YAY!! nursery is finally done! well the big, main things anyway.. walls are still bare.. so i will be slowly dressing them up in the coming days/weeks.. depending on how i feel, which i hope is like today, very productive! it was like i just had a sudden burst of energy!

but for the mean time, i would like to show you some before and after photos :D

please note, not much diy'ing happened in this room.. only shelves and staining of rocking chair

before:




after:






and that's about it with the nursery.. its a tiny room but cozy .. dont u think? hehe

next on the list:

- master bed! but can the bed frame come any slower!? feels like i been waiting forever! 5 more weeks i think, boooo! meaning i'm going to have to tackle this when baby is around. all good though, i always love a challenge :)

- lounge room is slowly slowly coming into place, i just have to now hang my frames (which im hoping to do tomorrow!) and paint, but hubby stretched a tendon in his shoulder so painting is postponed until further notice :(

i am hoping to post updates on the lounge quite soon.. so stay tuned! :)

till then! xx

i got both cot and king mattress today!! i know! it was an awesome day lol

so stay tuned for the nursery update.. should be up sometime on the weekend or early next week.


and just quickly, how expensive are king sheets!? and not to mention quilt covers??!! i have been looking non stop for nice quality yet not over priced sheets and quilt covers.. cheapest i found was $60.. for a 250 thread count.. that any good? sorry i'm clueless

any suggestions as to where to find affordable manchester please do tell!!

till then!

but first and foremost.. i hope you all had a blissful Christmas and a fun and exciting new year! xx
have we broken any of our new years resolutions yet? lol just teasin!
i dont have any this year.. i have been either too busy nesting.. or just resting haha

anyway, before i get sidetracked!


the news is!!...

cot is coming a week early!! YAY!

i get a call from baby cuddles today, informing me that cot is on the way and it'll come either tomorrow or Monday! YAY!!! which means i finally get to finish nursery!! YAY!

i just can't believe its a week early!! so it should be, right? i should've had it on the 4th!! but anyways, whats done is done.

also, more exciting news! hubby and i have been looking for a new bed since we found out we been sleeping on a double! we thought it was a queen! (i know, right? how did we manage that!?) i mean, our queen sheets not fitting properly should've given us a clue, you'd think...

so a couple of weeks ago, i dragged hubby to go look for a king bed.. we found a chiropractic mattress for a grand.. bargain right? and this beautiful king frame.. both $1800 in total.. i didn't realise it was going to be that much!! yikes! but its an investment i guess..

and then after i got a call from baby cuddles, i get a call from the bed place saying that our bed is ready to be delivered!! whoohoo! BUT frame will take around 4 - 6 weeks :( - theyre going to loan us a base while we wait.
its ok though.. as long as were out of that squashy, uncomfortable double bed!

what kind of frame are we getting? u ask
i've actually been googling a similar one but can't seem to find any :(
so i'm going to try and describe it..
it's timber with walnut finish.. i customised it so the legs are 15cm higher (from 15cm) and the headboard to be extra 15cm higher also.. which would mean the headboard would gain a total of 30cm.. making it 150cm tall! that's nearly as tall as me! haha
i wanted a real dramatic look to it so hopefully 150 is enough.. it should be though

initially, i was going to try and make the headboard myself (upholstered) but it was going to cost me more and not to mention the time and effort!

since, we're getting a new bed with a new frame.. i'm gonna have to go look at new bedroom furniture too.. :/ haha jk.. they can wait.. although, the plan was to get everything with a budget of 2g.. but i went overboard :/

so fingers crossed, bargains aren't hard to find like they have been for the past two months! :(

anyhoo its nearly 12am and i still gotta play legends of zelda on ds lol

till then!

Wow I haven't blogged since last year! With all the crazy happenings that the holiday fever seems to make I have been officially in holiday mood - no work, no emails, no worries has made me a happy little vegimite for the past couple of weeks. But yes reality hits unfortunately and I have to go back to work tomorrow...

So how was your Christmas and NYE celebrations? Hope you had the best time ever with all your special ones close by! My Christmas and NYE was spent with family - a nice quiet getaway with my immediate family to Port Stephens and a big old fashioned Christmas day with my larger extended family. Sorry not too many pics were taken this season, the weather was abit gloomy so it made me abit lazy with getting the camera out.

In one of my old posts I talked about how some of my Christmas gifts were going to be DIY. I decided to go for boxes filled with Cashew Tarts and I thought I'd post up the recipe.


