rustic windchime

Posted on August 29, 2015 by zefiart

So much for my plans of posting a bit more regularly. All the best intentions and all that… things just get away from me.

I may have mentioned I’m currently working 5 days a week. I gotta tell you, I’m loving the extra money. What I’m not loving is the time squeeze on doing my own stuff.

I’ve got a couple of projects on the go in the casita, one is finished and just waiting for me to be at home during the day, preferably when its not raining, so I can take pics of it to share.

Perhaps tomorrow will be the lucky day!

Meanwhile I thought I’d share my latest rustic windchime. I just love these things. I have the first one I ever made hanging in the middle of the living room cause the wind on the porch almost destroyed it. I think I’ll be moving it to the mudroom or enclosed porch when I remember to do it.

I find these old hand sanders in tip shops occasionally and collect them. I then use my pre-rusted eye screws to hang all kinds of junk from them. I love to add some crystals for a bit of sparkle and copper wire for a bit of colour.

I still haven’t cleaned up the office or moved things around as planned. Without a working light in there its kind of hard to do anything in the evening, but honestly, its such a mess in there that it fries me brain if I even think about tackling it.

Heck. I still haven’t put away the washing I folded last weekend. Every time I need undies or socks I just grab them out of the basket, why bother putting them in the drawers?

Sigh.

I’m not a very good housewife. Turns out my grandmother was right. She said that if I couldn’t iron properly I’d never make a good wife and no one would want to marry me.

Right on both counts!

Anyway, I don’t iron – well or otherwise. If I can’t wash and wear it, I don’t buy it.

But I did learn something from my mother: if you hang things on the line properly (and fold them!) then you don’t need to iron.

Turns out she hated ironing too.

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more wire work and plans

Posted on August 22, 2015 by zefiart

Sharing more pretty wire stuff.

Just cause I can.

And mainly cause right now its about the only thing I have which is both finished and photographed.

Last weekend I’d planned to clean up the office (again) and bring in the new/old wardrobe I want to use in there for storage.

The office hardly gets used any more. Not since I got a laptop and got rid of the ol’ coal burner (my old desktop) and since winter set in.

See, the office is the furthest room from the wood heater. Its darn cold in there in winter. When I had the desktop in there and I had to use it every day, I kept the door opened all the time and had a small bar heater under the desk for my feet. Even then my fingers would often freeze.

I’ve decided I should swap the guest room and office. The guest room is a dull room right now. Its got a beigey brown carpet, taupe walls, a small window, the bed and tons of stuff I have to move out whenever we have visitors.

The office on the other hand is pretty. I removed the salmon carpet, did up the floorboards to match the kitchen and hallway, painted it white so its bright and cheerful, and it has a huge window which lets in the morning sun.

I’m thinking about putting the bed under the shelves and opposite the large antique map. The office is a long narrow room, meaning there’ll be just enough room on either side of the bed for a bedside table, but the end of the room will be spacious enough to allow for the small cupboard I use as a linen cupboard. The map will make a great view from the bed and the shelves will look interesting around the bedhead.

The guest room is a square room with lots of wall space since it has such a small window. The carpet keeps it warmer in winter, and since its not salmon it can stay a while. Being closer to the wood heater means less chance of freezing fingers, plus its closer to the wifi modem. I want to move the printer, the printer/scanner, and the odd office bits out of the living room and into the new office.

Its bad enough Wayne has an office in here and I work in here, we don’t need all the office stuff in here too.

So, last weekend I planned to clean up the office and bring up the new/old wardrobe to hold craft supplies as I mentioned. Then I thought, why move it up if I’m going to swap rooms? Makes no sense to move it twice, right?

I can’t swap rooms till I get rid of Wayne for a weekend, though. He doesn’t handle the mess of moving furniture well, and the swap would need the entire contents of the office and guest room being moved into the living room. A great time to do some really good cleaning, sorting and organising. I’ll paint the guest room white to make it less depressing before moving all the office stuff into it, and I can have fun decorating the new guest room.

All of which will take way more than one weekend to do!

sigh.

Meanwhile, today I wiped myself out. I’d done some grooming, had a late breakfast, then knuckled down to work. It was sunny so I pooper-scooped and tried weeding. The weeds won. There are just too many of them. Next time the weather is good enough I’m spraying the suckers.

