Too Busy To Blog

I've been away from blogger for a little while, not because 'I was over it', but because I've been busy lol My wife had holidays recently, so while she was home I got a huge amount of the house painted. Even though my wife isn't painting the house, she's a shift worker, so while she's asleep during the day, I try not to make too much noise and banging and clanging ladders is a problem lol. Our house is only about 15 years old and had not been painted since it was built, so there was a bit of patching and sanding that needed to be done prior to painting. The original wall colour was cream, which over the years due to poor kitchen ventilation, had become brown in places. Yuck. I re-painted the walls white, except for one wall which I painted...... Are you ready for it?!?!!? Bright..... Lime Green!!! I know! You're thinking "WTF!?!" lol
Here are a couple of pics lol:-

This is a Balinese Boat that we bought a little while ago, but we didn't put it anywhere because we knew it would have to be moved when I started painting. So it now has a home in one corner.

This is a large Buddha that was given to us quite a few years ago, and the colour of him goes quite well against the green wall.

This is a hat rack that I saw in a shop... also a while ago... When I saw it, I knew which wall it would be mounted on and I knew the rustic white would break the green up a bit.

This is just a shot of some Roman blinds that I hung up just the other day behind the bar. I was a little worried, as I had never hung blinds before, but after measuring the window frames multiple times, I was confident I could do it lol

This is my new favourite thing/things lol I found this old table about a month ago in a second hand - antique - junk store. It was soooo grubby, but I really liked it and I thought it would look perfect at the entrance of our house - after a good clean of course lol. I couldn't decide, so I went home without it. The same day I also saw the telephone in another store, but it was quite pricey and I didn't know what it was really worth, so I also walked away from it too.

That night I kept asking my wife "should I go back and get the table and the telephone?" I really did her head in! She kept saying "If you want them, go back and get them". I did some research on the price of the telephone and discovered that the asking price was fair. However, in saying that.... It was still a lot of money. So I decided I would go back the next day! The store was an hour from home, and I had my fingers crossed that both items had not been sold, as I thought that they would look perfect together.

Thankfully the table was still there! After some haggling, I also purchased the old box and some clay convict bottles. I also purchased an old picture frame which is for another project. Then off I went to buy the telephone only to find that the store was closed!!! Noooo!!!! Luckily for me, I found out that there was a building manger (lol I wasn't going home without it) who had a key and she let me in to buy the telephone. So all of these items were stored in one of the back rooms until I finished painting. They now take pride of place in our entrance, and I just love them!

We have a TV show on in Australia at the moment titled Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, it's about a female detective and it's set in the 1920's in Melbourne. Last week's episode showed my telephone! lol It's hard to tell from the angle that I took my photo, but on the other side is a little handle where you wind the telephone up to use it. Anyway, in the last episode of this show, we saw the lead actress sit down, wind the telephone up and make a call lol I was stoked!!! lol. The show costs 1 million dollars an episode, because all the props used are the genuine article.   
  

I've been up to some other things, but I'll leave them for another post, for now I have to get back to painting. I've already finished the kitchen, dinning, lounge, bar area, bathroom, hallway and 2 spare rooms. I'm up to the main bedroom and en-suite, then I only have the laundry and 1 other spare room to do! I've passed the halfway mark!!! Thank God! Oh how I hate painting!!!

I Need A Clone!!

Yes I do need a clone! I have to finish painting the house, I have to sort out the jungle in the backyard and I need to get my small business up and running! Plus..... Just do all the other regular things that we all have to do! My brain isn't content with organising itself like a normal brain, it likes to grab a whole bunch of ideas and then it says "let do this!" When it isn't physically possible! Okay, so for the sanity of both myself and my wife, the painting will be finished first. If it isn't, horrible things may happen to me.... lol The garden, I am figuring can be done intermittently between sorting out my small work from home business.

When I was a kid I used to attend hobby ceramics classes, I just loved it! The other kids would attend the class, like me one afternoon a week after school. The only difference between me and the other kids was that, I would work on my pieces on the weekends. I constantly had more than one piece on the go at any given time. Then I got older, moved out of home and had 'grown up' things to do.

