A Nice Relaxing Saturday Afternoon....

Well, it's not a usual event for me to be at loose ends...but to-day I am.

Was expecting to have the Summer Kitchen roof tiles off by now and the front room windows painting completed and a bunch of great pics to load!

Neither happened, so am watching some of my fave movies...Love Never Dies being right near the top on the list...and it has been raining gently, on and off all day, with bursts of sun every so often.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o06IIuvFBYI     ...That is the link if you want to watch it too.

Got a lot of fiddly stuff done this week as 2 old friends who seemingly abandoned me some years ago, suddenly turned up on Wednesday, very unexpectedly. It was great to have Mo & Jo back again and am now able to fly through a lot of things I just could not find either the energy, inclination or enthusiasm to even look at, let alone do, for a few years.

I really haven't been 100% since about this time 2 years ago when I O D'd on plums!

Yup, plums.

The novelty of picking and cooking my own home grown fruit was too big a temptation, so I'd eat them for breakfast, lunch, morning and afternoon tea, supper, tea, dinner...you name it and I just ate plums and youhurt all day, every day for about a month...the colours were stunning together!

Anyways, I started feeling weaker and weaker and quite dizzy while in OZ that July, August, I could not do a thing and just laid on the bed all day. It was a bit of a shock, as I thought... is this what old age is???

I looked up a few things that could be wrong and found when you "pig out" like that on sugars, even fructose, (fruit sugars), the glycogen that shoots out from the liver is not good over a prolonged time...so imagine that happening over a month or so...

Plus, I felt vitamin B12 was depleted and possible lowered iodine levels, so once I got that back into my system, I started feeling physically better, but MO & Jo were still missing, no matter what I did.
I had to force myself to get up, go jogging and even wash up the dishes etc, it was horrible.

Last year, thankfully, it was a bad year for plums, so I was not tempted, but did ration myself to no more than 4 a day...but got the itches all over me! So, nature was keeping me safe.

Then, the other day with the big cherry glut here at the moment, with 5 different lots of cherries...   I O. D'd on them, ate so many, I really enjoyed them, but was so full...

Then next morning I woke up as usual and in my daily "10 Thank-You's Journal", in which I'd beg every day for help to be able to be enthusiastic and empowered again, but seemingly, even though I was jogging regularly 6 mornings a week, without forcing myself anymore, that seemed to be all I could...or as my Mum would say...would do!

In the end, that morning, after thinking over what my Mother would say about it if she was here, I said to my Senior Partner, that I was not going to ask for help any more, until I used what He had already given me to use, but wasn't using.

So, off I went jogging at a bit before 6am, nothing different, and to my greatest surprise and joy, MO & JO were on the verandah when I got back from my jog...and I haven't stopped since then. I suddenly felt empowered, and did a few things and then a few more and so on for the next 3 days.

Painted the red and green stools, cut the foam cushions and working out how to cover the cushions to waterproof them. Am getting Imre on Monday to staple this bright oil-cloth on, which will tidy up the bits sticking out...These are for the completed spa deck. Spa coming soon.

Nearly fainted the other day as 3 of these heads popped out of the nest! Wow, the storks certainly don't muck around! All the chicks are flapping their wings now they can stand on the edge of the nests.

The morning glory is growing about 2 inches a day...

Some hay bale art from the area, in the local paper here.

Experimenting with colours for the floor. If I apply the wash itnthe colour I want the yellow colour of the pine comes thru' and I don't like that. The grey, near the blackish one, is probably best as it allows the grain to show, but not the yellow. A bit hard to see, but it is so different inside to outside!

The workers up the road are building a BBQ area for their work yards...hahaha. Me fixing walls with patches missing and they are making walls with patches missing! hahaha...

A bright array of Petunias in Tiszafured.

A nice icecream and a plant shop next door in Tiszafured.

Pretty roses in the Centrum, Tiszafured.

A bit of a jungle up there on Thursday morning!

Thought I'd died and gone to heaven...I actually found a great black lettuce supplier at the Markets in Tiszafured on Wednesday. Sardine, fetta, sundried and plain tomato capsicum, cucumber and a great balsamic and garlic dressing. Yummo!

Imre will complete this end of the verandah in the next  month, then we can clean up the verandah at long last! Klaas gave me 18 of these little windows, so we used 4 here, 2 in the tool shed, 4 in the new window in the kitchen and 8 will go in the Summer Kitchen. It takes 4 for a window! 2 inside and 2 "outside". But here I only want a wind break, so we only need 1 layer...It is lovely and sunny here all year, so the wind break will be great.

You can see quite a bit of fancy work to be done on the restoration work here, but we have worked out how to do it now. Coming up for July!

