High and Dry

Yesterday at lunchtime I came home from work as the flood waters rose in the roads around our office.

It was a surreal afternoon, spent sitting watching the flood coverage on the news. It did give me a good chance to finish the baby owl, and make them a little penguin friend though.

To anyone out there in Queensland, I hope you're high and dry and keeping safe!

Felt Owl

Being inside so much lately (rain, rain, more rain) has forced me back into sewing, which I'd taken a break from during my first trimester while morning sickness and fatigue worked their evil magic.

We started setting up the baby's nursery on the weekend (mainly to move the baby furniture we've been donated out of the flood plain that is our rumpus room and up into the relative safety of a spare bedroom) and decided to go with an owl theme, with a few other birds thrown into the mix to break it up a little.

I decided to make some little felt stuffed toys to kick the theme off and started this little fella a couple of nights ago.

Last night, I finished him off and started working on a baby owl, which should be finished tonight.

He looks like he's being groped by that monkey here. Perhaps that accounts for the startled look he's got.

Monkeys - so cheeky.

After the baby owl is finished, I'm planning to make a penguin and then a cockatoo, then perhaps a galah...

Fingers crossed the baby likes birds.

Christmas Day

This is my mother's block of land, down on Bruny Island - off the coast of Tasmania. We spent a couple of nights here, as well as Christmas Day. She plans to build a cabin here sometime, but in the meantime she just stays in this little caravan when she comes to visit.

Dan, my brothers, and I all stayed nearby in a rented cabin but traveled up to the block for Christmas Day.

The original plan had been to cook a turkey in the fire, but after hearing something on salmonella or e-coli or some other strain of food poisoning that comes from cooking meat too slowly, I requested we use the stove in the rented cabin instead. This turned out to be a good thing, because the fire just didn't want to burn.

That meant it wasn't such a drama when Mum's new dog, Chloe, went and stood in it.

After lunch, we went for a walk down to the lagoon. But, being full of cheese and beer (and, it being Christmas and all), we all opted for a ride home on James's ute instead of walking back up the hill.

The sun came out sporadically through the day. In true Tassie fashion, we went back to our cabin that evening partly frozen, windburned and horribly sunburned.

That, in a nutshell, is a photographic record of my Christmas Day.

The Fog Lifting

Well, here we are finally at the end of Dan's weekends of labour at Karra. We're leaving on Christmas Eve for Tasmania for 10 days to see my family and I can't wait to get out of Brisbane for a while.

The last few months of lonely, rainy weekends have been, well, kind of shitty. Our house is constantly flooded now, our possessions smell of damp, the yard has gone completely haywire and the couch and carpets smell of wet dog.

And I've had the energy and motivation to deal with pretty much none of these problems. Every time I fix one thing, something else is full of water or under water or leaking water or smelling of stagnant water.

But, fixing up the regular house is a problem for next year.

We're leaving the nearly-finished Karra'd Away to the care of guests for the Christmas break and, being keen boaters, I am sure they'll have a blast there, if the weather holds out.

But hey, at least the house is watertight.

So now, here is some of the after photos.

The new master bedroom.

The second bedroom.

The lounge room.

The lounge room, as seen from the kitchen.

It's looking pretty sparse right now, and I plan to take a couple of extra lamps and paintings over next time we visit, but I do actually quite like the look.

Sparse sort of works for a holiday cabin, where you don't want to feel crowded in by someone's personal trinkets and different taste.

Anyway, I'm so proud of the work Dan has done on it and I think it looks fantastic. Next time it's sunny out, I'll get some photos of the new, improved deck area to post too.

If you know anyone looking for a TWO-BEDROOM (!!) holiday home with water views near the beach, then direct them to www.karradaway.com.

So now, the reason I've been MIA from renovations, blogging and pretty much life in general, which I think quite a few of you suspected:

I'm having an ALIEN!!!

No, apparently it is human, and we're very excited. It's due in June. I've been pretty unwell, a sort of round-the-clock morning sickness that's left me exhausted, miserable and REALLY hypersensitive to smells.

Not a good thing when your house has morphed into a swamp.

I'm in the second trimester now and I feel the fog lifting a little. I can handle basic tasks like doing laundry and retaining meals much more effectively.

So anyway, Merry Christmas to you and yours. Enjoy it and have a drink for me!

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).