I don’t think I actually got around to posting some completed pics from our back verandah project.  So, here you are:

Front View of House:

This shows the front angle of the verandah up a little closer:

The stoney area to the bottom right of the picture is going to be paved (not sure whether pavers or slate yet) and turned into a bit of a potted garden area.  We’re also thinking of putting a small tank in here to make watering easy.  You can just see at the top that this section has no covering.  The plan is to grow grapevines over this section of give shade in summer and allow the winter sun to hit the lounge room window.

And this is the view from the “backyard” (our backyard is along the side of the house really).

We purchased a cheap dining setting from Kmart before Christmas and “Christened” the back deck by having our Christmas lunch out there.  It’s become a popular eating spot over summer (when the flies aren’t too bad).  It’s taken DH a little while to get the painting done but he’ll be glad it’s all done now that we’ve had so much rain (past couple of days have been very wet here).

It looks a bit different to this:

It’s almost hard to picture what it looked like before (thank goodness for photo’s!!!).  It’s really made a HUGE difference to the size of our house.  Basically we have a whole extra living area now.

NEXT PROJECT:

Most urgent is the paving of the area where the car goes.  The pavers are ordered and Farmboy just needs to pick them up and lay them (well, we need a Dingo here to dig the area out first).  After the rain we’ve had the past couple of days, all we have is a huge mud pit at the moment.

It all takes time (and money) but our house is slowly becoming more of a “home”. 

Don’t fall off your chairs peoples.  I really have posted 2 days in a ROW!!!  One of these days I might even get back into the habit of posting daily.

I’m so happy with my grocery spending for February.  With only 4 weeks, I ended up with almost a week’s worth of grocery money surplus.

That worked out to an average of around $115 per week spent.

I put aside $70 cash toward our next lot of bulk meat, taking the spend to around $130 a week.

To be honest, I was quite surprised as I didn’t feel like we were all that careful with our grocery spending.  I know there are areas that I could tweak if we needed to.

I’ve been trying to figure out why our grocery spending is so much lower than others we know, even when I’m not really trying.  I guess there is a certain amount that is just “habit”.

Anyway, it’s nice to think that I’m on track with the budget and even have a little bit of room to move with rising prices and growing kids.  At this stage of the year, it’s probably better to have a little more than we need than be right on budget.

Will be interesting to see if things stay this way or whether I’ve just been “lucky” this month.

Lleyton had a big day of tennis on Sunday.  We entered him a tournament in a regional centre a couple of hours from here.  We’re not spoilt for choice when it comes to tennis opportunities around here and it’s not easy to make it to those tournaments.

He had a WONDERFUL day with LOTS of tennis.  He played in the 11&Under singles (and finished as runner up) and the 13&Under singles (got into the top 4 and only lost that game 5-6 so it was close) and 13&Under doubles (they came runners up there too).

Here he is with his 2 runner up trophies:

He also won a free pizza (think that was almost more popular than the trophy!!!!).  At the start of the day he was hoping to get 1 runner up so he could go home with a trophy so he was stoked to end up with 2!!!!

I was happy for him (what parent doesn’t want their kid to be happy) but the highlight of the day happened when he recognised the value of keeping his cool during a game.

He was playing a tough opponent in the 13U singles comp and lost the first 2 games in close competition.  He then admits he gave the 3rd game away because he lost his cool.  Farmboy and I were really concerned watching his behaviour on court.  It was subtle but we don’t want him to become the kind of player who shows poor sportsmanship when losing.

However, he pulled himself out of that and ended up winning 6-3.  The beauty of it all was that he watched his own opponent gradually lose it and could really see the value of keeping your cool even when losing.  It was an awesome lesson and I was so proud of him (it’s not easy to pull yourself out of that personal frustration).

At that moment, he was going home a winner no matter the outcome of the rest of his games.

On Tuesday, he had the Grand Final games for his Junior Tennis local comp.  His team made it into the top 2.  They played the top 2 off for first and second and the next 2 off for 3rd and 4th (the 5th team was eliminated).

