Impromptu Photography Shoot - the Australian War Memorial

I have never been a huge fan of the War Memorial.  I don't like the insight into what war is, the reminder of how many lives have been taken in the name of...well, whatever the purpose of war is.  Freedom to exist in the form you choose to exist in I suppose.  But sometimes I find myself there and I'm always overwhelmed with the mix of emotions.  It is both beautiful and terrible, one of our most sacred sites.

I've never photographed there before and I didn't have my camera with me this time either because I was there on a mission with one of my good friends, Miss Kim, who was looking for information about a relative of hers, George Hamon.  But I was compelled to take some photos outside with my camera phone.

We found George's name on the honour roll because he was killed in action.

Lest We Forget

Charlotte's room renovation - Part 2

So what prompted the moment of actual action on the room front?  Well half of our little family headed to Coffs Harbour for a week's holiday.

Given Rowan gets migraines from nail polish and baby Evan is only a few months old, I thought having them out of the house while I painted was probably a good idea.  It also happened to line up on a week when the kids were with their Dad.  The timing couldn't have been more perfect.

My Dad tells me that when you have big plans the Universe will send something to test your commitment to them.  This time the Universe sent the plague.  Since I wasn't going to get another opportunity like this for a good long while, plans had to go ahead.  A one-day job turned into three and suddenly I was heading up the ladder in between head spins and chewing pseudoephidrine the way some people knock back Skittles.  I kind of felt like if the Universe was testing me I should have passed after the first day and the sickness would give way but no such luck.

First up I cleaned out all the furniture and went through all her stuff.  I only took one photo to record the horror of this particular process.  Behold, under Madam's bed...

Bleugh.  Way, way, way past the time when this should have been done.  Next up was prep lock for the ceiling.  Here's what it looked like after two coats of paint;

Two coats of ceiling paint went over the top of that.  You can still see some of the worst bits very faintly if you know where to look but otherwise it looks like a perfectly normal ceiling.

Next came patching the walls and cutting in around the edges with the paint.  

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The colour, in case you're wondering, is Taubman's purplicious.  I was worried it might be too dark but the room has enough windows to make it light enough to pull it off.  Here's the end result;

So I mentioned in Part 1 of the room renovation blog that the carpet had some issues.  I hadn't been planning to do anything about it but when the room was painted it quickly became obvious that I couldn't put everything back on top of the feral carpet, I just couldn't.  So I called a carpet cleaning guy who came and took one look...

...and was immediately like, "Lady, no, I am not cleaning that."  First of all he wasn't sure the cleaning process would do much about the worst of the coloured stuff.  Second, he was pretty sure that ominous large waxy stain we've been hiding under a bed for five years would "melt and spread" and finally, because the carpet is wool he said the amount of water needed to clean it would make the whole lot turn brown and smell bad.  "I don't know what your finances are like," he shrugged, "But I think we'll both sleep better tonight if we agree I'm not going to clean this carpet and you're going to find a few extra dollars to buy a new one instead."

This takes place at four o'clock on a Thursday afternoon.  I have an hour to try and find someone who can sell me carpet and lay it the next day because Kat and Rowan are due back Saturday and I'm guessing they'd rather all their bedrooms weren't filled up with Charlotte's furniture and belongings.  Long story short I managed it. J & M flooring solutions in Weston agreed to supply and fit 100% pure wool Berber carpet the very next morning for $300 - roughly double what cleaning it would have cost.  Oh.  My.  God.   It's beautiful.

So this takes place on Friday morning and I'm still completely trashed with the plague.

Thursday nights I always have the kids and so they've seen the new room and were present while the carpet was laid.

It's also school holidays.  As soon as the carpet was down I planned to take them over to their grandparents' house for the day so I could die a quiet death in bed but Charlotte was desperate for her room to be finished.  Please Mama, please, please can we finish it?  I'll even help you with the furniture...

How do you say no to that?  You can't unless you're dead.  True to their word they helped.  Little man carting books back to the bookshelf and Madam powering up her little arms for some quality furniture moving.  So here you go.  Some shots of her new room with all the revamped furniture back in place;

There are a few more loose ends to go.  The money for her blinds went on the new carpet instead so, for now, we're stuck with the crappy aluminium ones.  I also need to make her a name plate for her door and a valance to hide the base of her bed (a job for this weekend).  But I did manage to buy her some new manchester on sale and she is the happiest little girl, spending all her time in there and cleaning it before bed every night.  

