Rose Cottage gets a Kitchen ...

Good morning, I am posting from Dear Husbands work computer, no, still got problems on the home computer. But could not wait to show off my new secondhand kitchen to you so I just had to get to work. But first could I offer you a cup of tea from my lovely old teapot, I brew some tea specially for your visit ... So here we go

Just love the colour of the cupboards and bench top, got plenty of work space.

To the bottom right of this pic, is where a dishwasher should fit, only I don't plan on having one so a cupboard will go in it instead. Packing space is far more important to me. And then just right of that is where the gas fridge fits.

As you can see the walls are far from ready at this stage, the window has to be moved up to the green post. Remember this room was an open deck before we started to convert it to a kitchen. Decking boards had to be replaced and solid wood floors put in their place. The cost of this beautiful kitchen was just $500 and the recycled wood floor was $75. (with still enough flooring left for another room) Now for some other news, sewing classes went rather well last week or should I say baking class as we made banana muffins from scratch, then had them with our afternoon tea. We sat around with yarn and crochet needles, learning to crochet, some got it some really struggled. One of the young ladies is just 4 months pregnant so that is wonderful to incorpate a few items for her layout. Friday I had another group of ladies, who have been coming to classes for a while now. Yesterday's class was a real supprise when 5 new young moms joined us for their first lesson,they got to make draw string bags. Lets hope they will stay. Our project was square machine quilted pot holders this week. Well I better get off here so Dear George can get some work done. Thanks for popping in and have a lovely day Rina

Problems problems ...

Sorry for the lack of posts but due to computer problems at home, I think it's about to crash on me, being no so clever when it comes to theis sort of stuff ... Hmmm not happy!! Mark my friend will need to come for dinner and then have a look what is really going on. Blogger keeps telling me I need Google Chrome cause it's not sup[porting Blogger anymore. And then some virus thing keeps coming up ... and the memory is full, who knows ... Until all this gets sorted, please bear with me ... Rina

Just south of Sydney ....

Another wet weekend here in Sydney, we had to drive down the coast to pick up and pay for a router my dear husband bought on Ebay. He had given the same model to Neal over Christmas, cause he believes in really good tools and knew Neal could not afford to spend that sort of money. And you guessed it that was not the only tools he was fortunate to take home with him, an 18 volt Dewalt codeless drill and my bandsaw, just as well he had now more space in his boot :)) Rain and cold chaced the swimmers away from this lovely beach today. Come holidays and I am sure there would not be much space to put your beach towel down. All along the coast beaches just like this one. I took a few pics of this rather nice looking man with his two dogs This fella and his mate must really love fishing in the rain. We headed for a hot cup of coffee at a nearby takeaway to warm up the old bones.

more pics ...

Hundreds of "Love locks" along this bridge, promises to be together forever ... A little History ... The rail line runs hourly to the South of Sydney, a beautiful trip through tall gum trees and passing through this tunnel on route. It was raining quite heavierly when I took these pics Blogger is giving me a hard time tonight, uploading pics wherever it likes grrrr...

News on the Home Front ...

Good morning, What a shocking miserable day here is Sydney,windy, cold and wet, don't like it much. Worked in the veggie patch pulling out weeds in the kale bed, the seeds I had planted a few weeks ago had come up nicely but so did the weeds. A few stray silverbeet also germinated. Rain chased me inside a few times, only The chooks did not seem to mind the weather to much, leaving their chook palace for a bit of free ranging but when they huddle in front of the back door, pooping on the mat I think it's time to round them up and get them heading back to their palace. (shocking pic sorry) This morning I loaded up 13 meat birds and took them off to the processing plant, leaving another 12 smaller birds for next week. Most of the 13 birds are sold, covering my feeding costs for this batch, leaving 12 birds as free food for my freezer. This does not cover love, attention and sometimes a bit of hardwork cleaning up after them. Decided to post about the sewing lessons in my other blog cause I will be making samples of each item for myself as well. And best of all I get to use up some of the scraps and left overs from other projects for the girls. At this stage I prefer to bring materials for them.But when we start with bigger projects they will need to bring their own.Just follow the link to read more ...

