Trends that must die: leopard print, mustaches, keep calm posters and effing mason jars.

Oh hai there internet! How are you? We are well! 

Since our last post, where we welcomed a new little blue car to the family and said a sad farewell to the old one, we have:

- Put some ornamental pears in our front yard!

-Spent the weekend away in Hepburn, Victoria. Which was offset slightly by Squirrel having severe 24 hour gastro (yep, both ends!) and power vomiting in the hotel room. This girl = all class. But as I said, gastro, not alcohol induced or anything. 

-Purchased a HEAP of things for the garden and house; seedlings, small veggie plants, and this lamp ($80 at Adairs!)

Our continued focus however, is the garden.

This is a mock up of the facade of the house with some Boral Cultured Stone - Southern Ledgestone, and a new mailbox, which is brought out from the fence-line to give definition between the nature strip and our land - rather than a fence or a hedge. You can also see the Ornamental Pears we have put in. Because my abilities in paint only extend as far as you can see, I wasn't able to add in imagery of the few things we wish to do next:

- Add decking stairs to the front area, rather than the concrete. This will probably come out further than the current stairs, as at the moment, it's a bit 'sudden' after you have locked the door.

-Matching this decking will be decking around each of the pears. The pair of pears, if you will. This decking, only about 1x1 metres, will have two inbuilt lights in each, which will shine upwards into the pear trees. This sort of thing, but with lights.  Completed 3rd August!

- Painting of the trims. The somewhat annoying thing about everything is that the inside of our house is grey, and the outside is brown, and this mis-match is quite evident when you look at the windows. Urgh. I don't really know what to do here. As many of you will know, we had considered rendering the house but after lengthy, lengthy discussions we have decided against this. Trawling of the internet found many voices opposed to rendering because of it's propensity to cracking, and need for maintenance. This was echoed by Puffin's Opa, who as a former brick layer, can't go past the classic look of bricks. And he has a point. This house has stood for 50-odd years and it doesn't look particularly bad. It looks neat. Boring, definitely, but neat and clean. And not overly dated. Whereas if you travel around our town, you see a mix of rendered houses - some, which tend to edge more on the much-older-than-our-house scale look excellent, where as others, which are similar to ours, just look terrible. So we are working with what we have! The trims will be painted a colour which underplays them, not totally blending into the brickwork, but also not drawing attention. Further to this...

-Replacing the guttering. The guttering has rusted through in a number of spots and is quite ineffective, so we will get this in a colour which will work with the brickwork and the ....

-Newly painted roof. This will be painted a colour somewhere between brown and grey. Again, subtle.

-Lastly, we will re-paint the green fence either side of the house - probably the same colour as the guttering. 

And there you have it! Timeline for this stuff is probably 6 months - the guttering is probably a job for someone else, as are the decks. Squirrel can easily do the painting of trims and fence it's just a matter of time and money.

In the meantime, the other projects for the following month and a half are: repairs to cracks in the roof that Squirrel made during the insulating, finishing the inside of the front door, painting the kitchen table and upholstering the second chair. Is there enough time bloggers? Probably not. Puffin and I seem to be constantly busy, but I suppose time for resting is 6 foot under. I would absolutely LOVE feedback on this post bloggers, landscaping is HARD!

xx