We haven't had a BBQ for three years. Not at home anyway. We have one at the hangar. But that's a ways to go for a burger. We finally gave in and bought a new one. One that would fit on our deck and leave room for a table and a chair or two. And lets face it, it just looks cute!
So far we've grilled up steaks, burgers, kebabs, and tonight was tandoori chicken.
Next up? Pulled pork. But we need to be home for 8 hours for that,so it might be a while.
Kelli posted a while back about organising her stamping stuff, knitting supplies and fabric. Seems we were thinking along the same lines.
I posted before, and I should have just bought those boxes. Instead hubby and I made it into a much bigger project. Once all my boxes are organised, they'll need somewhere to go. Hubby's tired of finding crafting stuff in the dining room and living room. So he's making me a craft room!
We have a long skinny garage, which we only keep one car in, so half the garage is empty. We should use the space, right? So up goes a wall.
and all that stuff in boxes?
It's now where the truck normally lives. The truck is on the street. The drywall is up, the mudding is done, it needs to be sanded and then painted. Maybe next month.
Remember when I said I'd made placemats and napkins but had no dining room table? Well now we do. We were shopping at IKEA for bedding. We needed a fitted sheet and quilt cover for the guest bed cause hubby's parents were staying the night. Well we bought a fitted sheet.
And a dining table! The Bjursta table in oak. (the video in the link is the bjursta table).
It has two extra leaves so it can be extended once, or twice. So now we have more dining table than we will ever need. Without the extensions it will seat 6 comfortably. Well it would if we had dining chairs.
I like these. From left to right. Eames Molded side chair (in green not red), cb2 diego, Crate and Barrel Folio, West Elm Overlapping Squares, West Elm Cut Out Cirles, IKEA Hallstra.
Hubby doesn't like any of the above. He likes a more plain design. We have narrowed it down to the following. All from IKEA. One day I will have a piece of furniture in our house that is not IKEA. From left to right. Borje, Henriksdal, or Roger. We have bought one of the Roger to see how we like that. (actually we have since returned it - it was all stratched and pieces were missing)
You can see in the photos - our floor is cherry laminate, the walls are blue, the shelves are birch and the table is oak. I know, that's three different woods, and we probably breaking all sorts of design rules....get over it. Our kitchen is oak and the furniture in the living room is birch, so we say it all goes together.
Over the years I have called many places home. At it's most basic, home is where I can take my shoes off, have a cup of tea, read in the bathroom and nap.
My first home is the house my parents still live in. I have not lived there since I moved to Tokyo in August 1990. But God help them if they ever sell it. It's where I grew up. It's where many of my first memories are. It's still where I feel most comfortable. It's the first place I want to go when I feel sick. And yep, at 37 I still get homesick. For a house I have't lived in, in 17 years.
The house was built for them. No one has ever lived in in but us. Two story and real red brick. Not a brick facade. In the backyard there was a swing set (that my dad built), a treehouse (that dad built), a trampoline, a basketball hoop (that dad built), a builtin brick BBQ (that was eventually removed, now it's a regular propane BBQ), a clothesline and a real pine tree that was huge, and Dad put christmas lights on it every year. Our backyard opened on to bushland, and we would get wallabies, possums and snakes. And every summer a bushfire. Now the bushland is disappearing as suburbia encroaches.
Downstairs is the garage, that was long ago renovated to become Dad's office, the laundry, which Kelly used briefly as a dark room, and "under the house" - the all purpose name given to what is literally under the house and it's where everything that is not being used gets stored. Somethings have disappeared under the house, never to be seen again.
Upstairs in the loungeroom, dining room and kitchen. The kitchen has a gas oven, stove top and grill. And a kettle that gets boiled on the stove - not an electric kettle. Dad redid the kitchen when I was highschool, in blackwood. Which it turns out he is allergic to the oils or something. He ended up in a oxygen tent.
There are three bedrooms - one for mum and dad, one for me and one for Shaun. And there is one bathroom. None of the bedrooms have ensuites. Ensuites were not common when I was growing up. Most houses only had one bathroom. But. In most Aussie houses of the time the bathtub, sink and shower are normally in one room. And the actual toilet is in a small room on it's own. In our house the bathtub and sink are in one room, the shower in another, and the toilet in another.
I loved my bedroom, it was on the front corner of the house, I had two big windows so I could see when anyone pulled into our driveway. It had a built in wardrobe that took up one complete wall, and the other wall was all bookshelf that my dad put up for me. I had pale blue carpet, cream wall paper with blue flowers, and a brass four poster bed, that Santa brought me for Christmas when I was 8. It had a trundle bed under it that I could pull out when friends came to sleepover.
