About zefiart

Blogger, DIY-er, poodle lover, graphic designer, dog groomer, recycler, artist, wonder woman in my spare time.

the bathroom – or how to make a 15 minute job last 5 hours

Posted on December 28, 2013 by zefiart

This morning I had a plan. I was going to clean the house. And by clean I mean a real spring clean type of clean. Clean up, clear out, organise.

I was optimistic. I’d start in the bathroom cause its the smallest room and would be the quickest to clean and tidy, then move on to the living room, the bedrooms, the office…

Uhuh.

I started in the bathroom around 11am.

I finished around 4.30pm.

How come it took me so long to clean and tidy such a small and ugly room?

Well, cause its small and ugly. I just got to the point where I was hating it more than ever… I decided to take out the tall narrow cabinet I had in there for towels and put up some shelves to make it look more… bearable.

It sounded easy, right?

First I removed the ugly gold and cream fittings from the wall which were never used to hang towels on.

I used my new contra saw to cut down old cupboard doors from the kitchen to make shelves. I had planned to put up 4 shelves but decided to leave it to 3, the top one would have been too high.

The top shelf holds my bottle collection. Minus one which broke in the move. All crammed in. I will thin them out and only keep the antiques there later.

The second shelf will hold Wayne’s towels and, for now, holds my poodle mirror and a small duck basket.

The third shelf will hold my towels, a larger duck basket with soap bars and my small caddy with my toiletries.

I may be the only person in the world who’s like this, but if I don’t have my beauty products out where I can see them, I forget to use them. Ok, not the deodorant. I remember that! And my moisturizer but I do forget to use eye cream or cleansers etc.

Below the shelf, on top of the bathtub, I’ve put two baskets which I need to make labels for. The tall tennis ball basket will hold bath mats, the larger one will hold hand towels.

I quickly painted a timber door I had from a tip shop trip a while ago. It serves as a shelf over the end of the bathtub. We never use the bathtub so its a waste of space…

While I was at it, I cleaned out the vanity and threw out anything I didn’t use or need. How cathartic! I found I needed more space to put some other products (my perfume bottles, hair spray, etc) so I knocked up a quick caddy to hold them.

I had this odd little box which would be perfect, all it needed was a handle. I found a couple of bits of pine off a cut down bit of trellis. I nailed that to the ends of the box. Then I found an old hammer handle which I used as the caddy handle.

I will paint it one day, but for now its fine as is. It holds stuff and that’s all that matters.

I did discover that taking shortcuts often ends up in disaster.

See, the drill was in the bathroom. I was making the caddy in the workshop in the casita. It was too far to walk in the sun… (about 50 metres). I was too lazy to go get the drill so I just put a nail through the end of the hammer handle.

And split the wood.

So, a clever person like myself soon found a way to fix it… I got a clamp and put it around it, holding it together so it won’t split. HA!

I had to put a nut on the other side to hold the handle in place cause it had a hole way bigger than the nail head. Hey. Make do, right?

So there you go.

Five hours later and I have an orderly bathroom, complete with clean floor, walls, shower, sink, and organised storage. I celebrated by having a shower.

I’m exhausted. I have a headache. Don’t yell at me, I think I’m dehydrated too. I never drink enough and its been hot today.

Time for a rest.

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christmas morning – the booty

Posted on December 24, 2013 by zefiart

Montana with her new toys.

Well, its Christmas morning. What a great start to a great day.

First thing I saw when I got up was this little gift train on the kitchen table. Each chocolate had a note on it saying “Merry Christmas Zefi” from all the animals: Montana, Romeo, Barney, the chickens, ducks, horses and even Herman Too.

Yep. That’s the limping duckling’s name. It was a lucky name for Little Herman, so that’s his name now.

Or her name.

Wayne’s not much for wrapping. He said he was going to wrap presents last night so I left out wrapping paper and tape but didn’t hear any wrapping noises.

This morning I found out why.

This was my first Christmas present, carefully wrapped in a throw. Romeo stands guard.

This is my second present, carefully hidden for me to find. heheheh

I laughed so much this morning. I adored the chocolate train and the presents are great! I got power tools! What more can a girl want?

One is a Dremel moto saw (click image to see what it does):

I’m so excited!!!!! I’ve wanted something like this for a while.