Here he is in action:

The competition was close all the way and ended up coming down to the outcome of his game.  Lleyton plays position 1 for his team so his game was left until last.  At that point, the teams were drawn.

I was concerned for him being under pressure but I don’t think he knew.  All the kids lined up along the court to watch the finish of the game (thankfully he’d been playing with an audience over the weekend so was used to an audience).

I think it ended up working in his favour as it made his opponent more nervous than it did him.

He ended up winning 3-1 to take out the championship for his team!

The winning team all got given a medallion:

Cute, isn’t it?

And it’s not over yet.  This weekend he has a finals comp for Senior Tennis.  They finished the season 4th so I guess they’re going into this game the underdogs.  Who knows though?  They’ve beaten this team before so I guess it’s anyone’s game.

If they win, they go into the next final.  If not, that’s the end of Senior Tennis for the year.

Thank you to all who took the time to leave a comment on my Mooo Giveaway post.  It was great reading of your enthusiasm toward their product range.

I have used a random number generator to select the giveaway winner.

And the winning number is:

Comment Number 3!

Congratulations Kelli!

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to enter.  I’ll arrange to have your 20% discount codes sent out to you ASAP (oh, and Kelli, your $50 voucher of course).

Cute isn’t it?

I can count on 1 hand the number of Valentine’s I’ve been sent in my life.

So it was a welcome surprise to receive this in the mail!

Singstar Princess had fun putting it together for me.

I <3 her too!

Pity my font doesn’t make a very nice heart.

Lucky Lego does!

My lack of posting has not really been due to lack of time (although that is always a factor).

It has more to do with limited brain power.

Right now, my head feels like it’s going to explode.

That’s what happens when you take on a role like President and the Parents and Friends when you have NO IDEA what the job entails.

I’m on a high learning curve here.

And a lot of it is just little stuff.

Like…

Where’s the cupboard?

Where’s the key to the cupboard?

What do I do when I need to photocopy stuff?

How do letters home to parents work?  Does the Principal need to see them/sign them?

Finding out the best ways of communication with the school and within the school.

Not to mention figuring out how to communicate with parents.  And how to communicate how IMPORTANT parental involvement in the school is.  And how to commuicate that Parents & Friends are NOT just about baking cakes!!! 

Yes, any minute now I think my head might explode.

I sure hope it gets easier than this!!!!

If not, my blogging is either going to be non existent or a bunch of whines about how busy I am and why don’t parents care and why doesn’t the goverment care…etc etc.

Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.  Otherwise I might have a grand total of 3 readers by the end of the year! 

MAN - why couldn’t Zemanta give me an image of a brain exploding.  That would have been kind of cool!

Have you seen this website with personalised clothing, labels and other fun stuff?

I’m a BIG fan of personalised stuff.  My kids love it and I find it particularly good for presents for my nieces and nephews if I’m not sure what to buy them (in fact, I just ordered matching t-shirts for my twin nephews).

Mooo sent me some samples and I have to say the quality is wonderful!!!!

They have lunchboxes, bags, puzzles and much MUCH more.

It was interesting to find Mooo also mentioned in the great fundraising ideas mentioned on my last post.  You can find more information on this under Mooo Fundraising.

To help spread the word about their growing business, Mooo have offered readers of this site the opportunity to win a $50 gift certificate for Mooo.com.au.  All you need to do is visit the site and then leave a comment on this post stating what your favourite Mooo product is and why.

Entries close Sunday February 28th 2010 and the winner will be announced Monday 1st March.  All non winning entrants will be given a 20% discount voucher to be used on the Mooo.com.au website.

So, what are you waiting for?  Go check it out then come back here and comment!

This Giveaway Has Now Closed.

There’s an interesting discussion happening on the Simple Savings forum (paid membership forum) regarding fundraising ideas.  I’m amazed at how many different ideas there are out there.  No doubt we’re all involved in one group or another that has a need to raise funds for various running costs or projects.

On Friday, I took on the role as President of our school Parents and Friends group (unintentionally I might add).  It’s a group I’ve only been involved with for a year so I’m not even 100% sure on the full role the group plays in the school.  However, one of the things it does do is raise funds to help with bits and pieces that aren’t covered in other funding (and there’s always plenty of those).

