Happy dancing in my new purple pants

ok silly I know but I am happy…bought 3 new pairs of pants today (ok so only tried on one of them thus far) so I am now the proud owner of a few pairs of size 22 pants! OMG that is huge you fat cow I hear you say rofl! but hey a year ago this fat cow was wearing size 26 pants and had been for some time! And hey purple trackies are pretty damn funky if you ask me!

on a sour note – was expecting 1xbrickie and 2x demolition/rubbish removers today for quotes, 1 demo guy turned up but the others didn’t bother. Frankly say you aren’t interested when I call – if you don’t want the work thats fine but don’t waste my time! Now tomorrow I have to make more phonecalls and arrange more people to come for quotes (still waiting on the other brickies actual quote but I did ask him to drop it in the letterbox in the next couple of days).

and if you are around over the weekend don’t forget we are cybercropping at top50 on Friday night!

and if you are free tonight/tomorrow – get your entry in for the monthly comps – it has been very quiet this month so you have great chances to win!

busy day.

Funny it didn’t FEEL too crazy but I crossed a few things off my to do list today!

Got Owen to kinder at 8.30 – note ON TIME and without too much fuss! Am loving the boys new found independence – as in dressing themselves and making peanut butter sandwiches for breakfast! it certainly makes life HEAPS easier only having to dress myself and one boy each morning!

Got 180ish postcards in the mail for top50

Bought new Pjs (its becoming a getaway tradition that I have to have a new pair of Pjs before I go)

Bought undies/socks for the boys.

Looked at bunk beds for the boys at snooze – nice but too dear.

Arranged for 3 quotes (all for tomorrow afternoon/evening) for pagola demolition and rubbish removal).

Arranged for 2 quotes from bricklayers (one has been and one more tomorrow) for house/brickwork

Did a bit more work on the coming additions to top50….one is about to launch and the other is a month behind it and shaping up to be VERY exciting stuff so keep checking back I might even post a hint later.

Oh and I managed to redye my ‘blonde’ streak purple again. I used different stuff and it has come out very dark but will see in the light of day tomorrow if it is purple or just so dark it appears brown. Not the in your face purple I was going for though sadly.

Now though I’m actually pretty tired so having an earlyish night.

making progress…

slowly but surely making progress.

progress with what you ask?

boys room……

is clean and tidy and smelling fresh again (ex took the flywires down one day and they     never went back up – must do that soon) so the windows hadn’t been opened in forever.  Yesterday I decided well bugger it we will put up with the chance of bugs coming in and let the air in…what a difference – that and I managed to find the whole FLOOR in their room!  I now have THREE big boxes of toys in my room to sort through and decide what to keep and what to ditch and then gradually give some back.  Also I have made the decision to get bunk beds for them – I know that technically Owen isn’t big enough to sleep on the top bunk til October but their room is long and skinny and bunks are really a great space solving option for them. Now just to balance the looks/quality/cost issue and get them here – made a tad more complicated by the fact Owen currently has a king single bed so will need to get him a ‘normal’ single mattress too.

house stuff – ok nothing really done but some decisions made on what to do at least does that count?  Have decided to find some big strong boys to pull down the pagola and do the rubbish removal instead of hiring a skip – well have decided to get a quote at least. I’m certainly not up to pulling the pagola down on my own.
top50 – lots of progress on the new stuff coming and updates coming shortly for the fonts too.

scrapbooking – I really am going to do some soon.

getaway – OMG it’s only TWO weeks away! I’ve decided to organise and print some photos before I go – hmm should actually start on that too!

washing – well all the clothes are clean/dry and in a mountain on top of the chair in the loungeroom – ok so the folding better start tomorrow before it topples over and I lose a child.

kids and vegies – hamburgers are good!  Got my tupperware hamburger press and we made burgers (my mum’s receipe – 700g mince, 2 cups rolled oats, Italian herbs, garlic, a tin of brown lentils, a grated carrot (or 2), finely chopped onion and 2-3eggs.  Cooked them in the sandwich press so no need to flip, don’t stick and they cook twice as fast – and it made 13 HUGE burgers and the kids scoffed ’em in hamburger buns with cheese/sauce – quick, easy – kids had fun ‘helping’ and pretty healthy really!