Makes: 24 tarts

Crust Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2 1/1 tablespoons sugar
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 egg yolk, slightly beaten
• 1 tblsp lemon juice
• 6 tblsp iced water

Cashew Filling:

• 3 eggs
• 1 cup maple syrup
• 2 tblsp melted butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 150g chopped cashew nuts

Steps:

1. For the crust: sift flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Add butter until mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs. Add egg yolk and lemon juice. Blend in 1 tablespoon water at a time until the dough can be formed into a ball. Wrap in waxed paper with abit of flour and chill in the fridge for 30mins.
   
   
2. For the filling: combine all the filling ingredients and set aside.
   
   
3. Preheat oven to 180 degrees celsius. After crust has been chilled, roll out dough on a floured surface until it is 3mm thick. Grease mold (I used a muffin tray) and cut out circles to fill the base of each mold (I used a wineglass for cutting circles).
   
   
4. Pour about 1 tablespoon of filling into each mold. Don't overfill the crust since it will spill out! Bake for 20-25 minutes or until crust is light brown. Let cool and store in an air tight container if you're not planning to eat immediately.
   
   

That's it! I made about 96 of these tarts and the house smelt so gooood for about a week. I had to keep on taste testing as I went along to make sure each batch was fine so that's probably the only hard thing about making these - they're too good to pass up!

on my last post i mentioned something about hoping to get the nursery done before 2009 ends.. so on sunday, i dragged hubby to baby cuddles, hoping to pay off and pick up our layby.. we get there and they're closed.. what's worse, they are not open until the 4th of jan!! u can imagine my utter disappointment!

i was so determined to get the nursery out of the way this year that i even went and looked for a different cot.. but hubby is set on getting what's on layby.. which i'm glad he is as i would have probably regretted buying a different one.

so the following are the furniture that are definitely going in the nursery:


1. old rocking chair stained in black
2. ikea dalom pedestal table
3. ikea aneboda chest of 3 drawers - front drawer covered in some damask wallpaper or fabric.. like this
4. bootiq annabelle walnut cot


i am hoping to go to ikea tomorrow and purchase 2 & 3 and a desk for the study.. fingers crossed though, everytime i make plans to go to ikea it never happens :(

nehoo thas all for now

till then!



ps. hope you had a wonderful christmas! xx

i just can't believe the day has finally come and i am super ecstatic to announce that... nursery is finally painted!! hubby and i decided to tackle it in one day! fair effort huh? hehe even though painting was the last thing i wanted to do that day.. luckily, hubby was determined :)

i can finally cross that one off my to do list, after having it on there for atleast a month!!

so here's a before photo.. sorry only took 1 :/



so far we only have cot to go in there.. which is still to be picked up from baby cuddles.



a rocking chair.. stained in black or painted in white.. haven't decided yet..



and maybe floor lamp from the dining room....



so i've been scouring around for some inspiration and found these







i'm also thinking of having a tree decal in the corner of the room like this



but can't decide on what design.. i quite like these ones





and/or maybe have wall art like this.. but not as big



i'm hoping to finish the nursery before 2010 comes.. i have 11 days! i have a feeling i may be biting off more than i can chew though :/ as i've noticed i have been feeling tired quicker now :(
lucky tho maternity leave for me has already started so i have more time to chill as well as my runnin around :)

till then!

so i thought i'd share with you my recliner dilemma as im sure my home living buddies are sick to death of me talking about the same thing! lol

below is a photo of one of our current recliners (the other one is identical except has more patches)


i did the patching myself :) pretty aren't they? haha
i patched them 3 years ago and as you can see, more and bigger ones have appeared :(


the other night, the newly fixed recliner broke again and was going to buy the ektorp muren on the weekend.




which would've ended the 'recliner saga' but my car decides to play up and will probably cost me 1500 to fix!! grrrrrrrrrr

today i dropped the car off to get a full service hoping it would fix it.. its a little better but it still takes awhile to kick off to the next gear.. we suspect gearbox is on its way to retiring so would probably need to get it replaced definitely by next month or so..

with christmas just around the corner and the baby coming, it decides to play up.. why car? why??

so anyways, i might have to postpone buying the recliners :( and bought these blankets last night to cover them up




oh and i know i mentioned on my other post that i was going to make slip covers.. but they are way too complicated for a newbie like me :(
i sewed them the other night and couldn't slip em on :/ yes i know, i need a stretchy material.. i didn't think of it when i bought my fabric.. all i was thinking was oooooh $5 a metre! :/

i've also rang upholstery places and they've quoted me ridiculous prices.. cheapest i got was $500!!!

i have seriously ran out of ideas on how to revamp the tired lookin recliners and is seriously going insane! last nite i had a dream about recliners... i mean who has dreams about recliners?

fingers crossed santa buys em for me.. haha!


till then! xx