nutmeg and booth archery

i decided to entertain the kids these holidays by doing something a little out of the ordinary, and brought along the booth girls for the ride. it was raining in perth, but wasn't supposed to rain in clackline, which i checked 4 times before leaving in the morning, so it was a perfect day to get off to the archery park!

we dropped alex off to nannas house, because there is no one in this world crazy enough to let a wild two year old loose near flying arrows, then hit up the hoddywell archery park. the kids looked like they had won the lottery, my kids have been once before, but it was the first time for the booth girls.

they loved it though, got right into it and were pretty good!

madison and chloe having a shot

joseph didn't do nearly as well on this trail as he had last time, when he kept hitting close to the bullseye every time and oh did we have to hear about it. he was well unimpressed.

besties who should not be messed with

as you can see from the photos, we discovered that the weather forecast was not correct... there was a sudden downpour and we all got soaked - but the sun came out again soon after and we dried out soon after.

it's not going to rain. honest. hahahaha

i don't think she was very impressed that i was wrong. but oh did we laugh. non stop.

things were progressing well, madeline even managed to shoot this fox in the head and was so proud of herself, insisting that i take a photo to show off to grandad.

it's so much fun watching these two together... they always have the best time (when they aren't arguing!) 

there was so many mosquitos though. that was the only downfall. we doused ourselves over and over with repellant, but they were still biting something cruel. i swear the pretty surroundings make it worth it though. please trust me! haha.

so here we were... right near the end and approaching the last target. it starts raining again, now that we are all finally dry - and this time it's way worse. like absolutely pouring - and then it started hailing. oh my word. we decided to make a run for it in the end, and then were so wet that we had to borrow a towel from the owners to dry off.  but at least we had fun. even when chloe managed to scrape her leg on the way back to the car with her arrow. i foresee a tetanus shot in her future!

one last stop - the christmas shop in toodyay for a quick look. these little drowned rats probably weren't impressed that i made them pose for yet another photo, but oh well. 

would you believe we then drove all the way to northam to get pizza for dinner, then back to mums to pick up an eagerly waiting toddler. we even waited that little bit longer until it was dark, just so madison could watch the stars. i completely appreciate this, as it's my favourite bit about visiting mums too!

it was a great day with the kids!

 

home staging

so some of our closest friends "accidentally" moved to new zealand. yes. that happened. coronavirus has been causing all kinds of problems all over the place but this is one i certainly didn't see coming. our friends are new zealand citizens and went back to nz for a wedding, only to be locked out for who knows how long because an outbreak occurred over there, right before they were due to come back to australia. because they are not australian citizens, our government has made it impossible for them to get in, and because there is no telling when (or if!) it's going to be clear for them to get back in, they ended up having to make a choice to just stay put.

we miss them dreadfully and there's been lots of tears, but after having flight after flight cancelled, they made themselves comfortable and settled in while i'm running things for them on this end. so, i've sold a car... and now i'm selling a house! i've had my very first (and i'm hoping last) experience with staging a house for sale and i'm so happy with the result! the listing and photos went live online yesterday and they look incredible. light and airy and oh so cosy. they are thrilled and so am i. i am really hoping it doesn't take long to sell for their sake. 

so with no further ado, i present - the newmans house!

and if you want to buy a house - the listing is here.

main bedroom with bedding from my house and lamps from the spare room at mums.

the very elegant pre-teen bedroom 

not going to lie, i'm probably going to swipe this wattle painting for my own house when the house sells.

the cleanest kitchen i've ever seen!

the whole house is set up with random paintings and items i found at my mothers to make it look pretty, without having their personal items and pictures on display, including the wattle painting above, don't worry, i'm not stealing their things!

we kept laughing that i was making such a fuss of setting the fire pit up, because it was such a silly little thing, but then the real estate really showcased it and took like 4 photos of it for the listing, so i guess it paid off haha.

fingers crossed it sells fast for them!

a stroll at the tunnel

it's the first day of school holidays for us here in wa and as luck may have it, it's also a public holiday so dad is home! so much to the disgust of our children, we decided to go outside and for a decent walk. we had actually decided to go to balls rapids (as we've lived right by it for 6 years and still haven't been!) but when we drove up, there was literally about 100 cars there... so we decided the swan view train tunnel was a better option.

for a kid that didn't want to go, he was pretty keen on the walk!

last time we brought the kids out here, alex was still in the pram. this time he loved running through the tunnel and splashing in the puddles left from all the rain we've had!

i have always been a huge fan of the tunnel. it looks so amazing, just there in the middle of the bush. i actually said to doug this visit that i wondered why they had closed it after so much effort... and when we came out the other end, i realised there was a bunch of signs with the history printed and in pictures. turns out, after all that work, it was a ventilation issue - all the smoke from the train was a hazard to the passengers and employees, so eventually a new track was constructed (around through the rock again) that bypassed the tunnel. 

it's a lovely walk, as the track is high on a ridge with a valley of bushland running down beside you, just a little horrifying with a three year old who seemed determined to dance along the edge

because as you can see behind us, it's quite the drop!

it was a lovely day, heaps of wildflowers blooming and cheerfully lining the track

i actually wish you could smell these - they smell like heaven!

and we all had a really good time.

i honestly wouldn't want to live anywhere else but here. i love the trees and the bush that just seem to go on forever.

of course we had to climb all the rocks, pick everything up, wander wander wander... walks are always so much longer with children. i remember when i was very small (maybe 4 or 5 years old) my grandfather joseph came to stay with us on the farm so that he could paint the house for my parents. we would go walking around the paddocks and he would walk so slowly, so he could look at everything. it was so nice to be with him and spend that time. he was my absolute favourite and i still look back on that time with love.

