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!

pottery - GLAZED!

Last week when I glazed some of my stuff, Sandrine, our teacher, said that it wouldn't be ready this week as there wasn't enough to fill the kiln yet. But she tricked us! And when we got there yesterday everything that we'd glazed was all ready and finished!
It was so lovely to have some things to take home.

Some of them I'm delighted with. Others I do love and am proud of, but they're perhaps a bit dark. This has made me come to the realisation that I am a lover of paler colours ( except perhaps that sort of natural brown you see on a lot of pottery - I like that!)

So I've put in an order for more of the cream glaze and also some pale blue. I'll do the small pots I made on the wheel in paler colours. That'll be a wee bit away as they're not 'kilned' yet.

Anyway here's what I've got so far.

This is the wee owl soap dish. I LOVE this. I especially love that the glaze did something it wasn't supposed to - it makes it look all shabby chic!

The pinch pot - first thing I ever made - Lloyd can put chilli sauce in it.

Now, the large platter and what I call the "ugly bowl". I like these, and would really like to make another platter, however I think the glaze is too dark for my taste. I do think it's a lovely glaze, but just not as lovely as the paler ones. I forgot to take a photo of the spoons, but they are in the same dark, midnight blue glaze.

 

 Now this was a total surprise to me! I made this with a wee blob of clay, last thing, on the first night, and I love it! I think these would make lovely presents if you made them in, say, three different sizes.

Anyway, suffice to say I am having a blast doing all this. There's just a small group of four of us. Simon and Alison ( who helped make my greenhouse) and another lady called Chris. We've formed a really lovely wee group and I think we all look forward to our Wednesday evenings.

Right onto something totally different!!

At the weekend Lloyd and I were invited to a friends birthday party. It was fancy dress and the theme was "Out of Africa"

This is how Lloyd and I interpreted it!

Yes, we went as Barbar and Cheetah!!

  Oh yes, I really got into the 'swing' of things!

And what an amazing spread. There were a lot of divers and spearfishers so this was very apt!

I contributed a lot of these! I had brilliant fun making them. And they disappeared really fast, so I think they were enjoyed.

I've been faffing around with clay!

I went to a class on Saturday morning and I loved it. I was 2 hours and in that time I made a wee pot, a couple of spoons(!), a small Koru ornament, a cute soap dish and a huge serving platter. Next Tuesday I go back and hopefully they'll have been fired and I can get on with the glaze. I'm really really excited about it all!
The studio has a wheel as well and I might be brave enough to give that a go!
No photos of anything, but it did inspire me to get the polymer clay out yesterday and make some little hearts and stars. I think I might make a pendant out of one of them and perhaps a hanging something out of the rest!

I think they're really pretty.

I did the same as I did when I made the garden markers - here

I think they're really pretty! The only thing I forgot to do was put a second hole at the bottom of the ones I thought I would make a hanging chain out of - doh! Luckily I have a wee dremel drill so I can put some in.

Now, tomorrow is Waitangi Day in NZ. So Lloyd and I are getting up at around 4am to head over to Waitangi for the dawn service. Then we should see the Wakas coming in. I hope the weather is a bit better...

My Treat!

It arrived about 2 minutes ago - our lovely Rural Delivery postie came right up the drive with it.

It makes my day when it arrives... sad but true!

What could cause this joy you may ask?

Yippee!

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

Rain, rain, rain

Over it now! It's been raining for days and going by the weather forecast we've more days still to come. It was incredibly dry up here so we needed some rain desperately, but that's enough now.

My main work is outside in the garden and the farm. It's so miserable that I just don't want to go out in the torrential rain and weed... or cut the grass! However, if it keeps up for much longer I'll just have to. And it's making a right mess of my roses, which is just not on!

Also, sadly, this morning one of my chickens, Gertrude, died. She'd had a virus for 5 days and I had put her in a nice warm house on her own and had been giving her probiotic yoghurt to try to fight the bug but, I think yesterday, I really knew she was getting no better, so if I'm being honest I wasn't surprised that this morning she had died. I was sad though. I kept thinking, should we have put her out of her misery a couple of days ago ( when I say 'we' I mean poor Lloyd) but then I kept thinking what if she gets better. Anyway, she'll be buried in the orchard.

On a happier note, Mavis and her babies are all doing so well. From what I can tell there only appear to be 2 boys out of the 8 - if so this is great!
 And! this morning Mavis laid an egg. Back to laying already - what a good girl.

One good thing about this terrible weather, it actually does make it feel like a Scottish Christmas! Pelting rain and a howling gale ( ok it's not actually windy at all) we just need it to turn to snow and get rid of some of the humidity and it would be perfection. To get into the spirit of the whole thing we put up the Christmas tree. I love our tree. I have the same lovely glass decorations I bought about 20 odd years ago, it's a lovely feeling unpacking them every year.
Lloyd and Lulah both helped - if you look closely you'll see Lulah has her teddy in her mouth, she obviously thinks it would make a better fairy.

New Shoes...pppfft!

An obscure quote from "Twin Peaks" might alert you to the fact that this is not Laura, but her partner in decidedly non-criminal behaviour, Lloyd. I have hi-jacked her 'blog to write a thank-you note:

You may remember a while ago the lovely people at Natureshop let Laura try out a pair of Simple Shoes, well they're back, and this time asked if I would like to try out some Merrell shoes, naturally, I didn't want to disappoint them. I'm such an agreeable person like that.