A run down of the renovation costs for those interested;

Premixed plaster repair - $15
1L Zinsser 1 * 2 * 3 prep lock - $25
4L British Paints Ceiling White - $31
Taubman's low sheen Endure in Purplicious - $70
Taubman's semi gloss in Soft Velvet - $80
Berber carpet supplied and installed - $300
Coffee table from tip shop - $5
Bedside table from tip shop - $10

Brass handles for bedside table $12
Quilt cover set - $14 from Kmart
King Single fitted sheet - $4.20 from Best and Less

All up, just under $600.  Stay tuned for the finishing touches when I get there.

Charlotte's room renovation - Part 1

This is one of the most recent photos I have of my oldest baby.

She's growing up.  There have been changes.  Physical and behavioral changes but she's been shifting for a while now from being a kid to being more of a teenager.  Which is hard to take when you consider she's only eight.  And still my baby.

But there it is.  These days she asks me for spicy laksa instead of McDonalds, she wants girl's nights to watch bad eighties movies and paint her toe nails with me, she has definitive opinions on fashion and she has been asking me for a long time to please, please, please fix up her room because it's too babyish.  And she has a point.  I did nothing to her room when we moved in.  It was painted pink and green (not as terrible as it sounds, I swear) and the wardrobe didn't have doors but it was passable.  The carpet was not spectacular - in particular there was one enormous waxy stain that we didn't even want to think about, but we simply popped her bed over the top.  Face crayons, oil pastels and a variety of other contaminants have since added to that particular situation.  At some point her toddler brother made it onto the top bunk with her set of alphabet scrapbooking stamps and this happened;

When you're three a ceiling is mostly just the biggest canvas you've ever had the good fortune to lay your stamps on.  So yes, the time had come for a change.  Let me walk you through some of the "before" issues.  First up, here's behind her bedroom door.  You can see the green paint and you can also see that when they put the wardrobe in they didn't bother to fix up the plaster and we still have bare metal mesh happening.  They didn't even have a frame for doors around the wardrobe cavity so that raw pine there is something I put in myself.  Embarrassingly that was roughly two years ago.

This is the other side of the wardrobe cavity.  Raw pine frame again and now you see the pink.  The butterflies are the only decoration I've added myself.  And spend a moment contemplating the industrial feel of those aluminium blinds.  Mmmm, institutional and broken.

The draws there are a project from a long time ago, shown on my other blog.  You can sort of see the corner of the TV table in this photo and I wish I'd got a better photo because it was in a terrible state.  But it was also scheduled for a similar revamp to the draws.  This photo also gives you an idea of just how untidy the whole place was.  No pride, no respect and honestly, who can blame her?

 Her bedroom corner.  More revamped tip shop furniture as a bedside table and more of the lovely green.

So there you have it, the blank canvas as it were.  Definitely time for a big change.  Stay tuned for part two, the revamp.

Back in the hot seat

It's been a while since I wrote anything.  Writing is something I love.  It's cathartic, it's motivational and energising...but it's also something that takes effort and frankly my efforts have been elsewhere of late.  It took a really long time to get my feet under me.  There are still days when I feel overwhelmed.  But I miss blogging.  I miss writing about my life.  I miss the dialogue that starts when you bare yourself for the world to see.  I feel like I'm ready for that kind of exposure again...and the sometimes negative comments that come with it.  It's been a pretty epic couple of months and this week it culminated with me, knocked over from the flu, still putting some pretty big runs on the board.

Consent orders are through, our financial settlement is finalised.  This week I negotiated a new mortgage, in my name alone, with the bank.  All those zeros next to my name.  It's daunting.  I really must get around to putting a "donate here" link on this blog in case anyone ever feels compelled to throw some dollars my way.  Emotional stripping - nowhere near as lucrative as the real deal.

I finished renovating my daughter's room (mostly.  More on that later).  I finished organising my room.  I made a catch-up book for my ex brother-in-law.  I spent most of yesterday asleep because I overdid it and knocked myself out.  Tonight the big kid has a friend coming for a sleepover.  I have sewing to do.  It's all happening.  I'm up to day 28 of my second shot at the 100 Happy Days campaign.  This time I'm determined to finish it.

I don't want to promise anything I can't deliver but I am hoping this blog becomes active again and that I can find the time to post regularly.  Let the insanity commence!