Funny little room

When we moved into our house I had been to the property just once before, and not inside, as the old tennant was still living here. When we got our jobs I tried to draw Michael a floorplan of our house so he would get some idea of where we were going. When we arrived we discovered that the house had a whole extra bed room and for the first two hours neither of us thought to open up a door in the kitchen that turned out to be a walk in pantry.
After living in a two bedroom house on a highway (which was fine by the way), we were blown away by our new 4 bedroom kingdom with attached shed and 12000 acre backyard (Dad you thought Greta's yard was big, wait till you see it).
The shed is this huge empty space across the backyard past the public loos. It has two old offices on the side closest to out house and the shed interior is so large that Michael could park 10 minis in there.
We have used up one of the offices for storing all of our boxes and spare crap and I am now trying to decide what to do with the second office. It has no air con or fly screen and because it is on the side that the sun sets it gets warm. Michael does not want it for an office, which would give me the whole study to myself. He does not want it for a guys hang out TV / playstation room. It is no good for scrapbooking because it gets too hot. We dont own any gym equipment, which would be perfect.
While technically we dont have to use it for anything, it seems like such a waste to have it sitting idle. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The ants go marching one by one, hurrah!

What is it, you ask? Is it an exotic snake? Or maybe a spot of random gate vandalism? No, its an ants nest.
The ants started to form their cosy quarters early this year. They had a steadily increasing membership over the last several months, that we thought was termites or some wood eating thing, until we got closer and realised that the nest is a solid block on the outside of the pole, not a nest of holes dug into the pole.
We blame the recent rain, in the fashion of Noah's ark, the ants could not sustain their habitat in the usual place. The rain appears to have stopped, for now. The cyclone that was looming and threatening to wipe out the biggest outdoor wedding of the year brought us only a few spits. It is just in time too, the grass is now as tall as me in some places and you certainly cant see the kitty once she steps off the porch. The other day I pulled up at the front gate and realised that our entire herd of cows was only 20m from me, silently staring out of the grass. It must be a bit like having a huge never ending bowl of spaghetti, they eat and eat and just dont even make a dent.
I am hoping that the farmer will come with his slasher before our visitors at Easter. At the moment the grass is an attraction of its own, with all the heads now turning a brown and red colour, with some of it a straw yellow and all of it waving in the breeze like waves at the beach. In the hour before sunset it shines like a huge pile of gold.

Always the wedding coordinator, never the bride

I have not been a wedding coordinator for very long, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that I will be a non bride forever. Since October I have been dealing with other people's weddings on a daily basis (the people, not the actual weddings - I would go crazy!).
Since October I have become completely addicted to channel Lifestyle You, to Bride Night, to re runs of Bride Night, to Four Weddings (more intensely silly than Four Corners), to Bridezilla, to Whose Wedding is it Anyway and to Say Yes to the Dress.
It is a very silly past time, but I usually justify it as research. The only problem is that all these wedding shows have made me scared to deal with brides. I am no longer rational when it comes to these people, I am expecting them to yell at me like the brides in these shows yell at everyone around them. Luckily the worst I have had to deal with is late entertainers and some rain. I have not been yelled at face to face, ever.
Consequently I am very patient and pay a lot of attention to detail and walk around on the day of the wedding expecting the very worst at all times. I have my 'wedding day skirt' and my 'wedding day fake diamond earrings' and always wear my plain 'wedding day' stockings. I get to work very early on wedding days and visit the bride throughout the day. I light a disgusting amount of candles and spend a long time walking up and down the stupid hill on which our reception room is perched.
I am entrusted with very expensive and heavy cakes, real sleeping butterflies (to be awakened and released), I spread flower petals, I am asked weird questions about things I have never had to deal with before like pinning on a man's buttonhole flower, about how long a Catholic wedding mass takes, about how much I would expect to sell a dress for on ebay as second hand, everyone assumes I am an expert, but I have only ever been to three actual weddings ever (except for the ones at work). If I was an expert I would know how to get someone to propose!
All of these wedding shows, wedding expos, wedding magazines, wedding meetings etc, have really put me off having my own wedding (if I ever get a proposal) but at the same time, desperately wanting a wedding so I could do it with all the best stuff that I have discovered. It is really an exercise in putting toegther the perfect event. My wedding scrapbook gets bigger and bigger, my page on The Knot fills up with 'favourite' wedding dresses and flowers and cakes and ideas. I'm all set, I have a budget, a guest list, a huge pile of 'things I would never ever do' and a smaller list of 'things I would like to do' at my wedding.
Alas, I am always the coordinator, never the bride. It makes me grateful I suppose that I dont have someone like me as one of my brides. I would surely be yelled at if I was me assisting someone like me.
Here is a pic of last week's wedding, it was one of the nicer set ups we have done.

