aussie invasion |

Way too long, super duper overdue wedding post…

March 23, 2012 8:44 am \ 2 Comments \ Mac

So. I got married. Um…last year. In September…yeah. About that. Wanna see some pictures? (insert sheepish grin here)

Before we get to the good stuff…i have to gush a little bit first about how truly awesome our day was. You see, both the Wee-b and I have been married before and we figured as this time it was for keeps (no takebacks-pinky swear) we should create the wedding we REALLY wanted. My first wedding was a doozy. In fact, to be completely honest, I should really say, my ex-mother-in-laws second wedding was a doozy It was nuts, over the top and full of people I have never met in my entire life. I think my friends took up about 1/32^nd of the entire headcount. But enough about that.

Goal #1 for our dream wedding was making sure it was full of our closest family and friends. Goal #2 was making sure that the location was TOTALLY AWESOME and Goal #3 was to enjoy. Luckily my parents decided that they would come over this side of the ocean and give us a hand reaching our goals. Oh who am I kidding…the aussies totally slayed our goals and ticked off new ones we didn’t even know we had.

So..Goal #1 – we invited about 35 of our closest friends and family .

Goal #1a – one of our closest friends was ordained as a minister just to marry us! And we created our own, totally goofy, definitely us, wedding vows.
Thanks Hal!

Goal #2 – Awesome location? Our backyard (we even got to enjoy two of the cutest mini photogs in the world – thanks Hencat!) – CHECK!

Goal #3 – Best. Day. Evar.

Goal #3a – OM NOM NOM

Additional Extra points

Take classy wedding photos - √
Have the best best man and the most awesome best gal - √
To be loved by some of the most awesome, giving people in the world - √
Create the most awesome wedding cake(s) ever - √
Make fun of the drunkest guest at the party - √

Honestly? Our wedding totally rocked. There is nothing about it (other than perhaps being able to fly in more of my Aussie family) that i would have changed. Thank you EVERYONE for making our day so brilliant and for reminding us once again how absolutely blessed we are to be surrounded by the most caring, generous, smart and loving people.

Posted in: home, mac-time, memories \ Tagged: aussie invasion, good times, wedding

Nanna Margie & Poppy Jack

November 30, 2011 7:36 am \ 2 Comments \ Mac

My parents are two of the most caring, warm hearted, giving people that you would ever meet in your whole life. When i tell people that my parents are coming to visit and that they will be living with us for 3 months, most reactions I get are the same…

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?!
GOOD LUCK WITH THAT!

Heh! But it’s different for me. My parents are quite honestly the most non-parents you could possibly meet. My mum is that cool mum who can hang out with my friends and all of them love her. My dad is a riot who tends to yell things like SHITBAGS! when things go all wonky. Having my parents stay with us for 3 months? I love it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But having to say goodbye? I hate that shit. My parents live about as far away as possible. If you stuck a long needle directly through the globe from where i live, you’d just about hit my parents house. This time around it took them just over 40 hours to get home, last time I went home it was 36 hours travel time. It sucks. Two of my most favourite people in the entire world live as far away as you can possibly get.

But while they were here, Nanna Margie and Poppy Jack helped with a whole TON of things around the house…

We met some of the neighbors..

They made sure that Gizmo was always dressed to impress.

My father showed me some of the sights I was not aware of..

Nanna Margie re-arranged the kitties every day, after Sterling had finished playing bowling with all of them

Some wildlife was smuggled through customs..

Poppy Jack instructed us on the correct way to mow the lawn

So the Wee-b and I wanted to say Thank you. We miss you and we hope you come back soon! Your room is waiting for you and Sterling said he would keep the blankets warm for you.

Posted in: family, home, mac-time, memories \ Tagged: aussie invasion, memories, nm & pj

Fan-tastic

November 2, 2011 7:33 am \ 1 Comment \ Mac

When we first moved in we were left with (courtesy of the Realestate agents who flipped this place) a lot of mis matching hardware and old ceiling fans. Nothing really flowed from room to room.

Thanks to a bout of ORB-related illness, a lot of the fixtures have been updated and re-used in their original spaces none the worse for wear

Unfortunately there were a few things we just couldn’t spray with Rustoleums Oil Rubbed Bronze Spray. I know, i know…it’s just a bad dream. Promise.

Take for example this oversized, overtacky ceiling fan in our small Den. It spanned about 54″ and was WAAAAY too big for the room. Not to mention that it had a special “marbled” finish on the blades. I use the term “marble” in quotes as I’m not sure that that was the exact look they were going for….let’s just say that if the white was red, it would definitely just be a great halloween prop.