I took apart our Whirlpool washing machine (I watched a Youtube video, how would you do it?) to try to sort out the annoying lint problem. Of course what I found in our washing machine wasn’t exactly like I saw on Youtube, but heck, it still works and the lint problem can’t be worse than it was! And it still works. That’s gotta be a win.

I made a drawer for the sidetable/box on castors I’ve been working on. I started on a cut down chair which will be a bedside table for the new guest room. I was busy sanding the chair when I was suddenly hit by a wave of exhaustion. I could barely walk to the house and it took all I had to shower and wash my hair.

Maybe it was low blood sugar. I totally ran out of fuel.

Tomorrow is another day. Remind me to eat lunch.

fairy bed

Posted on August 20, 2015 by zefiart

I just love these little wire beds. I love making them and I love looking at them.

How pretty is this?

Ok, so it might have no real use, unless you have a dollhouse or a visiting fairy, but its so delicate and fine and… just… well, pretty!

This is the second wire bed I’ve made and its a bit fancier than the first one. It has a mattress made from a tea dyed napkin – it was stained and in the throw out pile so I decided to use the best bits.

It also has a little ‘crochet’ cushion, made from a piece of doily.

I actually made this little bed a couple of months ago but didn’t have my ‘light box’ in the office where I could use it easily.

Plus, to make matters worse, I tried to change the pendant light in the office to test a new one, and ended up stuffing up the light fixture. I now have no light in the office.

I think I need an electrician.

In the end I rigged up two floor lamps, a desk lamp, a box and a white sheet and got some pics.

One of these days I might actually have a proper set up for taking photos of things. I just need good lighting like the kind I use when making films…

Anyway, I got pretty decent pics of the bed so I’m happy.

you know what really gets my goat?

Posted on August 16, 2015 by zefiart

Its blogs that have videos that just start playing when you open the page.

I mean, I know that the lucky bloggers earn money from advertising appearing on their blog… but really, do we have to have the bloody videos start streaming without wanting them to?

I have this habit of opening a million pages at once. Every time I check my email, I click on all the links to open blogs I follow that have alerted me to new posts.

That means that I’ll be happily clicking away when suddenly some stupid ad will start blaring at me, annoying the crap out of Wayne who’s trying to watch TV or read in peace, as I frantically try to locate the offending video and shut it down.

Sometimes I just shut the page without reading the post cause I’m annoyed.

A lot of time I have my sound turned off, just to avoid this problem. And I don’t think I should have to live without sound cause I enjoy reading blogs who’s advertisers place automatically playing ads on their pages!

sheesh.

Ok, I feel better now.

tawny frogmouths and other new friends

Posted on August 16, 2015 by zefiart

For the last few weeks I’ve been surprised by birds in our yard when I take the dogs out for their night time pee.

I thought they were owls to start with, but they were the wrong shape. I had a suspicion they were tawny frogmouths but had never really seen them well enough. Only in the dark and not close enough. Not like this:

But the other night there were two of them and one let me get quite close with the flashlight.

Tawny frogmouths mate for life and once they find a ‘home’ they return and mate there every year. Given I’ve never seen them before I’m guessing this young couple have just moved in. I hope they stay!

I’m quite excited about it. I love having wildlife around. Hopefully they’ll help keep our vermin problem under control too. They eat slugs and snails, small mammals (mice!) and other annoying pests. Pity they’re nocturnal and don’t keep the birds out of our roof.

Speaking of birds, I swear, we absolutely have to do something about the birds in our roof. Every year the little offspring-of-unwed-mothers multiply. The noise they make is incredible, and I cringe at the thought of the damage they’re doing up there. I think they’re building entire cities – they have no respect for our sleep, hammering and banging at all hours of the day and night. I bet they’ll soon take out the power tools.

Every year at this time I say I’ll do something about it, before they have babies, then suddenly they have babies… so I have to wait till the babies grow up and move out.

I’m not a baby killer!

I tell myself I’ll take care of it once the birds have left, but they never seem to leave, The babies move out and another batch seems to hatch. And then its winter again and its too late, too cold, too wet…

Sigh.

On cheerier note, another new friend is one I suspect moved in quite a while ago. A possum.