My brand spanking new studio size kiln.

Anyway about two years ago, I decided that I wanted to get back into ceramics and I took some more classes. Unfortunately my work roster changed and I could no longer attend the classes, as they were held during the day. I was stuck.... I wanted to continue working with ceramics, but I was unable to do so due to work. So I looked into buying my own kiln.... the second hand ones were appealing - simply due to cost. But there was no guarantee that the previous owner hadn't fired lead based glazes in them. So I started looking at new kilns.... holy moley they were expensive!!!! 

The kiln being loaded.

The other issue I had was, that I had actually never fired a kiln before! I actually knew nothing about them. So my research begun..... Everything I read stated that if you're going to buy a kiln, buy one bigger than what you think you need. So I looked at new kilns and picked the one I thought would suit me, and then did as I was told and looked at the next size up. This was getting dearer by the minute lol How on earth could I justify spending thousands of dollars on a kiln for a hobby? Plus, I would have to take out a loan, as I just didn't have that kind of money lying around. It was also around this time I was becoming increasingly miserable at work.

A Merlin/wizard tile - trivet.

In the past people had requested particular items, which I made and sold to them. Other friends had also told me that they believed that there was a market out there for my work, as it was a little bit different to the usual ceramic ware available. So this - combined with my unhappiness at work got me thinking.... What if I could earn a living from doing this? I spoke to my wife about my idea, she knew how I was feeling at work and she also knew that I wanted to continue with my ceramic work. So we looked at the prices of the kilns and decided to purchase one. When you purchase a kiln they are made to order, so you need to be prepared to join a waiting list.

Some Halloween coasters.

When it was my turn for my kiln to be built, my Aunt was diagnosed with cancer, so I requested that I be dropped back down the list. Then my Aunt's treatment seemed to be working, so I advised the kiln builders I was ready. This scenario actually happened three times..... Then one day I was able to take possession of the kiln. I started buying stock, and building up a collection that I could sell. I had almost gotten to a point where I had enough stock, until one day I noticed that most of my pieces had cracked!!!

A platter of four condiment bowls.

I had no idea what had happened, as I inspect all of the pieces when I take them out of the kiln. After doing some research online, I discovered that there could only be two reasons for this happening. The first was the temperature in the kiln and the second was the glaze. I checked the kiln temperature and it was correct. So I spoke to a company who sells glazes, and before I had finished explaining what had happened, the guy knew what was wrong. I had been sold a glaze that was not compatible with Australian clay, yet it was widely distributed.... I was told that the glaze doesn't crack immediately and that it actually takes a couple of weeks for the cracks to appear.

An experimental four-way glazes vase.

So where did that leave me? Well I am now pretty much starting from scratch. I still have a lot of stock that I have not painted, but all of the stock that I had painted, needs to be broken and put into the garbage as it is no longer food safe. I also purchased new glaze that is compatible with Australian clay. I guess the up side to this incident is that, these items weren't sold. As the glaze would've cracked after the sale, leaving the owner with an inferior product and me with a bad reputation.

A collection from my last firing with the new glaze.

As my wife is on holidays in a couple of weeks, the house painting will be finished (thank god!) and then I will be able to get back to my ceramics and start building up enough items to sell. I already have a domain name, however the website isn't live yet - due to not having enough stock to list. I do however have a Facebook page set up:- Crack Pot Ceramics. Once my website is live, it will also be connected to this Facebook page. 

My Crack Pot Ceramics Facebook page.

It's all very exciting, but quite daunting at the same time! I am very much looking forward to being able to spend my time time doing what I love, and that is to paint. I'm just not really looking forward to the 'business' side of things as I don't have a 'business head' lol This is where a clone would come in handy, I could paint and he could take care of the stock, marketing, money, ordering etc lol

Gardening For Non-Gardeners

I can appreciate a great garden as much as the next person, in fact I come from a long line of mad keen gardeners, both ornamental and fruit/veg. My Great Grandparents and Grandparents had great gardens. My Mother and Father could also stick something in the ground and it would bloom... My Aunt's garden was also manicured to within an inch of it's life. I however, have an amazing knack of being able to kill everything except weeds lol

Sulfur Crested Cockatoo's eating seed in my Aunt's garden.

