A Smidgen and a Dash

I've always wanted to try my hand at cheese making, so when I saw a cheese making kit available on Green Living Australia, I knew where to direct Dan's attention when it came to buying my Christmas present.

Dan, being infinitely more pragmatic than romantic, just gave it to me last night when I got home - still wrapped in the bubble wrap it came in - because there were various components that needed refrigeration or freezing.

So here, nearly four weeks early, is my Christmas present (minus the parts in the fridge and freezer, of course).

I'm really excited about having a go. The instructions say you should start with an easy cheese like cottage cheese or fetta before moving on to the tougher ones like cheddar, so I probably should follow those directions, but we'll see.

Dan also ordered these cute measuring spoons, featuring handy measurements like a smidgen and a dash, apparently very useful in the making of cheese.

Bring on a cheesy Christmas!

Patience, Grasshopper

This weekend, while Dan is again working at Karra (he'll be done by Christmas), I'm going to do some sewing.

I've been doing a little lately, not huge amounts due to The Exhaustion - but a bit.

A couple of weekends ago, my friend Aisling came around for what we dubbed 'Grandma Day'. She brought her machine, I fired up my machine and we got busy sewing away on the back deck.

Well, we sat there and chatted while sporadically stopping to swear at our work, our clumsiness and our chosen hobby.

"Why did I not take up whittling instead," I cursed to the heavens, after sewing bias binding onto the wrong side of my fabric.

What I've realised since I decided to learn how to sew 1.5 years ago is how much harder it is than it looks. Who knows, whittling probably is too. Maybe all hobbies are, perhaps that's the point of them.

This top here? This is probably the first piece of clothing I've made that I will actually wear. I made it from my own pattern, no less. I'm pretty proud of that.

I've also made a few bags I use, a few cushion covers and altered a few pants and skirts. Successfully, I mean. My sewing room is full of aborted projects, abandoned after the sixth attempt at unpicking a seam finally destroyed the fabric beyond redemption.

They say practice makes perfect. And I'm practicing, I really am. But I'm still a long way from competent, let alone perfect.

Patience, Grasshopper...

Functioning Beyond 'Asleep'

So, I've pretty much been the slackest blogger ever to blog lately. Or not to blog, more to the point.

I've always had a policy not to apologise for not blogging. I mean, ultimately, it's not really affecting anyone too much if I don't. I suspect my 46 loyal followers are not sitting out there, weeping into their morning coffees as yet another day passes with none of my ramblings posted on here.

It's funny, really, that I've chosen this period to have a break from blogging, because there's actually been heaps going on in the way of Karra renovating. Dan has been working HARD. For health reasons I will share with you soon, I have not. At all.

I've only been over with him on weekends a couple of times and both times, I was so struck down with sheer exhaustion just from watching him, that I made a little nest of bedding in the midst of the renovation rubble and slept.

Like last weekend. Sick, tired and unable to function on any level beyond 'asleep', I curled up at about 10am on Saturday morning and prepared to doze through another day.

I did manage to get up sporadically and snap a few photos of his progress though.

The internal walls go up. Note the shiny, lovely new floorboards.

There are two bedrooms: the master bedroom and a smaller room which will fit in a bunk bed and some drawers and not much else. There will be a mezzanine above them for storage or extra sleeping space.

Maisie spent the weekend planning and executing escapes, invariably taking herself down to the beach for a swim.

The exterior, all freshly painted.

The little bedroom.

The master bedroom, which has a built in robe and room for a Queen bed (just).

Mr Weekend Island

Today's renovation update is brought to you by Mr Weekend Island, Dan, who has been busy over at Karra on weekends while I have been tied up with Other Stuff.

He kindly took photos of his progress so I could share them here. Generous, isn't he?

In the end, we outsourced the rest of the sanding and exterior painting, and the end results are pretty good, although the battons downstairs still need to be done (that's a job with my name all over it).



Last weekend, Dan and his mate pulled off the railings at the side of the deck and started building the frame for the large screen that will run down one side.

We're building it because the new house going up next door is RIGHT up to the boundary line, and we like our privacy.

With bush on the other side, and water ahead, building these screens will mean the deck will again be somewhere you can wander around in your underwear.

Or less. Whatever tickles your fancy.



The screens mounted on these frames will be bamboo, in a reddish shade to tie in with the Western Red Cedar Walls of the house.



The boys also replaced the railings and are preparing to paint the deck surface.



Dan says they worked pretty hard last weekend. But they still had time out to hang out with some of the islanders, particularly of the feathered variety.

This little unit is particularly tame. Demanding, too. Particularly at lunchtime.

Relaxed, Hippy Vibes

Last weekend was Dan and my first wedding anniversary and we decided to take a weekend off from life in general.

No renovating, no housework, no friends - no anything-that-is-familiar or a typical part of our life.

In fact, we decided to leave Queensland altogether and revisit our mutual-favourite region of Australia, the Northern New South Wales Hinterland.

Dan booked us into a farmstay near Tyalgum, which was advertised as 'pet-friendly and gay-friendly.

As he put it, it looked like 'our kind of place' - we both love staying in places like this. We get to take our dog AND stay with people we invariably find to be friendly, accommodating and easy to talk to and share a glass of wine with.

In fact, half the reason we advertise our own holiday-rental as 'pet-friendly' is because we know that the people who rent it are invariably more relaxed and easier to deal with.

This time, we stayed at the home of Pete and Chris, and shared the home with another couple - also celebrating their wedding anniversary.

Between us, we had four dogs - a border collie, a kelpie, a Belgian shepherd and a pug.

We also spent quite a considerable amount of time between us out the back drinking wine and chatting.

This was the view from the house.

See that Mountain in the distance? Dan and I climbed the nobbly nose bit on the left on Saturday.

It was pretty steep. In fact, in parts, there were chains to help you get up and down.

We both used them with the descent (pictured below), but on the way up - motivated perhaps by desire to get to the top after 1.5 hours of climbing, or the fact there was a queue to get onto the chains - Dan and I both crawled up the rock face like spiders, chain-free. It was great.

For the rest of the weekend, we explored the region and Chris and Pete's property. Croquet was clearly a popular past-time.

This is one of Pete and Chris's dogs, Joey. I gotta admit, I don't usually go in for kelpies, but this one won me over. Sharp as a tack, and quite lovely. Dan bribed him with a piece of sausage so I could take this photo.

We ended up revisiting a lot of our favourite little towns, places we last visited a year ago on our 'Minimoon' - the week-long roadtrip we took after our wedding.

The Northern NSW Hinterland is an unbelievably beautiful part of Australia.

I love the lush, verdant, overgrown scenery - it just reeks of abundance, tropical climate and relaxed hippy vibes....

Tumbulgum, Chillingham, Uki, Tyalgum - these are the towns we'd live in if we could make a living, living in such towns.

And you know what? Out of those four towns, turns out we've been pronouncing every single one of their names incorrectly.

"You two couldn't sound more like tourists," a local pointed out to us on the weekend.

I think we're OK with that.

From Another Angle

I took this photo from the bottom of our block on Sunday. The house looks huge from this angle.



This is it from the road. Suddenly it looks tiny again...

Cotton Harlequin Beetles

I've shown photos of Cotton Harlequin Beetles before here but I found some really nice looking examples of male beetles on Saturday, so here's a few more.

I took dozens of photos but there's a pretty low success rate when you're trying to do macro photography without a macro lens - it wreaks havoc with your autofocus.









The female beetles, which are larger and orange, weren't looking as spectacular this time around. Must be the wrong time of the year for them.