Other places I have called home:
The first place we owned was a 2 bedroom apartment. On the second floor, across the road from the pub and the church. And 5 minutes from the airport. We repainted every wall, the previous owners ahd favoured a dark raspberry with stencilling, we replaced the carpet, the lino and the counter tops. We loved it. We never intended to move. We bought our current place on a whim.
Dave was out flying one day in April, and noticed a construction site down near the river. We drove down to see what was happening and it was a new townhouse development. But we couldn’t find any info - floor plans, prices etc and we weren’t in the market for a new place, so we forgot about it.
Couple of weeks later a mate of Dave’s phoned him and said “you know those places you were talking about down by the river, well there are people camped out on the street in front of the show home.” We drove down to take a look and sure enough there were about 8 people/couples who had set up camp for the night - tents, chairs, eskies, etc. We laughed at them all and went home.
Next morning Dave and I go for coffee/tea at our local coffee shop and Dave mentions - we should go have a look at those new places. It’s 7.30am so we head down, the show home/sales office doesn’t open until noon, so we join the queue. We are now about #12 in the line up. We still don’t know the layout or the prices as the sales staff are not saying anything. Finally at noon they open, and they are only letting 3 potential buyers in at a time. Then they are waiting for those people to make a decision before they let in the next 3 people in line. It’s about 1.30pm before Dave and I get in.
We like what we see, but because of the demand the sales staff want you to sign on the dotted line and pay a deposit now. We don’t have $5000.00 with us, or so I thought….Dave bought the cheque book just in case. So after a couple of phone calls to his parents, and then our real etate agent Ken Ambrose, we signed the dotted line! That was Saturday April 23rd 2005.
Sunday we started cleaning our apartment - scrubbing floors, washing walls, vaccuming etc etc. Sunday night, Ken and Jane came over so we could sign the listing contract, and they made some suggestions. Monday and Tuesday we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, and packed up “stuff”. The apartment had never looked so good. Ken listed it on Wednesday and by Friday it had sold! And we had to be out by June 30th. We didn’t get the keys to the new place until July 11th, so what did we do in the mean time? We stayed with Paul, Erin, Mackenzie and Ailis. Thank you.
We took posession on July 11th and spent a few days painting and making some minor changes -again with the help of Paul and Erin. We are not fans of the builders beige paint that the developer used.
We are second from the left - the first brick one.
Our barcode wall in our bedroom. Hubby built the bed - it has 4 drawers for storage under it. We need a headboard and bedside tables, but can't find any we like.
Our "keylime" green kitchen. I love it. We added the island - Dave found it in the As Is section at Ikea. It had a grey laminate top. Dave found the slab of butchers block also in the As Is section and changed to tops, he also added the breakfast bar extension.
Our dining room. You can see we have the important stuff like a full wine rack. But no dining table or chairs. We can't decide on any.
The living room. The picture used to hang on the wall above the fireplace. Dave gave me the flat screen TV for my birthday back in May, and as of today, the picture is still mounted on the floor.
If you are bored, you can see a lot more photos at flickr.
Yet I have quite the collection of cook books and recipes. And the recipes are the bane of my organised kitchen.
This is the shelf in the kitchen that holds my recipe books. It's relatively organised. The white boxes hold Magazines, Australian Women's Weekly and some smaller cook books. The larger books are inbetween. The blue folder you see - that's the unorganised part.
It looks so innocent.
Until you open it up.
Then it just explodes everywhere.
I have to find a better way to organise it all. Right now, it's too much hassle to find anything, so these recipes never get used. In that binder are
The magazine pages and the printed pages all fit in plastic sheets.
But what about the cards, the food packaging, the smaller sheets. I don't want to type them up, I like the randomness of them. I don't want to use a box, as I would like to keep them all together in one place.
What I need to find are plastic sheets that fit a 8 1/2 x 11 binder but hold different sizes. I 've seen plastic pages for photos (they hold 4 photos that are 4x6). They'd work for the cards etc but they are bigger than the binder.
Oh, so that's an easy fix, buy a new binder.
Not so easy. I don't like a lot of the prepacked recipe binders. And I want something a little nicer than the current boring office binder that I'm using now. I'm fussy, I know.
I like the look of these from Russell and Hazel
But at $110.00 USD they are just a little out of my budget. And everything would have to be written on to their pages and cards. Too much work.
I like this one too and at $34.95 USD it's in my budget, but they are not taking orders anymore. (so why have the website running still?)
How do you organise your assortment of recipes?
