right now

It's hard to blog when all the big things happening around me at present aren't my stories to tell.

Big things happening to people who are big in my life - filling me with sympathy, sadness, fear and fragile feelings of maternal tenderness.
There's a lot of them - people I love at whom life is throwing some big curve-balls.

WTF life??

The things I can write about are a mixed bag ...

... my Lego is failing fast. When the vet said 6 - 8 weeks, 6 weeks ago, I kind of scoffed. How could he be so sure when we've no idea how long she's had the cancer for? Turns out he knew (being a vet and all I guess). In 10 days time I go to Joburg for a week ...

... Joburg for a week to run logistics on a fab project. It'll be a week of hard work and hard play - my favourite kind. Johannesburg is interesting this time of year - icy cold nights (way colder than CT ever gets) and still, warm days. Good people, some of whom were with me in Durban last year, and interesting work. I'm looking forward to it, were it not for my ailing furbaby.

But in other news - we finished our bath renovation!

Well, besides for a small snag list ...

But it's lovely, very 'executive' as my brother called it (i.e. black and white and sleek), and now of course - totally different to the rest of our house.

It's been about 6 months in the making - the old bathroom was ripped out in November - and we've had the work done slowly as we've had the cash, or inspiration. We're 'hashtag blessed' to have had other loo's to use in this silly big house of ours. It's been fun, and we're hoping to keep up the momentum. We've been reminded that we love doing this, and I think we're quite good at it.
Photographing a bathroom is hard though - thank goodness for that massive reflective shower screen!

Life is hard, life is beautiful, life is relentless. What would we do without it?

floored

We bought them sight unseen.

My clearest memory of the show house was my husband walking from room to carpeted room bouncing gently on the balls of his feet.
'They're there,' he grinned. 'They're there and they're going to be beautiful.'

Once again, he was right. He has a good hunch for things.

We moved in a week before our wedding, and while I faffed with flowers and last minute arrangements, he channeled any pre-wedding jitters into tearing up the carpets, working late into the night before our big day.

the only - bad - before picture we have of this room when we first saw it

The next evening he carried me over the threshold, to a house filled with siblings and friends, flowers and joy and ... great big exposed tracts of glue-stained, dusty, hairy ... floor.
Extra-width Oregon Pine floor boards, gasping in the light they'd not seen for well over 30 years.

And so the work began. Carpet glue is a bitch. Ancient beetle-damage is a bitch. Sanding is a back-breaking bitch. But we did it.

And my god they are beautiful.

It's sobering to think we'll probably never live with such beautiful floors again. There are lots of wonderful flooring options out there for sure, and we're excited about experimenting with some of them (if/when/hold thumbs we move), but I don't think anything will ever come close to the warmth (to the touch and the eye), character, sound, feel, smell of original Oregon floors.
And I don't think we'll ever imbue so much love into flooring again. I'd have scoffed if anyone had ever told me I could love a floor, but I do you know. From the bottom of my feet.

This blog is about to get house-heavy. As we contemplate moving on, and look back at all we've done here, all this house has meant to us, I'm going to get sentimental. Brace yourselves.

and then 7 months later ...

... this happened.

Girl in paddling pool on LAWN.

See the journey here and here.

Hello summer.

got grass

Yup, a scant 3 weeks later and we have lawn.

Unfortunately I'm missing some pics in between. The extremely arduous phase when we were sifting and sorting and reworking the exposed soil, removing rubble and broken glass, old plastic bags, bits of broken china etc.
There was even an interesting moment when Husband unearthed one high-heeled shoe and the remnants of a dress ... our eyes met over the girl's heads and we wondered whether it was time to herd everyone inside and call Forensics. The old guy we bought the house from did say his wife had died here ...

Anyhoo this lawn'll need all the help it can get in the next little while. We bought cut metres from a grass dealer farmer on Friday, frantically worked to get the irrigation system installed on Friday evening and finally got to lay it yesterday, in 35+ degree (celsius!) heat.
It's still looking a little off-colour but we've been assured with enough watering and fertilising (ahem) it'll take.

Clearly the area still needs a lot of work (like removing that manky string mop from the shed roof!), but we're getting there ...

make it grow

Our house is well over 100 years old. We've lived in it for nearly 8.

The week we moved in, just a couple of days before we got married, Husband pulled up all the carpeting (beat that for a pre-wedding stress reliever) and the work pretty much hasn't stopped since ...
We've come a long way.

But the nature of a project like this is that one's never really finished, there's always going to be more to do. Equal parts inspiring and frustrating.

