Love the Look

So thrilled to have been this weeks' winner in Carpet Court's "Love the Look" comp on facebook.

As you know, I really love the way my backyard is finally coming altogether, and it's nice to have affirmations from others .. especially when that person is Stacey Kourous !

I really had my fingers crossed on this one, as I was hoping to share as a happy follow-on from yesterday's panorama, and now I can!

And this is what it used to look like in 2007 ( top ) to present day ( bottom two )

I love my Greenhouse .. it's my little space where I can potter around, or dress it up in seasonal colours ( we Halloween it, we Christmas it, we birthday-it-up .. and it's still got a now-tattered Geelong Cats flag flying from it's mast from last year's Premiership season ;) .. I grow seedlings in there, I often just zone out in there .. it's quiet and pretty and peaceful .. no tele, no fighting, no demands for food .. i'm pretty much left alone to watch the changing light, pet a cat, watch a bird, or sit in that chair with a wine and survey my slice of heaven.



So .. would you like to win a $10,000 room makeover? ( this is the major prize from Carpet Court ) 

I know I would... that 1950's Westminster carpet .. goneski ... the 10yr old tattered rug that has seen better days .. oh, i've got 10,000 ways I could use that $10k, absolutely.

You can enter here: http://www.carpetcourt.com.au/current-promotions/love-the-look .. or pop right on over to Carpet Court's facebook page.. tell 'em I sent you ;)

Gotta be in it to win it!

x
Lea 

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Intermission: The Backyard..

Yes, I know, I totes promised an updated pic of the boy's room .. but instead Spring happened, and i've been living outside in the Great Australian Sunshine.  Awesome.

This is our 7th year of 'save a bit, spend a bit, fix a bit and work a lot' on the garden. 
We can't afford to do things in one big bang, but that's ok.. it allows us to muse on what we want, what works, etc, and the garden grows organically.  Some plants have been transplanted and moved, oh, about a dozen times?  Some have travelled with us in pots from rentals past, and some we've bought anew.

I love gardening, and most people know the only gift we actually like is a Bunnings Voucher. 
For my 30th birthday, all I wanted was a pretty watering can, for my 40th I asked for a tree. 

Take me to a nursery and let me buy a couple of plants, and I will love you forever.





Things we have done:

- built a deck
- built a "boardwalk" .. the design which came to me in a dream and my husband made for me as his
  first ever job as a builder-carpenter ( not bad, huh? )
- made the kidney-shaped lawn area using old bricks from our old front fence
- made the pebble path
- painted the fences
- greenhouse pretty-ing up etc
- installed the vege gardens
- lots of plantings ( in the backyard we have a Japanese Maple grove, a Paperback Birch grove,
  roses, Viburnum, Lilacs, Weeping Lilly Pilly, Dianellas, Ornamental native grasses ( forgotten
  the name atm ), Gardenias, Ornamental Pear, Hydrangeas, English Box, a Mock Orange standard,
  a Ficus standard, iceberg roses, a Virgina Creeper ( love that monster ) and as of yesterday, a brand-spanking feature tree in an Autumn Blaze Maple! )



And of course, the other stuff, like removing a disgusting compost heaps made from an old
inner-spring mattress ( what? ), a broken hillshoist and all the 'paving' under it .. unearthing massive blocks of concrete from under the lawn ( we think maybe old garden borders? ) .. cutting and poisoning all the ivy that covered a back corner, the compost heap and our neighbour's trees ( he loved us for that ), and removing the few ugly weed trees ( Privet ) the property came with. 

I wish i'd kept count of all the Skips we have hired, but i'm pretty sure the one we hired this year was skip #10 :/

Further up the sides of the house where you can't see, AB also built me brick garden beds for all my citrus
( lemon, mandarin, Thaitian Lime, Kaffir Lime and Cumquats ) and rosemary hedge ( again with reused bricks ),
and built us a new side gate, and paved the driveway. 

And then there's the front yard..  hello, future posts..

7years.

Home straight.
( Underplantings next year .. i'm excited already! )

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One Project At A Time..

I'm too lazy to dig up any before pics, so you'll just have to beleive me ( or perhaps you've been to my place, or remember those past pics ) that the new backyard is so far LOOKING AWESOME !

OMG, I am so happy with this! The design came to me in a dream, and I awoke and quickly fleshed it out in a sketch, showed the bloke, conferred, got excited, and started to do stuff. It's gradual, like everything. We save for each bit ( be it pebbles, or plants etc ) and piecemeal it together as we go. We do it all ourselves, after work, on weekends. Ok, or he does mostly, and I bring the Coola Cordial and point a lot.