Growing Food

I've always dreamt of growing my own food. As a child, for 9 months of the year, squashed in a small inner city European apartment, I dreamt of the 3 blissful summer months my brother and I'd spend with our grandparents. They had a small house and a small orchard on the outskirts of a different city 700km away. Whilst most of my friends went to the coast for 2 or 3 weeks then wandered around the quiet and hot city during those summers, my brother and I enjoyed playing in the shade of a huge walnut tree in our grandparents garden, or picking cherries in the orchard, or feeding chickens and ducks, or braiding garlic in the shed with granddad, or helping make jam and preserves with the women or learning to drive a tractor. My granddad was an agriculture lecturer and even then he taught about compost, permaculture and natural pest control. He used to say that "if a bug likes it, it is good for you". Luckily, we loved our fruit and veggies and the nan would often get angry with granddad because we'd fill up on peaches, apricots, cucumbers and tomatoes whilst helping around, so at lunch time we'd hardly touch any food on our plates.

patch of dirt waiting for our veggie garden beds

So when we bought our house, it was really the backyard that sold it to us. We saw the potential to grow our own food, and whilst it took a bit of time to get to that stage, come spring, we'll be planting our first veggies. On Bella's first birthday we planted citrus trees (lemons, mandarines, oranges), then a mango tree and pomegranate bush and grape vine. This year we had our first 'crop' of mangoes - if two giant fruits can be called a crop! The taste was amazing! The citrus fruit is lovely and tangy, just the way it's meant to taste (Bella's friend recently declared that our mandarines are "the tastiest in the world") and the pomegranates were bursting with flavour.

Mango happy

I can't wait to start planting the veggies - I've bought packets of organic seeds and am already reading up on permaculture, organic pest control and companion planting. And, of course, no veggie garden is complete without a few chickens, so Bella and her dad are already planning on building a 'cluckingham palace' for them.
Happy Friday xxx

$10 beauty

Ain't she a beauty? We picked up this piece of furniture from a local church garage sale for a $10. It had some kiddie stickers on it, coffee and water rings and the legs were split in a few spots. With some metho, steel wool and 3 coats of danish oil, and she is a beauty once again.

We found a sticker on the inside saying it is "Greaves and Thomas" piece, which seems to be an equivalent to Australian Parker furniture. We also found an exact same piece on the internet, c 1965, (it seems that ours has had the legs shortened) in the UK on sale for a mere $1500!!! 

A post that's long overdue

Hi all
Long, long time ago I promised to post pictures of our living room reno but somehow the pics don't truly convey how lovely the room is now.

 

Goodbye to the flaking paint, gray ceiling, ugly fan and fake ceiling speakers.


Hello to the lovely white walls, billowy curtains and a fireplace. And we only spent less than $1000, electrician being the most expensive. We replaced the old ceiling fan with the new Fanaway and I can't speak highly enough about this brilliant product. It is quiet and when not in use, the transparent blades fold away so it is only a light fitting. Brilliant!

The gas fireplace is now fully enclosed. We bought some new furniture and the bookcase we found fitted perfectly in the new space that we constantly get asked if we had it made to order. Unfortunately, my camera makes the furniture look yellowish. It is actually French oak with a grayish finish.

So, now I'm on the look out for some nice artwork, a coffee table, a couple of armchairs, a mirror for over the fireplace, cushions, etc.

Our Bella reckons that this is now the most beautiful room in the house and that her dad is the cleverest dad in the world. That's one of the reasons she wants to be in every shot.



trying some artwork


   

here she goes again



What do you think?

Maja xxx

The year ahead

If you remember, in my previous post I mentioned that on 1 January I wrote an uplifting post that was all about great things that I would do in 2011.

So I looked back at that goal-achieving post and this is what I had written then:

"This time of the year a famous quote by F.M. Knowles comes to mind. "He who breaks a resolution is a weakling. He who makes one is a fool." We've all been here, making promises to ourselves that definitely this year we will lose weight, or start going to the gym, stop smoking, cutting up the credit card, etc. And it never happens. So for a few years I made no plans, I let the things unravel on their own accord, but that doesn't seem to work for me either, as I feel I've been left with far too many loose ends and unfinished projects.

So 2011 is going to be the year of goals, commitment and discipline. I got this idea from Julie Isaac (she is a creativity coach) who says that

"Without commitment discipline is impossible,
With commitment, discipline is inevitable."

So this year I commit to doing this: 

  Home Renovations

1. Finish all projects from the 'unfinished projects' list before starting a new one.  Here are a few projects that are on this list: a pantry door (pantry is door-less since 2009), water fountain (a beautiful vessel waiting since last year), veggie garden (bare patch of land just hurts my eyes), install a clothes line (old and rusty Hills Hoist was removed in 2005!)
2. Renovate the laundry. Only after the 'unfinished projects' list gets ticked off.  

Writing

1. Write every day for half an hour. Just like exercise, no excuses. It will be in the evenings after Bella's in bed and hubby is happily nestled in front of the TV. I think this is achievable and may suppress this crazy urge linked to goal number 2.
2. Gather all loose bits of my novel. I write a lot but I write everywhere (whilst commuting to work, shopping, etc) and on anything (backs of old envelopes, my work computer, my laptop, post-it-notes, notebooks). I get an idea and have to write it down right there and then, but later have no idea what had happened to that. So this year I will gather all that and transcribe it all into my laptop. 
3. Join a writing group
4. Start a new blog about books and writing. (Stop press: new blog is up an running, see here).

