I'm Back

If you're a regular round these parts you might have noticed that about a week ago I promised to be back shortly with some tiling updates. Ummm sorry.

The tiling is going well and I will have a post with some photos soon. Unfortunately though I took a bit of a beating over the last week and have spent most of the last week curled up in bed.

Long story short. I was feeling really, really sick. There were a few indicators that I ignored... I fell asleep at a set of traffic lights, I passed out in my bedroom & slept through Max destroying the room, I was so cold that even with four blankets on I couldn't warm up, and one very nasty swollen and gunky red eye (gross).

By Sunday I had slept through most of the last three days, but was feeling worse rather than better, so I finally hauled myself of to the doctor.

Turned out I had conjunctivitis and tonsillitis (and all the fun things that come along with it, like fevers etc). The doctor dosed me up on antibiotics and finally today I am started to feel human again.

Chop Chop

Lately I have been feeling kind of flat. I've been letting my weight creep up, I've been tying my hair back in a ponytail most days and just haven't felt like I have my usual sparkle about me.

I've been battling a few health problems lately (some mental, others physical) and it's really been getting me down.

But yesterday (after a serious lecture from Sean about me needing to be more of a fighter) I decided enough was enough.

I took the first steps towards getting my groove back by getting an impromptu haircut.

I forgot to get a before shot, but here is my after. It has definitely gone along way towards making me feel better :).

PS. I'll be back later on with another tile update.

Tiling - Day One

We started our tiling today!! Oh my goodness, the difference it is already making to the house is amazing.

Day One - today - was the easy day. A mate of ours (Dale) is a professional tiler and he came over to get us started on the right foot.

He started out by measuring out the space and deciding where the the best cuts would be. Sounds kind of easy... but after I watched Dale do it, I am so glad it wasn't left up to me. There was soooo much maths involved!

Dale worked his magic with the chalk-string-thingy and before we knew it we had a plan.

 

Next up Dale gave me a couple of quick lessons on mixing up the glue (it's like gluggy cake batter), cutting tiles and the fine art of smearing glue onto concrete. Turns out tiling is more involved than I realised, and a lot more fun that I anticipated too :)

We (and by we I mean Dale) started laying out the tiles along the long line of the house that runs from the front door right through to the back of the house. I am so relieved that he did that strip of tiles for us, it's dead straight and absolutely perfect.

 

Dale wanted to stick around until Sean's Dad arrived so that he could give him a quick run down on the tools as well. So while were waiting he managed to lay a heap more tiles. I did my part by making coffees, doing a bakery run and keeping Max from jumping on the freshly laid tiles.

By the time Sean's Dad arrived Dale had managed to lay about quarter of the tiles. Nice.

 

Tomorrow I'm off to work so Kym (Sean's Dad) is going to hit up the shops for the rest of our supplies and get stuck back into the tiling. Then on Thursday I'll be getting my hands dirty again and tiling up a storm!

Tonsillitis Strikes Again

Sorry for the lack of posting around these parts. Max had come down with tonsillitis again (as you probably guessed from the title of this post). Generally he's a good baby when he's sick, but not this time. He's been spitting up medicine, staying awake all night and letting us know just how miserable he is feeling. I feel bad for him, but I would also be a pinch more compassionate if he let me have a couple of hours sleep :)

We're off to a wedding today, so my friend Emma is staying over to look after Max. I have my fingers crossed that the novelty of having a babysitter outweighs his sore throat.

Looks like both my boys need a haircut...

At the doctors

Moments before he fell asleep in the trolley sitting up (this is when I realised how sick he really is).

Vintage Coral Art

Click on the image to see a bigger version

My front room is starting to come together piece by piece. 

The images above the couch are the latest additions. I found the prints on vintage printable, played around with them a bit in picnik and then printed them out on my regular home printer.

Originally I was going to hang two rows of four prints and include some red/coral images. But as I started to frame the pictures I decided to keep it a bit more simple.

I really like how it's looking so far.

Next up I want to try my hand at building a piece of furniture to go in the other corner (not shown in this photo). I'm thinking about giving this one a shot.

It will be my first time building anything, so it may end up being a disaster.... 

Regardless I'll definitely be blogging about the attempt!'

Tell me, have you ever built anything? How did it turn out? Advice is much appreciated!

Wearing Red

Today we wore red. Max wore a bright red t-shirt and I added a red ribbon to my jumper.

I held Max a bit tighter all day long.

I can only imagine the pain of having a child taken away.

Please show your support for the Daniel Morcombe Foundation.

They're Here!!

Earlier in the week I mentioned that I had cleaned out a space in the garage for a delivery I was expecting...

The delivery has arrived! It's probably not overly exciting for anyone except Sean and I... it's our floor tiles!!

I am beyond exciting. We have been living in this house - with concrete floors - for three years now. We are finally going to have tiles :)

(Our wet areas are already tiled and our bedrooms and front room have carpet, but we have 82 square metres of living area that we need to tile.)

