Caroline's Hideaway

New photos of our front yard

2010-04-08T14:34:00.001-07:00

We have been lucky enough to have had some rain since it rained all day on Christmas Day 2009. As a result, all the paddocks have a green tint and the grasses are about knee high. We had been unable to find enough money to put some aside for petrol for the mower and our yard was getting as overrun as the paddocks on the other side of the fence :)

Eventually, we decided that it was a necessity for safety reasons, especially after the snake incident (see my Aussie Caz Designs Blog) where Mollie (our Boxer) had bailed up a 4foot long King Brown Snake!

So here are some photos of the result. The yard looks so great after mowing. Even though it isn't all grass, in fact most of it is weeds, it still looks wonderful, green, neat and (from a distance through rose coloured glasses) like a real lawn LOL

The before shot!

Have a great day wherever you are!

Mollie!

2010-03-26T18:00:00.000-07:00

I hope you are all having a great day where you are. It is gorgeous here in rural Central New South Wales! Already got the washing on the line and got the next load on.

Our beautiful boxer, Mollie, had her first bath yesterday as she had discovered a kangaroo carcass and absolutely stank. However, this morning, Gary discovered the rest (or so we thought) of the kangaroo in our backyard and had to dispose of that, then Mollie bought us a gift... she bought us some more of the roo and left in on the front doorstep, so now we have to try and rid the house of this awful smell.

Dogs can be gross creatures! and of course, she now needs another bath LOL

Isn't she cute!!

Have a great day wherever you are!

I am so slack!

2010-03-18T20:09:00.000-07:00

LOL I keep coming back to this Blog and thinking I need to keep it updated slightly more often than I do :)

Trouble is, I get all carried away in my Aussie Caz Designs Blog, then I forget I should pop in here every now and then :)

Rebekah and Chris came up from Sydney last weekend and they have a new DSLR camera. they spent a lot of time taking pics outside, which is something I haven't done for ages, but I have yet to see the photos that they took!

but.... we did get this photo of this cute little baby Eastern Bearded Dragon (lizard). At first we thought it might be a Water Dragon, as Gary found it on the pool, as in .... in the water, using the surface tension not to drown LOL However, after asking Chris (SIL) who is our animal expert, we are assured it isn't. Shame, as we had carefully placed it on a lillypad in our fishpond LOL

However, the little critter did make his way off the lilly pad and was last seen streaking across the grass to take cover in the undergrowth that pretends to be our garden!

isn't it cute!

WOW!

2009-11-28T13:47:00.000-08:00

Well as it has been almost 12 months since I posted on this Blog, I thought it time that I updated LOL

We have had a busy year. At the end of May, we were offered the chance to move a few kms down the road to a HUGE house that needed looking after. We went up and looked around and then had a huge decision to make. The new place was enormous.... 8 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, library, sunroom, games room..... and so on! I think the decider in the end was the swimming pool, tennis court and the fact it was so much warmer than Burgoon. The property was owned by the same landlord and he was keen to get someone in to care for the house as he wanted to keep it as a potential family home for the younger members of his extended family in the future.

We decided to make the move. One week, whilst Nicholas was in Sydney with Rebekah and Chris, Gary and I packed up the house and moved everything using our little 6X4 trailer!

We have a kitchen that is full of cupboards and, although there were mice when we moved in, there were and still aren't any in the pantry. This was a huge problem at Burgoon, where we could sit and listen to the traps going off every few seconds at times! The cats have done their job and I haven't seen a mouse for ages :)

We are convinced that this house was once run by a very well off family. There is a bedroom and a bathroom only accessed from being outside the back of the house which we are sure was for a groundsman and another bedroom and bathroom near the kitchen which would have been for a housekeeper.

We have a aerial photo of the property from some years ago, this shows a sweeping driveway and a double garage around the side of the house. This is now gone, and the garage has been enlarged and become a huge gamesroom. We have the tennis table in this room, a TV and the Nintendo, the bar fridge and our new Christmas present, a pool table! And there is still room to spare!!

There are three bedrooms down the side of the house and I have one as a scrapbooking room and one as a sewing room. The first room is the guest room at the moment, but we have applied to become Foster Parents and so will become a child's bedroom. The sunroom off these bedrooms and this has our computers and Gary's train set.

The sunroom off the formal lounge is now our library and there was an enormous dining room table in the games room when we arrived, and we have moved this into the library as well.

