before and after #15
Thursday, 31 July 2008
As any current or past parents of new-born babies will know, there isn't a limit to what you will do in order to 'settle' them so that you can clock up a few hours sleep youself - If the baby falls asleep faster when you dress up in a penguin suit and cartwheel across the floor to the sounds of Lionel Richie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling', then you'll be ringing the costume hire places to get the best long term hire deal. Luckily though, most babies settle for some lighter style soothing such bassinet rocking, jiggling or pushing. This sounds relatively do-able but after 4 hours and the equivalent of 4000 kms you might be wishing you'd gone the penguin suit option. This is Robin's solution: Turning on the drill generates the desired bassinet wobble and also provides some much craved for 'white noise' which saves having to leave the vacuum cleaner on nearby (although for Ms Vacuum Cleaner 2008 that normally isn't a problem but I guess there's only so much vacuuming the carpet will stand). Anyway - we won't be seeing it on The New Inventors for a while but It seems to work for Jamie.
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before and after #14
Thursday, 31 July 2008
In the past few weeks Jon and I have had more conversations about window furnishings & pelmets than any human beings should have to have in a lifetime. The majority of our discussions have been related to the big windows on the other side of the games room but as we're still firmly at the before stage with them, here are the ones on the water side - featuring the curtains I made as well as the pelmets - I can't count woodwork as one of my skills, so the fact that they were roughly the right size and are still attached to the wall is a big achievement for me - I wouldn't be standing too close to them during an earthquake though!
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before and after #13
Thursday, 31 July 2008
Unfortunately this is a before and before photo. I think it's now about five weeks since our builder said he'd have the deck extension finished the first time and two weeks since he said he'd have it done the second time. As you can see all we have are a set of holes where the posts will go - I put in a close-up of one of them since I've calculated them to be worth about $1000 each and I thought you might like to see what a 1k hole-in-the-ground looked like- there doesn't seem to be any gold plating, surprisingly
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before and after #12
Thursday, 31 July 2008
This is how dad used to have breakfast. It used to be a nice quiet relaxing time during which he could peacefully contemplate the day ahead whilst admiring the spectacular views of the river on his right. On weekdays though, things have now changed... Admittedly Jett isn't normally there but I took him along for the drop-off trip just for a change so he wanted to be part of the double breakfast routine too. They've all had their regular breakfast at home but as Granny and Grandad have nutrigrain the first thing they do when they get there is rush about getting bowls, spoons, milk etc and carrying them out to the breakfast table (there isn't this sort of self-help energy going on at home I might add)! Luckily for dad, after what appears to be a short and intense inhalation of nutrigrain he is left with peace and quiet with just a few extra bowls, spoons and milk splatters to clean up afterwards.
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before and after #11
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Today Zali and the other kids from Sandy Bay Infants School had their annual cross country race. These photos are from the Kindergarten Girls division and that's Zali fourth from the right. She finished comfortably in the same position about 30 seconds later. Later on back in class they were asked to draw their favourite thing about the race and Zali drew the multi coloured bunting they had at the finish. I noticed that the girls took it all a lot more easy than the boys so although I'm sure they can run as fast if they had all been in the one division the boys would have mostly finished in front. Interesting. Miley finished a commendable 4th in the Prep boys event which was at least twice as long.
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before and after #10
Saturday, 26 July 2008
Long time readers will know that we've been running a comparison between the growth of Zali and the growth of a grass-tree we planted at Hardy's Bay on the central coast of NSW (Shirl and Tim's place). I've finally downloaded some photos from our Easter visit which include some new comparisons. A number of things are immediately obvious from these- Firstly - Zali's tummy is still very cute and her clothes are still slightly too small, secondly, whilst the tree (and the garden generally) has certainly grown, it still can't talk, read or write so Zali is way ahead there. . thirdly, my mobile phone takes adequate photos but struggles with the harsh NSW light. We planted a tree for Jett as well while we were there (the one in the middle) and I guess while it will never be taller than Zali, Jett probably will. Luckily Zali can't read so well that she could read this or she would be devastated to find out that she won't be a big sister forever (physically anyway).