Painting these 18 windows in the front room is a nightmare! So I gave it to Imre to do and he's not that keen either it seems, so now I have another guy coming on Saturdays, hopefully, to do them. There's 6 windows in each window space!

You can see the fancy cement work needed to restore this to its original glory. The arched window will look great when it is completed and painted soon.

Outside look at the morning glory growing madly! Imre is going to re-do the pillars as the cement keeps falling off. So he suggested he put that gauze stuff he used inside, around them to hold the render on.

Imre applying the last of  the magic coating before the painting happens for the middle room. But he had a terrible blow this week as his wife found big lumps under her armpit. A trip to the Dr revealed it could be very nasty, requiring possible surgery, radiation and chemo. Poor Imre is besides himself with concern as their kids are only 8 and 10 yrs old. He missed 2 days of work too, so I'm behind, but that is not the worry...the bad news is for him and his family.

Painting these things is not Imre's fave job...or mine, but if the guy does not come next week, I'll have another go, now MO&JO are back. Imre can fix and putty up and replace all the broken glass etc, so it should be relatively ok to do...

This is the last bit of the outside to do. See how close the fence is? Just on 2 foot from the house!Looking at a new front fence, just for this bit here for next year too.

Unusual floral arrangements...Look like boomerangs actually, albeit, hairy ones!

The lovely little park and fountain at my bus stop here in Tiszaigar.

Looks different from the other end of it!

 OK...that's the very interesting, happy early week, then a sad ending to the week here.

Will see how the jobs go this coming week...looks like I'll have to get the paintbrush out and try my patience with these jolly tiresome windows myself, if the guy does not turn up next Sat .

...and there it still sits, waiting to be used and loved again

This is the best of the crumbling walls. There were no footings, seemingly and no inside floors, so the gophers have a ball here and then nature wears away the rest.  Wait until you see next weeks pics of the other end and inside...and the roof at the back and...

I want everything completed inside by end July ish, so Imre can get the outside of the house painted, put down the paths all around the house etc etc, before he gets working on the insides of the Summer Kitchen/Romantic Cottage in August/Sept.

Arhhh well, we'll do what we can with what we have I guess, one can do no more.
Cheers and all the best.
Love to all,
M
xxxx




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Middle Room Nearing Completion...

Wow, a new window!
All cut out and put in... in one day.

Imre cut out the hole, made a window frame and added 4 windows to it, bought some antique hinges and now we have another 4 windows to add to the 18 in the front room and 4 existing ones here, plus these new ones to paint!

But...I'll be able to look out the window and see who is at the front door now, plus later on will put a little ledge outside to pass things thru from the kitchen.

It looks good and lets in a bit of extra light and as soon as Imre completes the wall repairs around it, the entire room gets painted, (ceiling, beams and walls) and exciting, exciting, the timber floor goes down!
I had a great confirmation yesterday when I was invited to a neighbour's house to look at some furniture in an uninhabited, really big house for here, that is for sale.

I think they said 3 million ft...about $15,000 Ausd.

Lots of rooms, a really big bathroom, with bath, basin and loo inside, real kitchen space with water connected to a basic kitchen bench and sink, large hot water system, huge square, sunny entrance, parquetry floor in formal lounge, 2 or 3 big bedrooms, roomy central passage,  gas heaters everywhere in the place and a few wood heaters too. In great condition from a quick first glance.

All on a lovely big block of land, with the normal big sheds and outbuildings etc for over here.
Any takers?

Lo and behold...they had floorboards in most rooms, just like I am putting in here!
The first ones I've actually seen in real life over here, so am thrilled to bits that I am indeed on the right track with trying to make the place authentic...sort of!

Found the BIGFOOT flooring place about 50 miles away to buy the glue too.
It is $10.20 a litre, comes in 13 litre drums and needs 1 litre per 1 M2 of timber floor coverage!!!

Boy, I knew it was costly, but wow! It is an expansive, expensive, water resistant and sound reducing adhesive, especially for glueing floor boards down onto concrete! Who would have known?

I need 65 M2 timber, so the glue will cost twice as much as the timber!

Then it only needs 12 hrs to set before sanding and after that I'm not sure how to apply the whitewash to the floor boards, which will be the most exciting thing for sure.

The weather is nice and summery, hitting the 30's outside, but inside it's still only 22-24C, so it is perfect for me.
We had a big thunder and electrical storm the other night, which reminded me of our early Qld days and the daily, 4pm thunder storms in summer.
It lasted a lot longer than the 30 minute Qld storms and was not too humid the next day, thankfully.