blocked eustation tube –  better – ok not 100% but haven’t had an earache all day today so good right? the fact that I’ve now developed a cough instead is probably irrelevant lol.

let there be light – ok some progress, after joking to Pam that my lack of balance (should be ok now as ear problems are resolving) was making it difficult to change lightbulbs but it was ok because the toilet light was working – it went the very next day!  Ex was over shortly after so got him to do it (he doesn’t need a chair/ladder).  I did however fix the globe in the kids nightlight yesterday and tomorrow I will go on a bit of a lightbulb changing spree and do …the two our here, the one in the kitchen, the one in the boys room, the laundry, the hallway and one above the backdoor….ok maybe I wont’ get to ALL of them tomorrow with the boys around…hopefully some though before I’m sitting in the dark!

Woohooo!

after some health problems knocked out someone I had working on a project I have now found a replacement who will finish top50s newest addition and for a reasonable fee.

It should now be up and running by the end of the week!  So BIG apologies will be sent to those that have been so patient on this one…and let the countdown begin.

And just to keep things interesting I am already working on the next project and it is looking equally good and VERY exciting!

I’m a mean Mummy!

Owen is making so much progress. This morning he got up and got himself dressed and he made himself and brett a peanut butter sandwich each for lunch. BUT I asked him 3 times if he had put his lunch box in his backpack….today I came home from kinder drop off to find said lunchbox on the table!

I rang and warned the kinder he would be upset but that I felt he needed to learn to be responsible so I wasn’t inclined to come and get it. Actually I thought it was very mean – it feels mean, but kinder staff agreed with me that it was good and reasonable.

So now mean Mummy is off to do some baking to take some pizza scones to the meeting this afternoon (our first kinder meeting/handover one).

Initial Verdict is in

*****warning***** this could be a long post as I get my head around stuff…
so ….I had the blokes out late this afternoon to assess the state of the house. Will have a full report in a couple of days listing what needs to be done and in a priority order with approximate costs. But verbally…

He says not to water the house but to keep it dry – fighting here with conflicting opinions. His arguments appeared sound (but I’m not an engineer). He says putting moisture into the foundations will encourage termites which would be a real disaster (and I’ve read in the local papers that this area does have termite issues so do need to be careful of that).

He says the problem has been caused by too much water…yup would you believe that in the two worst affected areas I have leaky downpipes! Too much water makes the soil swell so the house lifts then it settles and the house drops….

I suppose that the water/don’t water arguments are both aimed at the same thing – ultimately they want the soil moisture content to remain stable so that the house doesn’t move. The engineers are saying in times of drought water the house… But I suppose they also haven’t seen the house and once pointed out I can see the leaky downpipes so I am thinking it makes sense.

So moving on to the options for fixing the problem.

I could underpin – but he says by the time you include the costs of demolition of the concrete around the house to get to the pins etc and then fixing the brickwork afterwards that the cost is likely to be around $20K….eek not good!

LUCKILY – he doesn’t recommend that I go ahead with underpinning as he thinks that the foundations have settled and that with some necessary maintenance all should be well as is so we do the maintenance are repair the brickwork.

This is where it got alarming – although apparently not as expensive as it sounds – his suggestion was that I have the bricks in the 3 corners that are problematic REMOVED and then rebricked – said they should be able to reuse the existing bricks (and I have some extras if need be). All up he feels that $5000 would be plenty to cover it and I should have change from that.

However I also have to have the gutters cleaned and the two downpipes replaced/repaired and fitted properly and I need to have two more put in (only have two atm which apparently isn’t enough to deal with heavy rain).

Also need to demolish my pagola… which is actually not very structurely sound anyway. It would be fine to rebuild it but in its present state he felt all it was doing was inviting termites (which don’t appear to be a problem atm but best to guard against them).