Home life (family. me)

1. Organise a family holiday. This doesn't come easy to us. We tend to sacrifice our holidays for home projects. In 2009 we decided to install photovoltaic panels (aka solar panels), in 2010 I had to dash back to see my family (yes they are in Europe, but that certainly wasn't a holiday). So as we speak I'm making plans for a holiday in Sydney and Gold Coast in September. This will be our first family holiday since Bella was born 5 years ago!
2. Complete my post-grad studies. I only have one unit to go, and I've been postponing it, rescheduling, changing it around. Again, I sense the end and lose the interest. But I am committed to put this baby to rest in 2011.
3. Get Bella through her first year of full time school. This is mostly about getting her earlier to bed. She's stopped having daytime naps and that has helped.
4. Organise the study. This room has been a dumping ground during our renovations, but very slowly this room is once again starting to resemble a study that it once was. A few days ago I culled a lot of paperwork (old bills, bank statements, even my payslips from 1998!) and the room (and I)already feels better organised. 

There. I apologise for the long post. I will leave you with a sneak peak of our living room reno. I will do a separate post once it is all done. 

Maja xxx



before



during (hubby did it all himself)

Renovations update

How time flies! I mentioned quite a few weeks ago that we were about to tackle the living room renovations, and we are only a couple of weeks from Christmas so it is race against the time to have it finished.

Here are some before pictures:

It is a nice, large room with the high ceiling, but it had a lot of problems. There was a raising damp on one of the walls (see the corner there), outdated fittings and lots of holes above the windows. I sometimes think that the previous owner perhaps used a machine gun to make holes for the curtain rods :).

So far, the windows are white, holes are filled in, the old ceiling fan is gone and the fireplace looks awesome. The floor tiles have to remain for a while even though I hate them with passion.



Bella lends a hand!



I think this space was rather hip in the '70s when the house was built. It had ceiling mounted speakers, a bar in the corner, a funky shaggy carpet and the saloon doors and all in the super hip orange, yellow and mission brown. Groovy baby!

We've decided on a more up to date look with the enclosed gas fireplace, nice billowy curtains, and the walls in Dulux Antique White USA. I'm also thinking wheat, chocolate and charcoal with hints of red and aqua. Here are some inspirational images (sorry, I don't know the source for some of them).

unknown source

Pottery Barn ?

Pottery Barn

unknown

unknown



Vicente Wolf



Keep well

Maja

Out of blogging hibernation

I can’t believe that it’s been this long since my last post. I guess it had to happen – I was simply doing too much and I thought that what was happening at the time wouldn’t be of huge interest to anyone. In short, here is what happened since:

August – my job changed which meant a bit more interstate travel. There were two trips to Adelaide and I’ll be travelling to Darwin in early November. August was also spent thinking about Bella’s 5th birthday party, what to do, where to do it, etc.
September – Bella’s birthday party was a lot of fun, with fairies and pirates running a muck. A big party hit were the edible fairly wands - grissini sticks, white chocolate and coloured sugar and 100s & 1000s (below are the pics of Bella & I making them). Just about every weekend in September was spent taking Bella to birthday parties! I can't believe how many of her friends were born in September. We were also making plans for the renovation of our “grotto” aka the living room, possibly the ugliest room in the house. I’ll do a separate post about that one. Whenever there wasn’t a birthday party to go to, I spent time in the garden as the weeds were slowly turning into a forest!

October – we finally attacked the grotto. We are back living like nomads in our own house, the kitchen/dining area now housing our sofa, TV, large bookcase, and the study once again becoming a dumping ground for everything else.


So there, just in an unlikely case that anyone wondered what’d happened.

Keep well.
Maja xx

Kitchen reno

One of the main projects we've so far undertaken was kitchen renovation. This was something I was desperate to do as the original kitchen was nasty. It was smelly and greasy and had serious lack of adequate storage space. Not that I really stored anything in the cupboards anyway, things lived in boxes for quite a while. The first thing that went was an old exhaust fan and it was discusting (oh-my-God)!. It's a shame I didn't take a picture of it because it looked like something from an episode of CSI!

Before....

After...

We got a few quotes but they were all above our total budget of $10,000 (and this was meant to include new appliances) so we decided to tackle the job ourselves using the flatpack kitchen from our local hardware store.

The old kitchen decided it wasn't going to go away without a fight. The old wall tiles were stuck to the wall with cement or concrete or whatever it was, it was pulling big chunks of plaster off the wall so we had to do a lot of repair and that slowed the process somewhat.

During (even Bella decided to land a hand)...

As we were doing most of the work ourselves (apart from plumbing and electrical), we could afford better quality kitchen tops and we opted for granite. I wanted a glass splashback, but again the cost was prohibitive and instead we discovered these awesome Spanish tiles that look like glass and finished the rest with handmade Turkish stone mosaics.

We are thrilled with the final result. The new layout makes cooking a breeze and we use the central island for meals very often.

xoxo Maja

Almost French

My windows, that is. One thing I loved about our house when I first saw it was that all the joinery was made of hardwood (jarrah), hidden below the layer of mission brown enamel. Right at that moment I saw the potential - French windows!

They were very painful to restore as they had been neglected for over 30 years so they needed a lot of TLC. Some window panes were warped and the putty was missing in quite a few places. Paint caused some hassle. We used shiny white enamel on the inside but DH decided to go with a water based high gloss externally. Let's just say that we quickly returned to the trusted enamel :).

There are still a few to go (there are only so many weekends in a year), but already the neighbours have commented how pretty the 'new' old windows look. 

What do you think?

xoxo Maja

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog! Today has been an interesting day with two firsts for me - my first blog post and my first ebay purchase. I know, I know! What was I thinking?
But here I am, wanting to share with you my trials and tribulations as we try to convert a small 1970s house into a pretty, functional and above all sustainable home.
Oh, and as for my ebay purchase, it's a pretty dressing table stool in a desperate need of some TLC that I hope to present to you on Friday.
Have a great week!