New Drawers, anyone?

I used to have a dressing table in my bedroom. In fact I wrote about it here. 
It really was lovely, but... it had no room to put a chair at to sit down in front of it. And if I'm honest, I never actually do anything in front of the mirror long enough that I actually need to sit.  So I used to stand and sort of bend over and hunch a bit! Or I just knelt on the floor in front of it. It wasn't actually super practical.
So after a lot of thought, I decided to sell the dressing table ( which I managed to do in one morning!) and get a chest of drawers and just put a small mirror on it.
So, my "Derby Wife" - Desi, who just lives round the corner, had a small chest of drawers she was selling and it was perfect.

The day before yesterday I set to work with my trusty belt sander and got all the dark varnish off.

 None of us were sure what the wood was going to be, but now that the varnish is off we're pretty sure it's rimu. Which is lovely.

This is after the first sanding with fairly rough sandpaper, but it needs to be to get old varnish off. 

And after a couple more sands, with finer and finer paper. By this time it was very smooth.

So, time for painting! The other chest of drawers in the bedroom is done with a very thin whitewash, which was actually a stained wood varnish, that I did when we lived in Scotland. With this one I thought just a thin paint whitewash would do the trick. Unfortunately you can see down the left side that my first wash wasn't as thin as I wanted it to be!! So I got a jug of water and put in about 20ml of paint!! It was the consistency of milk and looked like it too. But it worked just like I wanted it to.
After the paint was dry I waxed it with some of my very precious orange wax. Precious because it's no longer made ( or allowed in NZ!) Which ever one it is, it's impossible to get now.

The most difficult part was the flipping handles! I took the handles off the dressing table to put on, but one set was simply impossible! The other 2 needed different sized holes drilled.  This was no problem, I went and got the electric drill and set to work. BUT! every time I drilled a hole the whole house fused! Twelve holes needed drillled and twelve times the house fused so I had to go and flick the switch each time. Man!!! What a palaver! Various bolts didn't fit and I also had to do a trip into town to find 3 more sets of handles. It probably took longer to fix the handles on than it took to sand the whole thing and paint it.

 You can see that the handles don't all match. That's ok. I actually like that!
Once it was finished I had to empty my clothes out of the dressing table drawers and organise them into the new ones. That was very therapeutic!

I love them!

Painting bedrooms!

Since we moved here, 8 years ago, I've painted the house. A lot. Every new french door we've put in, every bit of fretwork round the verandah, every room in the house... the list is endless. I did repaint the bedroom when we moved in, but it was the last room to be done, and even though I loved it, Lloyd and I both knew there were patches that had never been done properly - and the ceilings never got done at all. Eight years on and it was looking very tired.
This is the colour it was - it's Karen Walker, Coastal Blue. It will always be one of my favourite paint colours.

 I couldn't find a full room photo, but this gives an idea of the colour before.

 These photos also don't show how flipping tired it was!

 Anyway,  we wanted a change AND really wanted the ceilings done. But I am so over painting! And getting a professional in wasn't an option financially! So, helpx to the rescue! We put on our Ad. that we wanted someone that could paint. Three young German boys replied. They arrived a few days ago and got to work. I have to say it was a fairly Mammoth job for them, and they worked SO hard. They ended up doing an amazing job. Lloyd and I both love it!! And best of all I didn't have to do it myself!

Here it is - our new, grown up, white bedroom. We used Resene Alabaster for everything ( If anyone's interested!)

The fifth Annual Curry Cup

Last year, Lloyd won the Curry Cup.  Which meant that this year we hosted and Lloyd couldn't enter. But I could :)
The day dawned lovely and sunny with a weather bomb, and we had thunder and lightning and some amazingly heavy downpours.
Thankfully we have the Woolshed which is such an amazing space, so we moved our big refectory table over and Danny & Paula brought over an outdoor table so that everyone could heat up their curries an wee camping stoves.

I made curried eggs a la 70's! But my secret weapon was crispy fried onions that I sprinkled on top. I was actually really pleased with it.

Lloyd made a Dahl - just because he couldn't enter doesn't mean he couldn't cook.

Here we are, all set up and just waiting for the various curries and folk to arrive.

OoOoo the curries are on, and heating up.

The actual entries, there was even more food though, poppadoms, dahls, roti breads, raita and the biggest bowl of rice ever seen! Number 7 won, number 2 second and the big one at the back was third. (Mine was number 4 and I was the only person to actually make the dish the curry was served in!)

Some of the delights included; a Burmese rendang, Butter Chicken, lamb curry, a couple of dahls, monkfish curry, a beef something or other, the curried eggs and even some curry ice cream!

It takes a while for 14 people to stack their plates high with curry!

Still queuing!

At last, all sitting and eating

After eating, eating and eating - some even went back for fourths -  the voting was done and counted. Lloyd was ready to announce the winners.... oh the suspense!

