I have been painting walls today, well a part of a 13m long wall and all of a 3m wall. The house is feeling cosier than ever and if I had a decent pic I would put it in but as I dont I wont.

The first 14sm of tile is down along with the 'bullnose' edge of the tile acting as a fancy skirting board. They are a lovely terracotta (in all its varying shades) I decided the white rendered walls looked horrid against them and today went and brought a very orange (think pumkin flesh) paint from Pascol called Autumn Leaf. My beloved and I had painted every wall in the house that colour years ago and it was nice until I decided that white would look better... It does not!!

 So now I am in the process of figuring out what walls will be orange and what colour the other walls will be. I have painted on a black from New Look Paints called Faenza but as it will be covered in black framed photos and a huge eggplant coloured lounge it will hardley be noticed.

I already have a dark brown render called coffee brown on a couple of low walls with gold stencils so I have enough dark colours going on. Lucky the kitchen is white after all ( I wanted a chocolate coloured kitchen but it was too expensive, for my budget). So off I go to sleep tonight thinking about colours and paint chips and tiles. I will be glad when we are finished. It is actually quite exhausting!!

It has been awhile. I have been a tad busy, but as I may have mentioned before I do have seven children so I shall be using that as an excuse ( quite often to I imagine) for the gap in posts. A lot has been going on in our world.

Since My Beloved has had the 'chop' and, as a result ended our future childbaring I have started to tell him how my 'future' husband and I shall have exceptionally wonderful and talented children, that he is no longer required and have had the pleasure of questioning his manhood. Something that sounds terribly unkind but luckily after nearly nineteen years he realises I am 'just joshing' and has yet to run off crying. ;p

My Biggest Miss suddenly became obsessed with cleaning other peoples houses and mowing their lawns. I was pretty chuffed until I realised she did not mean our house or our lawn, she meant 'payers', in this case a very tired Aunty pregnant with twins. I was then struck with the thought of how helpful she had turned out and mentally patted myself on the back... then I saw the add for the local show and it all suddenly fell into place. She earned a couple of hundred ( well NEARLY a couple) and she got me to buy new clothing for her and she spent three days away from home. Hanging out with freinds and enjoying the show. I can only assume she ate well. She came home on my 'birthday eve' with 2 presents for me. (She is a good girl.)

I discovered that The Man Child has started to become even more 'teenagerish' than before and even... gasp... thinks he can do what he likes (until mummy unpacks her angry eyes that is). I have also come to the realisation that I have failed miserably when it comes to the 'money appreciation' part of raring him. I sent him and his sister to the local doughnut establishment whilst shopping the other day with twenty dollars and the very simple request that he get some doughnuts for himself, myself, Biggest Miss and Mr cheeky. And added they could get a drink for themselves. ( He had change if it went a little over I thought to myself so twenty is enough). he took Biggest Miss with him and they returned with three doughnuts and two of the most expensive drinks on the menu. Naturally i was flabbergasted and as I handed over a ridiculous amount of money for my purchases I proceeded to, well admonish them both. The next day I gave him some more money to use for the weekend as he was going to a friends. He didnt go and came home with a little left. Turns out you can easily spend $50 on lunch at the TAFE canteen when you are a 'growing boy'.

My littlest sister and her twinnies are doing well, my brother and his fiancee to are going strong and my other brother and his wife have had their baby girl. I wont go into too much detail in this post. But suffice to say she did bloody well and JUST made it to the hospital in time. Little bubba is gorgeous and looks like her mumma. Dad has also recovered from the shock. When my sister in law informed me she was working on my birthday present I thought she meant something simple like a greeting card. A day after I became another year older neice number 8 came into the world. :)

On that same day ( and before I was aware of my sister in laws attempts at getting me the best birthday present ever) My Beloved and I started the long awaited tiling of our lounge room/kitchen/dining room floor. It is an on going process and not going as quickly as either of us had anticipated.  But more on that later....

 ooooh did I mention the washing machine has died? And Littlest Miss is KINDA sitting up, for short periods following longer periods of getting infuriated because she is not still in the upright seated position.

Twins!

My Baby sister is having twins! Which means that she will have five children in just 5 and a half years. I am so excited it is almost as though I am having them. She has three boys and I know she is hoping for at least one girl! So heres hoping she get two! 

The promised post about when My Beloved was a boy. Will be with you in the next couple of days. Why? Because I have had some exciting news and I am too busy jumping up and  down with excitement.


 Once I am allowed to blab I shall and I am sure you will be very happy for me ( though it isn't really me it is happening to.) So bare with me. 


Instead I shall post a link to a Blog I have just started reading and it is another large family Blog... go check it out! :) The Joy of Home

When I Was A Girl

I have had a couple of requests for a back ground on  My beloved & Me so here is part 1- ME!!

When these two met and fell in love. They married. Barrie & Doreen  had three kids. Greg, Trevor & Ricki. They lived in Sydney and visited their families in the Blue Mountains on holidays.

This is Greg. My Daddy.

Meanwhile in England. These two met & fell in love. Howard & Jean got Married. They had Jane, Richard,Paula and Adrian. They often had camping holidays.

This is Paula. My Mummy.

Greg was about this old when Paula was born. (I said ABOUT)

When Paula was this old she came to Australia for a working holiday. (From what I understand no one was fond of her boyfriend at the time and a visit with her Aunts, Uncles & Grandparents in Brisbane Australia was in order!)