Our favourite thing in the world is Starting A New Project.
Second favourite: Making it Happen.
Less favourite: Completing Project.
Worst thing ever: Snag List.

And so we live with various projects in various stages of completion, with tools always unpacked 'cos we 'just need to finish up ... ' Sometimes it makes me MAD and sometimes I kinda like it.
I think it's good for our girls to watch and learn from us fixing up our own home, but often I wish parts of our house were more kiddie-friendly, slightly less 'don't touch that!'.

But on to our New Project. This one is for the girls. We're making a garden.

One week ago: Weird, virtually unused corner of hot, over-grown crazy paving next to the pool.

 (dontcha just love those air-bricks on the right ... ?)

Same view after last weekend:

The plan is to fence off the pool and plant a small (4x4m) but to be deeply appreciated patch of lawn. A bit of green space for the kiddies, a bit of head-space for the grown ups.

Still not sure what to do about those air-bricks though ...

food for thought

The builder told me today that they'd be done with all the inside work by the end of the week, that he'd like to see us 'move back in on the weekend'.
Me, I'll believe it when I see it.

It's not so impossible. The floor tiles are laid, the windows and doors replaced, plastering done, 1st layer of paint down, lights are in, cornices are up. But the kitchen sink's not in, none of the bathroom sanitaryware is installed, the kitchen counter top is still in production. So I'll reserve judgement and wait and see.

But truth be told, all I really want back is full use of my cooker. All I want to do is cook and bake and mix and play and then, have the dishwasher installed to take care of all the necessary afterwards.
It's gotten to the stage where I'm lying awake at night planning menus, creating dossiers of the first things I'll cook, I'm dreaming up dinner parties and braai's and brunches and (am I completely fokken crazy), excited about inviting Husband's family over for a big Christmas meal.

And so while the point of this post is actually just to rack one last one up for November, hereby bringing the total up to a totally un-awesome 10 (I'm so slack), here's a list of the first few things I intend to cook as soon as I can.

1. Lazy Chilies Rellenos ~ jalapenos, eggs, cheese, tortilla. Who could ask for anything more?
2. A batch of Nigella's Apple & Cranberry chutney. To have with cold gammon at Christmas. Droolishes.
3. Tres Leches Cake. I have to say I'm well over a newbie-blogger crush on the Pioneer Woman (in fact I'm pretty sure she doesn't actually exist but is a creation of Harpo Studios), and I stopped reading her ages ago, but I can't resist visiting Pioneer Woman Cooks every now and then. This cake is one of the reasons why.
4. Mince Pie Pinwheels. A possible replacement for my normal Christmas mince pies. Naturally I'll have to do a batch now to test ...
5. A good ole roast chicken with all the trimmings. Especially roast potatoes. And 3 veg. And a big ass chicken. You can hear the longing in my voice hey?

Husband also has a list, his goes something like this:
1. Curry
2. Curry
3. Huevos Rancheros
4. Curry
5. Curry

Oh my god I can't wait.

marching to tiletoria

One thing about renovating, you find yourself in the weirdest places. Places you'd never in your right mind (or normal life) frequent.
Tiletoria is one such place.

When you've lived in one city for 15 odd years you think you know it fairly well. But as life likes to remind one, there's always more to learn out there. Even if you feel the lessons best left unlearnt.

And so it came to pass that we spent a bit of time at Tiletoria last Saturday morning. More time then either of us would've thought we would really, but we went in looking for a lowly basin spout and immediately I had to start taking some pictures of the horror.
Then Frieda discovered the indoor aquarium, so that took a while.
And then as we leaving Husband noticed the daily special in the tearoom (yup, Tiletoria boasts its own one) was scones with cheese and jam and coffee for only R15 and so, I'm ashamed to admit, we sat down and had elevenses there.

Sitting right near this:

Too close for comfort to this:

Nauseatingly conscious of this:

And reeling in disbelief at this:

The whole time we were there I was pronouncing the name of the place as Tile-tor-ia. Eventually Husband pointed out to me that it was actually pronounced Tile-toria. To rhyme with Pretoria.

Instantly it all made sense.

Besides the scones we bought nothing.

it's all good

Dusty and tired.
But very, very happy. I can't express how much I've enjoyed watching parts of our house get ripped to pieces this week. Really, it couldn't have happened to a nicer kitchen.

It's only been a week but this whole process has, so far, been fabulous. Really, fabulous. I'm not just throwing around gratuitous superlatives here.