Now I know most people hate possums, and I hate it when they eat our vegies or my flowers, or pee and poop all over the shed, but I think they’re cute.

I don’t know if you remember Ponsonby, the black possum who gave me a heart attack when I reached into a chicken box for eggs and narrowly avoided grabbing a handful of possum. Ponsonby moved into the casita where he’d look down on me as I worked, which was nice, but developed the bad habit of peeing and pooping on everything I owned, which was less nice.

We trapped him and relocated him before I knew that brushtail possums are territorial and you can’t relocate them more than 50 metres from where you catch them. Ugh. Poor Ponsonby. I hope he did ok.

Anyway, moving Ponsonby out meant that the territory was ripe for another possum to move in.

Another thing I did not know then.

The first one that moved in was a red possum. He didn’t last long. He met a sticky end thanks to the great hunters disguised as poodles.

This new little guy has been here a while now, narrowly escaping a horrible death on a few occasions but persisting on pushing his luck, visiting the garden and sitting on our porch rails.

The other night both the frogmouths and the possum were out in the yard and the dogs were going crazy. They were sniffing the air and looking around frantically, “I know they’re here, I can smell them!”

Lucky for the possum, they didn’t see him and I got them inside before they saw he was well within their reach.

I was actually so close to him I could reach out and pat him. I almost did exaclty that, then remembered he wasn’t a tame animal and that the cute fat ball of fluff could easily turn into a whirling ball of teeth and claws.

Last week one night the dogs must have chased him off and he came around the side of the casita as I was going out to feed the horses. I was in the corral outside the casita when he came around the corner, walking on the guttering.

As I stood there, within arms reach of him, he clung onto the pipe with his tail, suspended himself upside down (which is why I know he’s a male!) and swung there a while as he stretched out his little paws as far as they’d go, trying to reach the old cabinet on the porch.

He let go, making a leap for it, and missed. He landed with a thump in a feed bucket. His little face popped up, looked at me sheepishly, then climbed out and made his way up the tree with as much dignity as he could muster.

I wish I had my camera!

I guess I should name him as I think he’s moved in for good now. That’s a good thing. Having a toilet trained resident possum will keep the not-so-toilet trained ones at bay.

Any suggestions on names for my new possum friend?

non fattening chocolate cake!

Posted on August 12, 2015 by zefiart

Ha!

I got you didn’t I? You thought I’d found some lush chocolate cake recipe that would allow you to eat your cake and keep your figure!

Sorry to disappoint you, but not quite… although I can guarantee this cake won’t make you fat.

I’ve been having some fun with wire lately. Its no secret I love wire, I have a huge board dedicated to it on Pinterest, and I’ve shared quite a few wire projects in the past.

This cake is made from regular fine galvanised wire from the hardware store, and some brown copper florist wire. Hence the chocolate in the cake. And don’t forget the cream on top!

The spoon is the same, silver and brown wire. You need a matching spoon if you’re to have any chance of eating this piece of cake!

Its sitting on an old Meakin plate I found with gorgeous scalloped edges. It looks best on a white or cream plate.

I haven’t been sharing much lately, but I have been busy doing stuff, making things. I’ll have more to share soon. All my projects are in various stages of development from ‘just beginning’ to ‘finished and awaiting their closeups’. Then you’ll be drowing in posts till the next dry spell.

That’s just the way things work out around here.

just sayin’ hi

Posted on August 5, 2015 by zefiart

These are not my dogs, this photo just makes me smile. Its just so darn cute!

So, what’s been happening? Well, it snowed.

Now, to a large percentage of the world that’s no big deal. A nuisance even. But here, in Magra, Tasmania, its not something that happens often so its exciting.

We’re down low here, not far above sea level, and it doesn’t snow down low in Tassie often, so you can imagine we got all worked up about it. At least I did.

So did the horses…

And the dogs…

I’d never seen wallaby tracks in snow before.

Unfortunately, even though we got snow, it wasn’t enough.

I still had to go to work.

So, other than the exciting-making white stuff, what else have I been doing for weeks on end of blog silence?

Wayne has pulled through back surgery and is back to his normal clumsy self.

I’ve been busy with work projects and personal ones for the Salvaged Art competition coming up in September.