No the toilet doesn't flush twice. It has two different buttons, one for, er, how do I put this..liquid/solid #1/#2 or blatantly pee/poop. pee = half flush. poop = full flush. It uses 0.8 and 1.6 gallons of water, depending on the flush. This half flush and full flush technology can reduce water usage by up to 67% compared with the traditional toilet that uses 2.9 gallons in a single flush.
Photo courtesy of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia.
Common at home, but I don't think I've seen one, here in North America. I didn't realise until now, but it's actually an Australian innovation. You can read more here. And a dual flush toilet is compulsory in all new built homes at home. Every little bit helps when it's the driest continent and in the middle of a drought.
Right now, we can't justify spending money on two new toilets, but when the one's we have die, or we win lotto, we will replace them with dual flushing toilets. But I thought I'd post about them during Kelli's Green Week. Education is part of helping mother earth.
Our clothes that is. Growning up in Australia, our clothes very rarely went in the dryer. We always hung them on on the clothesline in the back yard. Everything went on the line - underwear, clothes, sheets, towels, you name it. It's better for the clothes, they last longer. And it uses less electricity and energy. Well, more of my energy, but that's not we're talking about.
Photo from Hills Hoist This is very similar to the one that is in my parents back yard. It's a permanent fixture.
When I first moved to Canada everything went in the dryer. But I prefer air dried clothes. So hubby built me a drying rack. We don't have a backyard, so it had to fit indoors, and fold out of the way when not in use. Now most stuff is air dried.
I have a fridge that dispenses water out of the door. So why are we spending so much money on bottled water? Especially when the bottles then have to be disposed of. Yes, they get recycled but they still have to be dealt with. And we own about 1/2 a dozen nalgene bottles of various shapes and sizes so why don't we use those? We do now.
We do still have a couple of flats of water. One in the boot of my car, one in the garage and one at the hanger. They are for emergencies, flooding, earthquake type emergencies, not "I'm thirsty."
Now I fill my water bottle several times a day. Either from the fridge at home, or the tap at work. Yes, the tap!
And today I am the proud new owner of a SIGG water bottle. Remember this post? Well I couldn't find either of those bottles, but I did find the next best thing. Mickey Mouse.
And for those times when I stop into the coffee shop unplanned. I keep a coffee mug in my car. It get's cleaned and then goes back in the car.
Continuing with Kelli's Green Week.
A while back I switched to using Method products. They are a little more expensive than normal, but they also seem to be lasting longer than normal. Or maybe I just haven't done much in the way of housework recently. Please don't drop in for a surprise visit this week.
Method use formulas that contain only biodegradable ingredients, derived from natural ingredients - soy, coconut etc. Their packaging is made from recyclable materials, and they don't test on animals.
I've also stopped using sheets and sheets of paper towel when I clean. I bought some cleaning cloths. And rather than chuck out paper towel, I wash the cloths. I colour coded them - grey is for stainless steel, cream for the bathroom and dark red for everything else. I love the smell of the pink grapefruit.
My empty paper towel holder.
Don't get me wrong, we are far from completely eco friendly. We still use paper towel, we just don't have any right now, and we don't go through anywhere near as much as used to.
Another company that makes environmently friendly products is Seventh Generation. There products don't seem to be available any where locally though, and Method is at my local supermarket, so Method it is.
We have spent two days scrubbing our deck. All the rain over the winter caused lots of slimy green build up. It was not attractive. And now the weather is nice again, we will dining on the deck more often, and you'll find me in my comfy chair, reading.
(That's not my deck, it is my chair)
However, the nice clean deck leads of the lounge room. And now the lounge room looks messy, so I spent today cleaning it. Not just surface cleaning but cleaning. The couches were moved to sweep and mop underneath, the rug was moved to sweep and mop underneath, the underneath of the rug was vaccummed etc etc.
(I guess I should put the vaccum cleaner away.)
So now I have a clean deck and a clean living room. But all the junk from the living room had to go somewhere. Where? The dining room! The dining room doesn't have a table, so there is lots of room for junk to accumulate. And here's the keeping it real part - you get to see it!
See all those garbage bags? 3 weeks worth of garbage. The garbage man comes on Fridays. We never remember to put it out on Thursday night. And he is getting earlier and earlier, we always seem to wake up after he has been and gone. So the garbage is building up. If we don't get it out this week, hubby wil have to make a trip to the tip.
The TV in the middle of the floor? Our old TV. Hubby gave us the flat screen for my birthday. The old one works perfectly well, so we can't through it out. So until we decide what to do with it, it lives on the dining room floor.
Mmmm, looking at the 2nd to last photo, the kitchen needs cleaning as well. Like how I use the bar stool as storage for my bags?