Another day, another snakey

So, after last night's snake... Oh, sorry, you dont know about last night's snake? I thought that everyone had heard the screams? Last night's snake was found trying to climb the wall outside the front door. It (the snake) was covered in cobwebs (which was weird) and bright green with a yellow head. After I disturbed it, Kitty and I watched it slide past the front door (which I slammed in the nick of time) and slither under the BBQ.
My new least favourite noise in the world (and there has been a wide selection lately, with all the renovations at work), my least favourite noise is the sound of a snake slithering itself over itself. It is a dry rasping horrible creepy noise.
Last night's snake disappeared soon after the first sighting, but I still crept out carefully this morning to drive to work. I was feeling very confident, with no sign of the snake, until I came to the stairs and found snakey's brother hanging around. I was not sure how to politely move him on, after all, while he has little teeth, he has that horrible power to enchant and entrance and then make me quiver with his horrible noise.
How do you shoo a snake?
I did the only thing I could think of, which was whip out the camera and ask him to pose. After a couple of snaps, with full flash, snakey slithered away, under my car! Very reassuring, we've all heard those stories about the driver ignorantly driving along, to suddenly be confronted by a snake in the car. Its abit like that scene from Cape Fear, where the man straps himself to the bottom of the family car when they drive off on holidays so he can murder them.
I've never hoped for an automatic gate opener more that I did this morning. Alas, this is the country and I would get laughed at for even suggesting it.
I have offered a reward for anyone who wants to rid me of serpants (in time for St Pat's day possibly?). All the snakes you can fit in a bag, for just $1.00. Its a bargain.

Toowoomba Cafe Recommendation

We woke up this morning and not only had it stopped raining, the sun was out. For hours Kitty and I walked around the house, not sure what to do with ourselves, we hadn't seen the big ball of fire in the sky for so long.
We dragged Michael out of bed and headed into Toowoomba to purchase a long overdue new coffee machine (Nespresso - fabulous - discount of about $140).
Boosted by the Vitamin E all around, we decided to check out this place that we've driven past every time we got to Toowoomba. Cafe Valetta was the destination. It sits amongst antique stores, in a beautiful green leafy (rich) part of the town. It is a little haven of yellow and black umbrellas and looks so inviting, but today is the first time we've had time to stop.
The menu is varied - with the usual lunch fare offered - salads, sangas with chips, pizzas and the odd larger meal. They have a licence so we had a beer and wine, and just chilled out next to the fish pond / fountain. It was a great setting more than anything else, across the road from Queens Park, with lots of business people stopping for a quick lunch and coming and going, while we got to just sit and leisurely watch the passing traffic.
Toowoomba is one of those must see places, for the view, for the beautiful old neighbourhoods with huge old trees and amazing houses. There are also some decent shops there (all for you mum). The cafe is a nice place to stop and take it all in.

Snake in the window Photo - he's a freak

This is the little dude I wrote about a few weeks ago. If you didn't know any better you'd think he was a turtle.

Flood

For anyone who doesn't live in QLD, you may not be aware that we have had rain almost every day since Christmas. Infact, today is the first day in two weeks we have actually seen the sun for more than 10 minutes. The other night was a very hairy trip home from work, with the 4 fords underwater, which was bad enough.
The last ford actually crosses a creek, which feeds from higher up in the mountains on the property before hitting our part of the farm. The creek is not even usually running. There is a part near our house where they have created a spillway to divert the creek possibly flooding the house, and we have never heard any water in it before.
Over the last few days we have heard the rushing water in the spillway from inside the house - a good 50-70 metres away. This is the creek that we have to cross to get home from work. It was dark (really dark), it was raining (really hard and wetly), I gingerly crept the car into the gully and saw the water shimmering over the road, rushing across the road and at that time I could still see the concrete under the water and deemed it safe to cross. Which was fine.
The I got home and heard the rushing water in the spillway, from inside the house it sounds like pounding, but also like whispers, with all the rain all of the place at the moment everything drips and whispers water. It is very freaky to get home to an isolated dark farmhouse in the rain to think that you can hear people whispering outside the house.
Anyway, Kitty told me I was being mental and to snap out of it because she was hungry.

Bread

My mother told me that she is following some blogs written by people in and around the French towns we will be visiting later this year. She was the person who inspired me to write a blog for all the world to read if they cared, to keep up with our exciting...and obviously lavish life.
She told me that the other day that she was looking at photos of French bread on the blog and she thought I should also write about food and the things that Michael and I cook (as everyone thinks Michael cooks delicious delicacies everyday and that we dont live on two minute noodles and tuna in order to save for our French trip). So, just for my mum, I have written about some bread. The picture you see here is a photo of some of the 4-5 partial loaves of bread in our freezer. These include your standard grain, rye, wholemeal and just for fun - a Mens Only Bread - who has ever heard of such a thing?
Most of our bread goes straight in the freezer as it grows mould within a day or two in our house. We learnt this the hard way in the week that our potatoes also exploded in the bottom drawer in the kitchen because it was hot and muggy.
Hope you like the bread mum. There is also a frozen pizza and some frozen peas that I brought one day because Grace came for dinner and she asked for chicken and peas. I dont eat peas. I promise to write about real food next time.xoxo