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before and after #9
Saturday, 26 July 2008
 The problem with documenting your life (at least visually) with only before and after photos is that it requires a fair bit of foresight. Unfortunately I've not always got the wherewithall to realise that I need to take a photo before anything has happened. My struggles to keep us all entertained aside here's a recent craft project - if you are wondering what is actually going on here - I used a toy catalog, some glass beads, magnets and glue to make some cool fridge magnets for the kids. In the last few days I've gotten to do a few projects actually - from covering our noticeboard with retro-ish fabric, to hack-sawing a metal strip between two doors, to re-organising the pantry, to woodshopping some pelmets (one down, one to go) to doing a little bit of concreteing. This last activity was quite exciting - as a result of the recent roller-door removal and window-sliding door installation, we were left with a strip (approx 3cm x 3cm x 4metres) in the concrete floor which needed to be filled before we could tile over it. I went out and bought a 20kg bag of concrete powder. The instructions said to use 5 litres of water per 20kg of powder and I had guessed that my gap to be filled was the equivalent of about 5 litres in volume). Therefore by my calculations I needed to mix the whole bag. Of course what I needed to mix up was about three kilos of powder and what I did mix up would have filled a small swimming pool - and it's not like I could pour the excess down the sink. If there had been any candidates for cement boots around I could have just asked them to step into my (very large) bucket - but instead I had to pour the leftover mix into supermarket bags - which of course have holes in them... you can imagine the rest. Still - the floor looks great now - the next exciting thing to happen in the garage come games-room will be the carpet in a few weeks time.
So if you're wondering how I found the time to mix up enough concrete to pour a multi-level carpark - it's because there's been a halt to production of Pixel Pinkie Series Two due to some contract wrangling in the State Government. As a result all us staff were given an unpaid holiday until further notice. Some people had only been back at work for 3 days before this happened. I'm lucky as I have another income (jon's) that I can spend on my days off so I'm not too fussed as long as we do get to go back to work soon. I'm sure it's a lot harder for most of the other crew.
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before and after #8
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
 I think that I need to occasionally remind myself that some magazines are really better read on a casual basis, rather than through a regular subscription. A lesson in point is my Delicious Magazine subscription I asked for and recieved for a birthday present last year. Ever since then I've discovered that reading it month by month is a lot less exciting that browsing though someone else's stack of 10 at a time. I'm practically a vegetarian so I don't know what I could have been possibly thinking when I thought it would be a good idea - as an example, in the most recent edition, out of the 30 main course recipes a whopping 3 were vegetarian, and one of those featured mushrooms. Of the remaining two, both contained either rediculously expensive (ie 2 jars of marinated artichokes & 1 kg of ricotta) or just plain rediculous ingredients i.e. a salad containing amongst other things, fior di latte, creme fraiche, 1 rubarb stalk, 1 fennel bulb, 1 cup lambs lettuce and 1/2 a pomegranate. I mean come on! Who are they kidding - and who am I kidding thinking I might actually use a recipe from these magazines. So if anyone wants a stack of Delicious Magazines, in excellent condition (well except for this one I put in the bin for the photo and which now smells just a tad garlicy) - you are welcome to them. Pick up only though!
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before and after #7
Monday, 21 July 2008
 Here are some pirate cupcakes amassing for Will Wittingtons birthday tomorrow. In other news it snowed on me as I drove home today! My journey from Hobart to Kingston takes me up and over a hill generously named Mount Nelson. When I was only about halfway up the rain that was pelting onto the windscreen suddenly went quiet and the front window view looked like zillions of white shooting stars zooming towards me. I really wanted to take a photo but I didn't think climbing into the back seat to get my bag, then returning just one hand to the wheel while I rummaged through it looking for my camera was the appropriate way to handle the driving conditions.
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before and after #6
Sunday, 20 July 2008
 This is Jett before Jon finally relents and goes to BigW to buy the gloves we've been meaning to get him for a month.