joseph didn't want to walk back through the tunnel but everyone else did, so we walked around the ridge and chatted, mostly about nintendo and lego (insert yawns and eyerolls here from me!)

then it was time to go back to the car and head back to the swan valley for the promised reward of icecream and a play at oggies cafe.

tom and nicole's wedding

our lovely next door neighbours tom and nicole got married today! (yes we have already made the token tom cruise nicole kidman joke to them and i hope they have a much happier marriage than them!) it was such a gorgeous day for it and we loved being able to share their day with them.

they even invited madeline to come to the ceremony too, which was so sweet of them and she felt oh so special. the "bridesman" even handed her a bouquet to mind at one stage so we had to take a special photo of her with it under their arbor.

i really did feel bad for them as they had so many people who weren't able to attend from the uk (tom's family is from there) and from the eastern states (with covid cases running rampant over there they weren't able to get in) but they certainly made up for it with the most hilarious video presentation. they had everyone in fits.

i have to write down the funniest part so i can laugh about it in the future (because believe me, it was so not funny at the time!). when we arrived at the reception venue - the vines, later that afternoon - twe asked for the room the wedding was held in and were directed to go down the hall and to a lounge for pre-dinner drinks. we didn't think anything of it, because we knew no one other than tom and nicole, but as we sat and waited and waited and waited, we began to wonder how on earth they were running so late as it had been almost an hour. we had seen toms mum walk past twice and the best mans wife with her baby twice so we at least knew we were in the right place - only we weren't. gah. they eventually started showing people in the lounge into their room and it was not the cannon wedding. oh my word. we went and asked at the reception again and were shown to the right room, but i was mortified. especially since we had been early and were now waltzing in pretty much an hour late. thankfully nicole has a sense of humour and when i explained what happened she just laughed. honestly, it could only happen to me. turns out there had been a scheduling mishap at the resort and they've moved their drinks to another place and of course the one staff member who didn't know was the one we got. of course.

it was such a fun day with them though and honestly the best wedding speeches i've ever sat through. it was even better than nicole had kindly sat us with some people she new we would have fun with and as doug not so discretely checked the afl scores for the entire wedding, all the boys at our table were right there with him. for the record, the melbourne demons won the premiership cup, 57 years after they last took it home! it was a great night! congratulations to the bride and groom. 

a new garden bed

i looove our local free page. it is part of the buy nothing project worldwide (which you can read about here) and is wonderful, that you can ask for items if you need something and you can give items too. i have received many wonderful things from the page and this week i was thrilled to receive a whole buncg of freshly dug up agapanthus plants. they are one of my absolute favourites. i love the flowers on them especially and am not even distreet in my efforts at the chapel each year when they are flowering, i have a pair of scissors in my glovebox and i cut flowers and take them home to enjoy.

a lot of the gardens have come a long way in this house... this bed down the kitchen side of the house was originally brick edged and filled with riverstones. when we pulled out that awful fountain we had, i dug out all the stones surrounding both that and in this garden bed and sold them on marketplace (hilariously to someone that lives on the other side of our park!) and it has sat empty ever since. 

not anymore! after collecting these 4 bags of plants, separating them and trimming them all back to make the root system small enough to plant... which took long enough on its own...

i pulled out all the bricks and relocated them to the back of the house (i will be discretely throwing them in the skip bin when they start on our bathrooms in a few weeks) before planting these babies!

and i am so so happy! looks a million times better already, especially with the bricks gone. all clean and ready to thrive! they should get just enough sun through the shade cloth to keep them happy and i can't wait to have agapanthus flowers of my very own. let's hope my somewhat green thumb of late is still working.

hooray for being the queen of thrift. free is me!

the corn prank

recently, this kid has decided that he no longer likes corn. weird, because he's never had an issue with it before. i served up corn on the cob with dinner a few weeks ago and he literally turned up his nose and looked so offended - wouldn't even touch it and kept trying to take it off his plate. ugh

anyway. when i work in the canteen, the kids have a lunch order that day. wednesdays we have a special of chicken strips, wedges and corn on the cob. we sent his out like usual with the corn and at the end of the day he was like "why did you send me corn? i hate corn!" well. the lunch order bags have instructions on them and if you don't say no corn, you'll get corn. joseph: hmmmph

the following wednesday he carefully writes no corn on the bag and when i was hurriedly packing the bags, i accidentally gave him corn. mum. i don't. want. corn. oh my goodness i'm sorry i'll be more careful.

by this stage chantelle (the other canteen lady i work with) and i were in fits over it and when this bag appeared this week, she decided to play a prank on him. no corn. so what does she do? instead of his lunch, which was carefully packed (with no corn) and put in the warmer...

she gave him nothing but corn. we were laughing soooo hard about it and when his class collected the basket we kept giggling thinking of what would happen. but then it had been far too long and he hadn't appeared yet to get his actual lunch and we got worried.

around the corner comes his teacher, mr. omar, holding the bag looking completely confused and my little storm cloud following him stomping his feet and wearing a look of absolute infuriation. we lost it laughing and as soon as mr. omar realised it was joseph's own mother behind it, he couldn't hold back his laughter either. i was literally crying i was laughing so hard and he got so angry. "i don't want corn" he roared at me, at which time i gave him his actual lunch and told him it wasn't me! he replied, "it doesn't matter, you laughed!!!!" yes. yes i did. oh my goodness did i laugh. just another day in the life of a mum.

________________________________

update: the following wednesday he wrote on his bag:

no corn, no corn on the cob. no canned corn, just no corn! this means you chantelle. 

so what did she do? sent him a free bag of popcorn. solid gold. he actually ate that one, but now he's furious because he had no idea that popcorn was corn too. 😂