My Op Shop Finds - someone's trash is another person's treasure.....

Well I haven't been to an op shop in so long. I have donated plenty lately lol but haven't actually set foot inside on of the actual shops. This morning I changed that. I braved the heat as I am,,,make that was,,,,in need of a couple of bowls.

Last night Mr14 went to feed the dog some of the dinner leftovers and as Billy the Dog jumped up at him excitedly trying to see what was on the dinner menu, Mr14 accidentally dropped the bowl. Unfortunately it was Mr6's Shrek bowl that he had got a couple of years ago at Easter, so he wasn't too happy about that :( Oh well not much you can do about it when it smashes into numerous pieces.

We desperately needed a couple more as we only had the bare minimum. I have plenty of plastic bowls but I don't really want to be eating out of those continuously,,,well not for dinner at least lol. We are trying really hard to be more frugal and stop wasting things. So I decided that since I don't have a matching dinnerset anyway (mine is a hodgepodge of mine and Hubby's that we just put together when we met and so we have about 3 or 4 dinnersets combined together.....out of all that you would think that we would have enough bowls wouldn't you???? But sadly no, bowls seem to be the things that get dropped alot in this house. So anyway back to my op shop lol,,,,,I found 2 bowls (non matching but perfectly useful anyway) for 25 cents each. I had intended to just get the bowls but on the way out I saw a Dorothy the Dinosaur in really great condition for just $2.50 (she even sings now that I have replaced her batteries!) and a large wooden cutout of Tigger (you know the tiger from Winnie the Pooh) complete with the hanging string on his back for just $3.00. Well I decided that I could list those on Oztion and make, possibly double my money or more. Up until now I have just been selling my decluttered items from around the house and while I haven't made a fortune I have made enough over the last 6 months to pay for quite a few of our Xmas gifts last year. This year I am thinking that any sales from January through to March/April will go towards a holiday (our hopeful holiday at this point) and from then on any sales I make will be divided equally between the mortgage (every little bit helps I say!) and our christmas fund.

Ok I had better get moving and actually get these two things listed. Stay cool everyone that is sweltering at the moment!!!!!

It's sooooooooooooooooooo hottttttttt!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am so sick of this heat! Thankfully we have ducted evaporative aircon and ceiling fans but when it is this hot the evap system isn't that great...much better than being outside lol but still not that great. I keep peeking at the 7 day forecast hoping to see a much needed change somewhere on that horizon but alas no it seems to want to be in the 40's or high 30's continuously. I can handle a hot day here and there but when it is continuous I hate it. Of course the kids went back to school this week so they are really struggling and come home from school extra irritable and then we all pay for it lol.

The boys all did really well going back this week,,,,well my boys anyway, we won't know how Hubby's guys went until tomorrow night when we get them back.

My Mr14 has started Year 9 and is finding the homework step up a little tough right now. It is a big jump from what they were getting last year and since he has a bit of trouble learning it is going to be a little tough for him I think, but he has a great attitude and I know that he will do his best at all times.

Mr12 has just started Year 7 and is his usual bah humbug kind of self lol. Nothing really phases him too much and he grumbles about homework but tends to just take it in his stride. He sliced his big toe open when he went to the pools with his Dad on Australia Day and it is quite a nasty cut and today one of the kids at school put his chair down on his foot and caused it to open up and bleed quite heavily again,,,,so I had to go back into the school and take him some clean socks as there was quite a bit of blood on his sock.

Mr8 has just started Year 3 and has Mr12's old teacher. I am just hoping she doesn't expect the same out of him as she got from Mr12. Mr12 has never really struggled with school work but unfortunately Mr8 is very behind in his reading and struggles quite a bit and needs alot of encouragement. His teacher last year was fantastic and really boosted his self esteem as she was a real motherly type of lady and just oozed love and respect. The teacher this year is also an older lady but not quite the motherly type lol. She is alot stricter but lovely at the same time. I think I will just have to keep an eye on how he is going.

Mr6 has just started Year 1 and after the first day putting on the waterworks to a major extent, the last two mornings have been very pleasant. He has a teacher who even I find a little intimidating lol and she is known for her strictness but she gets results. Mr6 struggles a little too with his reading so it will be interesting. Mr6 can be quite silly at times and a little on the immature side so he won't like being told off but I just hope that he behaves himself and doesn't get told off too much. I find with him if he gets told off alot he becomes really sooky and won't want to go back to school. I think she will get results from him if he manages to behave though......will just have to wait and see.

