Landscaping Part Three: Grass and Trees

 

 

So I thought I’d share the final part of our landscaping story with you, considering it’s been about six months since it was finished. The best part about completing this project has been that the children now have a yard to play in and they don’t spend their day’s complaining about how bored they are. Not long after the landscaping was completed by Barry and his boy’s Brisbane and the rest of Queensland was inundated with rain. This made our job of 'establishing everything' a little bit easier as we didn’t have to water the lawn and tree’s every day to make sure that they were getting a good start in life.

 

The front of the house and all our Lilly Pilly's

 

Due to the amount of rain we experienced we had to wait a few extra weeks before we fertilised or cut the grass as we wanted to make sure that the grass and soil had knitted together. During the first ten weeks Mr Opoes and I bought more timber stakes to secure the Lilly Pilly's more and to correct their positioning due to the increased amount of wind we'd been experiencing. Once all the Lilly Pilly's were straightened up everything was looking better and all we had to do was make sure that each planet had enough water BUT not too much water. Barry's parting words were very specific about looking after the Lilly Pilly's as they can die if they're under watered or if they're over watered.

 

We now have street appeal and we don't look like the new kid's on the block.

 

We are really happy with how everything is looking and the children have loved have green grass to run around on. It was so great that we had the yard all landscaped by the end of January as it gave us an entire month of Summer left to play outside and enjoy the grass. The other great thing about having the backyard completed was that we were able to set the trampoline up that Grandma and Grandpa gave the kids for Christmas 2011. The children have loved going outside everyday and having a bounce on the trampoline.

 

The backyard which the kid's LOVE.

 

Quinlan is now at the age were he's able to use the trampoline and he really enjoys playing on it with Viveca and Mackenna. The next step will be for the girls to teach Quinlan how to jump up and down, I can safely say that Quinlan will probably have achieved this by his second birthday and he'll be spending quiet a lot of time over the Summer playing on the trampoline and running around on the grass.

 

The back of the house (top row of pictures) and the side of the house (bottom three pictures).

 

Since the we've had the landscaping done we have realised that it's about 90 percent finished and we still have a few things that we need to do before SUMMER arrives. As a family we are really happy with the way it is now but I'm really looking forward to getting it finished and having it all complete so that we can enjoy it all year round.

 

With summer been only four and a half months away I've drawn up a To Do List which I'm hoping we'll be able to tick off as the months pass:

• install a garden shed so that we can free up some space in the garage.
• create a concrete, paved or gravel based floor for the shed.
• start planning and planting out a veggie patch and then harvest the vegetables.
• possibly get a few chickens in the backyard.
• install two side fences so that the chicken are safe when playing in the backyard.

Once all these things are completed I'll be able to focus on organising the outside patio area which will require us buying some furniture so that we could eat outside during summer but that won't be happening until the summer of 2014. Thanks for stopping by and I hope to be sharing more of the projects that I have planned for the yard.

 

 

Megan

When motherhood throws you a curve ball..

This post was written not long after I took a break from blogging

and it's one of the reasons why I choose to focus on my family.

Where has the time gone? It seems like it was on yesterday that I was celebrating my birthday, we were madly running around getting Caelan's birthday organised, school was about to break up for Easter and I was preparing to get ready to celebrate Easter with the children.  So what have I done while I've not been blogging? The answer to that questions is 'not much but I have done more than normal'.
 

 

I generally love been a mother to my four young cherubs, its hard work sometimes but more often than not its really rewarding. My eldest son came first in he's school cross country for the eight year old group two days before his eighth birthday and we were all so proud of him. However, at the same time I was dealing with a sick little cherub.

Quinlan picked up a cold due to teething at the beginning of March, I was really grateful that he's improved by about the 10th March as this meant that I could use my evenings and his sleep times to work on getting Caelan's birthday party organised. However, seven days later he was sick again. This time things were a lot different and my happy go lucky little boy was pale, tired and NOT HAPPY AT ALL. He has since had small bouts of the flu every couple of months so I'm watching him closely to make sure that things don't get any worse. I have a new understanding for parents who have sick children who spend time in and out of hospital.