So I guess all in all $5-6 should do it. will still have to fix things like the loo door not shutting properly but once the downpipes are fixed the movement should slow/stop.

so I guess thats it. A bit to take in…not the answer I thought I would get – here was me running with the not enough moisture issue who would have thought it would be caused by too much water – you just can’t win. He did suggest that the neighbours big tree may have helped the back corner to fall (and it drops heaps of crap everywhere) so I guess I need to talk to the neighbour about having it removed too (he took out 3-4 of them a while back but left one and at the time he asked if we minded him cutting them down)!

well kids will be home soon…I should probably eat and stuff…

will wait for the report. Wishing I knew some big strong men about now lol! oh well guess I’ll have to find some and pay them to do it for me.

ahhhh love it when they kick in….

wondering what sort of spammers this will attract …but wow I love it when the drugs kick in! lol ok that sounds worse than it is really.

Still fighting this blocked eustation tube issue. In fact I’m not sure that it is any better really…well actually not true as my sinus’s have been clearing up so I guess it is working slowly but the earache is still driving me mad….I have to keep up the antibiotics/demizen combo – sadly the demizen has been zonking me out a bit and the earache means that at least 1-2 times a day I’m adding panadeine to the mix otherwise I snap everybodies heads off…I just don’t ‘do’ pain! I’m a big sook!

on the bright side….oh man the cool change has kicked in and the rain is coming down and it is lovely….well out here in my scraproom is lovely hoping inside is just as nice.

the guy is coming tomorrow afternoon to look at the cracks and tell me just how serious the house issues are. I am thinking it will need underpinning and hoping that it isn’t any worse than the $11-12K I think it is going to cost ….so everybody cross your fingers etc! I should have some idea verbally from him but will have to wait a few days for a written report…once i have that all sorted I will have a better idea of where things are at and what I have to do next.

sometimes things just click

*warning – this post involves discussion of toilet training boys*

Brett is a LEGEND! I am sooo happy! He has been regularly doing #2s in his undies for a while now – he did do them in the loo at one stage but never really consistently….well he just did – I didn’t even send him really he did and came out, pants around ankles asking to have his bottom wiped! woohooo! so stoked maybe it just clicked and this is the start of bigger better things! And best of all now Owen has decided he can have a sit on the toilet and just maybe I don’t have to stay with him the whole time….ahhh here’s to hoping this IS the start of things just clicking into place hey!

glad to see the weather report scaled back a bit – still too hot for my liking but anything less than the dreaded high heats they had mentioned has got to be considered a plus really!

am going out tonight for dinner and website work….yup most people go for and chatting etc but I think I must just resign myself to the fact that I am indeed a nerd lol!

hopefully top50 will see some new additions, spruce ups before too long!

bedtime blues….

my little monsters were always good at going to bed….no matter what happened during the day bedtime was the one thing i had to hold onto – put them in their room – a bit of playing/giggling and within 30min asleeep….hmmm it is starting to get to that ‘i want a drink’ or ‘i need to go to the toilet’ stage….now the toilet one is not really playing fair. And kids I am sure, know this. They know that you can’t say no to that one! still shouldn’t complain sounds like they are asleep now.

We went out for a bbq for dinner….they had vege burgers….told the kids they were ‘burgers’ (not no lying here) and they ate them up! I had never thought of that approach before! it was nice actually the kids were good (well until Brett did something in his undies – man I soooo long for the day that they are both trained)…Corey ate two sausages – and charmed everyone – but no repeat performance of yesterdays walking!

I finished watching series 5 of the Gilmore girls….now I had sworn that I would wait til 6 came on special but I don’t think I’m going to be able to hold out after the way that #5 ended! love that show!

planning a working weekend while the kids go to daddys…really looking forward to my ‘very special getaway’ in March too now that it is booked and paid for.

lots of work to do at top50 too – a few improvements coming soon soo keep touching base – and our cybercrop is on the first weekend of March (sponsored by scrappers Warehouse) and we will have our new crossword trivia happening again so lots of fun for everyone!

going on a getaway

I’m going….yup March getaway here I come! woohoo!

so looking forward to a weekend of fun and scrapping!