My poor neglected blog

Tis a true fact that exercise has taken over my life!  Most days now I'm up early, maybe every second day, and off out the door at 7am in the dark.  I've joined Snap Fitness Gym and I'm there around 7.40 or so and I can get a good 30-40 minutes work out in.  Then I go to work.  You'd think I'd be fatigued but there's a kind of rush that comes over you during the morning and I swear you can't get the smile off my face.

Of an evening when I get home it's just way too cold to be up here at the other end of the house on the computer.  Even now I'm sitting here with a coat on, cause I can't be bothered finding the blow heater to turn it on.   It's just so much more appealing to sit in the cosy warmth of the log fire!

I am so sick of winter!  Enough said.

Bathroom renos

We are knee deep in some renovations at the moment.  It's probably taken oh about 3 years to get to this point, but you can't rush things, can you.  Here's the story, I really ought to scrap it.

Quite a number of years now our shower leaked and water was coming through to the passageway on the other side of the wall.  So we took the shower out and had a new one installed.  But the plumber who was hooking up the pipes said our house was too low to the ground and he wouldn't be able to get under it, we'd need to lift some tiles in the bathroom so he could get in through the floor boards and hook it up that way.  Of course the tiles that were removed broke, but he needed a bigger area to access, so Mike took another two strips of tiles out, which also broke.  They removed the floor board underneath and lo and behold there was a big beam in the way, so the lifting of the tiles were for nothing.  They ended up having to get to the pipes via the passageway and under the wall.

Well that was quite a few years ago now, and the shower was put in, but the surrounds were never finished, and the tiles never replaced.  We've just had some thick plastic over the floorboards to stop them from getting wet.

Mike's good mate Tony knew this was a source of frustration for me, I just wanted the tiles replaced and the bathroom finished!  So one day recently he was down at the tip and he ran into the handy man tiler that he knew.  He almost dragged him by the ear to our house, not quite, and he did come willingly, he wasn't hijacked or anything.  So he had a look and said he'd be back.

He didn't come back.  Not right away.   But he's here now!  YAY!

So my idea was that while we were retiling the whole bathroom, not just a patch job, we may as well get a new vanity/basin unit too to replace the pine wood 70's style one we had.  That was just too much for poor Mike and in an effort to get the tiling done said that lets just get the tiling done and we can replace the vanity later.  Grrrrr.

I got a phone call last Thursday, a bit sheepish, asking me to go shopping.  FOR A VANITY UNIT!!!  Apparently they were moving it so that the floor underneath could be prepared for tiling and the whole thing fell apart.

I promise I didn't sabotage it!    :-)

So at the moment we have a lovely sleek white vanity unit sitting in the passageway while we're waiting for the tiler to come back tomorrow for the next stage of the job.  Yep, he's even coming on a Sunday for us, helps that he lives just up the street!

On the scrapping front

I love scrapping our history, family snippets that are so easy to be lost over time, particularly now with dad gone, I want to ensure his memory stays alive.  And I love heritage scrapping, I think I'm truly happiest doing this style of work.   In a past life I played for many many years, 20+ years, in various brass bands.  It was a family thing with my dad and poppa also playing in brass bands.  For a short while dad and I were in the same band as I was growing up in my teenage years, and this was a story that I will never forget.  And yes, one of those snippets in our family history you just don't want to lose.

Credits Designer Digitals.

And with that I need to take these weary old bones to bed!

Black Caviar

Anyone getting up (or staying up) to watch Black Caviar race tonight? Not into horse racing here at all but can't help but be caught up in the excitement of this magnificent horse. We'll be watching.

Happy Birthday QE2

And thanks for the public holiday.  Hope you don't mind but I didn't partake in cake, it kind of doesn't fit in with the 12wbt program!  But as of last Wednesday I'm now down 5.4 kg.  Yay me!   Roll on next Wednesday weigh in.

As far as the week went, it was pretty pissy last week.   I had a car accident on Thursday night.   I was coming home on a high after going to the gym after work and doing a particularly good session, the endorphins must have been kicking in.  I remember I had my Billy Joel CD on in the car and was singing at the top of my voice.

Now bear in mind between the town that I work in, and the town that I live in, is about 50km of farmland.  I was about 15 or so minutes from home, in the middle of nowhere, not a house to be seen, pitch black and I got up to the section where I knew they had been doing roadworks forever.  Slowed my speed down as usual.  But what I didn't know was that they had spread a thick layer of gravel across the road.