The other one is a Rockwell contra saw:

Woohoo!!!! Watch me now!

How can you not love a man who gives you power tools for Christmas?

The dogs got some home made dog biscuits and some toys. The poodles were into the toys instantly. Barney only wanted the biscuits.

Wayne got a new soft leather wallet, a 1932 indian head coin on a leather thong and a hand forged viking feast knife.

He loves the knife.

He collects knives.

… in fact, if you think about it, its a bit of a worry. I gave him a knife to add to his collection, he gave me 2 power saws… Plus we now have 2 bows each and a LOT of arrows…

If I wasn’t actually in this relationship, I’d be a bit concerned.

ps. I’m sorry about the alignment of this post. All posts, but this in particular. The alignment isn’t working for some strange reason!

vintage book christmas tree

Posted on December 24, 2013 by zefiart

… or how to do a token Christmas tree when you’re not really doing the decoration thing.

Firstly, you panic cause its, like, Christmas, and you have nothing Christmassy to blog about.

You grab a pile of old books you have lying around the house.

You stack them up, making sure they’re in the right order so they form a ‘tree’ shape. Or a pyramid shape.

You look around for something to top the ‘tree’ with. Locate a wooden star you’ve used before.

Balance it on top of the book stack.

You look around for something to trim the tree… I mean, it might just be a stack of books, but the trimming is what makes it a Christmas tree, right?

You find a broken string of pearls you once found on the ground near a bin in the city, and picked up, cause, like, why not. See? You knew it would come in handy one day.

You artfully drape the pearls over the tree.

You step back and admire it, thinking “there, did my Christmas bit”.

Then you go get a camera, take a photo and blog about it.

PS I hope you all have a Merry Christmas!!!

a primitive bird

Posted on December 23, 2013 by zefiart

Time to share something creative. Its been all ducks, geese, seeds and driveways lately on this blog.

Here’s a primitive* little bird I made out of some old fabric scaps. The inspiration came from artwork I’d seen on, where else, Pinterest.

*Primitive = my hand stitching is pretty primitive.

The idea was to make a picture using fabric instead of paints or pastels.

I learned a couple of things doing this.

I enjoyed doing it.
Its much quicker to paint or draw.
I’m way better with a brush than a needle.

It was worth trying it, though, right?

Still, I had fun. Hand stitching is therapeutic. You can do it while you watch TV if you’re not too invested in actually watching TV.

I framed it in an old frame I’d got at a tip shop. One of those ‘slide a photo in and stand it up on the dressing table’ type of frames.

Its a cheerful little bird. And its made up almost entirely of small scaps which had been destined for the bin cause they were too small to make anything else out of.

When I get the chance (time, inspiration, whatever), I’ll make another one or three.

Meanwhile, the duckling is still alive. Maybe even a little livelier today…? He cheeped at me.

I checked on him this morning, dreading what I’d find, but found a snug little duckling, some food eaten and all the water gone. Most likely spilled. Still, he was alive! That’s a win.

This afternoon I gave him a bigger box, more space but still snug and warm. I hope his foot gets better. I really do.

ps. When I say ‘he’, I have no idea, he could be a she like Little Herman is.

pps. Little Herman was the runt of a duckling we saved and raised a couple of years ago. I named him Little Herman and he turned out to be a she.

the driveway, the garden… its all happening here

Posted on December 22, 2013 by zefiart

I thought I’d share some photos of the last couple of weekends here. Its been rather hectic.

As you already know through my posts on the ducklings, last weekend we had an excavator here digging up the driveway and shoring up the dam.

The driveway is something we knew we’d have to do from the day we bought the farm. See, the guy who originally put the driveway in created a nice slope from the bottom of the hill straight to the house.

It successfully funneled all rainwater from the hill under the house and into the front yard. In heavy rainstorms we’d have Niagara Falls on our garden path, right down into the casita. All winter our lawn (or what passes as lawn) is like a sponge. You walk and squelch.

So, we booked this job in as soon as the weather was good enough.

Below are some photos of the excavator at work putting a slight slope and a new surface on the driveway, and digging a trench to catch rainwater and move it away from the house.

We hope.

Below, Barney overseeing the job.

Now, of course, we have a trench under the gate so need to find a way to stop poodles getting out and wallabies getting in!

Cass (aka the Masked Avenger) checks out the works behind the garage.