There are two things that I have not been able to kill..... Not that I've tried to kill them lol In our previous house, I planted heaps of roses because they suited the style of house. Now I'd heard that roses were finicky, but I thought I'd give it a shot.... I was amazed! In the years that we lived there, not one of them died! I also planted camellias, simply because I liked them, and surprisingly they didn't die either.

These are outside our bedroom window.

So you can imagine how stoked I was when we bought the house we live in now, and I noticed that the previous owner had planted camellias. Straight away I knew that we would have something, that would grow with little maintenance :o) As I am more of a 'plant it and leave it' kind of person. In the past I have gone down the path of tending to plants, and feeding them etc.... I still killed them. So now I'm a low maintenance - plant kind of person. 

Also outside our bedroom window.

Unfortunately the previous owner only planted camellias in the front yard. She actually planted something of a jungle in the backyard.... Which just seems plain odd, considering that we have an in-ground pool..... So every time the wind blows, the pool fills up with all kinds of leaves, sticks and berries.

Spike - our youngest kitty having a snooze under the camellias.

After I finish painting inside the house, the backyard is my next project, and Oh My God.... It's going to be a big one! It will be the kind of job where a skip bin will need to be hired and the chainsaw will be going at full force all day! I'm looking forward to the jungle being cleared out.... But I'm not so sure that I'm looking forward to the massive mess that it's going to make. I haven't got a photo to show you of the backyard, but just imagine a whole load of out of control trees and bushes..... Because that's what it looks like. It's the kind of yard, that when I do start, I'm not going to be sure of where to begin.

Once the jungle is gone I will be planting low maintenance plants that are also tolerant to salt, as our pool is saltwater and many plants just don't like salt. At the moment I'm thinking along the lines of clumping black bamboo along the back fence, with smaller plants, such as strappy red grasses layered in front. I just love black bamboo, and I think the jet black with the bright green leaves combined with red grasses will look quite striking. 

I still have quite a bit of research to do, as I don't want to plant the wrong plants and then have to do it all over again. I also don't want to plant items that will lose a lot of leaves which will end up in the pool. We actually have quite a small backyard, and most of it is pool - entertaining area. So the garden needs to be compact and - or tall, which is why I initially had the bamboo idea in mind, as it will give us privacy from the neighbours at the rear due to it's height, and it also loses leaves gradually - not all at once like a deciduous plant, which will make both me and the pool happy :o)   

New Neighbours

I guess at some point we've all had odd neighbours, or neighbours that we wouldn't normally choose to socialise with, if we met them at a function etc. Well, we have a woman who lives behind us who is quite mad.... She screams at all hours, she mimics the birds in the trees, she barks at her dogs - You could say that she's barking mad! By the way, I might just add, that her dog was born deaf..... We are (very) slowly learning to deal with her very odd and noisy behaviour. Trust me when I say it has not been easy, and after only living here for a short period of time, we were seriously considering going further into debt, and selling up to get away from the constant and intrusive noise pollution.

Okay, so that woman lives behind us, so the neighbour on one side of us is an older single male and has one son who lives with him. He's pleasant enough and we very rarely see him. On the other side, we had an elderly couple..... He used to open our mail, peak through the fence when we had female friends over for a swim in the pool, tell the other neighbours that I didn't like him because he was Maltese..... The funny thing is that my wife's parents are Maltese... So, What the?!?! He would badger me about our mortgage.... He would tell me that he would pay our mortgage outright, and then we could pay him back at 'different rates'.... He was as dodgy as all hell. Just because someone is old, doesn't mean that they are 'sweet little old' things. 

