Day 84 Is it a Find or is it Rubbish? (see previous post)

Is it a Find or is it Rubbish? (read all about it here)

Well I found these in a basket under the spare bed. Treasures made by my sons in their early years of kindergarten & school. I actually have quite a few of these from over the years. Some of them I thought might make good garden ornaments. Anyway so back to this little pile tucked away for safe keeping.... I am probably a not a very sentimental mum so I have decided that these will have to go to the rubbish pile. Knowing that I have already kept quite a few that each son has made over the years I think tough decisions have to be made and out they go! Imagine if you kept everything your children made, drew, wrote, painted etc over the years you would have to build a special room to house them all.

Day 83 And the cleaning begins...

Well yesterday I went and picked up some boxes from the local IGA and I also bought some extra plastic storage tubs. Today I plan on making a start on sorting and clearing out. We seem to accumalate so much over the years. Normally since we have moved many times, we have managed to always clear out each time but the last time we moved we were really pressed for time and so it just did not happen. So over the next week expect lots of pictures of

• finds - things I forgot we had
• rubbish - things we kept for no good reason
• a tidy space at the end of it all.

Day 82 Clean up time...

This is a small table that sits near our dining table that my older son uses for his artwork. As you can see it is a tad messy. In the holidays I plan on doing a huge clean up (I can't see the bed in our spare room!) and this is one of the areas that we will tidy up. I will also swap the desks around and give him a slightly larger table with some drawers. I know, I know all that will do is give him more room to spread out his mess! But it's worth a try!

Day 81 With Joy we greet you...

This is an old sign that was originally framed and hung at the front door of my fathers childhood home. It says " With joy we greet you". It has deteriorated and the frame has gone but I plan to clean it up and frame it and as corny as the saying may be I would like to hang it at our front door as well. I found this in the old family home that still stood on our farm. It was very run down and when I was very young it was used as a shearing shed. There were a couple of rooms still intact and I remember hauling back all these things that I would find - books, old hat trunks, and this sign.

Day 80 Something I don't have to look at for another 3 weeks

Yeah!! The last day of school. Arrived home and was greeted in the kitchen with the usual array of bags, tennis rackets, polar fleeces, sports bags and trumpet that I usually am and know that after today when the boys put all of this away I do not have to see it again for 3 whole weeks (yes they get an extra week of holidays in the June/July break) and I am over the moon about that!

Day 79 Getting ready for the school holidays

Today at work I browsed the shelves to choose a few books to read over the holidays. I like to read some of the books that the boys might like so I can recommend something when they ask. I have just finished reading Paper towns by John Green, who is the author I went to listen to at the State Library a few weeks back and would highly recommend it. I have another book A novel about my wife, that I have had sitting by my bed for some time and not been able to get into, so I am hoping the holidays will give me time to finish it. The other books in my photo are a couple of young adult fiction from work that I wanted to read. The house of power is book 1 of a new fantasy trilogy Atherton (always popular), the other Fearless is a sequel to a futuristic action book that I am looking forward to.

Last but not least, is a new book by Marshall Browne one of my favorite authors. He has written a wonderful historical thriller set in Melbourne during the Marvelous Melbourne era. The novels are quite rich in historial detail of Melbourne and its geography. If you would like to read about the authors ideas and reasearch for the book take a read here which is the transcript of a talk he gave discussing his trilogy. I could also highly recommend his Italian detective series Inspector Anders. His latest books have been historical thrillers set in Germany during WW2, which introduced the German bank auditor Franz Schmidt. The first book is The Eye of the abyss and the book I have bought to read in the holidays is the sequel to that The iron heart.

So I am looking forward to that..

Day 78 Vampire Fad

Vampire fiction is in at the moment.

The Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer has reignited an interest in this genre. It has always had its followers but it's popularity comes and goes. I for one loved Buffy the vampire slayer (I know it was a TV show) and there were many books before Twilight that were great vampire stories and well written. It's a bit like Harry Potter, there were many excellent fantasy books before Harry Potter that had enjoyed succes. But Harry Potter and Twilight seemed to be in the right place at the right time and have enjoyed a huge success and a fanatical following.

So at work I have been working on a publishing a reading list called Books to sink your teeth into.. . It lists our fiction about vampires, demons, ghosts and the supernatural to introduce the boys to other authors especially if they have already read the Twilight series. Those that haven't will probably have a sister who has or perhaps they have been to the cinema to see the Twilight movie. Today I finished it and put a display up about our Fang Fiction and Ghosts, demons and the supernatural and this is a photo of it.

Day 77 Op shopping

My younger son needed something to dress up in for school (raising funds for Amnesty so they are holding a Peace day - dress up like the 60s, flower power, hippy). So today I spent a few hours at the op shops. It was so much harder than I thought. I could not find much at all maybe the shops are getting a bit more selective about what they keep! Anyway found a couple of things as pictured and we made a large silver peace pendant for him to wear as well.

Day 76 Noisy morning

When we first bought our block of land over 7 years ago, the adjoining block was a huge 1 3/4 acre block with one house on it. A few years ago it was sold to a developer who wanted to subdivide it into a total of 4 blocks including the one with the existing house. Myself and a couple of neighbours protested the application and we went to VCAT and won! The plans were eventually resubmitted by him for 3 blocks including the existing one which we did not fight. In our case even if he had subdivided with the minimum of 2 large blocks we would still end up with the bush next to us cleared and a house being built there so we did not bother. The blocks have since been sold and we have met our neighbours closest to us but they are yet to start building. The other block that is further away has also sold and they have started some excavation work. This morning the hammer drill on the excavator was going for some time and was very noisy. There is a large rock vein that runs down the hill and I think they may have discovered it!

Day 75 London Plane trees

We have 3 huge London plane trees running along the western side of our house. They are great therefore in summer as they provide us with lots of good shade. But they are incredibly messy - huge leaves everywhere in autumn. The upside is they have beautiful bark and trunks and ours are in the process of shedding their bark to reveal a lovely mottled trunk. So even when the trees are bare they are still quite wonderful!