The view of the new sloped sides… What will I do with them? I had thought we’d get a steeper ‘wall’ which we’d put in sleepers to create a retaining wall. What we have instead is a slope of hard clay soil.

I think the rain will end up washing that down so I know we need to do something about it. But what? Ideas welcome. I do plan to put in a lot of plants up the top, things like pigface and other hardy plants which will grow and trail downwards.

Its looking a bit stark and moonscape-ish right now. It needs something, don’t you agree?

The dam looked quite pretty with all the reeds and grass on its gently sloping sides, but it was leaking and all the area below the dam was soggy and marshy. Lately the sides of the dam had started collapsing too. It definitely needed fixing.

This is what the dam looks like now. Another moonscape. But hopefully, no more leaks. What the guy did was build up the lower side of the dam and scoop out the high side. That way rainwater from the paddock will flow INTO the dam, not around it. It was wierd, but the dam walls were higher on that side and lower on the bottom side. Wierd.

Anyway, we hope this works. We’ll see if things dry out around the dam this summer and see how it goes in winter. That’ll be real test.

This weekend there was some gardening work done as well. I’d mowed and organised what I wanted to have done, then I got a friend to come over and put some new plants in for me plus a new garden bed.

I’ve already proved to myself that I’m not made to garden so I decided to pay someone to do it for me. That way I can have a pretty garden without the pain!

Below is the back of corner of the house (the office window). Our old picnic table and an old metal table serve as my potting area and seedling raising benches.

I have to admit… I’m absolutely loving growing plants from seeds! I get a rush when I see the tiny plants breaking through the dirt, then plant a heap of things in my garden which I grew myself.

I have more seeds to plant now. I think I’ve become addicted. Soon I won’t have room for more plants in the garden unless I put in more beds…

I’m gonna need a bigger yard!

Below is the corner of my cute timber shed. The hydrangeas are going really well. Even the stumpy one the horses ate and which was in a spot it hated. Its been moved and is starting to grow now.

I got Sharon to put in a few of my seedlings and a bog salvia I bought last week. The tag said it’ll get big. I hope so!

Here’s a sneak peek at some plants I bought for the driveway wall. I’ll re-pot them till they get bigger, then put them in in autumn. That way they’ll have time to settle in before the next hot dry summer.

My snap dragons are going well. Except the red one. That seems to be dying. That’s fine by me. I didn’t like the red one anyway.

Actually, I dreamed of a garden of blue, purple and white flowers only. Then mauves and pinks snuck in. I have a salvia hotlips which is red and white. I put in 2 pale yellow banksia roses. I planted a ton of osteospermums which are pastel yellow, orange and white… I have the yellow snap dragons (I’m hoping the red one is really on its way out)…

Looks like I’m not getting my blue, purple and white garden. Its more of a cottage garden with all colours, but I would prefer not to have red or bright yellow. Or bright orange… I’ll be ok with those on the driveway, but not in the garden itself.

I can always pull things out, right?

I’m a floral racist.

Anyway, here are some photos of the front of the house. I really need to finish painting. I have a huge potato vine dying to climb but I can’t let it till I paint the post its meant to climb up on. The lavenders are doing really well, and most of the other flowers are doing great too. Some not so great. I had to replace a few which died with my home grown seedlings.

Any ideas on what to do with this area? Its where the septic tank is and I have these pipes I’d like to hide somehow. I have plants growing on both sides, and up on the trellis. That will hide it a bit, but the pipes in the ground… maybe I need something cute, little gnome houses or something…

Excuse the washing on the line. This is the new garden bed I got Sharon to put in for me. I wanted to pretty up that area of the yard. I had tried to grow 2 blue plumbagos there before but managed to kill them both. Hopefully the new plants will do better. I have a sort of orange blossom tree (no idea what it is but its not an orange tree) some lupins (no idea what colours), plus my homegrown seedlings including swan river daisies and columbines.

Watch this space. One day it will be a garden! I can’t wait to see it all growing and full.

When Sharon finished doing the gardening she had some leftover pine bark. I had her put it in the swampy corner near the carport. For now it is a good place to grow my succulents.

I really have become quite interested in gardening. I blame old age. A friend of mine once told me that the older you get, the more you appreciate watching things grow. I think its happened to me.