I took Quinlan to the doctor's one day after a four and a half hour sleep because when he woke up he was pale and lifeless. I then spent the next 5 hours sitting on the couch holding him and trying to get him to drink a little bit of water as the doctor had informed me that he was dehydrated. The other difficult thing was trying to get a seventeen month old (he's now 22 months old) to tell you what was wrong, it seems funny now but every time I'd ask him if his tummy was sore he'd shake his head 'yes' and then vomit. At the time though I just felt sorry for him.

After countless trips to the local doctor's and the children's hospital I was informed that he'd probably started off having a gastro bug which had been masking the fact that he also had pneumonia. I found during my time at the Children's Hospital it was important to see the funny side of thing otherwise you can spend all those hours thinking the worst. On our first visit they wanted a urine sample from Quinlan so he spent four plus hours in his room naked in the hopes that the cold air would make him urinate. Didn't work. They even suggested I go to the toilet in the hopes that he gets the idea of what they wanted from him. No such luck. At the end of the five hours I left the hospital with a urine collection container and a very tired little munchkin.

One of the best part of the whole visit was the number of nurses who came in to talk to Quinlan and left after telling me that he was a very cute little boy. However, as his mum I already knew that Quinlan is cute BUT I did enjoy all the cuddles that we had during the time that Quinlan was sick.

Motherhood had been difficult of late. I've had to learn how to multi-task in area's that I've never had to before. More importantly, I've had to learn how to look after a very sick little cherub while also being solely in charge of three other cherubs. Mr Opoes took a business trip to Newcastle and I was left to figure things out on my own. It's funny no matter how old you are you still run to your mum for help and that's what I did.

I rang my mum just to make sure that I was doing the best for Quinlan and that the decisions I'd made were the right ones. So I'm hoping that my little man can bounce back and continue to improve. One thing I will miss is all the time Quinlan and I spent cuddling when he was ill, he's not a typically cuddly boy so the time spent together was really special.

During this time I learnt some very valuable lessons. The first thing I need to start doing more of is  cuddling my children more often and I need to spend some one on one time with each of them. I noticed during this time that the other three were trying to get my attention and because I was always tired up with Quinlan I never seemed to have any time for them. They would then end up being naughty in the hopes that this would get them some attention. The other thing I learnt was that I'm generally doing the right thing. I may over think things, worry about small things and get confused with who has done what or when something needs to be completed BUT overall I'm doing well and I'm forever learning.

 

So thank you for allowing me to have a moment and for sharing my thoughts with you. Tomorrow is a new day and things can only get better.

 

Megan

Slow Cooked Corn Chowder

I recently purchased a few cookbooks as I'd come to the realisation that I was generally cooking the same meals week after week. Although they were meals that the majority of the children (three out of four) ate we were all getting a bit bored of them. So when I walked into the book shop looking for a classic CWA book I was really surprised when I found a selection of 'Food Lovers' books that took my fancy. The shop was having a sale which would allow me to purchase three books for $12 so I walked way with three additional books to add to my collection yah.

 

 

During winter I love to use my slow cooker as it frees up the day and I can go about doing other things while dinner is cooking slowly on the bench. So the first recipe I decided to try was the 'Corn Chowder' but I wanted to put my own little spin on it so that I could give a few extra vegetables to the kids.

Corn Chowder.
Serves 6
Ingredients:
800ml chicken broth (stock)
450g corn kernels
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 red capsicum (bell pepper), diced (optional)
1 onion, diced
300g broccoli
2 sticks celery, chopped
½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper
7 tablespoons cream
200g cooked chicken, diced (optional)

Method:
1. Add the broth, corn, potatoes, capsicum, onion, broccoli, celery, salt and pepper into the slow cooker pot.
2. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours.
3. Using a potato masher, partially mash the mixture until thick. Alternatively, you can use a stick blender and blend it all together. Stir in the cream and cooked chicken, if using. Taste and season with more salt and pepper if you think it needs it.
4. Ladle into bowls and sprinkle with chopped rosemary. Serve with a small bread roll of toast fingers.

