Two adventures

On the weekend we visited a place called the Brick Pit, which was obviously once a quarry for making bricks. It's now an environmentally protected area due to a rare green and gold frog that lives there and it was turned into a great aerial walk which circumnavigates the pit.

It took a while to convince our Little Man to stop taking the exits so we could do the full walk, but he finally got the idea and we walked the whole way around :-)

On Monday, we had the chance to catch up with two friends with whom I volunteered in Indonesia about five years ago. Bev lives up by theLakes and Mel and her Indonesian husband Dikky were visting. We took to two hour drive up there to have lunch and catch up after a long time apart.

It was a very happy reunion for me. It brought back so many memories of Indonesian life and the friends I made there. It also allowed me to reflect that at that time I could not have imagined my future as it is now, and how happy and blessed I am with my little family.

Bev lives right on the water and on such a calm day, the water was glassy and smooth. A view one could never grow tired of!

Thanks to Bev for her hospitality and for such a great lunch. Even though Dikky and Mel were exhausted from travelling they made us welcome and it was a day I'll never forget.

"We forgot to take his plug out for the photo!" says Bev.

Bedroom renovations!

I don't have any 'before' shots of our bedroom but basically Ben has painted the very dark wooden built-ins with a Porter's high gloss enamel in Milk White. It's a non-toxic paint that doesn't smell very much at all when being applied.

Our bedroom is very small, so it was important that we painted the wardrobes white, and the gloss on the paint reflects the light from the window and helps make the room appear larger.

Ben also fixed new handles on the doors and little silver knobs on the very top sliding doors.

Nice job!

Bathroom renovations!

Finally, I'm posting about Ben's renovations! I'm sorry to family in other parts of OZ that it's taken so long..

Below are pictures of the original bathroom which had a charming avocado and khaki green colour theme. It's a very small bathroom and the busy pattern on the tiles made it look smaller:

You can see that he has already painted the inside of the shower in the above photo.

Mmmmm. lovely...

Ben painted all the bathroom walls, tiles and ceiling white, which I think has created a calming effect. The tiles have a detailed embossed pattern on them and once painted white, the lovely texture of the tiles came though more clearly (although it's hard to see in the photos).

He painted the basin white with a special paint for sinks.

He made from scratch a lovely frame for the mirror which matches the cabinet.

And he put a new fly screen on the window as the old one fell out.

With brackets bought from Ikea, Ben made the shelves and stained them. I love these shelves! We really needed a towel rack and I like having fresh towels available in the bathroom.

He also bought the cabinet in the above picture on ebay and put it up himself.

My one contribution to all of this work is the fishbone fern! The rest is all my talented husband.