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before and after #5
Sunday, 20 July 2008
 Today we went orienteering. Jon raced but my ankle is still injured so I minced around the assembly area with the children. Zali and her good orienteering buddy Pheobe trotted around the string course together and came back with armloads of 'dinosaur bones' and no amount of persuasion could convince them otherwise. If their claims are true I'm sure there'd be a lot of very excited genetisists as quite a few of the bones appeared to still have dinosaur flesh attatched. yUck.
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before and afters
Sunday, 20 July 2008
As I am currently so infatuated in "before and after" photos both on my own website and in magazines and other media, I've decided only blog in the "before and after" format for the rest of the month. The above photos are from last weekend - Jon asked the neighbours if he could give their gum tree a trim and they were very happy to let him as the branch which obscured our view also shaded their washing line. If we had really wanted to we probably could have taken the whole tree down (as the neighbours suggested a few times) but we didn't follow up on their offer as it is a nice tree. In fact it's all the nicer for not being right in front of the window. Now I can sit on the couch and see the water - it's lovely.
Astute observers will notice that I took liberties with the 'before' photo - I am taking my lead from a recent edition of Vogue Living that I read recently which promised on the cover: "56 pages of kitchens and bathrooms including before and afters". Well, it turned out that whilst there were 56 pages of kitchens and bathrooms, there were only 2 pages of 'before' and they were both staged photos with rolls of wall paper and painting trays artfully arranged around what was clearly a studio setup.
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During
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
 How clever is this - a before and after in the one photo! As you can see the new wire balustrading looks great but the new deck extension is clearly missing. Oh well - what you can also see is that it's raining so we aren't too fussed anymore. In other news I think I'm going to have to flick back through my blog archive to see what I used to blog about before we got a house.
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From Garage to Games Room
Wednesday, 16 July 2008
Today we reached another exciting milestone in our garage-to-games-room conversion. It was out with the double garage door, and in with the new tinted sliding doors. (Admittedly it still looks a lot like a garage but hey there's not much we can do about that one!). After waiting approximately 6 weeks longer than the estimated time for delivery, the installation crew arrived exactly on time and were obviously adhering the same crew structure guidelines that removalist teams tend to follow - that being: one older guy who knows what is going on, two younger guys at least one of which must look like they are could be serving a community service order and at least one must chainsmoke in a manner which makes the other two guys' smoking habits look positively social. I think I'll be reporting them to the union though cos they didn't play Hits106fm and their communication didn't reach the minimum allowable percentage of swearwords (70%) in general conversation. Appearances and smokey odours aside, they did a great job and were friendly and nice to each other.
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little changes, big differences
Monday, 7 July 2008
I love a before and after photo - and here is our most recent.. 
Nice huh. The glass splashback replaced the 80's tiles which were a bit um.. blah. Once again there was nothing really 'faulty' about them so I had to justify the change with the fact that a smooth splashback is required in commercial grade kitchens (i.e. no grout) - and the less risk I can carry food-safety wise, the better - otherwise I could have just replaced the tiles with new ones. You'll also notice I used a few clever strategies to enhance the before and after photos such as actually tidying up so that the benchtops were visible and cheating a bit by removing boring stuff like draining racks. clever huh. Oh also if you think the wall colour looks slightly different it's because it does - before I went to Canberra I repainted the lounge/dining/kitchen with a warmer sort of white which is a bit more suited to Tassie. Oh I forgot I also replaced the dodgy old rangehood with a new one - this was a bit of an installation job for me but ultimately satisfying!
In other news, we've had four days of slave labour in the form of Jon's sister Shirl and her partner Tim visiting from Sydney. This has been fantastic! The ingenious plan was for them to arrive a week after the deck extension was finished and to then help us do the wire cabling around the extended balcony (as they are experienced in the gentle art of balustrading). The reality was that the deck extension is still merely a divot in our bank account as opposed to a tangible item. Not to worry - they demonstrated and photographed the process for Jon, then busied themselves installing insulation and undertaking the marathon painting challenge of the garage room. I'd have before and after photos but it's still a bit messy - the walls look great though and they've saved me months of toiling on my own in there. yay!
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