The house has an outside eating area that is surrounded by flyscreen which is lovely. It needs a few repairs but will be lovely when it is finished.

Well, I have to go now and get some work done. I will be back with more updates soon!

More visitors to our garden

2008-12-15T21:45:00.001-08:00

Well, the other day we noticed that the Farmer had let a couple of Bulls into the paddock that houses our driveway. We often end up with stock in this paddock as it is used as a holding area for stock that they are working with in the big shed. These bulls were HUGE!! One of them decided to lie down under some trees at the edge of our garden fence and take it easy under the shade of the trees. Gary went down to say hello, but the bull wasn't really interested and got up and wandered off to a more private tree :)

In the morning, I went out to the "board room" so called because it is the only room in the house that has floor boards, and something caught my eye out of the window. It was the bull. He had wandered in through our garden gate, tiny gate, and was making himself at home eating the grass around the washing line. Gary got a couple of good pics of him. After a while we decided he should leave our garden as he kept trying to push round the side of the house and I was a bit worried he would fall into the septic pit! Not a nice thought! So Gary got out and walked behind him, back out the bottom garden gate (large) and he went back to his tree :) What a life LOL

Isn't he gorgeous!!

Nicholas and Cricket

2008-12-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

Poor Nicholas has had a run of bad luck with cricket this season. It has either been raining and called off or, as it is now, he has hurt himself and cannot play. Last Saturday week he did get to play a game though, and so finally got to wear all his gear that he got for his birthday. Even that game ended on a bit of a sour note though, just as it was his turn to bat, his team got run out and so he never made it to the pitch. Gary did get some great pics of him though, all done up and practising with his coach.

Nicholas is bowling...

Great swing :)

Such a busy life I lead...

2008-12-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been positively ages since my last post, I have been so busy, but no idea what doing LOL

Do you like the new look? Although I design my own digital scrap booking kits, I had to purchase someone else's work to make the changes to this Blog. I love this Kit, it comes with heaps of backgrounds, three different headers and lots of other bits and pieces. It also comes with full illustrated instructions for making the changes to the code and then uploading to Blogger. I still have a few things to sort out, 'cos I lost my favorite Blogs, among other things, but I'm sure I'll get it figured out sooner or later.. no biggie :) This, and another Blog Building kit, is available at Scrap Professor and is created by Tallula Moon Designs. What a clever clogs she is :)

I have a few photos to share with you since my last post. Nicholas has been in the wars... poor thing got smashed by a fast bowler at cricket practice and ended up with a really bruised shoulder and also a bruise from the rebound, on his chin. Then last week, he fell over in the school yard playing handball, and has a suspected fractured wrist. So now he is in a splint and wearing a sling for two weeks til they check him out again at the hospital, then the cast will either be off or on again for another month. Of course he is more annoyed because it is his left wrist and doesn't prevent him from writing :) However, I have noticed that it doesn't prevent him from playing on the computer, but does from putting away the dishes... LOL

and here he is pretending to be in agony LOL

We have had some amazing downpours since moving to NSW. They always seem to happen on the weekend which prevents Nicholas from playing cricket. Last weekend, we got another rainstorm, so I got out and took a few photos. I am not as good as Gary is at catching the closeups but I did get some nice shots :)

It was lovely, you could hardly see two feet in front of you, but it was so nice to see the ground just drinking it up! After living with the drought in South Australia, it is wonderful to be experiencing all this rain!

News on my health

2008-11-20T13:16:00.000-08:00

For those of you that have been following my health issues, I went back to the Drs yesterday. I saw my GP in the morning and found out that the blood tests I had done were all fine (the CT scan I had showed a possible issue with my pituitary gland) but he thought maybe the specialist might want an MRI done as well (didn't need one of these). Then off to Orange to see the ENT Specialist. The CT scan that I had done showed a soft tissue growth in the airspace within my inner ear, however the specialist did not feel that this was causing my dizziness at all. He felt that this was probably the result of childhood infections, I had a lot of ear infections as a kid, and nothing to worry about. Apparently the problem was caused by the move to New South Wales ( I knew this place wasn't good for my health LOL ). I had upset all these crystals in my inner ear and they were floating around all over the place instead of sitting nicely in the bottom of the canal as they were supposed to . He gave it a lovely name, which I promptly forgot, and then made me lie down on my back on a couch with my head tipping over the end of the bed, looking at the floor. This had the immediate effect of making the room spin. I had to stay there til it stopped spinning and then look over the other shoulder and do the same again. As I had just eaten Hungry Jacks for lunch, you can imagine how difficult it was becoming to retain this food LOL

