Melbourne Museum

 Hi all!

We have had a scorcher of a weekend and have started the week on the same note. This is all well and good, but in a house that doesn't have a cooling system (huh - in Australia?) we head out to places that do have air conditioning!

So this weekends "playing tourist" outing was to - you guessed it - Melbourne Museum. We shared the coach on the train out with all those young and hip 20-somethings in their teeny tiny shorts and barely-there tank tops with their gorgeously long tanned legs all on their way for a Big Day Out. Oh to be young again. Just not in 40 degree C weather!

But the museum was great! A beautiful ultra-modern building with fancy glass sliding doors and ooooh - aircon!! This old flower delivery van is in the foyer, isn't it cute?

 
We spent all day in there and still didn't get to finish the whole place. I guess that's because once you've moved from this dinosaur to that, you are forced with the constant demands of "come and see this Mum" and it's back to square one again.

So from dinosaurs, to brightly coloured green bugs, hairy spiders, all the way around to the human anatomy, animals of the world and the indoors forest, then onto the Aboriginal section.

Unfortunately we didn't get to finish because while in the Aboriginal section we were politely told by a nameless and faceless voice booming through the speakers that it was near closing time. So with a sigh we headed toward the exit and out of the coolness and back out in the smack-in-the-face heat once again.

But never mind. King Tut is coming to visit in April before he heads back to Egypt, so we can go and say hello and then finish off what we didn't see yesterday.

Robyn x

House Tour Conclusion - Living Room

Hi there!

Firstly, my apologies for the quality of the photo's. I know they aren't very good.

And so today is the conclusion to the tour with the living room. Not much going on here at all. Just a box standard white fan that does absolutely nothing! to the decor, but since there is no cooling system in this house, we need the air. But it's like blowing air in a sauna. It really doesn't help but physcologicaly we feel better.

The living room is long and because there is a double sliding door to outside in an odd spot, it leaves a bit of dead space behind the 3 seater. I have the perfect thing coming soon to fill that space, but it's currently being used as Master T's play area. As you can see NASA took over where the Christmas tree was. There are 2 boarded closed fireplaces in the stone wall which is doubling as a toy storage cubby for now. Not the best to look at but for now it's keeping it neat.

Confession: it doesn't always look as neat as this, but I was tired of looking at all the little pieces from K-Nex so some serious sorting and organising was needed.

And that's it. The lovely abode. Now some serious work involved to get it looking a lot better. Pity I can't brighten it all up with a can of white paint!

Cheers!

Robyn x

House Tour - Rumpus, Laundry and Miss M's Bedroom

Greetings!

Not long to go now, just the lounge tomorrow (if I can remember where those pics are) and then that's it for the rooms in the house. Hopefully those make-overs will be beginning REALLY soon.
I know I can't wait.

The Rumpus. Currently completely empty except for a rolled up carpet, one part 3 nesting tables currently holding all the hard drives, the phone, slug and other computer stuff Mr C says he can't live life without. Hey. As long as my laptop does what I like need it to do, then all that stuff stays. Until Labour Day there were still a few boxes in this room and the carpet was rolled down. Hopefully sometime this year soon this will hold a desk each for Miss M and I.

Miss M's room. As you can see it's small. Really small. It's at least half of her old room in England. We can't even get a much wanted desk in there. But I have a plan for that. And we have a plan to make-over this room so I just need to get stuck in and do it. Soon.

And then the "lovely" laundry. This whole concept is new to me and is still a novelty! Not the whole washing, ironing thing - do you think I'm mad? - but the novelty of having a whole separate room. With cupboards and a built-in washing basket for all the dirties. Need to do something about the side of that sink though. Looks terrible.

Lots of cupboard space for my towels, pegs, iron, ironing board, mop and even room to hold the mostly-used tools. That door on the right leads into the house via the rumpus area. To the very right (not shown) is a sliding door that leads directly into the bathroom which I have already shown here.

Plenty to work with  - now just need to get stuck in and get it all sorted.

'Til next time,

Robyn x

Happy Australia Day!

Hi all!

So we're not official Australians yet - we have a few years to go - but what better way to embrace our new lifestyle with a celebration amongst the true Aussies.

We were invited by our lovely neighbours to join them and some of their friends down at the local lake. So we packed up a picnic and headed out.

The kids had free reign all day and there was enough to keep them completely entertained. Which was great because that meant the mature adults could sit and chill-ax and natter about everything and nothing.

And so with too many bottles of wine and bags of crisps we spent the day with these lovely people.

Thanks guys for a fantastic day out! Wish someone had remembered to bring the camera to capture it all. Ahem, yes that would be me. I hang my head in shame.

