One Brussels Sprout

Phew, it's been a busy 10 days painting every piece of wood in sight, but all the exterior roofing timber has now had a trillion coats of paint and is looking very nice indeed.  We borrowed the builder's trestles and planks over the weekend and finished off the beams that were put up unpainted, plus touched up the ones we had already painted that had got a bit battered in the construction process.  Plus there were dirty fingermarks on the lovely off-white battens!  Imagine that! Quick touch-up and they are looking lovely. :-)

The house is coming along nicely, perhaps a little slower than expected but we have the rain to contend with.  No roof as yet, but the house is now covered with pretty blue sisalation which I gather provides a moisture barrier of sorts.  On top of the sisalation they will attach the Hardie boards.  Then we get to paint the Hardie board, oh joy.  Actually I am looking forward to painting with a new colour.  Anyway, here we have the back of the house....

 And the front of the house....

  Looking along the front of the house which gives an idea of the verandah area....

Looking through our bedroom window.....

One of the interesting things about living on-site is that we are more involved with the construction of the house than normal, simply because we are there to give answers when an opportunity presents itself.  The builder wandered over to Steve and told him they had a few pieces of short timber left over, and did we know where we were going to hang any paintings in the house, because if we did he would be more than happy to bolt these bits of timber between the studs so we could put screws through to the timber later.

Steve, fortunately for him, thought twice.... first he was going to say not to worry about it to the builder, but then good sense prevailed and Steve said he would ask his wife.  Well!  I ran around like a mad thing from skeletal room to skeletal room, trying to imagine artwork on walls.  But I got into the swing of it in the end, and the builder, who by now may have regretted opening his mouth, had to bolt 13 timbers up for me.  :-) Next thing will be to remember where they are!  I have taken measurements and photos so hopefully we will find them after the gyprock is installed.

 The end of a day's work entails a glass of wine.  This photo is especially for Anne who thinks our end of day wine is much more interesting than her end of day glass of wine.  Cheers Anne!

The finale to our timber painting was to have a big bonfire of some of the tree detritus lying around.  People may think this is a puny bonfire, but we are gradually building up to bigger and bigger ones, getting used to the power of fire.  We as the new people on the block, do not want to be the ones responsible for burning down the neighbourhood.  So we amassed leaves and branches in the middle of the paddock, and armed ourselves with rakes and hoses, then put a match to it.

Yeehar, pyromania heaven! It burned in a very orderly fashion as there was no wind, and there is virtually nothing left now.  Fires are lovely to watch eh.

Here is a photo of a fabulous dinner Steve made the other night.  Beef courtesy of Drovers Pastoral Company down here, and the potatoes, cabbage, broccolini and ONE brussels sprout each are all out of our garden.  It was delicious.

We had one brussels sprout each because they are still very small on the plant, I am perfectly happy to eat baby vegetables, however Steve doesn't part with his home grown vegies readily, they have to have grown to gigantor proportions first.  I stamped my foot and finally he relented and let me have one - ONE.  It was very nice.  LOL

I made pumpkin soup the following day (courtesy of a road-side stall), and with the leftover pumpkin I had a go at making pumpkin scones in the barbeque.  I cooked them squashed up together in my big Scan Pan pot (best thing I ever bought BTW, very versatile piece of equipment) as it is a heavy pot and things cooked in the barbeque have a habit of burning underneath.

 

They turned out great!  Yum Yum Yum with butter.  They didn't last long.  

I'm still toodling along doing a bit of knitting.  Check this out.  Looks ridiculous doesn't it, sort of like a giant bootee.  It is a bed slipper.  I wanted something to put on my feet if I was sitting on the bed with my feet up and this pattern looked interesting, and was straightforward enough for an idiot like me to follow.

What do you think?  They are very comfortable.  I'm knitting the second one at the moment so for now I have one warm foot.

Whilst all this was going on, we noticed a couple of new feathered visitors - ducks!  They have been popping in for a new days now, patrolling the paddock and around the outer edge of the vegie garden, scoffing bugs or whatever.  I must look up what variety they are.   (Update - they are Wood Ducks I think)

The wonderful end to an insane painting period was this spectacular sunset.  Glorious.