Earth Hour - a candlelit evening

For Earth Hour last night we decided to make an event of it, had friends over for dinner and had an evening by candle light. Made for some interesting photo effects.

Earth Hour is a fantastic idea for getting people to think about the environment and this year they are calling on people to go beyond the hour.

This we are trying to do with our day to day in our household making sure things are turned off at the switch and only heating rooms when required. We are also looking at sustainability with our build - double glazed windows, rain water tank and solar panels to name a few.

Hope you having a good weekend, our kids really enjoyed the candle light last night.

A rude awakening - a build story

7.15 this morning and there was a loud knock at the door, which I stumbled to answer with wet hair and in my slippers (oh and a dress thankfully!) to find a fit looking guy at the door announcing he was there to put on our new roof. This I was very excited about but couldn't seem to muster much enthusiasm for the poor guy when I was still half asleep (not helped by being up with my little boy from 4-5 earlier in the morning) and hadn't yet had that vital cup of coffee. So I am thinking I looked a little stunned, especially when he told me they would be done by lunch time. In my sleep induced brain I thought, well that is impressive for one or two guys!

New sliding doors - French doors you can see are been taken out along with that wall next week

Well with coffee finally in hand and sitting in between my two kids on the sofa, looking through our new sliding doors (put in yesterday) my five year old daughter quickly established for me there were six guys walking around on the roof frame (glad she is more with it then me in the morning) and then proceeded to tell me and Hubby (who had just come out to the kitchen to get the kids breakfast) she wants to put on roofs when she grows up so she can climb like that! While my little boy runs off to get his Bob the Builder tool set so he can maybe help (this is a regular occurrence at the moment, so cute).

Following this we continued to get ready for work and the kids ready for school and kinder hearing thumping overhead, which is a little disconcerting. Not quite as bad as the walls shaking a few days ago though. And I am sort of getting used to having builders around just outside the French doors at the end of the kitchen so they can see the morning scramble and chaos in our house. Still for some reason feel like I need to tidy up so they don't think we are too piggish with dishes everywhere (hard to do on mornings like today when we were running late and sleep deprived).

Anyway I am now getting prepared for the invasion to enter a whole new level next week when they are planning on knocking through into the kitchen / family area and knocking out our existing laundry. This is exciting and I am glad they are moving quickly but a little freaked at the fact that this weekend we need to clean out our kitchen and laundry and be prepared to live in the front of the house for a while. Yikes!

So now home from work and sure enough they have finished the roof.

Hallway blue makeover

Those that have read my blog for a while may remember a post I did ohh some four months ago about painting my hallway blue and changing it from the dirty cream it was. Well It took us a while to decide on the blue (British Paints, Distant Shore) and with other continual renovation distractions even longer to paint it.

Love these Paris boxes that a friend bought me from a $2 shop. Great for keeping bit and pieces in. Have even managed to get Hubby to empty his pockets into these when he enters the door.

Now from the images below you can see we still need to paint and decorate the rest of the hallway..............

You can also see the edge of a cupboard door here (our linen cupboard) which you see as soon as you enter the hall. So am thinking of ideas to spruce the doors up.

Hope you have a good weekend, I may even try to finish painting the hall but with the weather so nice here in Melbourne I think I might just get out and about.

Mummy Balancing Act

As some of you know the first blog I attempted was one titled - Mummy Balancing Act which as the title suggests is all about the Mummy juggle of two young children and family, Hubby time, my office job, social life, the renovation and the illusive me time.

Well in the end last year the 'Mummy blog' didn't get much focus and this one became it. Now as part of my resolution to live life in the moment, something which kids are so good at, I have decided to start the Mummy blog again with that as the focus. Please check it out - mummybalancingact.blogspot.com

Kids bedrooms

Now the build is well underway I have got even more focused on interior design ideas. Interestingly enough the rooms I am looking forward to doing the most are the kids bedrooms, I think because here you can potentially have the most fun.

Images from - http://www.livingetc.com

I do like these neutral styles above but with my kids love for colour they don't really suit.

I also love this beautifully classic style bedroom below but it would be more appropriate in a house a lot older then ours, plus my little girls favourite colour is red.

Image from - www.besthouseinterior.com/classic-childrens-bedrooms

Image from - childrensbedrooms.blogspot.com

This room would suit my five year old daughter more but with red instead of pink. I would also think of painting the wall behind the bed red. I do love bunting as a form of decoration.

Image from - homes-designing.net

And some good IKEA style and colour for my little boy. I think he would prefer a Lightening McQueen or Buzz Lightyear theme though if he had his way.

Thinking about the kids rooms I visited Adairs Kids the other day and was very tempted by the bed linen form the Morgan collection pictured below. Funnily enough they say it is for boys but my daughter would love the red. So maybe red for her and blue for my son.

Images from - www.adairs.com.au

We already have these star lights in the bedroom the kids share and I know my daughter will be taking them with her to her new room, so I am thinking of getting car shape ones for my little boys third birthday.

I can't wait to decorate these rooms but a few months away still, so I will keep collecting ideas.

Loving the moment!

A long weekend in Melbourne and after spending Sunday around the house painting windows we decided the weather too beautiful and with it being a sunny 33 degrees a good time to go to the beach and enjoy.

So we jumped in the car and drove 45 minutes to Mt Martha beach on the Mornington Peninsula to get out of the car and find the temperature had dropped over 10 degrees.