I love the problem-solving required when packing up half one's house and storing all that crap stuff in the other half in a way which defines items into 'deep' and 'shallow' storage, which allows a family of 3 (and a bit, and a bull terrier and 2 cats) to live in relative comfort and ease, which is still vaguely aesthetically pleasing and, most of all, safe from the rambling thuggery of an inquisitive nearly two and a half year old.
It's allowed me to flex an organisational muscle I've not exercised to this extent for some time now.

I love the transience of a make-shift kitchen (though admittedly this could start losing it's appeal), the change of perspective when one's sofa is moved to a corner you'd never usually sit in, the discovery that the second bathroom which was never more than a spare loo and a storage space actually boasts a wicked shower, the oddity of waking in the night and hearing the fridge hum and click in the lounge room.
It's reminded me of how fun it was to rearrange my bedroom on a whim when in high school, that interesting feeling of going to sleep with all your familiar possessions in unfamiliar places, and waking up to a seemingly new world.

I love watching the building progress each day, seeing the plans we've been hatching for 6 years come to fruition, love the translation of those plans to a physical actuality.
It makes me wonder if we'll function a bit differentally as a family in this new space. I know we won't change as people - obviously not - but this new, improved living space has to affect the flow of our days, and I'm excited about that.

I love sharing a project like this with my man. Making practical and aesthetic decisions together; the thrill of discovering how often we think alike, the shock when realising sometimes we really, really don't.
It forces us to communicate in quite a unique way, to express serious differences of opinion with no hostility, to argue for, or against, the other's opinion without insulting their taste or logic, and to relearn those old relationship favourites: how to pick your battles, when to walk away, at which point to play your trump cards. It's fun.

It's all fun, and the real fun, the enjoyment of the final product, is still to come.

is becoming a reality ...

California Dreamin'. That's how that line's supposed to start, but as that part bears (bares?) absolutely no relevance to my life I'll not include it.

No indeed, what is becoming a reality is this child growing inside me. 20+ weeks, kicking like a donkey (albeit a little one) and just suddenly my brain is starting to ask; where will it sleep? what will it wear? And also, what the hell is it?
So far it's remained elusive, coyly crossing it's legs and refusing to reveal it's true self. In other words defying me already.
It's not that I must know or anything, it's just that I MUST KNOW. And no, it's not a question of pink or blue, it's a question of getting used to the format of our family, of preparing Frieda for her little brother, or sister. Of ordering that Meccano set online for husband if indeed it is another girl (an excuse to buy Meccano seems to be the only real reason why he'd care either way).

And so the urge to start digging out baby clothes and launder them, to start stockpiling nappies and rearrange furniture is growing. But I suffer no dillusions about why I'm feeling this way.

It's all due that other reality. The one in which a crew of men descend on our house at 7am on Monday morning to rip our kitchen and bathroom to pieces. The one in which we need to create a temporary kitchen in our lounge room, clear the cobwebs from the never-used 2nd shower (and make sure it actually has water!), pack up our existing kitchen, make a plan about the dog, order new floor tiles, find a bath we can both agree on without any shouting, find a temporary home for the gazillion powertools, boxes of books, camping gear, furniture etc currently stuffed into the small 'storeroom' which will soon become (can it be?) our Dining Room ... all before 7am on Monday morning.
Makes California sound quite attractive really.

So ja, those baby clothes will have to stay packed away. And this baby, he or she, can carry on kicking back (ha ha ha) and growing, and I'll apply my logistical mind to the more immediate conundrums we face.

Oi vey.

dIY delicious

You know how earlier I ended my post saying I was popping off to dismantle my kitchen?

21h06 Sun 4 Jan - crappy 1970's kitchen with crappy built-in stove and oven combo

Well I wasn't joking....

22h55 Sun 4 Jan - crappy 1970's kitchen with crappy units removed

1st step preparing for the arrival of the new stove. Check!

lists of 5: 5 thoughts for twenty-oh-nine

Just to be clear, these are absolutely, most definitely and certainly not resolutions. I am by no means beholden, possibly not ever and probably extremely unlikely to fulfill or complete them all. I will in no way be held accountable, answerable or even enter into conversation about my completion or non-completion of any of the below listed items.

I will, however, pledge to revisit this list in 1 year's time - just for laughs.

So here, in no particular order, is a list of things I'd like to think about, or be conscious of, in 2009.

1. My health. (see why these most definitely aren't resolutions? If they were this one would be doomed to failure.)

I had a profoundly happy moment last week when I received a mail to say my beloved Yogafit classes are starting up again this week! I was a lean, mean yoga machine before I got pregnant and I'm determined to regain at least a little of that svelte-ness.

