Our House

From the Den Kitchen–Me & my Thermo

Yup, we finally got one. Last Saturday our new Thermomix arrived and both hubby & I have been cooking up a storm in it.

Thanks to Belinda, our lovely Thermo consultant, we had a delicious demo meal with some friends & family – sorbet, dip, soup, rolls, a chicken dish and then custard all in 2 hours. If you get the chance – go to a Thermo demo – you won’t be disappointed 😉

We’ve made Anzacs, scrambled eggs, orange juice, not tinned spaghetti, silverside & mustard sauce, more Anzacs, honey joys, Profiteroles, Chicken & corn soup AND a sponge cake! I’m currently making a cheese, bacon & garlic pull apart and tomorrow the plan is to make some vanilla essence (& vanilla ben paste), Scottish tablet (fudge) and maybe try making my own condensed milk.

Do you own a Thermomix? Do you want one? Not fussed?
If you do – favourite recipes?? or blogs – always looking for new blogs 😉

It’s that time again….

It seems to sneak up on us every year. Christmas. It’s 100 days away (well 99 in Australia but I’m a day late posting this). Can you believe it!!

I’m trying something a little different this year and will be following along with 100 days to Christmas. There are a few ways you can play along – follow the blog, sign up for the daily emails or buy the eBook and work at your own pace. Me? I’ll be following along on the blog.

Now off to start creating the Christmas section in my diary 😉

Creating a glorious haven in your home

Disclaimer: All links are affiliate.

So most will know I am a HUGE fan of Leonie Dawson (aka Goddess Leonie) and her Amazing Biz and Life Academy. I found out about the site after hearing about the amazing Create Your Incredible Year Calendar & Workbook and finally joined at the end of 2011. I love it. Love I have access to an amazing group of wonderful women. Love I have access to amazing e-courses and it’s one of these e-courses I’m blogging about today – Create your Goddess Haven.

Leonie describes the Goddess Haven e-course as

A six-week adventure for when you’re wanting & needing & craving a space that is a true haven for your the Goddess in You! You’ll use space clearing techniques to make your space’s energy sparkle. You’ll learn how to divinely declutter. You’ll dive into inspired interior design. You’ll be empowered with all of the wisdom, tools & techniques you need to make your space feel & look amazing to you. And you’ll end up with a home that is a sanctuary just for you.

I started my adventure earlier this week and decided to blog about it as I go.

The three main things I want to have changed at the end of the six weeks are

Our bedroom. It’s a dumping ground at the moment, I want it to be a sanctuary for me & hubby.
The sunroom/Miss K’s playroom. Another dumping ground and a total mess.
Keeping the stuff in our lounge to a minimum.

I’ll blog a bit more when I’ve finished week one.

Our To Do list

Been a bit inspired by Multiblogging Mum and her blog Decluttering and more to blog our home reno To Do list.
Last edited – May 2014

Kids room

new curtains
rip up carpet & polish floorboards
maybe some wall art
built in cupboards/desks (this is only a thought/dream at the moment)
make it suitable for 2 kids

Our room

paint (gotta pick a colour first)
rip up carpet & polish floorboards
eventually get built ins

Hallway

skylight
rip up carpet & polish floorboards (think we have a theme here)
new linen closet – happening soon!

Bathroom & toilet

Remove wood paneling & put up plaster
tile
put in claw foot bath (after getting it re-enameled) – not happening 🙁
new shower
new vanity unit
paint
new flooring (tiles? lino?)
Major reno coming soon (May/June 2014)

Lounge/Dining

rip up carpet & polish floorboards
paint walls
new curtains
new couch and chairs ??

Outside

new front fence
new paths
garden beds for the vegie garden
get gazebo up and set up for table etc

I’ve also been pinning up a storm of inspiration. Feel free to check out my boards – Bedroom, Laundry, Kitchen, Lounge, Garden.

Things we’ve done

replaced our wood heater with a newer model
got a reverse cycle air conditioner (& kept the wood fire)
new kitchen
replaced the plumbing – kitchen, laundry, some under the house and some outside
new roof & guttering
Family photos up in the lounge & dining room

Where’s Ya Noms at

(taking a quick break from the Blog Every Day in May posts to bring you another post in my Our House series)

I *heart* me some Drunk Kitchen. Google it hehe (Thanks to the lovely Fiona for first sharing it with me). See there I go getting distracted with music again. Where were we? Ah yes the kitchen. This is what we got when we bought the house

Now I don’t know about you but wood paneling in a kitchen, really isn’t my thing. It’s a total pain in the real to clean. That lovely stove in the corner – broken so our first step was a new stove. Then we decided the island thing was blocking a lot of light so it went. Then Miss K came along and it really wasn’t suitable so new kitchen was to be had. And didn’t we take great delight in helping rip out the cupboards & wood paneling. And our new kitchen slowly took shape over a couple of days (plus the time later to get tiling done and new flooring)

And I got a new glass hotplate and wall oven *squee* and our dishwasher got put in.

(I’ll edit this post later with a picture of the kitchen when it’s clean – at the moment it’s a tad messy)

Love my kitchen now.

in the middle of our street.

Love that song, it’s such a classic. Anywho, that’s a slight distraction from what I actually want to write about today. When we bought our house about 5years ago we bought it as a renovation project. A very slow renovation project. But that’s ok. I thought about starting a new blog to record what we did but we all know I struggle with keeping more than one blog 😉 so I’ll be sharing our reno here under the category of Our House.