So here are the shoes I chose. They're very "technical" which is another way of saying that  I have no idea what they're made of. But they weigh about half of a sparrow's fart, and are as comfy as all get out. They breathe (well, not literally), and have hardy Vibram soles, a factor that has influenced my shoe-choosing since I was about 7. Actually, I was doubly delighted that I'm their new owner, firstly because they are a very practical pair of shoes, and also because (and I know it's a long way off yet) I'm going to do a half-marathon next year. If I write that in lovely Laura's 'blog, then it HAS to happen, and I reckoned that a half marathon was a good distance for someone who hates exercise. (After all, if the first Marathon runner, Phidippides, died after he completed the 26 miles, hopefully, I'll only be half-dead)

But back to the shoes: They appear to be really well-made, they are very comfortable, and need no breaking-in. They even look quite smart with a pair of jeans! I couldn't be happier! Thank you NatureShop  - www.natureshop.com!

For all you people who might want to know more here's a direct link to where you can buy the shoes from  http://www.natureshop.co.nz/merrell for New Zealanders and http://www.natureshop.com/au/merrell for those if you in Australia!


In other news, and she wasn't going to mention it, because she is a humble person, not given to boasting, I'm very proud of Laura who swam in last Sunday's State's Ocean swim series competition. Whilst Laura is a very good, and very keen swimmer, who can comfortably swim for miles in a pool, she really dislikes swimming in choppy seas, and on Sunday the weather was awful, the currents strong, and she completed the 300m swim in 5min 40sec which is FAST! So well done Laura, my wonderful, and swimmy wife!

Calla Lillies

Grow like a weed! In fact when we first bought this place we had no experience at all with farming so we rented the land to a grazier. When he saw some calla lillies growing in a couple of the paddocks he said he wanted to spray them all. ( I never found out his reason,  if they're poisonous the cows don't eat them, so they wouldn't get ill and they don't seem to spread ~ the lillies, not the cows.)

We told the grazier that for starters we don't spray anything and secondly I love them! I could just hear him thinking "Blooming Townies!" He never really got me!

Coming from the northern hemisphere and having never had a garden where I could grow things, I used to buy these. And they were expensive! When I was over visiting mum and dad in April we went to a garden centre and I saw a plant for sale, it was about quarter the size of the ones that grow in the paddocks and it was 30 pounds!! 

 At this time of year and for a good few months, they grow beautifully, I pick them for the house and they look stunning.

Bathroom update - waterproofer is here today, bathroom is now a lovely shade of turquoise blue ~ who knew waterproofing was so pretty! Tiler is coming tomorrow - he needs a couple of days... electrician here tomorrow, and builder is doing stuff with the sink.... we're getting there...

Moonlight

The chickens were just roosting and making a bit of a noise, as they do every night. I thought it would be fun to see if I could get a photograph of them all up the tree as it's so funny to see - however I misjudged quite how dark it had got so when I wandered into the chicken run, camera in hand, I fell into one of their dust baths - which sadly for me, is not very dusty at the moment but has more of a wet mud thing going on. I splattered all over the ground covering myself nicely in chicken poop and earth! I saved the camera, though. *subdued Whoo hoo*

After all that it was too dark to get any photos of them, anyway, so I took the moon, which is stunning tonight, and the lights on our outside deck - cos they look pretty!

Didn't want to get covered in poop for nothing!

Made in New Zealand

Love this!

It's winter now

After the last couple of days it sort of feels like it. Not that it's been cold, it's actually been warm, but it's been horrible and wet and hugely windy.

Today, however, has dawned warm, sunny and blue skied.

We're going to the Sunday Farmers' Market in town to stock up on some lovely things.

I managed to gather up these leaves before they all blew away. They're from one of our Japanese maples - beautiful wee trees. One of our helpxers last year was a bit of a dab hand at tree pruning and he did this one for us and it now looks amazing, it's beautifully shaped.

Someone's dressed the palm trees.

Ok, not quite, but in our small town there is a fibre art exhibition and basically the palm trees are all dressed in lovely fabrics and knits. They look nice and cosy.

I'd seen that some of the trees were dressed a couple of days ago as I was driving through and I thought it might be some guerilla knitting. But I stopped today and walked the length of the mainstreet to get some photos and realised that this was an organised art exhibition. It's amazing isn't it.

 The lovely lady in this photo had just put up her own exhibit and was now walking round admiring the others, she was giving this one a cuddle.

It was so cute, little children were admiring the flowers and all the things hanging from trees. Our wee town is lovely at the best of times, but it's looking super pretty just now.

It's the little things...

I've been procrastinating about the veggie garden for about 2 weeks. I knew I needed to get in there and clear it and do a lot of weeding, but just kept putting it off and putting it off. I'd built it up into this huge thing but as is often the case, when I actually get down to it, it's not huge and it's even rather enjoyable.

I did think I needed something nice to spur me on, though, and then I had it. My lovely mother-in-law, Penny ( I would say that even if she didn't read this!) gives the best presents, and I had a beautiful new pair of gardening gloves that she'd given me, hiding in a cupboard. I'd put them there so that I'd use my old ones up first and I pretty much have, so today was the day. ( ok, if I'm being totally honest,  I haven't completely used up my old ones, but I really wanted to wear the new ones)

 This is what they looked like four hours ago. Aren't they lovely? Aren't they clean?

Four hours, a huge amount of clearing and a lot of weeding, later. Slightly less clean, but looking great non the less.

And I must admit I feel really good for having done it.

Tomorrow I shall plant garlic.