tacker learning to ski and I can't begin to describe how adorable the Captain looked rugged up like the Michelin man and snow ploughing (or pizza slicing as he called it) with his mates in ski school. Too divine!

Conversations with the Captain...

This child, amuses and exasperates me simultaneously!!!

Driving home after dropping his Father at work:

Captain: Can I have car lessons?

Me: What do you mean? (Distracted and concentrating on annoying Sydney peak hour traffic)

Captain: You know, to drive the car.

Me: Driving lessons? What! No, certainly not! Not until you are 16 and 9 months.

Captain: Why?

Me: Because the people that make the decisions about who drives cars and when have decided that that is the safest time to learn how to drive.

Captain: How many years until I am 16 and 9 months?

Me: Umm, a lot of them.

Captain: Can I have two birthdays this year?

Me: What? No!

Captain: But then I can go in the Tour de France sooner and learn to drive cars!

Project Organise (also known as Operation get son to school on time!)

Look what I found to store all my cleaning products in!!! (Yes, I made sure to thoroughly sterilise it first!) I have been looking for a container to put all the cleaning items in for a while now and was thrilled with this find! I loathe plastic, (particularly in relation to storage), and so when I came across this lovely old chamber pot at our local antique shop it had to come home with me as a housekeepers pot!


And yes... that is a flatscreen stuck to my back deck window.... my husband is trialling sticky tapes for a project he is doing for a big fast-food chain. He figured if the sticky tape could survive the rigours of small children it would be fine in the drive through window!

Missing the daffodils and jonquils of cooler climates.

Despite no gorgeous cool climate spring bulbs, the garden still looks spectacular. Kangaroo Paw have been flowering all winter, including this beauty called Bush Pizzazz.

White irises are popping up everywhere and look like dainty little ballerinas amongst all the natives in our garden. I suspect that these are equally as hardy though!

We are just about to make a big investment in some Grass Trees, fingers and toes crossed that they transplant successfully! Anyone have any tips?

Lamingtons and the Garbage Truck

This morning we made Lamingtons. It was a first for all of us. I have a very clear memory of watching a lamington drive as a little girl. I watched mesmerised as a group of familiar mums worked at unfamiliar speed in a factory line baking what seemed to be enough lamingtons to feed the population of a country town or in this case a school fete.


There is a reason why people do it in drives... it is quite a messy and fiddly exercise. However, for two tactile little boys... they loved it.

CWA standard they definitely were not! Nevertheless, we had fun and I even had 5 minutes peace and quiet to enjoy mine with a coffee whilst they were busy eating theirs!

Sadly said peace and quiet was suprisingly short lived. Today is garbage day and, as is a long standing tradition, the boys kept an ear out for the noise of the truck winding it's way up our street. As soon as they can hear it they both race out of the house, screeching like banshees "garbage truck, garbage truck" and then stand at the top of our driveway in relatively quiet anticipation. Normally, the driver waves at them and he and I exchange a "boys will be boys with their obsessions with large machines" glance and then he continues on his way around the neighbourhood. Today was different though... maybe he smelt the lamingtons baking? He stopped and asked if the boys wanted to have a sit in the cab?

They loved it... he let them press the buttons, move the seats up and down, and the highlight of the experience was a demonstration of the bin collecting arm grabbing our recycling bin off the nature strip and "emptying" it several times!

That driver made their day with this small act of kindness!

Seriously... my parents actually were awesome!

I love this site, there is something very special about it. In particular, the reminder that lives were lived before children. Every photo that I have of my husband and I (pre-boys) I have examined closely, wondering if one day it will be selected to be uploaded!



Here are my parents... looking young and fabulous on holidays in PNG (I think?)!






Another photo of my mother (and baby me!) looking glamourous. We were on posting in Cambodia then and I have to remind myself that she had servants, and thus had the time and energy to look glamourous in every photograph!