I have so much I want to achieve and I feel once again like I am not getting anywhere. I was thinking last night that my youngest has been at school now for 1.5 years and I still haven't begun painting the house which was my major job I wanted to do once he started school. I am also decluttering the house. This is going well and over the school holidays I removed quite alot of stuff,,,,,,,,,,into the carport lol. Now I have to go through and photograph and list it all on Oztion. I figure since I stay at home I should try to become a little more productive and try to earn a little bit at least. I have boxes and boxes of stuff to list. I did at least make a start yesterday but I am finding it very time consuming and tend to get distracted too easily lol. I guess slow and steady wins the race in the long run though!!!

My poor plants are struggling in this heat. I just went out the front to check on passionfruit vine to find the poor thing totally wilted. It is in the shade now thankfully and gave it a nice big drink so hopefully it will perk back up a little bit. The watermelons that I planted near it are fine though so I am happy about that. My Hubby and I have begun to strive for a more sustainable lifestyle and we aren't doing too badly. My 5 tomato plants never made it into the ground but they are doing great in the pots. We have had quite a nice little haul of tomatoes off of them. We have 2 capsicum plants which have so far given us 5 capsicums. We have an old nectarine tree that has given us stacks of nectarines,,,,,they are only tiny ones but they are beautiful flavoured. Our new nectarine tree that grew from a seed is going great guns. I am hoping it will fruit eventually and we can remove the old nectarine tree that has seen better days and replace it with the new one. We have a peacharine tree that has provided Mr12 about 10 or so of his favourite fruit,,,not bad for a small tree that we only bought last October!! I have seedlings in pots waiting to be planted out but it is just too hot.....we have pumpkin (which is threatening to take over the table that it sits on lol), rockmelons, more watermelons, cherry tomatos, a mulberry tree that has just started to shoot from a cutting I bought, marigolds, more capsicums, cabbages and a couple more passionfruit. I can't wait to turn out yards (front and back) into gardens that will help feed our family and in turn save us money. We bought ourselves a compost bin and are hoping we are doing it right,,,,,it doesn't smell so that is a start lol....a little more research is needed there.

Well I best go and list a few more things on Oztion. I need to get into the habit of doing this more often. I spend too much time reading about everyone else's lives and then don't get time to write about my own lol.

The What to Attack First Dilemma........

Well I have survived school holidays and am now back into that dreaded school lunch packing routine again lol. I love the few hours of "by myself" time that school terms bring but I just hate packing lunchboxes lol I have a couple that are pretty fussy and school lunches aren't their favourite things in the world so I am always trying to come up with things they will at least have a nibble at. The school holidays went pretty quick actually. Unfortunately money is tight and we didn't really get to do anything but we went to visit 3 different parks and got in a trip down to Glenelg beach and a visit to the museum just to get them out the house at least. The boys don't mind staying home too much but too long in each other's company can be a little tedious and it turns into a yelling match between them a little too often lol.

Now that I have a little time to myself I just don't know where to start in the house. There are so many things I want to do but just can't seem to get stuck into anything because I look around and think "oh that really needs doing first" etc etc. We decided to redo the gardens and we have decided to help save money that we would start up a vegetable garden. We have a peacharine tree growing in a pot. I have planted a passionfruit vine that I am hoping (if the snails don't keep eating it that is!!! grrr) to grow up the trellis in front of the front door. I have also got growing 2 tomato plants and 2 capsicum plants. We have gone a little crazy on seeds too, I have so many packets of flowers its not funny lol. I have also bought pumpkin seeds, watermelon, cherry tomatos, cucumbers, rockmelons, guava (not sure if this will grow in Adelaide but will try anyway), yellow and black passionfruit and also I bought some mulberry tree cuttings from a guy on Oztion. I'd like to plant a mulberry tree out the front so will see if the cuttings take off. He sent me six so surely one of them will grow lol. I just want a nice looking garden but also one that can be productive. I have never really grown veggies/fruit before so have my fingers crossed. I don't want a traditional veggie garden though I thought I might try just planting things here and there and see how they go in amongst "normal" plants. The front yard is going to become a cottage garden once summer is over. I am just letting the grass die off over summer (this won't be hard it has dried off already!) and then once the weather begins to cool a little we will get some top soil an stacks of mulch to smother it and see how we go.

At the same time I am itching to get started painting my house. This has been something I have wanted to do since I moved in here almost 7 years ago, so as you can imagine it is long overdue. I am wanting to just go room by room and do up each one (as far as the budget will allow at least) as I go. I have always had this plan to start in the toilet and work my way through. So my "do up" plan goes like this......toilet, bathroom 1, bathroom 2, laundry, bedrooms x 5, lounge, kitchen, family room. This is going to take a while lol.