2. My creativity. 2009 will (hopefully) be the Year of Craft. I've been gathering inspiration from all the wonderful crafty blogs I've been lurking on this last year and the time has come to channel all that into producing more handmade stuff myself. I'm very inspired by this, but ja, don't know if I'll even aim for 100!

3. Invest more in old friends. One of the benefits of spending more or less your whole life in one place is the large variety of friends you make, and generally keep, over the years. Husband and I, in the light of the loss of an old friend through circumstance, have been talking about how many wonderful old friends we have close by, and how we'd like to invest more time and effort in strengthening those bonds this year.

4. Getting my head and body ready for another baby. Gasp, I can't believe I'm actually committing these words to er... blog. I'm still wildly oscillating between 'no, no, no, jesus fuck am I mad to even be contemplating this again' and 'hey wow, I wonder what other fascinating little being there is out there, just waiting to be a part of our family'. On the one hand we're determined Frieda should have a sibling, on the other I get virtually paralysed at the thought of having TWO offspring - just the logistics alone are exhausting to think about. So ja, this is a long-term project...

5. Working! I'm SO looking forward to getting manically busy on this next job, so ready to taste the thrill of occupational achievement (is that a phrase? It sounds kinda cool so it should be). Besides, I need to earn some real money to pay for this , the full monty 5 plate gas/electric stove purchased by us yesterday. So excited. And now off to rip out some cupboards in our kitchen to make space for it!

room with a view

Aside: it must be one of my favourite movies.... Helena Bonham-Carter was such a fresh-faced English rose, one of Maggie Smith's best roles ever (and that's saying something because she's wonderful in so much), and the source of some fantastic lines, many of which are still quoted in our family.

But I digress....

Our latest DIY project is to build a window seat in the gorgeous bay window in our bedroom. We have such a lovely mountain view from there and it's the room which gets the best afternoon sun. A comfy window seat would be just the thing.
I've been doing some WBR (web based research) to try and find some inspiring ideas, hoping to find an assortment of gorgeous and clever designs to work from and you know, so far I've found.... NOTHING. Seriously, not even one lovely idea. It's all chintz and heavy drapes and net curtains (shudder of revulsion) and twee cabinets and over-stuffed floral phooeyness or hard cold minimalism (and not in a nice clean Scandinavian way, in a boring unimaginative student broke kind of way). Flickr has failed me, Apartment Therapy has failed me, I'm on page 4 of Google search and I'm still uninspired.
(And working on the theory that past page 5 on Google is total dead space, I'm not very hopeful.)

But what Apartment Therapy did give me, and I think I'm cursing it as a result, was this look inside my all-time favourite Haldane Martin's lovely home. God this man's furniture is too beautiful, that Riempie Couch would look perfect in my bay window : (

But those ostrich feather chandeliers make me wanna sneeze and I don't need anymore encouragement in that department right now.

Ai-chooo!

hearth & home

So, extremely boringly, fallback job option 2 hasn't worked out either. In a short week I went from zero to 2job-hero and back to zero, with a roller-coaster of emotion and angst and mental gymnastics in between. All good I 'spose, and all useful in working out what I want to, and can, do yada yada yada... 

I've very kindly been thrown some consultancy work by a friend which'll keep me out of mischief for the time being, but I'm aching to get my teeth into something and more importantly, earn some real money!

Not least of all to carry on doing this...

The fireplace in our lounge room. When it still belonged to the PREVIOUS OWNER. Can you handle? 30 years of accumulated knick-knacks, catholic kitsch, chinese shing-shong and general wtf-is-that-and-where-oh-where-did-they-buy-it??

This photo does touch a soft spot for me though. The old guy we bought the house from was facing the fact that he was too old to maintain the place by himself anymore. He was preparing to leave the home he'd lived in for 3 decades, where he'd raised his children and his wife had died. This stuff which we giggle over was all part of that life for him and I'm sure each item held some particular significance. Even that urn (?), jug (?), vase (?) in the foreground... really?

However, not long after we moved in this same corner looked like this;

and then like this;

and finally, and only about 2 years later (I feel this is a good time to tell you we were DOING ALL THE WORK OURSELVES!!!), like this:

This week we've been in our house for 5 years, we moved in the week before we got married, Oct 2003, and while we've done huge amounts of work on the place we still feel so far from even vaguely finished (does one ever though?). It's really good to look back at pics like this to see how far we've come, but oh lordy it would be good to earn some cash and get m'crackin' on the rest of it!