Weekend jobs

 

 

 

This weekend we were raking and leveling the sand on top of the compacted fill for the slab. It was just my Mum and Dad out there with me on Saturday because Guy had work commitments....although come Sunday when the rain REALLY started to fall, Guy was back in his gumboots with Dad and they worked the whole day in the pouring rain. Gotta love them.

I actually thought I'd add this little video my Mum took of Dad and I working....it's super boring....ha! But this is what our weekends are like these days.

Party on, Guy. Party on, Katrina.

 

Oh and yes, you heard right....only Guy and Dad were working out at the section on Sunday. Because I was tending to Rufus who we will now refer to as Frankenkitty. He had an emergency trip to the vet due to a nasty abscess on his noggin! It was horrible, there was blood and gag reflexes (not his), a very angry Frankenkitty and a slight misunderstanding on my part that my cat was indeed pregnant and having an emergency caeserean....slightly ridiculous, he is a tomcat.... Obviously what the vet assistant meant was that they had to perform an emergency caeserean on a different lady-animal and Rufus would be a little late. Of course. That aside, he is recovering well all thanks to Dr Thea Sweeney...aka Angel Face, from Total Vets.

 

 

Baby showering 2.0

 

Last Saturday I had the absolute PRIVILEGE of throwing my Sister and Brother in law a baby shower. After 15 years of a gorgeous marriage and good times they are finally becoming a family of three after adopting their beautiful daughter who will be home with them in September!! Woohoo

I flew over to Melbourne with my Mum and I only lost my passport twice once.... Thank goodness for the lady in 20e who found it on her seat and tracked me down. I am useless when it comes to traveling without Guy, next time I am off away on my own I have asked him to put me in a straight jacket of sorts and draw a diagram on my front which points out little pockets containing my passport, boarding pass etc and I'll just be quiet and let the straight jacket diagram carry me through.

I wanted to make a special gift for the baby shower (kinda like Hudson's book) that Gracie could hold on to and something that everyone who loves her and her parents had contributed to. I took further inspiration from Hudson and his intense love for his blankie and decided a blanket was going to be it.

 

 

 

 

We bought a gorgeous cotton/cashmere blanket and then I took a trip to spotlight and picked up some wool and pompom makers. We set up a pompom making area and after everyone left I trimmed all the pompoms and attached them around the edges of the blankie with some wool and a wool needle. Actually Homestyle mag had a great 'how to' recently which featured pompoms which is worth a squiz!

 

 

 

A pic of the two new parents holding it up and a quick run through the Over app and it made a super sweet thank you card for them to send to their friends.

 

P.S I solemnly swear to stop being lazy and using my camera for my photos....

Watch out fashion week

 

 

This build is one of the most exciting things we've ever done.... Ok, it is the most exciting thing we've ever done but it does mean we have had to kiss our weekends goodbye. We work our normal jobs through the week and first thing Saturday morning we are up to the block to get into it. Me with smoothie in hand, and still pulling items of clothing on (I really don't like mornings) often my ensemble is looked lovingly at (in an "are you serious" kinda way) by Guy. I have a couple of pairs of jeans or ripped jean shorts that are my staple bottom half attire, I will always have mismatched socks....I will never understand how other people don't, but the rest is where the fun comes in, it could be one of my old shirts or tshirts... Not all that exciting.... Or everything else could belong to Guy....or my dad.

There is something about doing the sort of work we are doing that makes me want to steal their clothes. Once when we were renovating the house we are in now, I was pictured wearing an old pair of my dads 'work cords' held up by a piece of cord and his flannel shirt. I look like I had been shrunk, but I painted two rooms like that. As unpractical as I may have looked, I was happy with a weird sense of satisfaction....yep, I took them when you weren't looking and I'm making them fit. What'ya gonna do?

The thing I love about this, when I have posted a couple of pics to instagram of my Saturday morning get up....it's been well received. People actually like it.....I air punch like a winner and I tell Guy! Some even see it as a carefully curated fashion choice rather than a minor case of kleptomania, which is even cooler. Like I said to my sister, who was one of my tradie attire fans, I'm working on a building site every weekend, doing things like bending steel and picking up wood off cuts, with no ladies bathroom facilities....I need something! And my instagram lady friends gave that to me. They made me feel like my weekend attire was cool, and I will be forever grateful to them!!!!!! Fist bump, insta friends, and blow it up....

 

 

 

 

Hard yakka

It's here!!!! The part we have been so eagerly awaiting and......it sucks! Ha! Foundations are a beast of a thing, especially when your ground is full of gravel and stones and especially when you need to dig 700mm deep around the perimeter and under each load bearing wall. Then you have to do all the boxing (once again we have had a case of the 'amazing neighbours' and we were given a serious amount of boxing to use....unreal!) boxing is not where it ends though.... Not even close, there is so much work that goes into the foundations of a build. Probably more so since New Zealand gave shaking Christchurch off the map a good nudge. On a positive note, I don't think this house will be going anywhere if it tries anything like that again.... Which it won't... touch wood, cross my fingers, touch your hair (is that really a thing)

Guy and Dad have been working rain and shine all weekend and some nights after work to get it done. These men are unstoppable, there hasn't been a lot I can help with at this stage which has been kinda hard to handle, I hate not having a job. I'm sure when the steel tying comes along I'll be recruited because I did such an awesome job of the shed. Can I get a Woop.