Then I had to sit up and recover... and then he did it again!! only this time, I wasn't as dizzy and no where near as long. The whole point of the exercise was to resettle the crystals and put them back where they belong. I now have to spend the next three days not looking up or down, not moving my head suddenly, not bending down, and sleeping sitting upright as possible. Very difficult! If that wasn't enough though, I came out to the counter and was handed a bill for $140.00, which I was so NOT expecting! I must have looked shocked 'cos the lovely receptionist asked me if I would like to take an account and pay it later, which I agreed with as I didn't have that sort of money anyway :) The whole experience was horrible, the Dr was gorgeous, and so were his staff, but the test left me feeling so sick I couldn't walk around anymore and had to stay in the car whilst Gary did the grocery shopping. Fortunately he was there as I couldn't have driven the car either.

On the bright side, Nicholas finally got to use his cricket gear at practice, although it was really wet and muddy and it did rain whilst they were playing, he still got his bat, ball and gloves muddy, so he was one happy boy!

And... look what I found when I was making tea the other night... I have never seen one of these before, so we had to get a picture!

more photos

2008-11-17T12:53:00.001-08:00

The other day we went outside and found these gorgeous cockatoos sitting in one of our trees. Gary managed to get a really close up pic before they flew away.

They are gorgeous birds but very destructive. Over a very short period of time, they can strip a tree bare of new growth and eventually kill it!

It was Nicholas's 13th Birthday on the 7th and he was very excited as his big sister and her husband were coming over from Sydney for the weekend. We waited up for them on friday night so that he could get his present as we had bought him one from all four of us. They eventually arrived at 10:30pm, way past my bedtime ( LOL ) and we sat Nicholas down in a chair and told him to close his eyes and hold out his hands. he sat down with his hands spread out wide and a grin on his cheeky face. He was hoping for cricket gear as he had just joined the team in town. I explained to him that as he had already had a big present from us, we bought him a basket ball hoop/stand thingie not long after we got to NSW, he was only getting a small present this time. His hands immediately shot in to meet each other infront of him, still didnt open his eyes and still with a big grin on his face. That movement just cracked us up, it was hard to continue with the gift giving. I handed a small package, it was a tiny bat and ball set meant for toddlers. he jumped up and down and was really excited! He was so funny! Anyway, we couldn't wait any longer, the suspense was killing us, and we made him hide his eyes again. gary bought in a huge parcel that we wrapped up in a picnic blanket for want of anything better, and told him to check it out, here was his real present. He pulled off the balnket and revealed a full set of...... cricket gear. We had managed to find him a bat, ball, gloves, pads and a bag to carry it all in. He was so excited, Saturday morning was their game and Rebekah and Chris were here to watch him and he had all this new stuff to play with. Off to bed, everyone exhausted!

And then..... the bad news..... spent Friday night listening to the rain falling, great for our water supply, but not so great for cricket, it was cancelled. But we did go into Orange to see "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" which was great! (although they werent showing the 3D version which was a shame).

This Saturday, Nicholas was really looking forward to finally showing off his gear and guess what.... I spent Friday night listening to the rain falling, and cricket was cancelled.... again! Hopefully, he will get to use it this Thursday arvo for practice. We did get him done up in it all though for some pics.

and then to top off our week , it was my birthday. Gary brought me a cup of tea and some cake with a candle in the middle and then sang Happy Birthday! It was lovely. I also heard from my Mum and Dad, my sisters, and got a call from my brother. We dont catch up very often so it was lovely to hear from him. One of the highlights though, was about 12 emails from all the Scrapbook sites I belong too sending me a Happy Birthday email. I also had my birthday announced on my good friend Pam's Scrapping Blog LOL

Isn't that cute!

2008-11-04T14:12:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a few days since I last posted. Time just flies by so quickly nowadays.... must be 'cos I'm getting older (nearly my birthday as well, maybe that isnt helping LOL )

Here are some pics of the tree we have started to cut up since it was rude enough to drop an enormous branch on the road just beyond the entrance to our drive way!

This is where the branch was originally attached to the tree!

The pile of logs that Gary cut last, but we were too tired to collect right then :)

You can see how big the branch was by the comparison to Gary's shoe! It was huge :)

We still have to go back and finish cutting up what is left and bring it back to the house. The branch has given us a bit of a kick-start to next years fires LOL

A few more pics of the house. Seems like there is a lot of photos here and not much writing, but that is probably a better way of doing the Blog really LOL who wants to read a whole heap of guff from me when you could be looking at these gorgeous photos!