My car went  into a skid and went onto the wrong side of the road.  Thank you dad or grandma or grandpa or whoever up there was looking down on me that night, making sure there was no oncoming traffic, let alone the big trucks that travel that road.  I corrected, I probably braked which is the wrong thing to do, and I couldn't get out of the skid and I skidded clear across the road.  I remember thinking okay I missed the white post on the side of the road, but saw the big tree I was heading towards, and to be quite honest thought that this was it. Until the car landed in a ditch and stopped.

A lovely lady stopped not long after when she saw I was off the road at a perculiar angle and with my hazard lights on.  I was probably hysterically ringing Mike at that stage.   She stayed with me until Mike got there about 15 minutes later.  The car was undriveable, the front passenger wheel had bent at a wierd angle under the car, Mike thinks the axle has probably bent or broken, my hub cap was actually broken clean in half as if it was a plate that had split in two.   

While we were waiting for the tow truck, the amount of people then that stopped when they saw both my car and Mike's car with hazard lights on, to see if we were okay, was really heartwarming.  Some we knew that were headed home to our town, some we didn't know, a lot had said they had skidded in the gravel earlier on in the day, so at least I felt a bit better when hearing that.  

Mike wanted to stay home this weekend and cancel a long awaited camp that he was going to, but I made him go.  I didn't need a babysitter.  Well I didn't have a car so I wasn't about to do any more damage.  So I've had a weekend of just me.  Mike had no phone reception but there was a hill he could climb to the top of and get a bar on his phone so he was doing that to keep a check on me.

So now the insurance merry-go-round begins.  They've said I should hear back from their assessor by Wednesday, so fingers crossed it won't be a long drawn out process.

:-(

On the scrapping front...

Scrapping is my therapy, pure and simple, so I had time this weekend to use one of the Studio Double-D templates, which was going to be perfect for scrapping some photos of Molly and Lucky on their favourite walk.  I love how you can get a template, add, subtract, turn, flip, whatever your heart desires to use it as a jumping off point and make it truly your own.  

This is the Layer Works template I used, created by Kayleigh Wiles, which as you can see is quite the beachy page, with the starfish and the bucket.

Add a few things to accentuate the story I was telling, like golf balls, and gum leaves, change the orange to blue to match the blue in Mike's shirt, and add the daisy's cause they are just such happy flowers, and this is how it changed...

Credits Designer Digitals.

Love how versatile the Layer Works are.  And it's a great way to get inside the amazing Kayleigh's head as to her powers of construction in a scrap page.  

And with that I'm off to bed.  I'm borrowing Mike's car for the time being to get to work and home, making sure for at least a while I come home before it gets dark, so I can get my nerve up again.  I have 10 days car hire on my insurance, but I'm going to wait to see what the assessor says and how long my car will be, before I work out when I'll use that.

Another weekend nearly over

Usually when the weekend hits I stay as far away from Warrnambool as I can.  I travel that road in and out every day, 100km round trip, I know every pot hole for sure.  But I've been in on both Saturday and Sunday this weekend.  Urrgh.

Last night we went for dinner at a friend's of Mike's from Masons.  They're an older couple and Mike said my face just fell when we were served up Chicken Kiev.  We've been really eating healthy the last couple of weeks and I just hoped this wouldn't negate the hard work I've put in.  It was delicious though I will admit!

Then today back in for a fitness test.

A fitness test you ask?

Why sit down, let me tell you about it! hahahaha

Okay this is where I come clean.   I've signed up to do Michelle Bridges 12 week body transformation, with a view to making this a lifestyle choice.

I've been in what they call pre-season for the last 3 or 4 weeks since I joined, making different choices and so far have lost 4.3kg.  Ecstatic about that!   The 12 weeks start officially tomorrow, so let the games begin.

But before then we had to do a fitness test, and I met up with some other ladies from Warrnambool who are also doing 12wbt and we did it together.  Lets just say there is a lot of room for improvement for me to run/jog/walk/crawl 1km ! ha.

So wish me luck.

Oh and for those from overseas who do not know who Michelle Bridges is, she is the Jillian Michaels of Australia, one of the trainers on the Biggest Loser here, and dare I say as tough as Jillian is too.  

On the scrapping front ...

Katie has this great striped paper in the shop at Designer Digitals, Striping with Navy.   And of course if you know me you'll know which paper my eyes zoned in on!  Perfect for a layout about the Cats!   Katie even had the stripes going the right way!!

Credits Designer Digitals.

Have a good week ahead everyone.