House and Home | picklebums.com

August 25, 2010 | Filed in: House and Home

Last week I joined in the new (to me) Wandering Wednesday and this week I am taking up yet another new blogging challenge!

Since all the pickles have been a tad sick this week and since they are such caring and sharing children they have given it to me now, we haven’t wandered much further than our fridge… which is why Maxabella Loves’ August Chronicles – What’s on Your Fridge blog hop seemed like such a good idea!

My all time favourite fridge magnet (a gift from my SIL so she knows how true that statement really is) is holding up excursion forms that I must must must remember to fill in and send back to school for the girls.

The other favourite magnet holds up a prized possession… Muski’s offer for a kinder place next year! We finally got the letter yesterday after much worry that he may have missed out. Yay for Kinder! The the left is my menu planning calendar – but as you can see I haven’t done much planning for this last week of August. The last week of August?? What? How did that happen!?!?

And this little scrap of local newspaper… a reminder that we need to find some money to buy a truck load of fire wood before we run out!

Yes, life is exciting here at the Pickle Farm!

So what’s on your fridge?

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There are so many things on my ‘to do’ list for around the house that I’m hoping the nesting urge will kick in sometime soon. If it doesn’t there is no way I am going to get everything I need to get done before #4 arrives. And I’m not even talking frivolous nesting activities like scrubbing baths or washing windows (though goodness knows both my bath and my windows could use some of that). I’m talking the ‘we need to make space to fit an extra person into this house somewhere’ kind of tasks.

Top of the list is getting rid of stuff.
De-cluttering – will I ever be done will this?

I need to sort through all my clothes, and get rid of heaps of them. I know, being a gazzilion weeks pregnant, extremely rotund around the middle and only having three pieces of clothing that actually fit you is probably not the best time, or frame of mind, to be culling your wardrobe, but it has to be done. It has to be done so that when I find the energy to sort though the twenty million (do you see a trend in over exaggeration here today?) boxes of baby stuff I have somewhere to put all the blankets, and nappies and clothes and related baby junk.

I also needs to de-junk the house in general. There will be visitors when this baby arrives, not least of which those who are coming to look after the other three picklebums while #4 makes his or her momentous appearance. And those people would probably like somewhere to sleep… somewhere that is not piled high garbage bags full of material and piles of books and a rock collection, plus the odd dinosaur. There is nothing worse than sharing the sofa bed with a spiky dinosaur.

Ah yes thee is much nesting to be done….. except that I am not sure that I really believe in the concept of nesting.

Sure, I did a LOT of laundry while I waited ever so patiently for Muski to be born, but that was only because my computer died and I had nothing better to do. I’m pretty sure I didn’t do anything that even remotely resembled nesting before the girls arrived… in fact I seem to recall we didn’t have a lounge room floor around about then and stepping on the dirt between the beams every time you need to get to the kitchen or bath room isn’t really conducive to cleaning.

If nesting is a real thing then exactly when can I expect it to kick in?

Maybe I am just deficient in nesting genes. Or maybe I subconsciously suppress the urge because I already know I would suck at it? Or perhaps it is just the fact that it is suddenly become winter here and dark cold days are way more conducive to hibernating than nesting.

So enlighten me dear readers? Did you nest?

image by Madbuster75 via flickr

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Council needs us to apply for a variance for our sewage system (because we are not on mains water we also process our own waste with a clear water sewage system) to make sure it can ‘cope’ with the extra bathroom we are putting in. This is so stupid – it’s not like having another toilet is going to make us pee more than we already pee. If they were really concerned they should have asked us to apply for this variance when we added another child not another bathroom….

To add insult to injury there is a missing plumbing certificate that seems to have never been issued way back when the original owners moved the house and installed the sewage. Without which they shouldn’t have gotten an occupancy certificate, but they did and now, almost ten years later, it is our problem to chase the original plumber etc etc. blah, blah, blah…

Still, ranting and raving about it won’t change things. This is part of the joys of building and renovation. It is what it is and it won’t happen any faster because I am cranky about it.

So I’m going with my theme for 2010 – Making the Best of Things.

2010 making the best of things

Most days I’m not really bothered by the delay at all.
I do love this house, I love so many things about this house. Sure there are things about this house that drive me nuts. The fact that our ‘laundry’ covers over half our back door is one thing, and you know, the whole smallness thing, but really, when I think about it, there is way more about this house to love, than there is to hate.

Plus the change in timing is probably a good thing. Now that we are settled with where everyone will sleep I’m actually kind of glad that we won’t be without a kitchen, heating and the back wall and roof of our house when this baby is born. Doing the all that major work over spring/summer instead of the middle of winter really is a better idea.

Still some days I am frustrated…. I have such dreams for our little house, and it’s going to be so wonderful when it is all done, and we all have a little more room to move. So I’m not giving up. I’m still dreaming, and planning and affirming to the world about how wonderful our house will be when the renovations are done, and they will be done… but in the mean time, I am making this work and trying to remember and enjoy all the things I love about this old place.

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