I’m eternally searching for the perfect calendar for our fridge. Ideally, it needs room for everyone’s stuff, including the menu plan, the dates should be large enough to read across the room & it should be easy enough for the kids to figure out. This year’s is prett good, except I don’t like filling out everyone’s names each month – hard to please, I know. If I was a bit organised I’d make some stickers to speed up the process.

Anyway, the menu planning part of this calendar is quite handy. I don’t like looking at an empty notepad, nor do I like seeing old menus on there (see, really hard to please). So I have a bit of motivation to do a new menu plan each week. It’s got me back in the menu planning groove.

This week we’re having:

Monday: curried sausages & sweet potato mash (using these little sausos I found at Aldi)

Tuesday: fettuccine Alfredo
Wednesday: quiche, corn & chats
Thursday: mulligatawny
Friday: homemade burgers
Saturday: salmon & feta frittata
Sunday: roast pork & vegies

Baking: pear & banana muffins

The flowers of spring are giving way to the activities of summer: days at the pool, walks after dinner and, very importantly, planning for Christmas.

A few weeks ago, when I decided to make a return to blogging, I wrote about how I could possibly create a little blogging oasis in my garden.  All I needed was a little outdoor setting to pop in the morning sun, and I’d be able to enjoy a cuppa after my workout and get some blogging done.

I don’t really believe in the Law of Attraction, but…

Look what I won in a raffle on the weekend! Not a new Macbook, unforntuately, but almost as exciting: a little three piece outdoor setting. The perfect size for my blogging oasis! I’m typing this in the beautiful sunshine, sipping on my peppermint tea. I feel very indulgent.

At least 3 years ago we promised our boy a bedroom makeover. New furniture, new paint job; the works. He’s been choosing paint swatches every trip to Bunnings since. While I was happy to have him choose the wall colour, I spent a very (very) long time deliberating which shade of white to use for the trim.

Then something would come up and it would be postponed. Then there’d be something else and something else.

I credit Pinterest with finally getting us focussed and moving on this long awaited project. I’ve been diligently pinning images of boy’s bedroom ideas, excitedly sharing them with the lucky recipient of the work. Unfortunately, he’s been trained to not get too excited about this project, because, you know, it’s been taking sooo long to get going.

The project became a reality for the boy when we trotted off to Forty Winks and ordered a fab new bed (below, minus the side and top bookcase pieces). Now he could see it was really happening. At last! It was the first major internal painting project for my husband and I, so I was a little nervous. But my new JFDI (“just freaking do it” – thanks Michelle Bridges) attitude got me to the paint desk at Bunnings at long last.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a before photo but imagine a buttery yellow room with a hotch potch of hand-me-down furniture. Most likely there would have been clothes and Lego’s strewn about the floor as well. Probably best I didn’t take that photo.

We whittled the main colour choices down to two and did a sample pot patch of each. Hubby & I agreed on the same colour choice (miracle of miracles). Of course, our son then chose the other colour. But, his room, his final decision, so we bit our tongues and got on with the job.

The final colours were Suddenly Sapphire and Moonlit Snow for the trim (these are Taubmans colours). I’m not sure who comes up with these colour names, but I’m pretty sure they are the same people that write wine descriptions!

The bedroom is at the north end of our house with windows almost the whole length of the north wall, so we could go pretty dark without making the room too cave-like. The white trim lifts the whole thing nicely, I think. The boy is obviously very happy with the outcome so far. He actually made his bed from scratch, although I have a sneaking suspicion his sister might have helped with the straightening things up part. This morning he was practically impossible to wake. I think that is an indication we chose a comfy mattress, right?

Next step is getting all decorate-y with the walls and accessories. Minecraft pictures have been specifically requested. I’ll have to work on that. They don’t especially appeal to me, but then I guess I’m not an 11 year old boy with a penchant for bacon. And I need to find a solution to that ridiculous air con vent/hole in the wall. The standard vent blades tend to get knocked out (or probably dismantled, in this case). Look out, I’m on a roll!

So here I am at the end of 12 weeks, a slightly different person both in body and soul. Here’s how the body bits panned out (in addition to the nearly 10kg gooone):

Today I found a pair of jeans I’d forgotten I had, with the belt still threaded around the waist. It put them on and am pleased to say they fitted much better than last time I wore them. And, I had to pull the belt in an extra three notches! Woo hoo!