Gradually he got the message that I didn't want his money and that I didn't appreciate him opening our mail. One day he simply stopped acknowledging us, which I honestly didn't lose any sleep over. Prior to this, if I was out the front - mowing the lawn or getting into my car and I saw him, I would wave and he would wave back..... Then it just stopped, it was as if he was looking right through us.... It was quite odd.

Anyway, about two months ago their house went up for sale and sold very quickly. We're actually expecting new neighbours to move in any day now, as people have been in cleaning the house. I have two things weighing on my mind regarding the new neighbours.... The first is that the old neighbour taunted our Labrador Angel through the fence, even though I had repeatedly told him not to do it..... So whenever the old couple were in the backyard or they had a tradesman in the backyard, Angel would go ballistic as I'm sure she was waiting for him to approach the fence - which he did finally stop doing, however the pattern of behaviour had already been set in motion.

My gorgeous Labrador Angel with her rope toy.

So my concern is, that Angel will view the new neighbours as being either 'the old neighbours or tradesmen' and go nuts at the fence every time the new neighbours go outside. I have googled for answers regarding dogs and new neighbours... Most of the sites had the same info, which was to invite the neighbours in to meet your dog. Okay, yeah that makes sense... But what if - and this is the second thing weighing on my mind.... What if the new neighbours aren't the kind of people that we would either choose not to 'normally' socialise with or for whatever reason, we don't want them in our home?

Angel rolling around playing with her toys.

Angel is not by any means an aggressive dog, she's a rescue dog who was badly neglected when she was a puppy and just loves people. I guess only time will tell what's going to happen when our new neighbours move in, and how Angel will react to them...... I can only hope that things will sort themselves out.

You Want How Much For That?!?!

We have a wall in our lounge room which is blank, and its blank because we've never really found anything that has jumped out at us to hang there. That was until one day we were having lunch, and then after lunch we went for a wander through some of the nearby shops. Now I'm not a 'shabby chic' kind of male lol Don't get me wrong, I love old stuff! But for me, it has to be the real deal! The last few years there has been a huge trend in decorating your home with shabby chic items, and they're just not my thing.... Maybe because they're usually in pastel colours and to be honest, I find them just a bit girly..... Sorry girls lol

Anyway, I saw some photo frames that were made up of multiple photo frames, that were all connected together like a collage. I really liked them! Part of me was thinking.... "No! It's a type of shabby chic!!! Stay Away" But the other part of me was thinking... "These are amazing!!" lol The reason I was in two minds was because firstly, yes they were a style of shabby chic, but secondly, it wasn't your typical shabby pastel colours. These frames were all different colours, and the colours were bold and bright!!  

I pointed them out to my wife and she also really liked them, then we noticed that the store had about four different styles of these frames. So we had a look at the different styles.... At this point I hadn't really thought about the price.... After all, yes they were nice, but they were also very simple in their design. So fast forwarding..... We decided that one of these frames would look great on our lounge room wall, that was until I discovered that the asking price was $300! Are You Serious?!?!?! It's needless to say that we left without the frames..... 

As we walked out the door I said to my wife, that if I could get my hands on some old timber frames from ebay etc, I could make the same thing for a fraction of the price! Then I had an idea! I'm full of them! lol There was a charity shop around the corner, so I suggested that we go and have a look.... Guess what I found?!? A bunch of new and used timber frames!! Guess how much they cost me? $8!!! Now I'm no mathematician, but $300 - $8 means I saved $292! Some of the frames are raw timber, which is great, the others I will sand back before painting. I have been playing around with layering the frames beside each other and over the top of each other and looking at which frames will compliment each other, as I'm not sure if I will use all of them, or if I will perhaps seek out a couple of different shaped frames for some variety. 

The photo above is a picture of our bar, it was built from recycled timber from multiple Balinese fishing boats, and as you can see it's made up of many small and different brightly coloured panels. This is going to be the style in which I am going to paint the frames. I also don't have to worry about buying the paint in which to paint the frames with, as I already have quite a collection of acrylic paints, which I have used in the past when I've made decorations for Halloween parties. The downside to my many 'brilliant' ideas is that, my to do list is already as long as my arm lol So it may be a little while before this job gets done.