2012 Mission

2012 is the year of finishing stuff.

So given that I completed most of last years list, I thought I would give it a go again this year. (note that * indicates it is being carried over).


1. The lounge room hearth*

2. Paint the outside of the house

3. Finish the veranda*

4. Paint the carport poles

5. Paint the gates

6. Not kill anymore plants.

7. Complete the wall art in Eliza's room

8. Finishing painting all the doors*

9. Clean out the shed properly and get rid of the crap

10. Finish the kickboard in the kitchen

11. Finish painting the inside of the front door

12. Sell this house - We're part way there, we have had the estate agent come around and do an appraisal and give us some suggestions on things we could do to increase the price. Funnily enough, a lot of them are in the list of things to be done anyway.

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Paint Work

Paint and lattice is back on. I am loving the dark veranda poles, the contrast with the lattice is awesome. Now I just need to paint the rest of the guttering.
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Art Smocks

My god-daughter recently turned 5, and if that wasn't a major milestone in her life, she is about to start primary school too!

When buying a gift, I like to give something that there is a high chance of no-one else giving, and something that will be utalised. So for Em's birthday I thought about getting her a personalised pencil case for school, but wasn't sure that no-one else would get her one. Her mother informed me that they have school issue library bags (boo! it wasn't pretty like the one in my head) but no art-smocks.

With that in mind I set off to find an adorable artsmock, and came across Miss Tilly and Me. Allison had the most adorable smocks, and was a complete gem to deal with. She even personalised Em's name on her smock for no added cost!

Within a few days this pretty was in my mailbox. I could not be more impressed with it.

The sewing is A+ and the attention to detail is supurb. It is a far cry from the old business shirt that I used to wear as an artsmock at school!

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Exquisite Wall Decals For An Artistic Home

Everyone deserves a lovely home considering the amount they invest in them. Real estate as we all know involves huge sums of money and only the fortunate ones could actually live their dreams when it comes to dream homes. You certainly do deserve the best considering all the hard work you put in to realizing your dream home. Creating a dream home or purchasing one doesn’t end with just the initial investment you put into purchasing. Interior decoration also plays a part and you might have to shed a little more out of your pockets for decorations, furnishings and regular maintenance in order to prolong the longevity of your home for several generations to come. Only then, your dream or investments would become worthwhile. Traditionally, when it came to interior decorations, people just used to paint various colors onto their walls and add exquisite furniture’s to make one’s home look livelier and lovely. It has become highly common these days. You can almost find it in most households. If you have purchased a new home and you want to live your dream, have you considered wall decals for a change?  Certainly when it comes to interior decorations, everyone seeks for creating a unique style that isn’t commonly found anywhere else.

The solution you are looking for when it comes to creating a unique home issue lies on wall decals. There are surplus amount of options with variety of designs, colors and styles when it comes to these wall decals available in the market. Most merchants merchandising these wall decals also allow you to customize your own stickers which has highly aided towards creating a unique home. These wall decals are made out of vinyl which adds more features to them, making them more flexible. In other words, vinyl wall decals can be removed with much ease as and when you please and hence you have the flexibility of changing your wall decorations with variety of wall stickers as and when you please. This particular feature always gives your home a new look and hence you can never get bored of the way your home looks. You have wide variety of options when it comes to choosing and hence wall decals have revolutionized the art of interior decorations and now you can certainly have an artistic home. Wall decals are not just for residential purposes. They also contribute a lot towards creating a wonderful office environment. Wall decals with wall quotes are highly popular and more commonly used in every business firm these days.  

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Eliza Wears

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I am teaching her early

Eliza and I do a fair bit of shopping, however it took me until she was 6 months to go on her first trip to Bunnings! She was a huge fan, and has since demanded that I take her fairly regularly.

Who am I to argue?

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To Buy or Not To Buy: Bumbo & Tray

 For us, this was $70 well spent. Eliza has been sitting in the bumbo since she was around 3 months old, first to get used to sitting, then as a table for food, and now as a substitute high chair if we go somewhere.

It really is handy, and very easy to wash when someone smears banana into the sides of it. Highly recommend it, and am planning on buying one for a friends baby on the way.

If you are looking for one, don't pay more than $55 for the seat and $20 for the tray. They are regularly on sale for these prices at Baby Bunting. There are ebay sellers selling them for much more than this and praying on sleep deprived mums who don't have time to research prices.
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Bedroom Robe Doors

This was actually completed last year, to just scrape in the list of things I wanted to complete for 2011.

It started out as a pretty boring task, remove doors and chisel out the hole for the flush sliders, so that I could paint them. It was meant to take a day.

It took three weeks. Which meant I had to look at this for three weeks (and this is the cleaned up version).

Why did it take so long? Well I started by using a brush to paint them. Huge mistake as the brush marks were visible, and unlike every other door in our house that has a textured finish, these ones have a smooth finish. FAIL #1. Sand back doors.

So I decided to spray paint them for a nice smooth finish. Added bonus was that we had a friends spray kit at home already. Fantastic. Until the paint ran as neither of us had much of an idea of how to spraypaint doors (top tip: use an airless system or a mighty big compressor. Neither of which we did). FAIL #2. Sand back doors again.

So we were starting to run out of options (and baby sleep time), so we went back to our old faithful: rolling. Which was a success, thank goodness as I was contemplating paying $300 for new doors at this point and sending them to a professional painter.

So now we have this view:

In our next house I am having a better system.
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Family Photos

We recently had some family photos taken of the three of us as a fundraiser for a local Kinder. I thought they would make easy awesome christmas presents for grandparents etc, so I paid the hefty price for the package. I had a promo coupon from Huggies for a 30x30 photo canvas from Snapfish, and thought "what the heck, might as well treat ourselves".

So we ended up with this photo above our TV. Being the awesome bargain hunter I am *scoff* I was patiently waiting for a sale on Snapfish, Big W or any other random photo site. The gods delivered and Snapfish had a half price canvas sale, so I ordered the other two poses.

I do love that picture of Eliza!

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Eliza Wears

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Christmas Wrap Up

Or unwrap. Which ever way you like to think of it.

Given Eliza is only 6 months old, and very oblivious to the whole christmas thing, I went with the minimalist approach to christmas this year: one present from us, and I worded up the big fella about only sending one present down the chimney too. At this stage I plan to keep it that way.

So, from us she received

 A lot of wrapping paper.

 Nah, really it was a Wheely Bug Mouse.

And from Santa she received a Boon Bug Pod

We hosted christmas lunch this year, with a total of 14 adults and 5 kids, all the presents took up half of our lounge room!

As a special treat (that I didn't know about until after the event) Eliza was given a bit of gingerbread cookie. My mum claims it contains no sugar, just golden syrup. Thanks mum.

All in all it was a lovely day, sleeps were missed, treats were plentiful and the love was flowing. Next time we host christmas I am asking for a bigger house though.

Now I just need to find an adult sized one of these!

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Photo Challenge - Day 18

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Photo Challenge - Day 17

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Photo Challenge - Day 16

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Photo Challenge - Day 15

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Photo Challenge - Day 14

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Photo Challenge - Day 13

I normally just chuck my purse and keys into the nappy bag, but today I actually managed to go out without Eliza - so no need for the bag.
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Photo Challenge - Day 12

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Photo Challenge - Day 11

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Photo Challenge - Day 10

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