La poussiere

I spent a few days at my Mum's place with the three boys. My Mum is French Polynesian and speaks French fluently. I speak French too but not so fluently - it gets me by, but I do not attempt to intellectualise (not that I do so in English).

After a few days with my Mum and her Franglais, I came back home this afternoon thinking more in French. And the first word that came to mind when I entered our home was la poussiere. The dust.

The poor Sow's Ear is shrouded in a coating of fine dust from yesterday's enormous dust storm. Oh dear. I'm looking at it as I write. Hoping it will blow back to where it came from...to no avail.

Gee, I hate mopping.

Super deluxe monster cooker

Almond butter biscuits and jam drops cooling

Roast beef cooking evenly on the rotisserie

I have never had a new oven before, let alone this super deluxe monster cooker which is gleaming ever so brightly in our renovated kitchen. With all sorts of knobs and buttons, I was a little daunted by it...

But that is all over, after spending Saturday morning at the free cooking course which explains how to use my Ilve oven. What a revelation! I did not realise how advanced cooking technology has become. This oven can turn itself on and off, clean itself, defrost as well as cook. Now, if I can just harness that energy into food preparation, menu planning and grocery shopping I will have it made...

It was well worth the effort to attend, and especially motivating after weeks without a kitchen. I am fairly confident with all the features and know that I am using the oven correctly. Since Saturday, I have made pizza, a rotisserie chicken (stuffed with lemon and garlic), rotisserie beef (with a rosemary and mustard glaze) and two batches of biscuits.

I'm in kitchen heaven.

Mornings

Most mornings at the Sow's Ear, we sit down to have our breakfast on the back deck. It is still a bit brisk at this time of the year, particularly at 6 am when the sun is just making its entrance.

Jason prepares our coffee while I prepare the food. Nothing too fancy, but the shot of caffeine is a great kick-start to the day.



The outlook we have, although mainly suburban, is very serene and we can see one forest reserve. If we are lucky, during the week we see the hot air balloons floating effortlessly across our vista.

The two small specks are the hot air balloons

A nice way to begin the day.

The Lounge room

Photo of lounge room pre-sale - first inspection


Empty lounge room before the move - opening to sun room

Empty lounge room before the move - opening to kitchen

Here are some before shots of the lounge room. It's a fairly decent size but, with two sets of french doors (one set opening out onto the sun room, the other opening out to the front entry) plus a bedroom door opening, it is kind of awkward to place our furniture. It is also the room where the TV lives, not so discretely.

The basic plan is to re-paint the room white - freshening up the VJ walls and bringing much needed light to the core of the house. Jason also wants to straighten the picture rail which is crooked. I've got my eyes peeled for a cabinet on which to place the TV and DVD player, but it has to be high enough to be out of reach from little hands (we are also toying with the idea of wall-mounting the TV).

The bathroom

There are a lot of rooms in the Sow's Ear which have not been photographed yet. I'm going to try to post a few photos of the rooms before we renovate them. It will probably be a while before we get to do anything substantial to them but at least I will have a record of it.

We will have to wait until we have more money before we can do anything with the bathroom. At this stage it is fine and functions adequately. The previous owners left it in such a poor unclean state. Behind the bathtub looked like it had never met a mop before, so there was a thick layer of gooey scum to welcome me to our new home.

I oiled the cabinet and timber mirror frame to replenish the wood and to remove the globs of toothpaste ingrained into the wood. Jason removed the cheap timber rails and hooks - leaving behind the bare minimum for us to hang our towels. I changed the moldy cream floral shower curtain with just a cheap plain white curtain.

Funny how such small things like that improve a room. Oh and a reasonable clean helps too!

We will probably paint the bathroom walls and windows to freshen it up until we have some dollars to do a decent renovation. I'd like really like a new toilet!