Robyn x

Melbourne Royal Botanical Gardens and The Shrine of Remembrance

Hi there!

Hope you have all had a great weekend! We've been playing tourist again this weekend. Might as well make the most of the outdoors while it's nice and hot! So where have we been this weekend?

We hopped on a train into the great city of Melbourne and took ourselves to The Shrine of Remembrance and then across the road to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Explaining about the war memorial to a 4 year and a half interested 12 year old resulted in groans and sighs so we didn't go all the way in, but Mr C and I had visited in Feb '10 so fortunately we've already seen it.

So we spent all the rest of the day across the road in the Royal Botanic Gardens. We certainly did a lot of walking with a few rest stops to rehydrate and to watch the ducks, eels & turtles in the lake. We didn't care at all about the time, but when the childrens garden and the gift shop closed, I think they were dropping a little hint that we needed to head for the exits, but not before an ice cream treat. Mmmm, cookies and cream flavour for me please!

It was quite busy and like all Botanicals there are the regulars who come for the day and lie under a tree in the shade, chill-axing, maybe do a little reading and having the odd sneaky nap. You know, all for some peace and quiet from the busy city noises. And then we come along with 2 kids, one of whom never stops talking and the other who needs to be seen as being cool but still likes to run down the rolling hills!

Think I'd like to live here...

Wonder if I could borrow their gardeners? Or just one of them maybe?

Back tomorrow!

Robyn x

Getting Those Jobs Done I Kepp Putting Off - With Help

 Hello from a nice hot & sunny Oz!

Today we woke up to a bright and sunny day, with the birds squawking singing in the trees and a very rare occurrence for me - lots of energy.

Mr C has commandeered my the car today because he had to be at work extra early, so we are not exactly house-bound, but it means no day trip to burn the excess energy that staying at home while it's miserable induces.

This bucket is in desperate need of a white-make over

 So what to do? Put the kids to work of course! While the house is neons away from qualifying for "How Clean is Your House", those little jobs one keeps putting off in the hope that ONE day it'll do itself, needed to be tackled. The kiddos each got a broom, a mop and a bucket of soapy water (just kidding), but between the 3 of us, we have put in and hung out to dry 3 loads of washing, spot-letised their bedrooms (mine was still spotless from Monday's post), hoovered and mopped all the floors, cleared the rumpus room of all the boxes which were conveniently stacked there for a  rainy day to sort - we've had plenty of those, but still the boxes stayed - done a spot of gardening, and swept the steps at the front and back/laundry doors.

So spotless all that's there is the bed and a little rug

 

Shew! The sugar-rush is now SO over. Which means time for a bit of R&R. Okay we aren't quite close enough to the beach to just nip down for a couple of hours, but the park around the corner is just as good. Naw, that's not true. But it's the best I can do.

Don't worry about "Raaf" - he's just waiting for Master T's bed to bed re-made

And do you know what? After that Road Runner effort through the house, I feeeel goooood!! Why? I can put my feet up, grab a nice cold cider and just chill!

Until dinner needs to be made.Ugh.

Robyn x

House Tour - Main Bedroom

Hello!

So, the main bedroom. Some of you are going to look at this and think - mmm, plain. While others might see beyond the not-so-pretty blinds and the wardrobe doors that could do with a lick of white paint and think - blank canvas! Where do I start? So apart from the bed and a spare dining chair (it had to go somewhere and we needed something to dump our stuff on at night), we also have a cardboard box which serves to hold the clock radio. Someone has to get up in the morning and go to work!

The bed. According to all the blurb that came with it it's made from Malaysian teak. I used to own a teak tv cabinet and I'm sure it wasn't as orange. Mr C had already ordered the bed before we arrived so I wasn't truly involved in the choosing, even though I'm sure I told him "everything white". Like the sales assistant apprently told him "no matter what you choose it won't be right". It's not that I don't like it, but because of the orange tinge, its made it difficult in choosing the right linen colours. So it's all white. Now it just needs some dressing up. And maybe a whitewash?

As you can see the room itself isn't very big and so there isn't space for anything else really. Which is fine with me as I am more of a minimalist when it comes to furniture. There is just enough space on this side to open those louvered cupboard doors, and Mr C has just enough room to squeeze in on the other side. But you don't want to know how many times I've bruised myself on the footboard. There's no flowing in and out, it's more like walk in, sharp turn, straight up, sharp turn - so all those years of being a finely tuned drum-majorette has paid off!

There's this little space that Mr C wants to put a dresser/tallboy for some more storage space as the wardrobes have no shelves, it's all hanging space. I'm not going with that, as it will just take up more of the little space we have.

I'll come back to this room again when I have accessorised more and you can see what's been done. For now, my little clay heart is all that's there.

