The bookshelf

Here's the new bookshelf, made out of the wood that was holding our old straw ceiling up. It just needs to be painted now.

It's (almost) finished

It only took three weeks, although it felt like much longer. Our kitchen is now finished, apart from the bookshelf. It's made an enormous difference to the house. It was a gloomy room during the day, until late afternoon in the summer when the sun finally reached it. It wasn't a room we particularly wanted to spend time in. But now we love it.

The nook has had many incarnations, starting as Daisy's making area - now relocated to her bedroom. Now it's become a music room/quiet grown up's space.

The open bookshelf is going from floor to ceiling where the missing skirting board is.

Look at the sun coming in those skylights - they're 5 star rated, so hopefully won't make the room too hot in summer.

Science experiment

Daisy asked Scott why people don't fall out of aeroplanes when they do a loop the loop. A quick lesson on centrifugal force followed. Here's Daisy demonstrating with a full bucket of water.

Oh so different

I took this short video of Daisy and Hugo because it captured how different they are. Daisy is singing about bright stars, while Hugo is talking about killing things with his powers.

Fete day

It's been a busy week. It was the school fete today. The weather was amazing and the turnout was huge. It was packed and the kids had lots of fun. Feeding the baby animals is always a highlight.

Hugo was also particularly pleased with his new spiderman outfit, bought for $4.

And they both love the new $2 swing.

Back from camp

I came back from school camp to see our new chairs and rug in place in the nook - better photos will follow over the weekend once we've put the house back together and got pictures up etc.

The kitchen has been out of action for 3 weeks. It's lovely to be back in there playing with the playdough - especially now it's flooded with daylight. This was taken about 15 minutes after the biggest meltdown Daisy has ever had. She slept from midnight til about 6am at camp and was struggling by the time we got home. The intricacy of drawing around a biscuit cutter with a crayon that was much to fat for the job proved too much. But she recovered herself amazingly well and we had a great afternoon with playdough, food colouring and icing.
And the finished produce after 20 minutes at 180, then iced.

School camp

The grade 1s and 2s from Daisy's class went to camp this week at Glen Forbes. The school has an old school that closed in the 1970s that they use for camps. It was just one night but they've been looking forward to it all year. I went along as one of the parent helpers. Great fun, but exhausting.

Arrival and rushing off to find a tent.

A song with teacher Terry round the campfire.

Gathering wood for the fire

And the final farewell.

Getting there

The plastering is done, now just the painting....

Maths day

It was maths dress up day at school today. Daisy wanted to go as a dice. Fortunately we had painters in with big brushes and plenty of white paint.

The kitchen

Here's progress on the project to remove the Caribbean beach cabana look from our kitchen and get a bit more daylight in there - we need the lights on pretty much all day.

Day one: the straw and timber come down and already it seems lighter, even without the skylights. We ask our builder if it's possible to take the archway out going in the nook - funny little room off our kitchen. He says yes. Unfortuately he also discovers that he can't lift the tin roof to get the insulation in, so the old lathe and plaster ceiling has to come down.

Day two: After a lot of cleaning (we're now on day 5 and there's still black dust), here's the new look room. It looks and feels completely different without the archway.

Day four: the skylights and insulation are in. It's amazing. We haven't needed to switch on the lights at all. We've been a bit surprised by how different the room feels now it's been opened up, but the nook still feels like the nook once you're in it, so we're going to keep the piano in there and add a sofa. We're going to divide the room off slightly with a narrow floor to ceiling open bookshelf on the corner where the lamp is standing - something like the pic below.


Day five: It's Saturday night and we're wallpaper stripping.
The plasterer comes on Monday, so more to report next week.

Tree house latest

Scott has added the trap door to the treehouse, as modelled by Daisy.

and Hugo.

They've got lots more space to play up there now. We just need a quick lesson in not trapping fingers...