Recycle wool blankets ... Community Centre sewing

Do you remember sleeping under wool blankets before the days of Doonas/duvets, how cosy they used to be, Well I remember my Grandmother have a few really special blankets and I have always wanted to make a few like that. Everytime I visit an Opshop/Goodwill store that is where I head ... too the blankets. I found this lovely pale green wool blanket, not quite a single size but big enough to make my very first blanket for just $5. And then on the same rack a queen sized gingham doona cover for $8, just what I was looking for, and a whole box full of pale blue bais binding for $2 a roll This morning I layed out the donna cover, unpicked a seam or two, and the seam on the edge of the blanket and ironed the seam open/flat with the steam iron. Lay the blanket in between the material flattening it and pinning through the 3 layers. Neatly cutting the blanket to a good size knee blanket. Normally I would zig zag the edges but opted to sew the bais binding on at this point. Technically I should have machine quilted the piece first but I am hoping the safety pins will hold the 3 pieces together so I can hand quilt it. Now Grandma's blanket was made with scraps of material much like a patchwork. Beautiful shades of yellow, orange and browns, But I just opted for the easier method today. Tomorrow I start teaching sewing, crochet and baking to a lovely bunch of refugee ladies from somewhere near Nepal. 2 weeks sewing and 1 week baking, no I was not looking for a job, just happened to be with my neighbour who already works at the Community center. I am taking over her classes while she recovers from a hip replacement and then got roped in into taking these as well Only 3 hrs lessons but we have a language barrier to deal with. Tomoorw we start with draw string bags to keep their wool and needles in and a square pin cushion for their pins. very basic sewing.

Question ... ha ha ... prepping ... and more

Can anyone have too much toilet paper ... Well what ya think? I did a quick count and come up with close to 200 rolls. (Gosh that sounds like a lot hey) but if I had 9 people living at the farm going through +- a roll a day ... 6 months supply. Maybe I just get another pack of 48 from Costco next time ...

As for the fishing tackle box ... a few more sinkers are neaded. Should I think of getting a sinker mould and all the stuff to make sinkers. Have a fair amount of hooks and could always make some hooks the old way. Some very clever woodrunners have told me how, still got to try when I got a little spare time, promise. Above is a pic of our bridge where the boys always fish from with handline.

(got this pic of someones blog but can't for the love of me tell you who's, if it was yours please forgive me) Once again storage is important so much so that I have got Dear George to bring home his triton table saw and some tools. I am on a mission to get a pantry cupboard before we head back to the farm for a working holiday.The rugby league will just have to take a backseat or he will have to work faster. No chipboard or other rubbish stuff, I want a good solid cupboard that weighs a ton, I want to distress it to match the diningroom furniture. Old fashioned? but I am old and that's the look I want.

Ebay purchases ... and a little bartering

Been a busy girl on Ebay, wicked I know but where else do you get such good stuff so I just had to share some of my purchaces with you

But this last little beauty I did not bid on simply because one hand fishing reel would not do , with two fishermen needing their own reel, so Grandma decided to barter instead with a lovely man by the name of John. Well John is not just turning 3 x 6 inch reels as I asked for but 4, one being a little bigger for Grandma too. All it cost me was 1 dozen eggs, a few sticks of beef jerky and a meat chook. And we are both happy. Until nexttime enjoy your weekend Rina

Which do you want first the good news or the bad ...

Good morning my blog buddies, the sun's not quite up yet and I am thinking another cup of coffee is in order, smell the coffee hmmmm Okay the good news first, we are heading up to the farm after George's eye appointment this afternoon, so it going to be a very long day indeed. We won't be doing much up there as rain is expected over the weekend. But we do have a lot of stuff that needs to go up in preparation to us taking a full week off work. The generator is finally running properly again after a good service, a carborator service and replacing a cracked head which probably happened when George got the sh..s sorry upset with it cause it just would not start ... sure he felt like banging his own head on it a few times ... only joking. Main thing it's working again.

The boy's with their catch of the day, pic was taken last year sometime. I bought 7kgs of seed potatoes to plant from our produce store here in Sydney for when we are at the farm for the week. Too early to plant ATM due to frost, mid July I am told would be better. But the raised 3x3mtr boxes needs to be prepared and composted with some old chicken pellets. Still got 4 bags of mushroom compost I can take up. Need to get a few bales of hay to spread on top as well but that I can get up there. The extra fishing gear, gut, yabby traps and other small fishing stuff needs to go into the stockpile. Purchased some canning bottles 6 of size 31 and 6 of size 36 on Ebay at a really good price, it's a start getting proper bottles. Think I might stick to that size cause they both use 4 inch lids and rings. I used to just use recycle bottles. A bag of 48 toilet paper rolls,a slab of cans bake beans, coconut milk and 12 bottles of tomatoes sauce just to mention a few extra's I bought from Costco last week. New pink plastic washing baskets and 2 new small pink wheelie bins for the cat and dog food pellets and one for the bag of 25kg white sugar, I just had to get! I must say George is now starting to worry I want to kill him off with that sugar, but I did reassure the man he is worth having arround a little longer :)) Who buys Kirkland Iced tea powder? just wondering if it's any good, was at a great price so could not resist getting some Stockpile happening in the corner there. Now the bad news ...I candled the eggs in the incubator but they have not developed at all. Out of 38 eggs only 1 silky egg shows up dark while another has some darkness to it. They must have showed something by now as it's been two weeks already. Can't be that they are too old as some eggs where very fresh when I put them in. Only conclusion I can come to is Harry might not be doing his job properly. Decided to remove them and try again by replacing them with a few eggs I kept saved since Mr Fox did his dirty deed. Just maybe the last egg Bonnie layed could give us another silky. There are 18 eggs that I can replace them with.