Guest Room

When my parents came down last month we had only moved into the house about 10 days before. The mattress I bought for them arrived late in the afternoon before their flight came in and I hadn't even had time to buy sheets let alone a base for the bed.

So they slept on the mattress...on the floor.

It was fine, we went and grabbed some new bamboo sheets on the way home and a quilt cover that was on sale. It wasn't the "guest room" experience I was hoping for my very first guests but it was what it was.

That was over a month ago and finally we have a very basic resemblance of a guest room. I dropped in at Sheridan DFO and they were having a big sale. I bought the quilt cover, 2 pillow cases and the European pillow cases all on sale. The sales assistant was so sweet and signed me up to their VIP club, which gave me an extra 10% and because it was my birthday they gave me another $20 off, so all up it was like $90 for all that. Awesome.

The bed base was from a friend who was throwing it out. It's perfectly fine and will do for now, saves me a few hundred dollars for the moment and I just need to find a valance for it.

It's still missing bedside tables, lamps and some artwork, but is now at least basic amenities for any guests.

Now I just need some more guests...

Pots...finally

The gorgeous Singapore Frangipanis I was given for Valentine's Day finally have proper pots! The poor things were beginning to get root bound, I think I transplanted them just in time.

I'd been looking for pots for ages but they were all about $35 each and I wasn't that keen to pay $70 for a pair of pots. I got a hot tip that there was a closing down sale at a nursery in Eight Miles Plains where all the pots were 50% off so I jumped in the car IMMEDIATELY. These were the exact pots I was after and just $15 each. Win.

The nursery was across the road from a butcher one of the girls at work had mentioned. I said to her the next day that they were having a closing down sale with hot prices for pots. She said, "meh, they've been closing down for 2 years, I wouldn't exactly jump in the car and race down there...."

I didn't tell her...

Veggie Garden (or Graveyard) Phase 1

Wowsers I logged in today and realised it's been over a month since I last posted. It's been a crazy month too. Visitors, parties, work issues (a whole other story) and life in general, we haven't actually had time to do much on the house now that we've moved in. That's not to say there's nothing to do, there's a list a mile long, we just haven't had the time or the money to do it.

Last weekend was the first weekend we've had free and I've been itching to get into the garden.

This was the pile of bricks that was at the house when we originally bought it back in 2009. It was leftover from the 1970s patio extension to the original house. We sold half of them on Gumtree in 2011, just after the flood, but still had loads leftover...perfect for a veggie garden on a budget.

This is the spot behind the granny flat. It gets afternoon sun and filtered light throughout the rest of the day, however it does flood a little during major rain. It's the only spot however that's not in the way of the future garden or exposed to the main road while we are without a front fence. So it's temporary but will do for now :-).

I think Josh was a little surprised at how much effort was needed just to make a simple garden bed. It was going to be a raised garden so we didn't even need to dig anything up, but we had to measure it to make sure they were straight and evenly spaced (I'm not anal...I'm really not...) and the ground wasn't completely flat in some spots and had to be built up.

We've only made it 2 bricks high, but I'm considering putting at least another level. We were a bit stretched for time because I had an afternoon tea to get to and also the pile of bricks was full of spiders and I was over being frightened like Miss Muffet every time I picked one up.

We put wet newspaper down instead of weed mat (there was only grass there anyway, no nasty weeds)  and then some hay leftover from a hoe-down party we had. Yeah, you read that right.

I'm going to get some soil delivered to go over the top of this and let it breakdown for a couple of weeks before we start planting. I've started collecting tomato and chilli seeds to cultivate in some small pots so hopefully we'll have some seedlings ready to plant when the time comes.