The cutest thing happened when the tiles were delivered... Max was convinced that the delievery guy was his Uncle Mark. I was holding him on my hip and he kept saying 'Mark, Mark', I told him that it wasn't his Uncle Mark, but I don't think he believed me.

I put him down in the garage so that I could take some photos and he walked halfway up to the delivery guy and started saying 'Mark' to him. The guy took off his sunnies and started talking to Max, Max got really confused then. His little voice started to shake and he kept asking me for Mark. So sweet. As the guy drove his forklift out of the driveway Max started shaking all over (I think the noise of the forklift scared him) and said 'bu-bye Mark' over and over again. Awwwwww.

...................................

In a couple of weeks Sean's Dad and Brother (Mark) are going to be coming down to help us lay the tiles. It's going to be our biggest DIY to date and I can't wait!

Pallet Art

Out the back of our place we have a couple of pallets. I haven't been able to bring myself to throw them out, they scream DIY to me!

A while back I tried to use one to make a side table. I was only able to salvage short pieces of timber though because the nails had rusted leaving the longer bits unusable. Bummer.

Last week, inspired by this pin, I decided to make a piece of art to hang in the laundry. Although I decided to have a quote on my boards instead of a picture.

You can kind of see the corner of it here in the post I did about my floor mat.

Here's how it came together:

I got together the couple of pieces of timber and sawed up a couple more. They were absolutely filthy from being outside for so long so I gave them a good scrub and put them back out in the sun to dry.

Now, when I go into a DIY I generally don't think more than one step ahead. It probably would be a good idea to plan the whole thing out first and then get started, but it's just not how my little brain works :)

So when it came time to join up the boards I couldn't decide if I should glue, nail or screw the support plank into the other planks.

First up I decided to use nails. The top two on each side went in ok, but as I started hammering in more nails the top ones would pop right out! Definitely not what I wanted.

I changed tack and decided to glue the boards down first. I used a stack of old text books to hold down the boards while the glue dried (I always knew the would come in handy!).

Once the glue was dry I decided to add screws as well. They went in a lot better than the nails and in no time I had a canvas to start working on.

I decided to use white paint and a letter stamps to write out my quote. I did a practice run on the back of the boards while the glue was drying and I liked how it looked.

Instead of using my normal clear acrylic block to do the stamping I used a clear plastic lid. I did this because I was often stamping across the join in to boards and wanted something that had enough give for me to press into the join.

I also started each word from the middle and worked out so that my mid-line stayed nice and neat.

 And here we go. My new pallet art! It's perfect for out laundry :)

 

Our Garage - aka The Dump

Up until this weekend our garage was embarrassingly messy. The kind of messy where you can't find anything and when you do go look for something you risk having a mountain of junk fall on top of you.

Check it out...

Yikes, I need a new word for messy!

It took me a couple of hours (thanks Sean for keeping Max occupied!), but I got there in the end.

 (The stuff on the right is things we need to garage sale, ebay or donate - I should really get onto that!)

A huge improvement none the less!

You might notice that we still can't fit a car in there. But that's ok, I wasn't cleaning it out so that we can park our car in there... I was cleaning out a space for a special delivery we have arriving on Thursday. I am so excited and will share as soon as my 'package' arrives!

Say What?

Max, like most kids his age, has way too many toys. I generally keep about half of them tucked away in his cupboard. The other day I decided to rotate some of his toys and brought Elmo (along with some other toys) out of his cupboard.

 It was the first time he had really played with this toy. So you can imagine my surprise when he looked at it and said 'Eh-Moo'. I was speechless. I asked him what the toy was called again and again and he kept saying Elmo.


I have no idea where he has learned it from... The only TV he watches at home is his wiggles DVD and there's no Elmo in there. I was wondering if he got it from daycare? But it has been over a month since he last went there, would he really remember something like that for so long?

Totally weird...

Flogging my Blog over at Glowless for the first time today! 

Another Cheap and Cheerful DIY

Doormats.

I'm generally not a fan. I understand they have a purpose, but they can be so ugly. Generally I don't mind them outside a front door, but just not a fan of them inside the house.

The problem we have at our house is we don't have anywhere to put them outside. No front deck, no back deck and no landscaping in the backyard. One day we'll have all those things, but in the meantime we have lots of dirt constantly being walked into our home.

After much disagreement from me, Sean went out and bought us two doormats. One that sits just inside the front door and another that sits at the sliding door in the laundry. He did his best, and they definitely weren't as ugly as I was expecting. But I still wasn't a fan.

The other day when I was browsing pinterest I saw a couple of tutorials for chevron rugs and picnic blankets. Cue light-bulb moment! Seeing as I didn't like the doormats anyway, I really didn't have much to lose by giving them a coat of paint...

The first mat got painted a really cheerful blue colour and found it's way to the laundry....

 

The second mat I did in a slightly more sensible navy for the front door...

So, what do you think? Have you ever painted a rug, floor mat or picnic blanket?

I'm linking up with the Inspiration Board over at Homework