Dad would be proud.

love our geeses to pieces

Posted on December 22, 2013 by zefiart

The geese have settled in well. Yesterday they started to seem comfortable in the penned enclosure, playing in the buckets of water and not phased by us looking in on them.

We decided it was time to introduce them to their new home. It involved Wayne and I ‘herding’ them out the pen, through the yard and out to the paddock and the dam.

First photo shows them making their way through the yard. Henry leads the way. Turns out Henry is quite the brave boy!

Scrambling up the steep dam side was a bit of hard work…

But the view from the top was worth it!

Of course, they then had to scramble down into the water. Henry led the way, of course.

Then it was just enjoying the water, after 2 days of dry land.

I think they like it here. Well, they’re still here, so here’s hoping. At least we now know they’re not homing geese.

The ducks are a bit put out. Till now it was just them on the dam, now they have to share with these gigantic birds. They’re not too impressed. I think they’ve reached a truce – sharing the dam but keeping a respectful distance.

Meanwhile the duck saga continues.

Yesterday morning we enticed the 2 mother ducks and their brood (which had halved in the last few days) into the chicken coop. From there we were able to catch the mothers and then the babies. We put them all into the safe pen. All seems well there. No losses yet.

However, this afternoon Wayne came in with a tiny duckling in his hands. This little baby has an injured leg and was apparently being trodden on and pushed around by the others. He didn’t stand a chance out there. I’ve put him in a cardboard box lined with a dog heating pad, some warm blankets and water and food. If he makes it through the night he may have a chance in here.

we have geese!

Posted on December 20, 2013 by zefiart

Yesterday we welcomed 3 new members to our Wind Dancer family.

Three gorgeous geese.

I’m in love with them.

And I never wanted geese.

This is the story: Wayne has always loved geese. I finally gave in and started to consider it. Then I spent about a month online looking for some geese for him.

In the beginning all I found were exotic geese. I didn’t want them. I wanted the plain ones like I’ve seen for years. White. Big. Gorgeous.

I found a guy who had sold all his goslings but had some 1-1.5 year olds he was happy to sell. One female and 5 males. I claimed the female and one male.

When we got there yesterday he offered us another male for free because he just had too many of them. We accepted.

You know us. We have no spine when it comes to animals…

So now we have 3 gorgeous geese who refuse to talk to us.

I’d have taken photos of them but they’re sulking and I don’t want to make them hate me more than they already do by forcing my company on them.

I don’t blame them mind you. We lobbed up at their place yesterday where they’d been minding their own business, weren’t even properly introduced before we grabbed them, manhandled them into cages in the back of a noisy truck, on the hottest day of the year, driven all over the countryside, then plonked them in a small enclosure (the one we call Alcatraz which had been used for the roosters before) and then had the nerve to try and make friends with them.

They’re not happy.

They haven’t come out of the little shed since we got them.

They just huddle together and glare at us…

Sigh.

I want to make friends!

I already named one of the boys. His name is Henry. He looked like a Henry. He has one slightly squinty eye so you can tell which one he is.

I never realised, but the boys have orange rims around their eyes and their eyes are blue.

I absolutely love our geese. I hope they learn to love us back and love living here.

wire, frames and photos

Posted on December 20, 2013 by zefiart

Thought I’d share these two wire frames I made and sold at the last market.

This first one is using… you guessed it!… birdwire!

‘Cause as you know, I have a ton of it. Though a ton less than I had before after lining the dog pen with it for the ducks…

Speaking of which, we now stand 2 ducklings down, 8 remaining. One egg down, 9 remaining. And holding our breath.

But I digress. Back to the frame. I have a couple of frames with this design on them so I decided I’d try one as a birdwire photo display.

The second frame I did with the wire lines for something different. (I like the birdwire better!)

Still, they’re both very handy. If I hadn’t sold them I’d be using them right now.

make a crown from a tin can

Posted on December 17, 2013 by zefiart

Don’t you just love crowns? Especially rusty crowns.

I saw a rusty crown on Pinterest when I first joined it and really really wanted one of my own. But where to find one?

Solution: make my own!

Firstly, I got a tin can. This one used to have some kind of fruit in it so it was bigger than your usual baked beans can.

I got a piece of paper and cut it to fit around the can. Then I folded it so I could divide it into uniform peaks for my crown.