Best I go and achieve something for today then huh!!! I really need to do the floors, they are looking a little disgusting and then I should do some ironing oh well....here I go!!!!

School holidays are upon me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have precisely 1 hour and 9 minutes until the troops get out of school. I'm feeling more than a little apprehensive because they have been extra argumentative with one another lately. One only has to breathe and it can start an argument. Can I make it through 16 days lol??????

I love the relaxing part of school holidays.....the not having to be up and out the door by 8.15 and the fact that I don't have to organise school recess and lunch each day but man!!!! The arguing and the "I'm bored" is enough to drive me batty. I am still trying to think up things to do with them that doesn't cost the earth and preferably are totally free, but I'm not having much luck. Looks like bike rides and a few trips to the park may be on the agenda, and maybe a trip to the museum and/or the beach now the weather is warming up.

This weekend is going to be a busy one, which hopefully 4 pairs of smaller hands will help with. We want to dismantle the cubby house and put it out the front with a "Free to good home" sign attached. Hopefully someone can get some joy from it. The kids haven't looked at it in about a year now so it is just taking up space in the backyard here. I want to get into the garden and plant some plants that have been loitering around in pots for way too long. Hopefully we get stuck into the older two boy's bedroom as well. We want to swap beds around and thoroughly go through it and get rid of the junk that seems to have accumulated within their walls. I just hope we can actually get all of this achieved over the next two days and also find some time to relax and enjoy each other's company.

Hmmmmm will need to psych myself up I think!!!!

Ever have one of those really frustrating kind of days??????

Well today is just one of those days where I wish I could just hop back into bed and start it over. Not that that much has really gone wrong but I just feel really frustrated with it all anyway lol.

We have an inside dog who is a little over a year old now. Here is his picture.....see that look of innocence in his eyes (well the innocence behind the devil reflection he has happening in this pic at least lol)..........


Well this little pooch had been blocked from entering the loungeroom since we have had him because even though he knows he has to poop etc on the paper that is laid out he used to insist on going in the loungeroom and since we had only recently bought a new loungesuite we didn't want the chew monster to try to eat it. Well since we moved furniture around this last weekend we decided to unblock the archway because I was so sick of having to climb over an upturned coffee table all the time. Today I am tempted to just reblock it off. I forgave him on Sunday for destroying my happy plant which I had in a pot on the loungeroom floor. But this morning I had to go up to my Mum's as I do her shopping for her each week and I decided that I would put his food and water in the family room and close the sliding door so that he couldn't wreak havoc in the lounge while I was gone.

DH arrived home to have some lunch with me and beat me by about 10 minutes. He walked in to find the pooch had somehow managed to slide the sliding door open and had shredded a small cardboard box throughout the loungeroom and pooped under the coffee table....ggrrrrrrrrrrrrr I tell you there will seriously be a "4 Sale" sign hanging around this dog's neck before very long.

I was already frustrated because I had arrived back at my Mum's house after I finished her shopping, only for her to say "I forgot to give you my prescription to get filled" and of course when I checked she only had 3 days worth of tablets left, so I had to drive back to the shops to get her medicine and of course there was a 20 minute wait for prescriptions.

All I wanted was a smooth sailing day today lol. I am trying to prepare for the school holidays which are at the end of this week but I can see it just won't happen. I was hoping to have the house really clean and neat so that I can just enjoy time with the boys and know that the house is at least reasonably presentable without too much of my time being taken up with cleaning.

Oh well life is like that I guess lol.

Better late than never!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I can't believe that I created this blog all those months ago and have only just begun to use it......lets hope I can keep it up now lol.

The weather here today is sooooo gloomy, although we do need the rain so that is nice at least. I hung out a load of washing and no sooner had I walked back inside than it started raining, quite heavily even!

DH and I moved stuff around on the weekend and I am so pleased with the result. In our not overly large lounge room we had a Bowflex gym machine, a cross trainer as well as an Ab King Pro. It really did look more like a gymnasium than a lounge lol. We couldn't even open our front door as their was a lounge chair in front of it!!!

Well the gym equipment has been moved out into the family room and I have a loungeroom back and it is sooooooo nice!!!! Look at how lounge like it looks lol......




I would so love not to have the blankets over the chairs but we have one cat loves to sleep on the top of the lounge and also on the chair that is covered in the pink and green blanket and he sheds so much fur it is unbelievable. I took the blankets off the lounge for a bit over winter and every second day I had to "shave" the top of the lounge to remove his fur. I am looking forward to getting new carpet in here and also to painting the walls. But hey just having space in there is a major achievement so I am happy for the moment.