Bear is still here and I've had to tie him up in the day and lock him in the inner yard at night as he lays in my garden and has been eating the pansies!
I wondered why the pansies in one area in the oval garden, kept on dying out disappearing altogether and was pulling weeds out the other day and heard "chomp, grunt, chomp grunt(of delight) under the bushes next to me!

I sprung the blessed rascal, laying there, munching on my "prize pansies"!
For some reason he does not understand the garden is off limits, but he also thinks he is a cow...or maybe a deer, as he loves lettuce, carrots, grass, weeds, roots of weeds, spinach leaves, strawberries etc etc.

Dog was easy to train not to go near the garden, but Bear....another story.
So I have to tie him up over at the old lean to on the summer kitchen for the time being, until it is pulled down in a few weeks time..and then hopefully, he'll be gone.

I had no idea how much energy the dogs drained out of me...worrying if they barked too much, it would bother the neighbours, concerned all the time they were contained within the yard and not digging escapee holes everywhere,  having to keep an eye on Bear incase he bolted off with tools, gloves, gumboots etc etc...which he seemed to do so effortlessly...all the blessed time.

But after filling in all the yard holes they made in the lawns and finally, digging up and eating my plants, was the last straw this week! After about 2 hrs of Bear being tied up...I realised I could sit outside, have a cuppa and not be stared at by big, soppy, beautiful brown eyes in a sideways cocked head, staring adoringly and ever so wondrously, at me.

Sighhh, so sad I'm not into dogs, as he is just like a teddy bear, you can prop him up anywhere and he stays! Such a lovely natured doggie and he is going to be a big one indeed.

Lunch Burger...of feta cheese, fresh pineapple slices, capsicum and tomato on rice cakes with baby spinach leaves, with a garlic, balsamic dressing. Much too yummo!

For anyone with arthritis or painful joints, here is a simple pain relief remedy. I spread it on my 2 rice cakes before I add 2 soft poached eggs in the mornings. It is a teaspoon of turmeric, 1/4  teaspoon of black pepper...and I add some cinnamon, as it is supposed to be good for something...probably memory? hehehe...

 

A neighbour dropped over some red cherries, an early variety, the day before yesterday. So I went cherry picking again, only inside this time. Had just returned from lunch in town with a friend and on the way home we stopped the car by the roadside and had a nice dessert of fresh cherries from the trees growing wild along the roadsides. So it is cherries everywhere just now. Then another friend brought me a big bowl of yellow and red early cherries yesterday, so I think I'm a bit over cherries for a few days!

These are tiny miniature roses on tiny bushes! They smell lovely too. The cream one is really beautiful.

This was a graph I found on a video about using Turmeric and was shocked at the results when 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper was added to the mix. You need to also have it with natural fats too to help with the uptake and absorption. eg...runny egg, avocado, nuts etc.The bottom line is without the black pepper and the 2,000% line is with 1/4 teaspoon of black pepper!

Imre fixing the carbie, air filter and wheels on the mower. This time he ran an axle right through to both sides and put the wheels on that. Wow, it is sooo easy to mow now.

The only thing I planted this year are the little white plants. Everything else self grew!  Having Bear is such a deterrent, but he'll be gone soon when the people who took Dog, bring their car from Belgium, so they can take him to the vet for his desexing op.

Some of the darker cherries we gathered from the roadsides.

Imre starting on chopping out the hole for the new kitchen window, before he completes this end of the middle room..

All done in here, now he's gone outside getting ready for another chop-chop!

These are 4 of the 18 the windows Klaas gave me from a reno he was doing. We used 2 in the tool shed, 4 on sealing the doorway arch on the end of the verandah and will use 4 here...2 inside and 2 outside and the other 8 on 2 windows in the summer kitchen. This is as authentic as it can get and recycling at its best!

Chop-chop inside...You can see he has broken thru' already, as there was a window here once but it was sort of sealed up. This unpainted area was where my son and a friend put the big shower while we sorted out rooms etc.

Yeahhy, breakthrough...You can see inside now.

The blue door at Imre's right is the door leading up to the attic. I'll get him to make a bench with drop down hinges on it to use for passing stuff in and out thru the kitchen window. We'll use the drop down hinges when ever having to go upstairs to the attic. I'll get him to put it in after everything is completed.

So, window frame in, now to seal it with that foam stuff.

I still can't believe the mess that these mud bricks make!

Foam in partly and mess cleaned up!

Inside windows hung...now to do the outside ones...

All done...4 windows extra now to paint! Next he will make the mortar mix and fill the holes, make it neat and paint both inside and outside.

OK, that's it  for now...My memory card is playing up, so maybe next pics might be when it's all painted???