The recipe states that you'll get 6 serves from the chowder, however I was able to get a heap more than that but that's because I had four little people eating it. What was great about the amount of chowder I'd made up meant that I had enough soup leftover to use it for lunch the following day for the kids and I. I also made a toasted cheese sandwich to accompany the soup as I have an eight year old with a huge appetite and his two little sisters who want to keep up with him.

So if you're looking for a great meal that you can cook while your at work for the day or while you're busy with the children then this slow cooked Corn Chowder is the meal for you. So give it ago and leave me a comment to let me know if you liked it or not.

Megan

Blogging Again

Welcome back to my little piece of the blogging universe. As you may or may not have noticed I’ve been MIA during the last twenty plus weeks. Unfortunately, this wasn’t because I’d been whisked away to a beautiful tropical holiday resort - I’ve just been busy looking after sick children, getting over the flu and working hard to improve my relationship with Mr Opoes. One thing I’ve come to realise in the last few weeks is that when times are tough you’ll discover who your true friends are and the same can be said about close family members as they too may desert you.
 

Now I’m not someone who likes to tell everybody my business so you won’t read anything here that is too personal. I will share my personal weight loss journey, interesting things that the kids have done, craft projects the kids and I have done together, things that I’ve discovered that I think you might be interested in and there might even be times when I try getting things off my chest without going into too much detail. Don’t get me wrong I won’t be airing my dirty laundry all the time BUT sometimes I might just have to get it off my chest.  Please don’t judge me because by no means am I doing everything right. Although motherhood is difficult at times I am blessed everyday by things that the children say, do and show me. All in all I have found that I've spread myself too thin (wish my weight was looking that good) so I've taken the time to focus of been a better mum, wife and friend. Let's talk about more positive things..

So what have I been doing since my last post?

I've had a few visits to the Emergency department due to Quinlan been really sick with Pneumonia, then moved onto weekly doctors visits just to make sure he's gaining weight, trying to make the children happy while daddy's been away on business trips, rang up to get quotes for built in bookcases, a 3 metre long desk and curtains to go into the kid's play area. I've tried to work these quotes into our families budget BUT some of these dream items will be left sitting on the shelf for a long time. I've been planning on making this little house of ours into a home and one of the last things I've been doing is taking time out for 'myself'. I read earlier in the year that to be a better mother and wife you should look after yourself, otherwise you won't be much good to anyone. Well I can tell you now that this is a hard lesson to learn especially when you've put yourself last ever since becoming a mother.

 

Have you thought about your blog while you've been away?

The simple answer to this is YES. During my time away I decided to enrol in an e-course run by Amy Davidson Latta from One Artys Mama and I can tell you it was the best money I've ever spent. I was one of twenty bloggers who took part in Amy's Growing Together: Summer 2013 group. During the twelve weeks I learnt about program's I didn't even knew existed, I developed skills using Picmonkey and with help from my fellow blogger's I was able to set up a Facebook page, clean up my Blog, add a button and make cosmetic changes to my blog so that it's more appealing. When I started this blog nineteen months ago I had an idea of what I wanted it to look like but as I'm not really good with computers I just did a basic job. With the assistance and guidance of Amy and the girls I cleaned up my sidebar, installed a button, added an about me page, I joined bloglovin and I added some social media buttons. So I hope you like the cleaner, modern look that I've we've created especially as it was a team effort.

 

Will anything be different?

Ever since I started this blog the one thing I wanted to do was share my craft projects with people. I have come to the realisation that I don't share many projects on my little blog so I'm going to work on doing and sharing projects that I do and those that I do with the children. Last year I created a board on Pinterest called 'Try Something New Tuesday' and the whole idea behind it was to find, learn and cook new recipes. As I enjoy trying new things I will be maintaining this weekly feature with the hope of building up both my skills and my Pinterest board.

 

In the coming weeks I hope to share some home décor projects I've been working on, share a few really yummy recipes and just babble on and on like I usually do ha ha. So I hope you come back to see what I've been working on.

