Day out with my sister:: Part 2

Back to the rest of the day out with my lovely sister Sandy.

After stuffing ourselves on delicious steak sandwiches, it was back in the car to head down the range towards Esk where there was another fantastic Antique shop. Now I have driven through Esk a million times and didn't even know that this shop was there. Then again Esk has always been a mid journey toilet stop and perhaps a pie from the bakery if a bit peckish so I've not really given a thought to the other shops in town.

This Antique shop is in an old pub in the middle of town and is a rabbit warren of rooms upstairs and down absolutely full to the brim of STUFF.

There was this fantastic old pram on the path out the front.

Not to mention this fella......

Inside was full of furniture, crockery, kitchen items, crystal, glass and this lovely spinning wheel.



The old hand turn sewing machines were just beautiful.

I loved all the bits and pieces in this room (with my sister looking on). He hee, I don't think she realised that I snapped her!

Then there's the old washboards which my grandmother used, and even my mother while we used to live down on the farm. I wonder what my grandmother's reaction would be if she knew just how much these cost now!

After peeking and poking around the rooms downstairs, it was time to head up to the next level to see what treasures were there.

Rooms upon rooms and a huge verandah (this is only the small side section of the verandah), absolutely chock full of stuff. (Some was lovely and some I have to say was pretty crappy.)

This is looking down the hallway with furniture one either side all the way and there are then rooms coming off either side full of treasures as well.

Once we finished peeking into every room that we could then it was back in the car for the rest of the drive home which took about one and a half hours. It was a lovely day which we both thoroughly enjoyed. It's not often that my sister and I get out and about doing things these days so it was extra special that I got to spend the day with her. Luv ya!

Day out with my sister:: Part 1

On Thursday I went out with my sister for a drive to some Antique shops in Esk and Crows Nest.

It was quite a wet day but such a lovely drive over winding up the road through Peachester, Kilcoy, Toogoolawah, Esk then up to Crows Nest. The drive between Esk and Crows Nest is up through the winding, tree lined range which was quite misty and magical. The photo below was taken on the way home but on the was wet, misty, green and just lovely.

Onto Crows Nest and to Salts Antiques which is a treasure trove of furniture, and bed warmers (hanging on the wall below)....






....1950's picnic sets with real china: no plastic here!

A gorgeous old loom and I apologise now for the quality of some of the photos as it was really difficult to take great photos without light shining from behind no matter which way you tried to take a photo from.

The glass and crystal was absolutely gorgeous and spread out over a huge table. I was so worried that my handbag would knock something off and break it so I had to gingerly walk down the narrow aisles. Eeeeek!

Some of my favourite things are the useful and battered old pioneer things. I love old tubs, buckets and anything that people used to use in everyday life and shops like these are such treasure troves of goodies that you can't help but get excited.

The below picture is of a knife polisher which I had never heard of. I've heard of knife sharpeners but not knife polishers.

And then there were the sewing machines....so many of them lined up in the windows.

All ancient Singers of course.

Plenty of furniture including this gothic looking bookcase. It was so intricately carved with lions heads and other interesting bits and pieces but the close ups didn't turn out very well, sorry for that.

If you ever need a tea trolley to serve in the sitting room after dinner while your husband is enjoying his port then you can get one here.

Now I didn't buy anything but only because I was VERY strong. I don't really have anywhere to put most things because we have a small, cluttered house and as we will be moving over the next few months it would be best to see what I like that would suit our new house. My sister Sandy did buy a couple of lovely tidbits which you see below.



A lovely copper kettle and a silver coffee pot which are just lovely and will be perfect for use as props in her art work.


Enough of the antiques though, we were starving by this time as we'd been on the road for nearly a couple of hours then ferreting around in an antique shop. It was off to Hampton about 12 kilometres away to a cafe where we had the most fantastic steak sandwiches. They were truly among the yummiest steak sandwiches we've ever had and I don't think the fact that we were starving had any influence on that decision!

So I'll leave you with lunch and will let you know about the rest of our day next time.

With love xxxxxx Susan

New play space

This Easter break seems to have been really busy even though we didn't go anywhere. We did have plenty of visitors, most of them were family who would pop in for a few hours or so and then we had some special friends stay overnight on Monday. Hello Sally and Tony! It was so fantastic to see you after all this time (we are so slack!) and I just thought I'd let you know that Little Miss R is now getting your name's right!

I've done plenty of decluttering over the past few days and still have SO much more to go but we did get the rest of the lounge room painted on Tuesday. That meant that I could then re-arrange a few things so the kidlettes got to have some painting time outside to keep them occupied for awhile. What masterpieces!

As we' ve moved my salon furniture into our garage I decided to utilise a bit leftover space out there and declutter inside in the process. Part of our lounge room was taken over with a play corner for the kidlettes and was always pretty messy so we've now moved the play area outside.