Hope all is well with you,
See you all next time,
Cheers,
M

Front Room Done...

Moved in to the front room from the kitchen/dining room while Imre completes that room!
Just as well I like moving things around...a lot!

It is nice and sunny in the front room now that mid year is only a few weeks away. The sun comes in from 5 am..ish to after 3pm...ish, so it is very bright indeed!

Imre should only take a few days to complete the middle room, then he'll put in the power and sort out the kitchen plumbing again. It is all there from when the bathroom was there before I moved it into the kitchen!

Then when all the painting, plumbing and electricity is completed, he'll lay the floor in there and when it's dry, I'll move back into the new kitchen and dining room.

Still will have to have a custom made kitchen, but that's no problem and will take about 6-8 weeks the guy said. He has to come back and remeasure again after all the walls etc are completed, as there is not one straight line, wall or one 90 degree angle anywhere in this place at all!

The first rose of Summer!

Sun coming up just after 5am here. Wondered if it would be a clear day when I peeped out!

Yup, those cherry blossoms you saw from 1-10 April are now cherries on 16th May! Amazing how fast they grow and ripen.

Poppy time again as I do my rounds on the morning jog! Even in the middle of moving, there is always space for a vase of fresh flowers...well, a jar today, as I packed away almost everything else!

This is my accidental rambling rose! I thought I bought a proper rose and it seems the stock root grew, but the rose graft did not! hahaha, Shopping is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you'll get over here!

This one grew as the label showed in the picture!

Just a quickie blog-ette today to get ahead a bit again as somehow I got so far behind there for a few months!

Temp inside now is 23C, outside a bit warmer...hot in the sun, but pleasant.

We have had 3 nice sunny days in a row after a couple of rainy, cloudy and grey sky months.
Hopefully that has passed and it will be nice now.

My vegie garden is bare this year as Bear is still a puppy and just has to chew everything...all the time!
I buy him lots of bones, chicken carcasses to chomp on, plus he has his doggy toys, 4 old shoes, a couple of squares of cut off foam, plus 34 rocks he retrieves from the rock pile and countless bits of wood, weeds and dead twigs!

He is a cutie though. I'll miss him when he goes in a few weeks time, but animals were not on my radar for here. Too much trouble when I travel. Dog has gone and soon Bear will go to live with his Mum along with 5 other female dogs.

The guy who took Dog, said she is the Queen of the 6 dogs he has now and she lays her head on his thigh when he is playing his video games. She sleeps on his couch inside and is loving it!

OK...am off to finish this moving thing - again - and next week, it will be a very different story from inside the Little Lodge of Many Wonders!

Maybe a sneak peek?

Bye, do take care,
Cheers,
M
xxxx
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Tool Shed Completed!

Wow, it is finally done!

The reno and remake of half of the old pig pens into the cutest little tool shed this side of Man Cave Heaven...but it is for girls this time. hahaha...

Have to find out the name they give to Girl Caves now!

The lino is down, painting all completed for now, the shelves Imre made at Xmas time, go over this arvo after lunch and then the new bench top goes on and that's it. I have to empty out the kitchen now so we can use the designate bench top for the shed bench, so that is a prompter for me to get a wriggle on and do it.

Will have to find some of that peg board sheeting then get the tools sorted out to hang them up neatly and get the power in when the big room is built, but that's all dressing for later on.

The garden is coming along great guns after all the rain.

In goes the shelves to the new bench in the tool shed. Then one last lick of paint to cover last minute fixes and we are done! The doors will be painted with the externals walls after they are all done later on in one big push.

All going well with the rest of the renos...which, once completed, need to be maintained...ooops!
More work. hahaha.

Not too bad, going from this and below...

The end under repair....

It is satisfying creating the remake of these historic old buildings. The end of this shed was sort of OK...in places, that is, so we saved as much as possible as it really was pretty sound and strong!

Bear, just rolling over as he heard me move! I can't believe I actually let a dog, of all things, in the house with me! He sits at my feet and is a real softy. He loves the fan heater blowing on him after he's been out in the rain...funny little fellow.

Lines must be straight, sort of like this Richard! They'd be better if there weren't so many mole holes and mounds and undermining all over the place. Only one third finished mowing here. This is taken from halfway down the paddock, but you get the idea! More fruit trees will go in the section to the right with the cherry, apricot and nectarine trees. Then some big shade trees will go to the left a bit to form a circle with a big clearing in the centre so as the trees grow, they form a cooling canopy of shade for summer

Lino joins all glued down and weights placed on them. The last few coats of paint will be done in a few days when this one dries out and then the benches etc go in.