 

 

 

Megan

May The Force Be With You

Yesterday I mentioned that I've been busy working on organising and preparing for Caelan's eighth birthday party at the end of the month. Now there are a few things you'd learn about Caelan within minutes of meeting him. One is that he is madly in LOVE with anything 'Star Wars' and he'll talk your ear's off if you let him. The other fun facts you'll learn is that he loves LEGO, he's made about technology and if he's not reading he'll be search YouTube for new video's take feature anything Star Wars or Lego related.

So I knew straight away that if we asked if he'd want a birthday party he'd immediately want a Star Wars themed party. So once I had the go ahead, I started searching Pinterest to see what ideas I could steal borrow for his upcoming birthday party. It was during my search that I came across the fabulous party printables made by the lovely Simone she runs an online party business called Simone Made It. The first thing I did was to make sure that I'd use the majority of the printables that are included in the pdf file especially as I'd have to wait another eight years for Quinlan to hopefully want to use the same theme.

I'm using the invitation in the top left hand corner.

All the text on these particular invitations was changeable so this allowed me to enter all of our party details and make up individual invitations for each child. I printed out each invitation using our printer and I set them aside for twenty-four hours so that the ink would set before cutting them. Now in my part of Brisbane we've been dealing with a heap of rain so I quickly came to the realisation that handing out printed invitations wouldn't be ideal.

To make the invitations a bit stronger I framed the invitation with two layers of card stock. I decided to use three different coloured card stock just because that's what I had on hand in my stash, now I went with silver glitter card, purple glitter card and a blue shimmering card stock. Now as I've been listening intently to Caelan during the last two weeks I knew that I had to add some shimmer and/or glitter to the invitation so that it resembled the starry galaxy that goes hand and hand with a Star Wars theme.

So I cut out the paper image, placed double sided tape on the back and stuck it onto the glitter card stock. I wanted some of the glitter to show through so I allowed 0.5 centimetres to create a boarder around the printed image. I then struck the glitter card stock onto black card stock so that the entire invitation was more solid. Again I created a 0.5 centimetre perimeter around the glitter card just to tie it all together. After all that I placed the invitations under some heavy telephone books just to make sure that everything stuck together properly. So after hours of cutting, measuring and gluing both Caelan and I were extremely happy with the way his invitations turned out.

The invitation at the front has a purple
 glitter boarder BUT it photographs blue.

So tell me what do you think? Do you think that the glitter worked? I'm very happy with the way the invitations turned out my only disappointment is that the blue shimmer card stock (invitation that has Luke on it) isn't the wasn't the correct colour but it was the closest I could get at the time. Caelan was really, really happy with the way the invitation looked and he couldn't wait for school to start today so that he could hand them out to all his Star Wars made friends.

Megan

It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to...

Today's my thirty-eighth birthday and I'm not really feeling it. Ask the children my age they'll tell you I'm really old, hundred's of years ago I would have been considered 'old' but today 38 is just a number. I'm reminded everyday that there's women just starting their families at my age, some people are travelling for the first time, others are starting new careers and some are watching there children move onto adulthood. If you'd asked me when I was in my 20's what I'd be doing at this age, being at home full-time with children wouldn't have been my only answer.

I always wanted children and I wanted to raise them but I also wanted to have the ability to work from home while I raised the children. I've come to realise in the last few years that I probably should have planned my life out a little more, planned more holidays, taken more trips with the children just so we could explore things, learnt to dance, taken up knitting, done a short course, searched out beautiful antiques and started doing more crafty hobbies. One thing I've come to realise is that I'm my happiest when I'm helping others, so coming up with an endless list of things to cross off a bucket list before my next birthday won't make me any happier.

My focus is my children, our family and as a twenty-five year old I wasn't mature enough to know what I'd need to be doing as a mother or a wife. I now know that I need to focus on showing my children how I love them, playing games with them, making them laugh or smile but most importantly doing things with them or for them to show them that I'm here. I want to be present in their lives, I want to share things with them and enjoy their joy, their loves and their sorrow. I want to more than just their mum I want their love, understanding and respect. This year I'm going to try and make them smile more, laugh more and I'm going to cuddle them more.