They have their kitchen that Poppy made for them, the dolls house, a toy box, a bench which now has pens and paper for drawing, a table and chairs and this.....

Master M got this workbench back in January for his birthday but we never had the room to set it up before now. He's spending most of his time out in the play area building lots of interesting things as well as just rearranging things all the time.

Little Miss R has just got home from school and after a quick change and a snack, all she wants to do is go play outside in the play area. Yay! It gets them out of the house.

Another Ta-dah moment!

I have finished another blanket! Yay me!

This one is for Nephew M and I've been really happy with it up until doing the border. I made up how I did the border and it's a little too tight so the whole thing curls in a bit which is disappointing but I'm not going to undo this one.

I do really like this blanket (except for the border) and I hope that Nephew M loves this one too. It's so nice and snuggly.

So I've completed 3 blankets, I'm part way through the 4th and then I'll only have 3 more to do after that. Yay!

Eggs, balloons and pancakes

Today is Easter Sunday which meant waking up to an Easter Egg Hunt!

I was woken very early by Master M saying 'Mummy, I have an egg!' He soon woke his sister up and it was hunting through the house for eggs and Easter candy as Little Miss R doesn't like chocolate. (Shocking I know!)

Once the eggs were found in the house, it was off outside to hunt for the eggs the Easter bunny left out there. It was such an exciting time and what made it more exciting was the kids next door were out hunting too so they all got extra excited!

Not long after we heard from my sister Sandy that she was in the air on her hot air balloon ride so we jumped in the car and drove round the area hunting for a balloon. There it is, just behind Mt Tibrogargan! Oh it's about to fly behind it, quick, back in the car to give chase again!

That's better, then sun finally came out just as they were landing



Then it was home for pancakes for breaky. Yum, yum, yum..... and if the fact they they haven't got enough lollies and sweet things today doesn't send them super hyper, Daddy decided they could have some ice-cream with their pancakes.

All of that by 8am! At least the rest of the day was quieter and a bit less busy as we just had lots of play time at home.

Hope you all have a lovely Easter too.

xxxx Susan

Good Friday

Today has just been the most beautiful, happiest of days. The weather has been just gorgeous, even a little hot and humid which is a bit odd as it's late April and well into Autumn.

It's been such a lovely happy day that I didn't even take any photos. Didn't even THINK of it until late this afternoon as I was so occupied with everything else! So you'll just have to put up with the photos of the gorgeous lilly's I received a few days ago from a couple of my lovely young clients. The girl's that gave me the flowers are gorgeous and I have so much time for them so the fact that they gave me these flowers as a thank you and goodbye gift was really touching.

I LOVE lilly's and yellow is such a happy colour. Our little family has loved having these flowers on our table to watch each of them slowly unfurl to reveal their bright and cheery fullness.

As for bright and cheery, I have to admit that the day didn't quite begin that way. I did get to have a wonderful sleep in (after Master M came in very early, stood beside my bed and asked for a drink of milk). Daddy sorted that request out while I stayed snuggled under the covers for another half hour or so.

The rest of the morning was taken up with lots of washing, playing outside, decluttering and tidying up inside and then much more playing. It's been quite a productive day as Lovely Hubby has had a HUGE declutter of the shed and I've got quite a bit of decluttering and tidying done inside while still having plenty of time for the kidlettes.

I sort of feel like Supermum today which is quite a rare feeling I have to say. Normally I feel like just getting by Mum but lately things are changing and I'm beginning to feel like the kind of Mum I've always wanted to be. More on that another time maybe..



So for now I wish everyone a bright, happy and wonderful Easter. The kidlettes are in bed, the footy's on the tv and I'm off to do a bit more crochet while hubby's doing computer game things..... each to their own!

Bittersweet

Today was the last working day in my salon. I have loved this little salon so much and will be sad to no longer be working here. I do have a couple more days to go back there to move furniture and clean things, but no more treatments on my lovely clients.

Today was another step closer to us moving and even though it seems we keep getting delays, we will get there I know..... just when the time's right.

One door is closing and it's allowing more doors to open for us. What an exciting adventure!

More rainy days

First of all I want to say a bit THANK YOU to one of my lovely clients Lea. She gave me a gift of vegetarian sausage rolls the other day and they are absolutely truly and unbelievably scrummy!!!!! In fact, Lovely Hubby didn't even know they were vegetarian until I told him. So Lea, I know you're on holidays camping on fantastic Stradbroke Island (I don't envy you in this rain) at the moment but I have your number and will call you for the recipe when you get back. Be warned!!

As for today, well it's been another quite wet day so I've had to find ways to keep the kidlettes entertained. I did pretty well although I am a trifle sick of hearing the work 'Mummy' at the moment. I know in future that will be such an endearing sound and I'll wish to hear it again (probably when they're teenagers) but in a small house on a rainy day I really wish I could find somewhere I could hide!