I’ve been working on a couple of home projects which I will finish one day, at which point I will share them. Its kinda hard to finish things when working full time and grooming in my spare time.

Did I mention I’m working full time at the moment? I started about the same time I pulled the blog disappearing act.

I have no idea how I used to do it in the past. (The doing keeping up, not the disappearing.)

Maybe I managed to fit more into each hour back then. I was younger and faster…

Then again, I didn’t have horses and dogs and ducks and chickens and geese to feed twice a day. And wood to bring in for the fire.

Plus I lived alone in a 1 bedroom flat, I was only responsible for my own mess and for my own self. I worked, roller bladed, went to the gym, danced rock’n’roll and had a social life.

Hm.

Something is wrong with this equation…

what i’ve done and how i spoiled myself

Posted on July 26, 2015 by zefiart

Since Wayne has been in hospital and recouperating, I’ve been the one feeding the horses morning and night.

As such, I’ve had to go into the feed room morning and night… and every time I opened the door I was greeted by the aroma of mouse pee.

Eech. Yes. Mouse pee. I felt like scrubbing out the inside of my nose every time I went in there.

See, I sorted out and cleaned up the feed room about a year ago. Since then it deteriorated and deteriorated into the mess it was up until this morning. Sorry, there are no before pics.

Part of it was my fault. I used to store all my timber in the feed room along the left hand wall. I also stored some old kitchen chairs in there that I planned to fix. I did remove my timber a while ago but the chairs were being used to toss horse rugs over.

All good in theory. Then came Wayne. The pile of horse rugs got bigger and messier, no longer tossed over the chairs but piled on them, falling off them, pooling on the floor. Bags of horse feed with small mouse holes in them stood along in front of the old freezer we store horse pellets in. The old bench I use for general horse medical stuff was covered in molasses, mice began to nest in the rugs, empty feed bags and the plastic bags carrots or licorice come in were all over the place…

I would go in there every now and then and pick up bags and put them in the rubbish. Every now and then I’d sweep the floor, wipe up the molasses spills… but I finally had enough.

Today I went in there and hit the place with a vengeance. Firstly I sorted the horse rugs into a ‘cut off the buckles and throw the rugs away’ and a ‘keep’ pile. Then I bagged up all the rubbish and swept the floor. I put all the feed bags into a large chaff bag to give to a friend who re-uses them.

Then I got a couple of pieces of leftover pine lining (left over from our kitchen remodel) and put them on the walls. I had to use a nail to find the studs to screw the pine into (its an old house, the studs are all over the place!). I used whatever large hooks I had for rugs to hang on.

Would you believe the place no longer stinks?

I’m so pleased with the new, clean feed room. Which will no doubt stay clean till Wayne is well enough to take over feeding the horses…

The large box on the right holds 2 bags of chaff. The old bench in the middle holds medical bits and pieces, the old freezer holds pellets. I put the old pink bin in between the chaff bin and the bench for rubbish. Hopefully it’ll get used.

On the left I’ve piled up feed bins and some buckets and my carrot basket. I made that out of a galvanised metal basket I bought at a tip shop and some old legs off a side table I pulled apart. Its perfect, I lined it with an old summer horse rug so the smaller carrots don’t fall through and it keeps them fresh as it allows air to circulate around them.

Meanwhile, here are some other small updates to my workshop in the casita. I re-used some old boxes to make shelves. I love this new little storage corner for things like spray paint, glues, fillers, etc. Nails hold my levels and some old tins screwed into the lining on the wall hold pen, paint tubes and box cutters. Where the wall lining stopped there was a gap I often lost things down. I fixed that by putting in a bit of timber and creating a new shelf.

On the other side is my original shelf which used to hold not just the small paint tins but also the spray paint. A basket for odds and ends, some tins for paint scrapers and more shelves made where the wall lining ends. One old rake head holds brushes and another holds scrapers.

And my Haywood’s sign is up on the wall properly!

I’ve also done some rearranging of work benches and stuff but I’m not ready to show it off yet. I mean, I did organise it, but then I got to working on things I never finished so… its messy again.

Meanwhile our old kettle has been playing up. Everytime we boiled water it was like a flood on the benchtop. I decided it was time for a new kettle.