Danny was in third place, and deserves a special mention for his home made curry ice cream. It was absolutely amazing!

Nick and Sara were runners up, with the gorgeous monkfish curry - it was delicious and a personal favourite!

And Andrew had a well deserved win with a Burmese Beef Rendang.

Lloyd seemed even happier about this than Andrew!

It was a really brilliant day. Yet again the curries were all spectacular. It makes the voting really, really difficult. People were back round the curry table taking wee spoonfuls of individual curries, Masterchef judges have nothing on us!

Bring on next year! As Andrew has won a couple of times Nick and Sara offered to host. 

Oh and guess what? I was 4th! The top three all had a lot of votes so I was a fair way behind them, but 4th! I was well chuffed, I think it was the onions that did it!

Teeny, tiny

I was having a wee twitter chat to someone about tiny homes. I've mentioned in the past that we really do live in a teeny tiny house. I'm not sure if anyone realises just how tiny it is so I thought I'd post a wee video. The video shows the whole house - minus the bathroom and the larder! it was a wee bit messy as I just took it when Lloyd's new camera arrived! But it's not too bad. (quality is guff though as I made it a little file for easier downloading.)
So, does anyone have a smaller house than us??

Herb jars

Lloyd likes to store all the herbs is jars. Up until yesterday - what was in the jars - was written on the bottom in permanent marker. It was a bit of a pain, as I can't tell the difference between a lot of the herbs so had to pick all the jars up, and either smell them or look on the bottom. Yesterday, I chalk painted a panel on the front of each jar so that we could write the names on, but I also painted all the lids so that it's very clear what's in each jar without lifting them all to check.
It took ages for the paint to dry as it was very damp yesterday, and I'm incredibly impatient and want things done - NOW. But I had to leave them overnight.
This morning they are all dry so I wrote what was in them and put them all back in the larder.
A job well done!

The Chalk paint recipe - worked!

The recipe I posted for the chalk board paint worked a treat.
 Reminder of the recipe...

Chalk Paint recipe
So, pour one cup of your paint into a bowl.
Add 2 teaspoons of the non-sanded grout and mix really well making sure all the wee lumps are out.
And that's it! How simple is that?

Then I saw an idea to use this method to mix up a batch of chalkboard paint the same colour as - say - your kitchen doors, I thought I could do our larder door as I still have lots of the lovely blue paint left that I used to paint the kitchen doors a few months back. Then when you take something out of the larder you can write a list straight onto the door!

Couple of things to note
- I would add the powdered grout slowly, stirring a lot inbetween. It has a tendency to all of a sudden turn into actual grout - great if you've got a bathroom to do, not so great if you want to paint with it.
- Even stirring and stirring I was still left with tiny grainy bits when I painted the door. Not to worry though as a very, very light sand will get rid of them.

Now all we need to do is use things from the larder and I can make a list on the door of replacements!

I've also painted all the herbs and spice jars, and Lloyd's last batch of chilli sauce! There's no stopping me.

Happy Easter folks!

Lloyd and I always have one of these at Easter
Let's just call it tradition!

Got up bright and early, weather is lovely, fed the many, many animals. Still no new baby alpaca... then made breakfast for Lloyd and I.

Had to laugh when I looked at the table!
The Macs are our equivalent of the morning newspaper!

 

I think we'll head off to the Sunday Market in Kerikeri for a wee meander around. Usually we don't actually get that much shopping done, we just meet people, every step you take there's someone else you know. It's really lovely. 

We may have some more animals arriving today. Since we decided to just 'do' alpacas, the grass has somewhat got away from us. There's grass everywhere. You need to wade through hip high grass to get anywhere. I am on a local email group - I just get emails if anyone has an abundance of anything, or needs help with something - whatever really. Well a few weeks ago an email came in from someone looking for grazing. I called Richard and he came and had a look. We decided that rather than pay us for the grazing he could do some ( a lot!) of fence maintenance and clearing of weeds and general stuff in the paddocks. To say he's worked hard would be an understatement. It's an arrangement that really suits all of us. After a few weeks of getting it ready, he's now good to go! So either today or tomorrow some cows and a horse are arriving! 

I am very excited about the horse!

Hope everyone has a lovely Sunday, whatever you're up to.

New Chairs!

We've got 4 matching chairs!
We've never had 4 matching chairs. We've bought lots of various second hand chairs to replace the ones that first Brodie, then Lulah ate as puppies. It was the only thing they ever destroyed. They would lie down, resting their heads on the bars at the bottom of the chair, this would inevitably lead to them having a wee comfort chew, then a bigger chew, then next thing we knew the leg of the chair was killed!

Well, a few years on and they are grown up enough that they don't eat the chairs anymore so it was time to search out some 'new' ones.  They're only new to us, though, as I love old pre-loved furniture and usually I buy some and do it up myself, but remember My dressing table?  When I bought it I also got one chair. Michelle at J'adore Design had the other three in the set so we asked her if she could do them up for us so we had all 4. She did!  Two greenish and two blue. And I went to pick them up yesterday. So now they have a new home. Love them.
I wonder where they used to live?