Looking forward to the day that a concrete truck arrives full of the stuff....that will be a good day, or as I have been pre warned possibly a little stressful seeing as the concrete floors will be exposed and need to look pretty awesome. So as long as I have a concrete truck on my section and a red wine in my hand, I should be fine.

Consent? Tick!

 

We are officially building consent, finance and insurance approved for our build!!! What a feeeeeling! (Sing it!)

And boy, what a process! Thank God for Guy, I couldn't have done it without him....and I think we only had to use our safe song twice. Not bad at all.

 

 

I say I couldn't have done it without Guy, well I also couldn't have done it without Olivia and Brent from Design and Consents North Canterbury, those two are nothing short of amazing. We picked up with DCNC after a slightly failed attempt with a different draughtsman.... After our experience with the first person I had lost a bit of spark over the project to be honest. I felt that everything was going to be too hard basket or out of our budget or way behind our schedule. We had to cut ties with him and a chunk of our budget, which was a bit of an ouch moment.

 

But it was onward and upward, DCNC were 100% on our wavelength, nothing was a problem and if there was, they didn't come back with a problem but instead a well explained solution.... A serious breath of fresh air. They had some great ideas for details we would have completely overlooked and now those ideas will make the house even more special. Just to solidify their awesomeness with some back up.... I called the Waimak council at one point to ask a question re: our consent, the man I was talking to said " Oh, I see DCNC have submitted your plans for you, well you can rest assured there will be no problems with that, they are so onto it and thorough, that's the name I like to see when I receive plans" .....oh yea..... I was feeling pretty smug, I had my cool kid strut going. I already knew this, I could tell from my experience with them so far, but hearing it from someone at the council and as just a random point, unrelated to our convo. Well, that was pretty cool.

The best part about this, they are affordable, even for tight purse strings like ours! I couldn't recommend them any more, if you are reading and about to start building, call them!

Tel: +64 3 314 7279

 

 

 

 

 

Upholstery girls

 

A few weeks back my friend and I organised a gaggle of girls to come out to the shed in Waikuku and bring an old dunga of a chair with them (or in Alice's case, a 2 seater sofa, girl got skills) we had a lovely upholstery man called Nigel come along and teach us how to turn these chairs from smelly-yuck to spiffy-wicked in two days.

Not all of us finished the chairs/sofa in the weekend but we all got pretty close, even Fliss whose chair had lived a hard life and was covered in bullet holes, had broken springs and a feared possibility that something furry and alive could have been living in it.

Unfortunately our 'after' photo was taken by Nigel and featured more of his finger than the chairs.... I'll hopefully get some photos from the girls over the next few weeks and show you their before and afters, until then it's just going to be my little fella.

 

 

Here he goes, my little chair's extreme makeover (upholstery edition)

For those with a keen eye, you are right, I have not quite finished..... I just need to staple the underneath cloth down and cover with some calico.......soon.

 

 

 

Fabric from Femme de Brocante ....the girls there were super helpful and friendly which was a real bonus on top of the fabric find!

 

If I can offer any advice for a weekend like this...

• Keep your class small
• Try and pull all of the old fabric and staples out before you go, the first half of our first day was filled with chiseling, ripping, pulling and cussing
• Keep it simple splashy, I was so pleased I didn't choose anything with arms to sew.... In fact my makeover required zero sewing, only a few hand stitches. Although in saying that, it meant I didn't get to learn any of those skills. Pros and cons

 

 

 

Oh yea, this is my sandwich. Haha. The reason I'm sharing is because feeding 8 girls over two days ended up being really easy, this is how I went about it

• Fresh ciabatta rolls
• Baked free range chicken breasts coated in spelt flour, chilli powder, turmeric and salt+pepper, then shredded
• Salad greens
• Beetroot salad (this recipe from the ripe cookbook) without sultanas and with chia seeds and sliced almonds and maple syrup instead of the molasses
• Parsley dressing (my mother in laws recipe)
• Feta

We all just made our own sandwiches and then we ate cookies.

 

It was such a fun weekend and we're all keen to keep catching up over crafty workshops. I'm thinking the next one could be macramé.....

 

Out of the build

We actually do have a life out of the build, I just wanted to prove it to you. We went to an incredible wedding on the 20th and Guy was a handsome groomsman... I apparently started to blush when I saw him.....real smooth.

Such a massively fun party complete with swing band, flash mob, singing wedding party and a roomful of hat wearing heads! I love our possum tail backdrop...