Holiday Gallery....

It took awhile but Tony and I finally went through the 2500 odd pics taken on our 07 European holiday...this was a mighty undertaking as we had to choose 22 pics to go into our frames in the hallway.

Sound easy...not really...as probably 95% of the pics taken were taken in Landscape, we needed only 6 landscape photos for the wall....so trying to decide which of the other pics would come up well as a portrait was daunting.

I'm a bit of an catagorising nut, so all our pics were sorted into countries, then into places...this actually made it easier to go through them......we sat down together and went through them, writing down the ones we liked and whether they were landscape or portrait.  This process took a few weeks, only cos we had days where we didn't look at them.....ended up with 95 photos...not bad......next we used our printers program and rotated the photos to see how they would come up as portrait photos...here, we had no say in the finished pic.

Then we made up folders....one for definates and one for possibilities.....actually ended up with 25 defs and 8 possibles....more decisions to make....finally ended up with our 22 pics.

So, last night while Tony was at work i printed them off and framed them...as i have said in a previous post, some of the bigger frames were not standard sizes, we ended up buying white cardboard and putting that behind the photos to fill in the gaps.  I also made up some name plates to say where the pic was taken and in what country.

Kell n I had the task of then deciding which photo went where....okay, so the largest pics were not a problem...it was all the little 4 x 6" ones, suprisingly we only ended up swapping two over...not bad.

Hanging them was interesting as the hooks in the back of the frames are all set at different heights...but...on the whole the frames line up pretty evenly.  It definately changes the look of the hallway...love it  :D

Clothesline.....

I don't normally get excited about a clothesline...but...after not having one for over 14 months I can now say....Woo Hoo......

So, here is  pic of our lovely line....trouble is i washed this morning before it went up, hopefully it will still be sunny next time i wash so i can hang it out.....now all I have to do is teach Nikki that she can't touch the clothes on it...mind you she has never seen clothes hanging on a line before...

More Bits n Pieces....

Over the last few weeks we have gradually been doing small things around the house to make it more a  home.

We ordered a set of 20 photo frames to go on the yellow wall in the hallway, these we have put up...now we just have to decied what photos to put in them.  We had planned to use pics from our overseas holidays till we realised that most of the photos Tony took he took in landscape, while 90% of the frames are in portrait, so, as yet we haven't decided what to do about it, also what we thought was an A4 frame in fact turns out to be slightly larger, the same thing happened with the next size down...the frame is slightly larger than a 5 x 7" photo....at least the bulk of the frames will support a 4 x 6" pic.

We have gradually been painting all the rooms with the semi gloss acrylic to go over the low sheen paint the house came with...its not something we are rushing to get done.
We have painted the ornate parts of the columns near the lounge...so now they are the same colour as the skirting boards and the architraves...looks so much better.

Also our wardrobe insert for the craft room finally arrived...this should be an easy job as this one was hanging space and 3 sets of shelves....hmmm...how wrong can you get.  Instead of having to go down to Warrnambool to pick up the pieces, they are now sending the jobs to other factories for you to pick up...depending on where you live.  Turns out that we were the first job for this factory and the cutting info they were sent was wrong. 
We built the robe only to have the shelves fall down as the dividers were not aligned...hmmmm, then the hanging rod was too long...so we remeasured...what the...the two end divisions were wrong...in fact they had made them the measurements of the other end????
Finally after dismantling the whole thing we realised that the top shelf (which holds it all together) had had its edging put on the back and not the front of the shelf.  Easy fixed, back to the factory we went and they put a new edge on for us....then it came together very easily.

The wall of Frames...lol

Before and after shots of the upper moulding

Before and after shots of the lower moulding

Our DIY robe in the Craft Room

Paths.....

Today Tony's brother Warren and his wife Jeanette came over to give us a hand in ripping up the path between the Alfresco and the Spa as well as the pebbled area between the garage and the alfresco.

Warren use the mattock while Jeanette and I shoveled the stone into the wheelbarrow while Tony wheeled it out the front to put in a neat pile of the nature strip.

We have replaced it with some of the crushed brick that was left over from the back paths....Jeanette and I had the ominous task of stomping on the bricks to help compact it...boring and tedious work...but the end result is worth it.

After a bbq lunch we tackled in front of the garage...so far all we have done is to remove the stones....during the wet weather the dogs were using this area to pee in...and boy, does it smell....so we will leave it for a couple of days before bringing the crushed brick in.

We finished in time to sit down and watch the Melbourne Cup....
poor Tony then had to get ready to go to work...boo.....never mind...nice overtime  :)

From this.....

....to this

And from this...

to the halfway stage