When we moved in we painted what was to become our temporary office/computer room and that was pretty much it. Everything else needed lots of work.

This was what our ‘office’ was for the first few weeks, where we survived on dial up internet waiting for our ADSL to be hooked back up

Our first semi major project was to rip this out.

We thought it was going to be difficult but it was all held in with a couple of screws. Easy – yup I did it at 9 months pregnant!

Next up was our kitchen cause the kitchen we had wasn’t great for a little person….

20 Days: Days 6-10

I actually managed to keep up this time so here are days 6-10

Day 6 was the bathroom. Love that our bathroom is fairly small so stays pretty tidy so it was just a quick once over.

Before

and after

Day 7 and we cleaned out the fridge. And I managed to declutter my cookbooks. I’ve scanned the recipes I use often and the ones I want to try so now I can get rid of some cookbooks.

Before and after

Day 8 was cleaning the sunroom which is Miss K’s playroom. This room is such a pigsty with paper everywhere & stuff gets dumped there before getting taken to the office.

Before and after

Day 9 was cleaning out the junk drawer and organising my calendar & diary

and after

and finally day 10 was cleaning the oven. I hate cleaning the oven with a passion but I have actually been keeping up with cleaning it so it was a pretty easy job this time round.

20 Days – Days 1 to 5

It took a little longer than I thought to get the first five days done. Life (& bushfires) happened.

Day 1 was focusing on the kitchen. This is what I had to contend with….

Hubby was out helping his sister defend their place from a bush fire so I gave Miss K some play dough, some paint with water and chucked on ABC 4 Kids and she was happy to play while I got stuck into the kitchen. I was sooo tempted to pull everything from the cupboards and sort them but I managed to restrain myself lol.

Here’s my task list for the day and here’s my clean kitchen

Day 2 – the master bedroom, or as it’s commonly known in our house – the dumping room.

I struggled with this room. Not so much getting all the clothes put away but all the scrapbook stuff that makes it’s home in our bedroom. I’m still slowly sorting it out and working out what I want to keep here (Project Life, wedding album, Journal Your Christmas) and what will go to the scrap room at Mum & Dad’s. So not 100% clean but much better than it was before.

On to day 3 and we’re in the laundry

Our laundry is usually pretty good so it was just a quick clean and tidy. Gave the washing machine a good clean as well.

Our lounge room frequently looks like a bomb site & day 4 this was my focus

I have to admit, did a little more than was on the list cause I was getting sick of all the mess. Swear our lounge room will never be clean til someone grows up & doesn’t drag all her toys out here.

Finally a nice easy day focusing on the floors & the pantry. No floor photos but here’s the pantry.

I did go a little overboard in the pantry and decided to recover the shelves. OMG remind me never to do that idea again. I’d love to have the money to pull out all the shelves and replace it with something from Howards Storage World or IKEA.

If you’re doing the challenge, how’re you faring? And for the record, here’s my kitchen bench after 5 days (which is actually 15 days total *sigh* – hopefully the next five days will be a bit better)

20 days to Organise and Clean your home Challenge – Take 2

It’s that time of the year again. Christmas and New Year are over and it’s time to get the house back in order and a lot more organised. I really want to get our house more organised and clean in 2013. Creating a warm, inviting sanctuary if you will.

I took part in The Organised Housewife 20 Days to organise and clean your home the first time it ran and I loved it. The house stayed pretty clean and organised… until just before Christmas. And of course we hosted Christmas lunch so that added to the mess.

I’ll just be blogging my journey this time, not sharing on Instagram cause I ended up forgetting half the time lol

One of the pre challenge tasks was to set some goals. Here are mine:

I want to feel RELAXED & COMFORTABLE while I’m at home.
I want to spend more time PLAYING WITH MISS K INSTEAD OF CLEANING.
I want an area of the home where I can DO SCRAPBOOKING.
I want to organise MY WHOLE HOUSE.
I always lose KEYS & WALLET.
Something that I don’t need anymore , but am having trouble parting with KITCHEN STUFF I NO LONGER USE.

So roll on the next 20 days….

20 Days–week 3

I’ll be honest. I slacked off a fair bit this week. And OMG you can tell! I spent Friday and Saturday catching up with this week’s challenges. There’s also a lack of pics cause I was too busy cleaning 😉

Day 11’s challenge was to clean our washing machine and organise our linen cupboard.
We now have a clean washing machine again.
The linen cupboard wasn’t too bad as I’d gone through our sheets & towels not too long ago, it just needed a tidy up.

Day 12 was the dishwasher’s turn to get clean. I love this way of cleaning my dishwasher now, no more chemical cleaners. Miss K got in on the action too.

I also decluttered and organised our bathroom cupboards

Before

and after

Day 13 was cornice cleaning and sorting artwork. Miss K has recently gotten into drawing and painting so I’m getting this system in place now.

Day 14 was the office. Since I’m being honest, I’ll let you know I skipped this room. It is currently the dumping ground while our garage is being cleaned (our office is off the garage). I’ve filed all the notes away for when we get stuck into it (which will hopefully be soon)

Day 15 was cleaning outdoor areas. I cleaned the area around our front door, did a bit of weeding and planted some potted colour.

Onto Week 3…..