Exciting times ahead, as all the tools go out of the house and the house becomes a house, all by this weekend of the 20th May! Of course the house still has a few finishing touches, like removing and re positioning the bathroom wall, making a toilet door to suit the size of the others in the house, and finally having a real kitchen installed.

Am waiting to show you the big reveal in a few weeks, room by room. Coming together quickly now as there are only minor things all over the place to fix, touch up, hang up, move around, tidy up etc, but it is happening at long last.

And, of course, the last thing is the floor in each room to go down. We are having trouble finding the right glue for the wood here, so it looks like a big trip to Budapest to buy a couple of 20 litre drums of polyurethane glue...which is more expensive than the entire flooring, hahaha.

Oh well, it is time to get the mower going again and complete the mow for this mid week cut.
Imre is going to fix the wheels on the mower, clean out the carby etc etc in the morning and hopefully sharpen the mower blades too.
2 other families in the village use the mower too and one always cleans out all the wet grass from underneath, which is a blessing. Both always return it filled to the brim with benzine. But I think the dragging of it along behind a bike to the other end of the village every week probably is not really good for the wheels, so we'll have to work out something there.

It has taken one heck of a beating over the 3 years it while it tamed a 6 foot high paddock of weeds into a 3 inch high paddock of weeds!
It never misses a beat. One pull and it starts, but the wheels and handles are falling apart!
It is a toss up re buying a new one now and keeping ole' faithful as a spare or giving it to the other folk to share.

New mowers are very cheap considering!
Must be a Briggs & Stratton motor as those things go on forever.

Am off will see you all next week from inside my newly completed front room while Imre does his magic on the finishing touches in the middle room.
I forgot about this...he's putting in a 2nd kitchen window which will overlook the front door!
This will be a great asset so I can see who is there before running through the place to see who is there!

Bye now,
Cheers and take care,
M
xxxx

Want to Sit and Watch The Grass Grow?

Yes, it's that time of the year again when you finish mowing the paddock and it has grown almost half an inch from when you first mowed that morning!

Amazing.

All is good here, Imre is almost finished rendering the inside walls in the tool shed.
He put in the windows, cleaned up the footings cement ooze from last year, made the new door way, put in the door and tidied up the ceiling gaps from the original old animal pens.

When we put up the new thermal brick walls, the shed became a foot wider inside and of course with me trying to hang onto the old original ceiling, it ended up being a foot too short where it met the new walls.

So, Imre to the rescue again and with a wave of his magic hammer and saw, a few bits of patching sorted out that big gap! Well, it was a foot wide and 15 feet long actually, in the tool shed, so some sort a gap it was.

When it's all painted next week, you won't know there was ever a mess there.

Am a bit sorry I didn't realize that the new walls would have made the entire old shed larger inside, otherwise I'd have made it into a caretakers cottage. It is amply large enough for that and is the size of a big caravan, without the end area which we haven't done anything with yet.

There were 3 pig pens originally and I knocked the wall out between 2 of them and made the tool shed and Zoltan dug down about 9 inches and gained the extra height needed. The end pig pen is supposed to be a junkshed or something as I really wont have any room for just stuff! I need my son Peter here to bring in a shipping container to make a great shed just for stuff!

A sunset last month from my back fence...

But in hindsight, I should have taken out the old ceiling made of timber with 6 inches of mud and reeds on it and added a few extra rows of bricks that way.

Never mind, it is fine thus far.

Dog has been given away and Bear goes on the weekend to the same family, hopefully.
They had 6 female dogs and one died last month, so they wanted to replace it.

Dog was the perfect answer. Then when he came to get to meet Dog, he fell in love with Bear too!
Hoping for a happy outcome there on Sunday next.

Then I can get in and clean up the yard and replant all the gladiola bulbs that Bear seems to have sniffed out and dug up. He thinks they are truffles or something exotic!

We begin work on the honeymoon Cottage shortly and am just getting the materials in place now.

Have you ever seen a side opening tip truck?

I hadn't noticed them before but they use them for loads of sand and gravel in one delivery and are able to tip one type of material at a time so they don't get mixed together.

They tip one and then move away, back up to another spot and either back tip or side tip that load. Very interesting...well, for me anyways!

The awesome side tipping truck in action...

Great idea...

Giving the sand a bit of help there...

Not bad hey?

Found a great idea for over on the big deck...not sure if I'll use it, but it looks really nice and cozy with walls around it and the BBQ inside and all..

This one had the whitewashed flooring in gloss, not a flat or semi flat finish like I'm thinking.

Anyways, that's all for a very short blog this week, so see you next weekend.

Hope all are well.
Cheers,
Mary
xxx