This is a photo of the stained glass window that we have in our bedroom. Now aren't we lucky to have such a gorgeous window :) The proper front door is also stained glass, but can't seem to find a pic at the moment, so you'll have to wait til later!!

Here is a photo of our eldest cat, Oscar, sunning himself and having a bit of a clean on the path !

And these are some photos of some visitors we had in the yard the other day! Some cuter than others as you will see!

These sheep had been in the paddock that is our driveway, and just decided that the grass really was greener on the other side of the fence :)

soooo cute!

This was one of a pair that came to visit one evening! They were the biggest foxes I have ever seen. This pic is not very clear, but he/she was moving really quite quickly and I just had to snap and hope for the best. Funny though, Oscar, our cat, just sat on the wheelbarrow in the middle of the garden and just watched the foxes wander around. Muffin (cat) ended up a tree and Casper (cat) was very interested, but the foxes disappeared before he could get to close.

Enough for today :) see you soon, have a great day!

New pics to share

2008-10-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

Here are some more pics of our gorgeous house. These show the house as being a bit of a shambles LOL we had only just moved in, but come to think of it.... it is still a shambles!!

This is a picture of the front room when we moved in. You walk through the door that we use as the front door and come into this room. When the removalists were bringing in our stuff, in the end we told them to plonk it all in this room and we would sort it out later. They had been shifting stuff for hours at this stage and we wanted an easier time for them. Little did we realise what a mamoth job we had set ourselves to get it all sorted LOL

This is the front room now.... it is a huge long room so as you can see we put the table tennis table up in it. It still had plenty of room for the dining table, a vintage treadle sewing machine, a games cupboard, a keyboard, chest freezer and a bar fridge!! The windows had these horrible dirty yellow roman type blinds in the windows which were falling to bits. So we removed them and put in lace curtains that we had brought with us.

This is, obviously, our dining table. When we moved from South Australia, we left the chairs behind as they were all a mismatch. We found these chairs at a second hand store in Orange, New South Wales. I think they are from a refurbished motel, but I like them anyway :) When it is just the three of us, we don't really sit at the table to eat, but the chairs have been used a couple of times now as we have had visitors!

This is the "Board" room. We call it that as it is the room in the house with polished floor boards, but it was bought into use to tell the removalists where to place some of our stuff. This is a pic of when we moved in. Although, in the pictures below, it still seems much the same LOL

This is my end, it has my scrapbooking table, my laptop table and the computer that Nicholas uses, although on that table is my Craft Robo cutter and my A3 HP printer as well.

This is Gary's end LOL This is his model "N scale" train set. It is even bigger now! He has extended it out over the cupboard in the foreground and built a new scene. The track for this joins in with the original tracks "underground" making it two tiered! Opposite this train set is another desk with Gary's computer on it and cupboards with our CD backups in from the computers.

More later.......

have a great day :)

More news from our lovely house

2008-10-28T15:14:00.000-07:00

Another lovely day here in New South Wales. We could really do with some rain though, it is beginning to dry out around here. We did have some thunder and lightening Monday night, but no rain to speak of, unfortunately. Hopefully we will get some by the end of the week.

Gary was bringing Nicholas home from the bus yesterday, and heard a huge noise just as they came over the rise to turn into our driveway. A massive old gum tree had dropped an enormous branch and it landed right across the road! It was huge and very heavy. Fortunately, it was beyond our drive and no one was on the road at the time, it could have been a nasty accident!

So, they rushed home, as fast as one can "rush" up a winding dirt track!! and got the chainsaw and back down to carve up the spoils and bring them home to our wood shed ready to dry out for next years fire. I was so busy loading up the car with logs, I forgot to take the camera with me, so don't have any pictures, will have to get one of what is left today :)

More photos of the lovely flowers I have in my garden....

'til next time.... have a great day :)

Early pics

2008-10-26T15:18:00.000-07:00

Here are some early days photos of our new puppy. She is a purebred Boxer and her name is Mollie. She was born on the 22nd October 2008 and we will finally get to meet here just before Christmas. She is a little fatty and very cute!

This is a picture of Honey just before she had the puppies. She was enormous, and with good reason.... 'cos she ended up with 10 puppies, 6 girls and 4 boy!! Well done Honey, I say!

and this is a picture of our little Mollie.... isn't she sooooo cute!!

