Tour of our home, part two

Continuing on from yesterday's post....

A better photo of the dining area.

More of the lounge/living/family room from different angles,

and again...

Nice warm fire for winter.

Next is the main bathroom pictures.

This bathroom has two doors either side, one leads to the second bedroom.

This bathroom is massive, it is hard to show in photos.

The spa that rarely gets used because of water restrictions.

The basins and cupboards, heaps of storage as you can see.

Onto the laundry, please excuse the untidiness, this tends to be the dumping room.

The view from the entry...

View from back door...

View of window. Whoops.. I could do with a new laundry basket.

This is another large room. Excellent wall to wall to ceiling storage cupboards. There are three of these, could only fit two and a bit in photo.

Thats all for today folks,

Tania

Tour of our home, part one

Today for those that are interested I would like to take you on a tour of our home.

This is looking straight out my front door. (We are Adelaide Crows fans, hence the flags)

Slightly left of front door.

Right side view from front door.

Left side view from front door.

Picture of the front of our home.

This is the entry to the house, and what you see upon walking in the front door. The washstand is one of the pieces of furniture given to us by my parents to restore (was painted blue, my mum loved blue). Beneath the washstand is a restored butter churn from my parents also.

This is what you will see next, the lounge/living area. The house is open planned and this area is large. I still haven't bought a new lounge suite, as I can't find any I like yet. I need to take another angle of this room so you can get some idea of the size and shape. I will do that later.

Pictured here is the timber ceiling, absolutely beautiful when you first see it.

Next is the dining area, sorry I have missed getting most of the table in. Will take a better picture soon. Kitchen dresser I found in my dad's workshop full of his tools. This was painted pink, green and black. It was without the back but we managed to find one that fitted perfectly in a second hand shop. The meatsafe is dhs that he inherited from his uncles shearing shed, he has restored it back to its former glory. I use it for the daycare craft materials at the moment, but I want to eventually use it for my collection of patchwork quilts and linens.

View of my kitchen from dining room side.

Some dishcloths I have been knitting. These sit on the window sill in the kitchen.

Heart of the home and the place I spend most of my time. The kitchen...

View taken from the window end of the kitchen. Here is the pantry...

Another view from the dining area showing the high kitchen bench.

This is what you see when looking out the sliding door leading to the outside from the dining area. Sad, dead lawn sorry! We are thinking of paving this spot as we are not allowed to water the lawns.

Looking slightly left from sliding door.

Lastly we have what I see when going out the back door. You guessed it, this is the door leading from the laundry. Sorry again for the dead lawn. We don't quite know what to do with this area. Maybe planting small native shrubs and grasses might be the go.

More to follow in the next few blogs.

Kindest regards

Tania

Daily Living

Sunset taken from hubby's train, snapped somewhere out west.

Bird of Paradise trying to survive in my somewhat dying garden. It breaks my heart to see my plants withering away because of the lack of water. I spent years getting it to look nice only to have it destroyed by severe water restrictions.

We have a salt lake directly behind us. When it rains it looks like a nice lake with water, the rest of the time it is bone dry.

Thyme and Oregano, these are mainly watered with dish water.

I do not own a dishwasher, so this is how I wash my dishes. First, I run the hot tap into the bucket pictured, this is used for rinsing. (Our hot water is solar and takes a while to get hot when running the tap). When the water starts to warm I then run this into the other square container to which an earth friendly detergent has been added. As you can see I don't use very much water, depending on the amount of dishes of course, if there is only a few I use very little. I wash dishes at lunch time and after tea (dinner). I used about six litres of water all up this time around. When this cools down I put it onto the herb garden.

Neighbours house with wind generator, situated across the road from us.

I couldn't help but capture this evening shadow coming through my laundry window yesterday on sundown.

Have a blessed Sunday.

Tania

Lamp Lighting Time

Last night was our first night with solar powered lighting. I found myself thinking I was wasting the power in the batteries when I turned on a light, so I decided to get out the old lamps and spent the evening with the two lamps gently burning.
There has been a lot of cackling noises coming from the chook house of late. The reason being is pictured above. Our new hens have started laying, so there are plenty of eggs at the moment. I have included a larger egg that belongs to the old girls and the smaller ones are from the younger girls.

A couple of my attempts at crafting. I made these a few years ago now, don't get the time these days. Once a month I used to sell some of my goods at a local market. The "kitchen closed" cow was very popular.

Hope you have had a wonderful day.

Tania

I'm Back

Let the sunshine in.

Hello again,

The weeks have flown by since I was last here. I had good intentions of returning sooner but life got in the way.

I am now busy again caring for little ones while their parents are working. My work load is a little easier than I thought it was going to be because I didn't get the baby that required 45 hours a week care. Instead I have a dear little 18mth old starting.

Pictures of some of the Day Care area, not very tidy when this was taken because they had just finished playing here. Top one is the shaded area and below is the playground area, includes sandpit, swings, slippery dip and climbers.

Today we were hooked up to Solar Power. At the moment it is only our lights that are running from the system. Hopefully in the future we will be able to run more than just lights. We are looking into buying a wind generator next.

Best wishes until next time.

Tania

Chooks

This is a pic of our chooks. We have restocked our flock because some of the older ones died or became victims of a fox. We have had to fox proof their pen so they are safer. There are eight new girls, two new roosters and three older girls that are still laying, just. The new hens aren't laying yet. I love home grown eggs, the bought ones don't even come close. The best part is that I know what goes into our eggs by what we feed them. As you can see it is pretty dry here at the moment, not a blade of grass in sight. When we first moved here the enclosure was overgrown with weeds, so much so we couldn't even walk through it hardly. Now it is just dirt.

View of my kitchen sink.

(Sorry it's a bit dark).

I have spent the last couple of days cleaning the house in preparation of my friend's arrival tomorrow night.

Things will be a bit quiet around here for a few days as I spend some quality time with my best friend. We have been friends for over 26 years and it will be great to catch up again.

Done it!!

Yesterday, at last we preserved our nectarines. After asking many questions to people in the know we finally had a go and were pleased with the results.

Then I found somewhere to store them all. This is in an old icebox that my hubby restored. This icebox used to be on the farm that I grew up on. My mum had painted it blue and used it for a storage cupboard for her craft things. When the farm was sold I asked if I could have some of the old furniture to restore. I have quite a few pieces that I will show you in pictures later.

DRAGS
Last night we went to the drag competion in the nearby City of Whyalla, a fun night was had by all, that's if you like fast cars and lots of burnt rubber!

I think it is going to stay cooler for a few days to give everyone a little bit of relief, so I am hoping to get some more jobs done around the house. We still have some nectarines to deal with in the next few days as the last of them ripen. Unfortunately we still haven't had any rain, hopefully that isn't too far away.

Health and happiness to you all.

Tania