The seal of approval from Pango

 

 

 

Just like to say hello to all the lovely new followers and a HUGE thank you to everyone who has voted for me in the Bloggies. xx

Re-painting the kitchen

A couple of years after we moved to Darroch Cottage, we put in a new kitchen. When we first put it in we loved it. The wood was nice and blonde and I think that because it was such an improvement on what was there before, we thought it was great.
Move forward  4 years and we like it...not so much!
The lovely blonde wood has gone orange - which is irritating as this was exactly what we said we didn't want. And the cream units seemed boring. For a couple of years we've been kicking ourselves that we weren't a bit braver with our colour choice.
So, today I finally plucked up the courage to re-paint it. I had to get some advice from the lovely man at Resene ( a paint shop in NZ) because the finish on it was like it had been painted then baked! It was sort of shiny! (ew!) Anyway, he thought that a paint type called lustacryl should work - and it did!
I had on a pale blue cardigan this morning that we both really liked the colour of so we matched the paint to it.

Before

 

This was the day it was put in, before the kick boards were fitted. It was also very bare!

Now it's a bit more cluttered, and we've had to replace the dishwasher that broke and was rubbish. We've also added some shelves for our coffee mugs and a wee egg cupboard for all the eggs  my lovely girls lay.

This makes it look a bit more purple ishy than it is in real life, the first pic is pretty realistic!

It feels like we have a new kitchen and we love it! It only took a couple of hours to do the whole thing and I only used about a third of the smallest pot of paint you can buy so it was incredibly inexpensive too. Why oh why did it take us so long to pluck up the courage to do this?!

The Woolshed

When we lived in Glasgow we lived in a big townhouse, so when we moved to New Zealand, to a very tiny cottage, we had an awful lot of furniture and stuff that we just couldn't fit into it! We didn't want to get rid of most of it, a lot of it had sentimental value so we stored it in the Woolshed that came with the property. The woolshed was completely watertight, but was home to rats, possums and about 3 gazillion spiders. It had HUGE potential, though, as it already had water and electricity.
Anyway over the last 6 years we've saved our pennies and finally had what we thought would be enough to sheet it out properly and paint it. Basically make it into something lovely where Lloyd could write, and friends and family could stay
(we have no spare room in our house!)

Before we started the outside looked like this.

By the time we'd finished it looked like this! (from the leaves on the trees you can tell more than one season passed!)

During the work it looked like this!

  and this was after we'd cleared it all out!

The holes in the floor are the chutes that the sheep would go down after they'd been shorn.  The floor in the sheep shearing area was made up of open slats. We couldn't afford to lay real floorboards here, so we covered this area in marine ply. It worked amazingly well.


A bit more cleared, and the big sliding door going in.

Insulation

It looks like an inside out tudor mansion!

Front coming off

Painting done

 

Bed made out of the old shearing gates

 The desk was also made out of the old shearing shed doors! Lloyd really wanted to recycle as much of the wood as possible. I think it worked amazingly. We also recycled a lot of the old doors - one went on my potting shed. We kept all the original wood in the ceiling - adding a bit more.

We had Lloyd's birthday party there to christen it - we cleared the furniture so there was space for a  large dance floor, with a chill out area to the side!

And finally! After 6 years of storage ( in a rat/possum infested woolshed) our furniture and paintings have a proper home. Lloyd has managed to unpack all his precious books and vinyl - he's even set up his old record player! We did have to re-cover the sofas as they had got very damp and somewhat covered in rat poop! But they were rescued. Oh and the huge tv? Free with flybys! Save those points people, you can get fabby 'presents'!

We didn't buy a single thing to furnish it with as we had everything already.
We think it's amazing!
And just goes to show good things come to those who wait...6 years in this case!

 

Note to self...

Do not leave dogs unattended when there are presents under the tree!

I'm fairly certain this was Brodie, it has him written all over it, that and one of the presents he'd opened was to me from him! Thankfully the only thing damaged was the paper so I have re wrapped them. Obviously the one to me is no longer a surprise but I'll work hard on my amnesia.


I am, however, incredibly pleased with this - new candelabra. About 2 years ago Lloyd and I came to the decision that we wouldn't put a fire in here. The regulations meant that we'd either have to remove the mantlepiece and part of the wall - or have the fire sticking way out. Neither appealed, so after 'thinking' about this for eons, we decided to just sheet out the fireplace in tongue and groove. Sitting in this space had been a piece of driftwood that we just sat candles on. (I've just realised that if you go to the previous post you can actually see the chunk of wood in one of the Christmas tree photos). Anyway, two days ago I saw this in a shop - and after thinking about it, almost constantly, I went and bought it today. I love it!

 

Anyone else treated themselves to something recently?