Also notice the fine layer of dust that coats every inch. Luckily they left all that good stuff for us when we moved in. I still have plans to make a mint on Ebay with that!

Enter a nice weekend trip to the Big Orange and a days quiet work by Poppy Jack…well according to my mother, it was not quiet at all. According to her she now knows some new words…of the naughty variety.

Not only is our new fan smaller and much better space-wise, but it also comes with a remote control! Do you know what that means? Discothèque USA! Light goes on, light goes off. Light goes on, light goes off.

Simple minds as they say

Don’t forget – tonight 10pm – my boss is designing for Restaurant: Impossible on the Food Network!!!

Posted in: family, home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, fan re-do

Pantri-fied

October 18, 2011 8:12 am \ 8 Comments \ Mac

I feel like I should rename this blog to the Nanna Margie & Poppy Jack show – they have been coming up with so many awesome ideas while they are here. I swear my “poppy Jack To-do List” was nowhere near this long.

One of their suggestions, was to create solid shelves out of masonite to add to the top of the wire shelves that we currently call our pantry.

Brill.

So we hit up the Orange on Saturday and had them make a few cuts so that we could fit the boards in the car and make the end cutting job a little easier.

So first things first…empty out all those shelves. Try to feign embarrasment at all the boxes that are out of date. Find a spot that is out of curious cat reach. Start removing & stacking pantry items. Figure out original spot is not quite out of reach. Find new spot and continue.

Now its time to start cutting the boards. After a rough start, Poppy Jack found himself a mathematical genius to assist. Unfortunately the pencil turned out to be too distracting and Poppy Jack had to finish the job by himself.

Assumed mathematical genius was then placed in charge of monitoring the shelves (removed to make an initial template for the corner posts) and making sure that they did not try to run away and hide under the couch.

Add a small dash of adorable contact paper (Target – $5.99!) applied perfectly by Nanna Margie and there you have it! A quick, easy and fairly inexpensive (under $20) pantry re-do.

And the best part is all of my jars and cans sit up straight now

Posted in: family, home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, pantry shelves

Backyard Blitz Bonanza

September 19, 2011 8:02 am \ 7 Comments \ Mac

So here’s where we started off…

And here is where we ended up…

It’s really quite the transformation and I am still quite surprised every time I look out the window to see all the green grass and the beautiful flowers. As I told my mum – you made it look like fancy people live here

The aussie invasion worked it’s magic and transformed our backyard into something totally AWESOME. We had a space of about 8-9′ from the back of the retaining wall to the fence line, so we decided to cut off the planned grass area at the base of the trees. That was about 6′ deep so it left us some room to play with when it came to planting some flowering bushes at the very back.

We headed to the local nursery here and talked to one of the employees about the types of bushes/shrubs that we could plant in a filtered light area that would flower and attract birds and butterflys. We ended up buying a bunch of azaleas, hibiscus, day lilies and creeping jennies and spread them out across and in between the trees.

Eventually the creeping jennies will work themselves throughout the back area and provide a really nice pop of green as a ground cover.

So that’s my new fancy backyard. Don’t be jealous….you can all come over for a nice cuppa

Posted in: home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, backyard

Aussie Invasion to date – Front yard

September 13, 2011 8:07 am \ 4 Comments \ Mac

So the wedding was on Saturday and Wee-b and I had decided a long time ago, that we had wanted to have a small gathering of our friends and family in our backyard. I love big weddings, I think they are beautiful and I love being able to be a part of them. But when it comes to me, I am not a big wedding kind of girl…my dream was always to be married outdoors with a small(ish) group of people and to be able to spend time just eating and drinking and sharing until the sun went down. And a little bit longer than that

So that’s exactly what we did.

BUT!

Before we got to that point, we had a lot of work to get done in the backyard and Mum even added on some (not-so) optional extras for the front yard. Unfortunately both Wee-b and I had to work in the lead up to the wedding so we were only available to assist on weekends and even then, I was gone for two weekends filming.

So before I get started with a week of photos, i want to say a HUGE MONSTROUS big thank you to my parents. Without you I wouldn’t be here. You have supported me in (almost) all (blonde hair?) of my endeavours and for that I will be eternally grateful to you. Thank you for all that you have done for me, thank you for welcoming the Wee-b as a part of the family and thank you for making our house look like fancy people live here!

So..beginning the tour in the front yard, we managed to go from this…

To this

and a little bit of this..

It looks…freakin AWESOME. Wee-b and I were always at a bit of a loss with what to do with the front yard and this was the perfect solution. Create a small garden to break up the boring expanse of siding.