Speaking of children I'm in the process of planning my son's eighth birthday party. This year we are inviting a few children over to the house for a STAR WARS party and I can tell you that Caelan is beyond excited. He can't wait. The best part so far has been listening to him talk endlessly about all the characters he likes, he's helped me name the food we'll be having, he's helping think up things to do while the kid's are here and he's counting down the day's until the invitations get handed out.

I'm not showing him everything, I want to have a few surprises on the day so that he has to smile even wider. Tomorrow I'll show you the finished birthday invitations, were I found all my supplies and what other things I need to cross off my list.

May the force be with you....

Megan 

When Clutter Own's You Part 2

During the last six months I've shared a few posts about my issues with clutter, (find them here, here and here) how I've tried to declutter our house and how I've signed on to various 'organising your houses' programs that other bloggers host in an attempt to make an impact on the mess clutter that we having been living with. So I've taken some time away from blogging and I've been working on finally unpacking all those boxes that I'd dumped all over the house.

In Queensland, we have been inundated with rain during the last two months so it was an easy decision as to were I was going to start. The first area that I needed to address was getting the our KIA Carnival into our double garage especially with the heavier rain falls happening during school drop-off and school pick-up times. Having to time it so that I could run each child out to the car with an umbrella means that by the time I get to the car I am very wet and as the return trip home is done with twenty minutes I usually have to take my clothes off and try to dry them over the clothes horse. So with this in mind I set about clearing the garage out so I could get the car into the garage and the kids in and out without having to deal with the rain.

Before.

Before.

As you can see there is a heap of things in the garage that just shouldn't be there and these pictures were taken after I'd previously spent six hours clearing out things. The majority of the work I'd already done was to remove all the clothing out and install a storage box that I'd purchased from Ikea months and months earlier. One of the reason why I only spent six hours in there was because we had so many large and small items that there wasn't really anywhere to put them.

I started off by removing all the boxes, containers, toys etc and I worked through these sorting them into various piles so that I could put them in there correct position later. I knew that we had a few heavy items like a refrigerator, unused tiles, an old wardrobe and a metal shelving unit that stored poisons, petrol and other items that need to be stored in a shed (which we don't own). With the amount of heavy items I had Mr Opoes work with me so that I could focus my time on going through the stuff I'd moved into the house. It wasn't an easy job, with all the things we had in there it's often difficult to find places for them in other rooms without first looking through a box and only keeping the things we need.

I still have a number of boxes to go through and I know that the majority of the boxes are filled with toys so one of the next jobs I have to accomplish is to organise the storage area in the kid's room which is next on my ever growing to-do list. Clearing the garage in order to get the people mover in took nearly six hours, at least half that time was spent re-positioning things like tiles, an old wardrobe and household items e.g. wooden ladders, art canvas and wooden dolls items. So in total we have probably spent twelve hours so far and there's probably another four to five hours just finalising things once we get a shed organised. It will also mean that I can move the four kid's bikes out of the living room and into the shed.

So if you're still reading you probably want to see same after pictures. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the same angles as the before pictures but I was able to capture a more detailed photograph so that you could see how we went about fitting everything in.

The Garage (80% completed)

After.

Done:

▪ moved all the tiles into an area so that it would be easy to sell them.

▪ stored wooden ladders out of the way.

▪ placed items needing to go into the shed in one area.

▪ put shoes in pink box in the shoe storage area.

▪ swept floor so that the area was clean before the car came in.

To Do:
▪ remove all the shed related items into the shed.

▪ sell the tiles, wardrobe and any baby related stuff that I don't want.

▪ move the refrigerator, clean it and plug it in. 

▪ work on setting up an organisation station.

▪ set up zones so that the room is more functional.

As you can see there are still items that need to be rehoused but for now we are all very happy to have the car in the garage. The other thing that we've noticed is that the garage might not be a true double garage size especially when you take the brick work into account, we would struggle to fit a small car into the space that's left. The fun now is learning how to get down the driveway without damaging the new garden beds. Hope you have some fun de-cluttering just like we did!!

Megan