'Til then,

Robyn x

Sand Sculpting Australia 2010 - Creepy Crawlies

After spending most of the week at home playing entertainments manager because of the rain, I have to say the weekend we've just had made up for all that. On Friday afternoon and aaaaalll weekend, the sun made an appearance again, and trust me it was VERY welcome!

On Sunday we headed down to Frankston Waterfront to see the annual Sand Sculpting Australia. Sand Sculpting is open from Boxing Day and runs for 4 months.

Creepy Crawlies

One word - WOW!! These guys are amazing. There were 17 sculptures in total and are done by sculptors from around the world. Most of them full-time professionals.

"Flea Circus"

"Bed Bugs"

"Enchanted Garden"

The attention to detail is so incredible and these things are huge! The textures, the depth and of course the imagination these guys have.

"A Close Look" - up close

Unfortunately with all the rain we have had recently, most of the sculptures have been destroyed either nearly completely or only marginally. Now that we are in for a spell of hot weather, for this week at least, there are 8 full time sculptors on site to repair the damage. They expect this to take 10 days. A couple of the original artists have been flown back in from around the world to repair the damage done.

Repairing "Flea Circus"

Repairing "The Exterminator"

While the kids enjoyed having a go themselves and other activities we learned a few things about all this.

"A Close Look"

It really is just all sand and water. But the sand grains are square (known as "brickies") which makes them easier to stick together, like building blocks. The finished work is then sprayed with an environmentally-friendly, biodegradable spray that gives them a water resistant coating, but over time (and in our case) heavy rainfall and strong winds will erode the work.

"Bed Bugs"

The sculpting is done from top to toe in sections, and when each levels "scaffolding" is taken away, they begin the level. Each one is solid sand. There is no open space underneath. Only when indoors on a floor with weight bearing limitations is a core used to lighten the load.

Then at the end of April when it's all finished, they get bulldozed down and the sand is either reused or stored until next years event! Looking forward to what they'll do next year.

If you've never been to one of these events before, do yourselves a favour and go. I cannot stand the (real) little critters myself, but I was quite happy to stand awe-struck and stare at these!

We couldn't not do this afterwards...

And something funny to finish on - I have that classic red face with white sunglasses mark. I need to work and that Slip, Slap, Slop slogan they have here.

And I have to go food shopping tomorrow - at the mall!

Robyn x

House Tour - Bathroom

Hey hey it's Friday!!

This house tour is taking longer than I wanted simply because the weather has been reeeaaallly dull over the last few days, and I'm useless at taking good shots with these fangled all singing all dancing DSLR camera's.

So here it is. This bathroom is brand new. New vanity, new tiles, new toilet, new shower. It's rectangular in shape with the door opening on the left, and can be sectioned off in 2 places. Huh?

Not sure what the thinking was behind that. The left side houses the vanity and bath, the middle has the toilet an the other end is the shower is. Between the shower/toilet & toilet/vanity are 2 concertina doors.

See that door on the right? That's a sliding door that leads directly into the laundry room. Pretty clever design. It's like sending dirty kids through a car wash. Dump all dirties from outside in the laundry, step straight into a shower and come out the other side all sparkly and clean. And no dirt in the house.

I really need to put something on the shelf above the toilet but don't know what yet, so for now we'll display the clean and crisp whiteness of the toilet paper! And once again that caramel-coloured trim. At least it's better than the pigs we had on tiles in the old house. And NO, I didn't choose those! The bathroom was the only room we didn't re-do in the UK house.

Rightio, I'm off to make some of Mrs Beeton's banana bread muffins. Have a great weekend!

Robyn x

Miss M's Big Day

Today is Miss M's birthday. I had a fantastic day planned out with a luxury picnic packed, a place where Master T could run off his excess energy and they could both mess about on the beach. I'm talking sun hats, bucket and spade, ice-cream and sunshine. Or as they say here, some "slip, slop, slap" weather.

But was it to be? Not a chance. Like most of this week it's been a wet day so back-up plan B was put into place. Fifteen minutes before we had to leave.

So instead of me relaxing with a book on the beach and people watching (I love doing that, especially with the inconspicious sunnies on), I hot-footed it out of bed and threw them in the car for a trip to the cinema.

Legend of the Guardians

All during the holidays the cinema has Kidz Flix for the 10am show which costs $5 a ticket. Imagine my delight when my ticket was the same price. It's been a loooong time since I was classed as a kid ;-)

A very rare take-away afterwards, before a slow and deliberate steady walk through the mall back to the car. And now bless her, she even made her own birthday cake. But she did want to. Honest. I did ask her.

And it was delish...

Robyn x