Love the colour of the beach huts

And after 10 minutes on the beach the dark clouds let go and it poured. For a while we just enjoyed running in the rain, the kids laughing as we finally decided to run to the car.

We enjoyed the moment and after seeing more images on the news of Japan (so devastating and heartbreaking, I can no longer watch) later that evening made me really realise how important these moments are to hold on to.

Hope you had a lovely weekend with those you love.

A days work - framing

Friday a beautiful sunny day in Melbourne saw most of our wall frames going up. I couldn't believe how quick it was, in the morning we just had flooring in then went out for an hour came back and saw this.....

The back fourth bedroom or study .....

Then a little later in the day -looking across the family room floor (will be floorboards) extension to the other rooms which include a hall, two bedrooms, laundry and family bathroom....


Looking through the laundry door to side entrance (so happy as got to keep this tree, it was a close call and so now half its original size).....

Looking through the back bedroom / study window from the back of the garden. Plan to put our desk under this window which will look out on a beautiful Orange and Japanese Maple trees.

So tomorrow I think the plan is to put up the family room walls, the room which will eventually join the kitchen (linking the extension to the rest of the house) which is just through the existing French doors. Around this will be a deck. The alfresco undercover deck on the left of the image below which we will be able to walk on through sliding doors which will be put in in place of the existing window you can see and then open deck at the end of the family room space again accessed by double glazed wood sliding doors.

Cottage

I have always like the idea of living in more of a cottage style house. Growing up in Adelaide I became a big fan of the blue stone and sandstone cottages.

Image Adelaide property - http://www.domain.com.au/

In Melbourne you don't really find these so had to adjust to weatherboard and now I have I love it. I did an earlier post showing the brick on our house coming off the back, well now we have taken it off the front the house is starting to get the look I want.

Before - with half brick still on

After

A clean up, looking at redoing the porch and getting wooden sash windows (maybe lead light) will be the next step. These iron windows we have at the moment are rusty, very thin and I don't like the look.Now for a weekend of painting and cleaning up. What have you got planned? Hope you have a good one.

Tuesday Juggle - A day in the life of our renovation

Have you ever looked at the beautiful homes in magazines and wanted to know more about the family or looked at the renovation section of Home Beautiful (which I love) seen the steps and the cost it took to get the final look but would love to know how they juggled it with day to day life a bit more? The story behind the process. Well I know I certainly have but maybe I am more nosey then most?

And this is probably why I love shows like Grand Designs where host Kevin McCloud talks to the family a lot more and often they are quite honest about how they are feeling and the impact. Even so I want to know what happens after the show and their are some Grand Designs revisited but that is more about just living in the house.

So along this vain I thought I would start a regular post - A Day in the life of our renovation - so let me know what you think (please note as first one will be a little longer the future posts).......

Site before all the rain, now very muddy

The Tuesday Juggle

Tuesday is the day I try to get into work by 8am so I can leave by 4.30 to pick up my daughter from after school care and then my little boy from childcare, it is a full on, long day. But trying to get out the door by 7.15 to make this 8am deadline was a little difficult this morning with both kids wanting Mummy and pulling on me to try and get my attention while I am trying to put on my makeup.

Then of course at 7.30 this morning there is a knock at the door as the guy to insulate under the floor (who we weren't expecting) had arrived at the same time as the plumber (who we did expect but were given half a days notice about). We were a little concerned about them installing insulation as the termite company was due to rock up as well to treat the stumps (mind you this was a last minute thing too being told the day before we needed to organise). Can all this happen at once? A call went out to the Supervisor, who by the way has been on our job for less then a week as the last one resigned.

Both Hubby and I are too busy rushing around trying to get the kids ready, marking a spot in the front for the portable toilet (also which we were only told we needed to organise the day before) to hear what the Supervisors response is to the guy putting in the insulation. My little boy is also continually opening the front door to say hi to different tradies and getting upset when we won't let him go out into all the mud to see what is happening, resulting in screaming which has the flow on effect of upsetting my daughter too.

So finally rushing out the door (having to leave Hubby to deal with everything as his turn for dropping off the kids) and getting on a packed train just after 8, I get a call from the Supervisor on my iPhone ( a bit of a plug here as an invaluable tool in the whole balancing thing), which I try to answer while not falling over onto the business man next to me, to be told " I hear you said the installation of the insulation had to stop because of termite treatment.' My internal thoughts were screaming, no, no, no, we just asked if it was a problem as hadn't been warned at all that this was all happening today. Communication people!

All this to then find out later in the day that Hubby had spoken to the plumber who said the floor insulation can't be put in anyway until he does pipes. And on top of this the builder was talking about putting in the rest of the frame and roof first. Kind of makes sense for protecting it.

So glad that things are moving along quickly (especially after having the ensuite take twice as long as expected) but sometimes feel even with a Supervisor we end up doing a lot of Project Managing and wish we could be on site more. Especially when I had a day like yesterday where I got calls at work and had to rush around organising last minute things in my lunch hour.

Thankfully tomorrow I am at home for the day and have a meeting with the new Supervisor first thing so will have to reiterate the importance of keeping us in the loop and maybe giving us a timeline more then a half day in advance (especially as we are living in the house with two young children). They haven't knocked through yet and I would like a bit of warning before they do, is that too much to ask? When they do that, that is when the real mess and difficulties are going to start.

View from the kitchen tonight, in a few weeks these doors will be taken out once the back is at lock up

This renovation gig is a little like having a third job, first being looking after the kids, then my paid office work and then the reno.