Puzzles were brought out again but because we did so many yesterday the attention span didn't last as long. I didn't even begin to contemplate cooking with them because my attention span (not to mention temper) would have coped well with that today I don't think. We ended up settling on playdough which is that wonderful soft, colourful mix that can be cut, rolled and moulded into so many different shapes. The imagination is limitless!

The above picture is Master M's wonderful sculpture of a squirrel.

At least when they were cutting out shapes it was much easier to guess what they were doing without mummy feeling quite stupid for not knowing what they were sculpting. "No it's not a boat, dragon, melted ice-cream, rabbit.............. mummy. It's a SQUIRREL!"




Aaaaahhhh.... hands...... much easier to recognise.

Hmmmmm.....well yes....this is a ummm.... What a lovely sculpture Little Miss R. What have you made? Oh it's a STICK... of course it is!

And below we have Biggest Mountain (in blue) and the especially delightful Snow Cat (in pink).

We've also had quite a few visitors and lots of craft time at the table although no photos here as it was too much of a big MESS. Fun though I have to say.

Tomorrow it's back to work for me so the kidlettes will be home with Daddy ALL DAY! I wonder how her will cope if it rains all day? I'm not sure I want to even think about that.

An all sorts weekend

We have had the most beautiful weather during the week, such lovely Autumn days with blue skies and pleasant humidity. Then the weekend arrived and with it came the clouds and the rain. Luckily it hasn't rained too heavily, just showers (some heavier than others) here and there so we've still been able to get out and do things.

Saturday arvo saw Little Miss R and Mummy off to the local swimming pool for the birthday party of a school friend. The birthday boy's parents run the pool so it was the perfect place to entertain the kids. They weren't too interested in the food, they just wanted to run around looking for things in the treasure hunt, then it was all in the pool for heaps of games.

Lots of very happy and tired kidlettes on Saturday night!

Sunday was another dull, overcast day but staying at home all day wasn't an option. The kidlettes were whinging, fighting, screaming, fighting, kicking, fighting........ so we thought we'd get out of the house and let them run around a bit.

Off to Moffat Beach near Caloundra this time. Even when overcast it still is lovely, except when Master M stirred the green ants nest up and they ran all over the picnic blanket.

Instead of packing a picnic we decided that as it was a cooler day we'd have fish and chips instead. (It was also a quick getaway out of the house so didn't really have time to pack a picnic...damn!)

Even though there weren't too many brilliant waves about, the surfers were still bobbing around in the water.

Looking over Moffat Beach from our picnic spot.

The other great thing about Moffat Beach is the fantastic playground it has. In fact it has two but we went to the main one in the main park area. There's this huge play area underneath a beautiful old tree (don't know what sort - sorry), and the kidlettes can run, slide, wobble along each section where it joins onto the next section curling up around the tree.

Some older kids were climbing the tree and Master M tried so desperately to get up to them but he was too short to reach the first big branch. When he does grow another couple of inches I think we're going to have to start looking up to find him!

Lovely hubby and I sat on the grass beside the playground and watched the kidlettes, the activities in the park and the water (including the poor person who's catamaran tipped over and they drifted near the outer breakers as they couldn't upright the boat. Luckily the surf lifesavers from Dicky beach came to the rescue in their boat just in time!)

Monday dawned very murky and wet, much wetter than the couple of previous days. Home day for the kidlettes and myself and I knew that we wouldn't be expending our energy at the park so I had to find some inside activities to do.

I really wanted to clean the toy boxes up because the whole toy area was such a cluttered mess. Amazingly we all had quite a bit of fun but then we made a bit of a game out of it and the kidlettes got to play with toys that hadn't seen in ages. While they were playing I sneakily got rid of quite a few of the broken ones.

We also found their super hero capes (had to get a chair and look up for these as someone taller than me.... had put them high up so we couldn't find them). These capes are reversible and were a Christmas gift from Aunty Sandy over at Hearts Landscapes.

I've had two little excited super heroes running around for most of the morning now with lots of 'super hero to the rescue' being yelled out as we run off with capes flying behind.

Nothing beats ham and cheese toasted sandwiches on a cool, wet day.

Play time in the 'home corner' in the dolls house....

...and cooking up a storm in the kitchen. Looks like we're having roast chicken and potato, an egg, a mushroom and a cup of tea. What a feast!

Of course puzzle time is always fun too and we've done plenty of these.

The rain got heavier and more frequent during the afternoon and then Daddy arrived home early because he can't work when it's raining like this. What's even better is he's now got his last two days before the Easter break off so now he has an EXTENDED Easter holiday which is great for us. Yay! More family days!

Will attempt to let you know what's going on over the next few days while Daddy's home.

xxxxxxxxxxxx Susan