So that’s a little bit of our new front yard. Now the plan is to try and keep everything alive til at least my parents next visit. Or save up enough money to replace everything right before they show up

Posted in: family, home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, front yard, new garden

Wednesday

September 7, 2011 7:17 am \ Leave a Comment \ Mac

The backyard has been a bit of a worry. We had great plans for it all and towards the end we were a little concerned that it wasn’t all going to come together in time for the wedding. In fact, after seeing a gigantic roll of Astroturf at Home Depot that was high on the *maybe* list for quite a while..

Well the last piece of the puzzle fell into place first thing on Sunday morning and we got stuck into making the backyard work. Now i know…it looks like Poppy Jack is doing a LOT of the work in these photos, but I ASSURE you that most of these were staged and posed.

Here was the midway view of the backyard – this border is about 1′ back from the fence and left us with about 6′ of useable space in front of the tree line, down to the retaining wall.

Where will all those FANCY plants go?

What is Poppy Jack doing and who is handing him that green roll? What is in it and where will it go? It’s a mystery, Agatha Christie!

In the meantime, for all you dirty readers..

Oh now that is just disgusting. Who allows this kind of filth on a website? Isn’t there a family filter?

Pee Ess – HAPPY BIRTHDAY POPPY JACK!!!!

Posted in: diy, family, home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, backyard blitz, gardening

Aussie Invasion in full effect.

September 6, 2011 8:47 am \ Leave a Comment \ Mac

So labor day weekend was the perfect opportunity to get a lot of work done in the yard. With only a week left until the wedding, we are kind of in crunch mode, but all in all…doing pretty well.

We got up reasonably early (ok, ok…i needed a little sleep in!) on Saturday and headed out to Meadow Farms to go plant shopping. We managed to stumble across a really knowledgeable fellow who pointed us in the right direction for ideas on the backyard (more on that tomorrow) and some pointers for the front.

From there we headed over to Home Depot in Annandale (their nursery is AWESOME) and grabbed 4 smaller cyprus trees for the front, a palm, some perennials and a metric buttload of mulch to fill in the never ending mulch pit.

We tossed a ton of our empty pots and pallet pieces in to take up some room – and we used some of the potting mix bags to act as barriers along the edge of the paved border. Poppy Jack also made some little wooden covers for the vents at the front of the house to keep them clear of mulch – he’s an idea’s man.

Cyprus front and center!

These bad boys in their faux whiskey barrels did an incredible job of breaking up the (boring) front of the house. The paved stone border is actually glued in place, but the barrels & planters can be pulled in an out for easy access and maintenance.

In order to not put a ton of mulch and potting soil to waste, Mum came up with the brilliant idea of using smaller planters within the bordered off area to plant perennials in. Then, once everything was in place we topped it all off with a layer of mulch to make it look like a planter bed that was always there.

Me and mah mum, hard at work for the cameras. Our outfits even match. Oh so cute!

Finished pictures are on their way soon!

Posted in: diy, family, home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, front yard, gardening

The magic is coming..

September 5, 2011 7:15 am \ Leave a Comment \ Mac

And this is just a shot of the backyard…

Posted in: home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, backyard blitz, gardening

Front yard carnage

August 31, 2011 8:44 am \ 1 Comment \ Mac

Aussie Invasion. That should probably be the theme of the next couple of months. My mum came up with a brilliant idea for the front of the house….which originally looked like this

Lovely huh? Trust me, the inside is a LOT nicer.

So the front of the house had me stumped for a very long time. On one side, we have a long section of house at the front that is just covered in siding and looks awful…there’s not even a window to break it up. At the other side there are two overgrown bushes in front of the littleb’s window and not really enough room to do anything sexy.

Or so i thought…

If i had been quicker (or smarter), i would have grabbed a before picture of the area. But basically what you can see of the weed mat is the edge of the original space. It was just one big rectangle that was covered in ~~grass~~ weeds.

Mum came up with the idea of adding a row of brick edging to the front section to border off the plants, which would then curve around back towards the house. We would also add in a third (fast growing) bush and then finish it off with pea gravel at the front.

Even after we had only added in the row of bricks and some of the mulch at the back the front was looking absolutely amazing. Every time I looked over I came up with another f-bomb-adjective to describe how awesome it was.

The fact that our front yard is now so nice, that it makes me want to be a nicer person is saying something

I love it. I love the contrast of colours, i love the way the mulch looks against the pea gravel and I love love love how it softens our beautifully clad siding on the front of the house.

Wait till you see what the rest of the front has in store…

Posted in: home \ Tagged: aussie invasion, front yard, gardening

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