More later........ stayed tuned........

Some pics from our little part of Paradise

2008-10-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

We went mad here yesterday and Nicholas got on the ride-on mower and mowed til we ran out of fuel and Gary ran around with the whipper snipper and got most of the edges and garden beds cleaned up. I swept up and generally supervised... as you do LOL

I also went around with the camera and took some more pics of our beautiful garden and house. The garden was full of spring blossoms, they are starting to disappear now but there are still many flowers blooming in our garden. I even have water lillies for the first time ever.

Aren't they just beautiful! I hope these pictures of these gorgeous flowers brighten your day as they did mine :)

Have a great weekend!!

My thoughts for today

2008-10-24T14:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I am feeling a little down. I had this CT scan done yesterday looking for an Inner Ear Tumor :( I have no idea if they found one, and won't know until late next week. It is a long time to wait to find out this sort of information! I started to feel dizzy soon after we got to New South Wales. Finally gave in and went to see the Drs. Got a locum who was very hippy like.... wore a plait and kept telling me everything would be fine and all was good! very weird :) Anyhow, he told me I had an inner ear infection and it should clear up by itself within 3-5 days. Of course, he wasn't at all put off when I told him I had already had the dizziness for over 4 days.... nope! it should be on the wane then.

I then went to a different Dr LOL . This was 2 weeks later. He prescribed some tablets to ease the dizziness, which by now, had settled to during the night, getting up/sitting up or looking over my left shoulder, rather than all the time. I took these tablets, which cost me a fortune, and within days, I was so itchy I wanted to remove my skin. Turns out that one of the top side effects of these tablets was itchiness.... so I didnt take them anymore!!

back to the Dr's. This time he suggested a CT scan to check for this tumor. Now, I like this Dr, he is funny and makes you feel important, but it is amazing how casual some people can be when they are suggesting to you that you may have a growth in your head LOL

It was a horrible experience. It started by having to fast for four hours before the appointment. I was only allowed black tea or water. By 10am, the appt time, I was starving! Since breaking my leg in Oct '89, I am extremely wary of hospitals and I am claustraphobic and hate lying on my back so I was not looking forward to this experience at all. Turned out I had to have an injection of Iodine dye for a contrast scan, I also hate needles :) The machine turned out to be a huge donut, not a tunnel, so that was something. And they recommend that you shut your eyes and not try to watch what was going on. Ever notice that when someone tells you NOT to do something, you suddenly have this overwhelming urge to do that very thing !! I tried to shut my eyes, but I had to keep peeking... I am like a kid LOL But in the end, I did keep them closed as I figured that it was the only way to get through the experience. It was like having your head filled with strong vibrations. I felt sick, hot, dizzy, awful... well, you get the picture! Just as I was thinking I couldn't do it anymore, they came and injected the dye and it was almost over. The second part of the scan, after the dye went in, wasn't as long and I did get through it. All up I was in the hospital for one and half hours, and yet the scan took all of about 15mins, if that!

CT Scan

The smell
That is the first thing that hits me
God
I really hate hospitals
Keep me safe
And
Guide those looking after me so that they do their job well

Sitting
Endless sitting
Waiting
Endless waiting

Don’t they know
Can’t they see
How so very scared and anxious
I am

Finally
Some progress

No
I am taken to sit
Isolated in an alcove
Not even Gary’s warm hand to
Hold

A needle
A needle the size of a garden hose
That is what they want to
Stick in my arm

God,
I hate hospitals

Nurses
Chatting about puss and gore
I feel
Sick

A donut
They want me to lie down and be
The filling in a donut!

Head feels like
Exploding!
Vibrations
I feel
Sick!
Now
Don’t talk while we put in the dye
Okay
So… how long have you been here then?
Trying not to answer

Back in the donut
Trying to keep eyes shut
Trying to get through it

You did well!
It is
Over

My head hurts
I
Hate
Hospitals

I feel
Sick!

Today, I just have a headache and a slightly unreal feeling. I will feel better when I know what is going on. It is the unknown that is scary!

'til next time :)

New Beginning

2008-10-22T23:23:00.003-07:00

I was going to use this Blog as a "Test" zone for new blog templates, colours and such, but I have decided to use it as a more personal Blog about what is happening in our little part of God's Paradise.

Aussie Caz Designs will remain as my Scrapping Blog :)