I cut out the pattern and traced it onto the can using a marker.

I used tin snips to cut the can and then used a file to make the edges a little less dangerous.

Its still pretty sharp, however, so if I was to make another one I’d go a step further and fold over the edges to round them off.

So, my crown was made, but of course it was WAAAAY too shiny.

I put it in a solution of salt and vinegar, but really, I’ve never had as much luck with that as they claim on Pinterest. I found that you can leave most things in salt and vinegar for-EVER and nothing happens. HOWEVER, once you take them out and expose them to the air a while things start to happen. ie Rust happens.

With the crown, I sat it in a bowl of solution and kept turing it to get a kind of rusty effect.

Given my crown is a bit on the deadly side, I’ll be using it as a decorative item in places where no one can impale themselves on it. ie, I won’t be leaving it on the couch…

I really enjoyed working with the tin. I’m thinking of a few other projects I could use tin cans for…

For now I think I’ll just concentrate on the other 5097 projects I have waiting.

PS. Some updated photos of the crown. Turns out it wasn’t finished after all. It took Wayne 5 seconds to ‘fix’ it. All he did was bend the points and it was better!

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life, death, dam!

Posted on December 15, 2013 by zefiart

Yesterday morning we had a rude awakening.

Its not like we didn’t KNOW Kevin was coming over with his diggy-diggy to do our driveway and fix the dam… its that I was so wiped out I’d been in bed since 7.30pm the night before (I should say afternoon before) and Wayne was living in denial or something. He’d woken up, got a coffee and come back to bed with a book.

When the truck arrived the dogs went bezerk. I was up, running around trying to put some clothes on, get to the door, keep the dogs in all at once.

Of course the dogs hadn’t been out to pee cause that’s my job in the morning… so they needed to go out and pee and not eat Kevin before he did our job for us.

So here I am, running around pulling on track pants with one hand, boots with another, breasts bouncing cause who has time to pull on a bra at a time like this, with dogs frothing at the mouth around me, barking at the machine wielding murderer who’d obviously come to massacre us as we slept.

I rounded the dogs up, heading them out into the paddock where I thought I’d release them so Kevin would be safe for a while, get to the gate and what do I see???

Three tiny ducklings in a little pile right outside the gate.

SH#$*#^#T!

Can’t let the dogs out. Those tiny things are like squeaky toys to them!

I go out the gate, grab the ducklings, yelling “WAYNE!!!! WE HAVE DUCKLINGS!!! I NEED YOU! HURRY UP!”

I mean, this is the end of the world.

I have a handful of tiny ducklings.

Again…. its not like we didn’t KNOW they were coming. We just thought we had another week or so.

And yet, this last week I came home one day and saw crows hanging around. One had something in its mouth. I knew we had ducklings…

Wayne and I had discussed this whole plan in detail.

We were going to get out into the area around the dam before Kevin came over. We were going to remove the electric fence which used to protect the willows I’d put in there (which we moved a few weeks ago and which seem to be doing fine in their new spots thankfully), and search the reeds for duck nests.

I’d already found one with about 10 or more eggs in it. We knew there were more cause we hardly ever saw about 3 of our female ducks… we knew they were sitting on eggs.

The plan had been that Wayne would fix up the old dog pen, line the bottom with bird wire to make it duckling proof, then we’d go out, grab the eggs and mothers and move them into the pen to safety.

Because:

1. Every year we have tons of ducklings and none survive unless we can catch them and lock them up. The crows eat them all. Its heartbreaking.

2. Kevin was going to work around the dam and might squash the nests, eggs, ducks….

Right.

Good plan.

So here we are, yesterday morning, running around like jumping beans on speed. Cause we had a plan!

A mother duck hissing at me with her ducklings under her wing.

First nest was the one I’d found first time around. It had no eggs left, just a few ducklings. About 6 of them I think. I put them in a basket and started fixing up the pen. The mother duck was going crazy. We left the gate open and she eventually came in and sat near the basket. Good. When the pen was finished, we put the basket inside and she followed.

All’s well.

Well. Not all.

One duckling was dead at the bottom of the basket. I don’t know if I killed it when I was catching them and it wriggled and I dropped it… It wasn’t high. But it was dead. sigh.

Later on, I found another one dead. Both the dead ones were fawn coloured…. probably girls.