I also decided I deserved a little spoiling so I got one of these:

Yep. That’s right. I bought a Smeg kettle, one of those kettles which, for the price, should not only boil your water but should make the coffee and serve it to you in bed. I got it in the mint green of course, to match the kitchen doors.

I love my new kettle.

cheap cubbies makeover

Posted on July 21, 2015 by zefiart

Here I am. Still alive.

And barely crafting.

I’ve done a few small things lately, and one not so small and pretty stupid. But more about that later.

Here is one of my small projects. I bought 4 of these little babies from Kmart, but a smaller version with 9 drawers.

They’re just mdf and cardboard. Cheap.

I thought they’d make perfect storage for all the little crap things I like to keep around. Like buttons, crystals, beads, small found objects.

You know. The kind of stuff that fills small containers which collect in larger boxes or fill drawers and cupboards and when you need something, you know you have one but you can’t find it anywhere cause you’re sure it was in a small plastic jar with a red lid, but where did I put it, I was sure it was in the box under my desk…

Or is that just me?

ANYWAY, the little cabinets have to be glued together and painted. I picked one of my miss-tint sample paint pots for the cabinet colours, a kind of warm grey. It goes with both the tones of scrapbook paper I also bought for the drawers.

One set of cubbies are already full, the other is still waiting for me to get around to it. They’ll live in the office where they’ll (theoretically) make looking for things easier.

Here’s a closeup of a tin and wire fish made by Wayne. Cute isn’t it?

So, back to the stupid big thing I did? Well a couple of weeks ago I decided I was sick and tired of the swamp in the back corner of our yard and knew that if I dug a trench I could redirect the water from the yard.

It seemed easy enough. The ground was really soft due to all the rain…

But afterwards I was sore.

I’m still sore.

Every time I think I’m better I’ll do something – like get some wood for the fire, pick up a bag, get a cup of tea, get up – and the pain is back. I’m walking like a bent old woman.

Meanwhile Wayne is in hospital. He’s had spinal surgery. It went well but he’s out of action for a while and I’m keeping busy. I have all the animals to take care of, work, hospital visits. If I wasn’t sore I’d be taking advantage of his absence to remodel the bathroom or paint the living room.

Sigh.

So I amuse myself with small things, like these drawers.

At least they’re handy.

another thing you can make with old shutters

Posted on July 12, 2015 by zefiart

This is a project I finished last weekend but which I couldn’t photograph till this yesterday. It was still gloomy and overcast but better than trying to photograph it in the dark after work.

So, here it is! Our new ‘gas bottle and bin hiding’ box!

This is what you’d see as you came to the front of our house – my little window shelf with the pretty succulents and a small cement slab holding gas bottles and stuff to go to the rubbish bin. Not particularly attractive. Which is why I never have any photos that show it.

I always planned to make some kind of cupboard to hide them. I had these old shutters (louvre doors really) which I’d bought at an op shop a few years ago. I’d used them to make a screen to cover the hot water cylinder when it was on the front porch. When we moved the hot water cylinder to the side of the house we no longer needed the screen.

But I never throw anything away if I can help it. Things have more than one lifetime around here.

The shutters were too big for the new gas bottle box so I had to cut them down. I had two narrow ones and two wide ones so I worked out which would work best – the narrow ones on the sides, the wider ones in front as doors.

They were already painted the same colour as the house so they were perfect. I cut them down to the right height and joined them at the corners using hinges. I used small brackets to attach the sides to the wall and keep it all in place.

The lid is hinged above the box so that it slopes. This is for two reasons. Firstly I just thought it looked nice. Secondly I don’t want this to become another flat surface for things to accumulate.

Now all we need to do is lift the lid, use the hook to keep it open, then swing the doors open to access the gas bottles.

There’s a small bin in there for empty bottles and I put the kitchen rubbish on top of it every night cause I hate stinky rubbish in the house. In the morning we take it down to the bin on our way to work. Having the rubbish inside the box means less temptation for the dogs to go excavating for goodies.

Not that they would.

My dogs are well behaved.

But in case a possum comes visiting. You know.

Of course, nothing ever comes together easily. The leftover bit of door I planned to use for the lid wasn’t long enough. The solution was obvious: I found an old bit of timber to extend it to the right length.

I even added some initials.