* Watch this space for updates... two photos are missing i.e I forgot to get them from mummy & Daddy. ;) *

Then after a while. Greg & Paula married... in November 77 and Emma was born in May 78 hmmmmmmmmmmmmm? Very fitting considering they were married at the Wayside Chappel in the middle of KINGS CROSS Sydney. The only place at the time that would wed interfaith couples.

For the sake of everyone's eyeballs I shall skip baby pics. We moved from Sydney to a place in the middle of no where called, for the hell of it, Goomby. With my little sister, Sister #1.

Pretty soon brother #1 came along. We had 2 dogs, well actually more but only 2 at a time.
Drum & Kia and two cats very inventively named, wait for it... Blackie & White. I loved Blackie.
The shed/stable in the background actually fell down many years later during a cyclone with our horses Amigo & Shelala in it! But they were not harmed. (luckeeeeeeeeeeee)

The house looked like this at the time. Yes we lived in it. It does not look like it from the outside but inside was lovely, well as lovely as it could be! And quite often the main thing you would see around our place was ...

Mum & Dad doing this sort of thing. When Dad was not traveling away for work as a Bricklayer of course. Mum would be at home with us. She made all our bread, we got milk from a local dairy (back when it was allowed) and had a chicken pen and vege patch. I remember her killing & gutting a chicken once, she hated it and didn't do it too regularly. Now don't go feeling sorry for my mum she really wouldn't like it!

 Look at our play table, so that's why I love Mission Brown paint. So many fun happy memories in the backyard play area.

Along came brother #2 I spoilt him rotten.

In between building the house & working away dad & mum took us to all sorts of places that are local, this is the duck ponds. But we went to the beaches and bays, rock pools and climbed mountains we even drove through a field of lions that came up to our car window. I remember mum freaking out & dad making out like we were on safari & the car had broken down. Later that day I rode an elephant,a camel & a donkey. I remember a horde of Lorikeets too.

Somewhere between all that sister #2 was born.

When mum wasn't helping dad build or us kids she was doing a lot of this. She started her Salon when we were a little older but had always been cutting hair. (That lovely red head is my Jean remember her from way up the top of this post?)

One day dad fell off this (the local council had spilt oil on the road and just covered it with some sand.) He was coming home from a trip away for work and he said after he came to he could see all his 100 dollar bills fluttering around the road and hobbled around on a broken ankle and seriously scraped up thigh (two different legs) to pick them up. He couldn't work (bricklaying) again for seven years.  Sooooooooooo

He started up a football club (as you do) so for years there was a LOT of football talk, teams, watching, playing fundraising & fun. (Which is actually hell for a book worm)

By that time we looked like this and I met my beloved. 

 And the house still wasn't finished!

Come back tomorrow for My Beloved 'When I Was A Boy'

My Sister-In-Laws

I was going to post about something else tonight. But I felt seeing as my sister in law M (for privacy reasons ;p) is having a baby in four weeks time (my 8th niece) and my beautiful brother asked his long suffering girlfriend R (see M) to marry him. And my other sister in law D (err you've got it by now yeah?) is just plain awesome. I would write about how lucky they are to have us as their family... 


Now yes it is true there are a lot of us. But seeing as birthdays, Christmas and Easter are not hugely traditional affairs for our family (aside from camping, camping and wishing that the present was camping) they will never have to figure out where they are going for those bigger events like Christmas. They wont have to buy ridiculously expensive presents and not that many Easter eggs either. 


We are happy for them to live their lives the way they choose. They don't have to worry about us rocking up at their door for the weekend with very little warning descending like a plague of locusts. And when we do they are pretty much assured of take out for dinner so no extra cooking and washing up and better still the kids must clean up all areas they were in regardless of whether they made the mess or not. They don't have to worry about us telling them what we think they should be doing or not doing because we are usually too busy 'doing' our lives. And well, we are also really, really great people!


In return we get wonderful women into our extended family and short of it being detrimental to our big little family. We will do anything for them. We get awesome nieces and nephews even the ones that live far away can be assured we love them and think they are great. After all these women put up with my brothers and in the case of D has been putting up with My Beloved for YEARS! ;p With mothers day not far around the corner I really think we should designate a day to sister in laws too!


CONGRATULATIONS Brother#1 and R on your engagement. It is fantastic to see you entertaining the notion of spending the rest of your lives together and going forth! Oh you brave, brave souls! You have noooooooooooooooo idea what you are in for!


 R, Men are like small children and can actually be even worse sometimes. And Brother #1 if you really want to live a happy life remember this simple fact... 'If Mumma ain't happy, ain't NOOOOOOOOOOOOBODY happy'     Capiche?


I AM SO excited Brother#2 and M, I can't wait to meet my Beautiful little niece L. M you are going to be a great Mumma! After all you are putting up with her Papa!! ;P


And D, poor poor D, you have been putting up with My Beloved for so long
now you really should get a medal! tehe. And you know what I am talking about! ;p






So hands up who thinks that sister in laws need their own special day? Lord knows I do!




DISCLAIMER For all intents and purposes we will endeavour to always offer takeout at some point after our arrival,make sure your house is at the very least presentable after we leave to the best of our abilities. HONEST! :)