Then I went out and found another nest. Right next to the first. It had an egg with a hole in it but nothing was happening… dead duckling. Sigh again. 6 unhatched eggs and 8 ducklings. We got all of those, picked up the entire nest, and put it all in the basket.

This mother didn’t seem to care that much. She didn’t come for the ducklings.

Mind you, they were much quieter (younger) than the others. They weren’t squeaking for mom.

Plus the excavator makes a lot of noise. And our neighbour was brushcutting on the other side of the paddock. Even if they were squeaking, she probably wouldn’t have heard them.

I covered them with a blanket to keep them warm.

Then I spotted 2 ducklings, most likely from the first batch, on the dam.

SH#$*#^#T again.

No way I could catch them on the dam. They were on their own.

I hated that.

I saw a magpie flying over…

Anyway, after about 2-3 hours of no success enticing the mother to come after the ducklings, I made an executive decision. These nests were really close to eachother, maybe ducks raise ducklings in a kind of ‘village’ approach.

I put the nest, eggs and ducklings in with the mother duck and her remaining 4.

She sat on the nest and covered all the ducklings.

Success!

I felt so much better.

This morning there were 2 casualties. Wayne found one outside when feeding them, I found another in the nest when mom and babies were out paddling in the playpool. Darn. Down to 10 now.

Still… its better odds than they’d get out in nature.

Mind you. We found another nest. It had eggs and ducklings. Some totally newly hatched. We watched some of them hatch right in front of our eyes. It was amazing. I’d only ever seen something hatch out of an egg on TV before.

I almost feel like these are MY babies…

I so want to save them as well, but we just can’t catch those other two mothers. I think they’re older and wiser. I can’t expect that one mother to hatch and raise all those babies, can I?

Someone said a chicken can raise up to 20 young… dare we try? Or do we let nature take its course and see what happens? Its almost certain death for them if we don’t try.

We don’t need a million ducks on our dam, but it would be nice to raise some more… I figure we’ll probably end up with 6-7 of the current 10 making it to maturity. I hope. Should I grab the rest and up the odds? Or not interfere?

When we moved here we had 12 ducks. We’re down to 7-8 now. Maybe less cause of the mothers on nests I have no idea how many we actually have. If we only raise the ones we’ve captured now and all 10 survive, we’ll have about 16-18 ducks. Surely thats enough for anyone, right?

What am I trying to do? Convince myself that I shouldn’t go out and catch the rest of them?

We have 2 geese coming next week. I’ve always been against geese cause they can be aggressive, but Wayne loves them. I decided a while ago to find him a couple for Christmas. I couldn’t find plain white goslings when I looked, but I found a pair who’s about 18 months old. Probably better. They can have their own young here. Then we’ll have to worry about catching goslings…

Meanwhile, one of the two ducklings on the dam yesterday disappeared. They wouldn’t get out of the water while Kevin was working so it may have been a fatality of the work. This morning the other was gone as well. Maybe it got out and joined the nest. Maybe not.

On another, related note… while looking for duck nests I found a wren nest. Darn. I picked it up and looked inside. Tiny unfeathered babies, alive but seemed asleep. I put the nest back further over cause I knew we’d be disturbing it when we went for the duck again.

I checked it later, they were still alive. Hopefully mom found them and went back to them. I dread looking again… I may be responsible for more deaths.

So, here are the ducks yesterday afternoon (minus the mothers) looking over the dam works.

And here is the dam this morning, finished. The lower side has been reinforced so it won’t leak (hopefully!!!) and we won’t have the swampy problem we’ve always had below it. The top side has been lowered to allow water to flow into it when it rains.

In theory, any excess water in the dam will now flow out on the other side, into the paddock and away from the house. That fence is the house yard fence. The house is only a few meters from there. That’s how close to the house the dam is…

Meanwhile, Kevin has been working on the driveway.

This is yesterday morning when he’d first started. The plan is to make it so that water running off the hill doesn’t just stream down the driveway, under the house and into the casita. Seriously, whoever designed this place had no brain. The house is at the bottom of a hill and in a valley… all rain runs off under our house, our lawn and down under the casita. We hope that with Kevin’s help we can change things and direct the rain towards a drain, down the side of the driveway, into the drains on the side of the road. And away from the house.