So, my question to all of you is:

What successful fundraising ideas have you been involved with or seen?

In particular, things that are reasonably simple (workload wise) with not too much outlay.  We’re not a huge school which puts some of the big fundraising ideas out of our reach.

Also, how many fundraisers does your school hold a year?

Do you think that is too many?  Too little?

I actually think our school could do with holding a few more but I don’t want to overdo it either.

Any other thoughts you have on the whole issue of fundraising I’d love for you to share.

Thanks for your help. :)  Oh, and wish me luck.  LOL.

I grew up feeling like an over-emotional freak.

It wasn’t until I met my now husband that I even learnt that I have a tendency to absorb other peoples emotions.  He would come to visit me and all of a sudden I would feel absolutely awful.  We worked out (through talking) that he would be worrying about how his car was running or something else.  All I was getting was a negative emotion that seemed to have no source or reason - and was therefore almost impossible to deal with.

Recognising this tendency has helped a little.  It doesn’ t seem to always happen and I don’t always recognise it when it does.  I’m also learning that I’m more susceptible when my own emotional stores are low.

It happened this morning and took me by surprise - and caused me a lot of pain.

I’m emotionally low at the moment.  Signs like thinking my husband hates me and not being able to get to sleep (or stay asleep very long when I do get to sleep) are tell-tale signs.

I’m doing well and today planned a “mental health” day.  Plenty of rest, some recreation and pottering around making the main areas of the house tidy (because that seems to help as well).

I did have 1 task that really “HAD” to be done and that was talk to the Deputy Principal of our school about possible changes to our kids classes (they’re having to reshuffle the school at the moment and I don’t want our youngest changed).  That’s fine - all went fine with the phone call.  It should have felt a relief to have that dealt with and know they’re not going to change him.

Instead, I felt incredibly exhausted and in a LOT of pain.

Why?

I’m surmissing that I absorbed a heap of his emotions.

Unsurprisingly, he’s quite stressed at the moment.  He’s been sick.  He’s having to deal with all the extra work of reshuffling all the primary classes (we’re getting an extra teacher) and the principal is away at the moment.

Poor guy.  I do wish I was more that I could do.

But I’m guessing my carrying some of his emotional baggage is not helpful to anyone.

Mind you, I’d be curious as to whether he felt any better after talking to me.  Wonder if my taking it on unburdens someone else or whether the emotions multiply???

Dunno.  I’m still learning about this myself.  And I’m not about to ring him back and ask him.  LOL.

So, now I’m doing some research and trying to understand strategies for stopping this happening and what I can do to recover my own emotional state when it does happen.

Anyone else have this tendency to absorb other peoples emotions?  I’m not sure how common it is.

Now that February has begun, my new budget has clicked in to play.  As has my grocery challenge.

This month all I’m trying to do is TRACK what we’re spending on groceries.

I really can’t set myself any goals or challenges until I KNOW what we’re already spending.

As it turns out, I’m beginning the challenge with a well stocked freezer and pantry which should help.  It also means I need to take that into account when considering how much it is costing us in groceries.  One thing I would like to do is to set aside $50 each month toward the cost of our 1/2 cow.  We seem to get one about once a year and the cost is around $500 so that will give me the cash all ready for the next one plus enough to get a couple of sheep butchered as well.

BUT, we’ll see how we go.

For now I have allocated $150 for groceries.

I found an old little coin purse which should work well for our grocery money.

I’m a little bit peeved that our local supermarket has just instated a new “no cash out” rule.  My plan *was* going to be to do the weekly shop and take the “change” from $150 out in cash.  Now I’m going to have to be a little bit more organised and go to the bank first.

Anyway, so far this week:

Spent: $72.45

Leaves: $77.55

I know I’ll need to buy milk and fruit tomorrow when I go through town (they get fresh fruit and veg on a Thursday so when I know I’m going back through, I leave some of my stuff until then to buy).

Unless something goes drastically wrong, I think I’ll make it “within” the $150 this week.  Nice way to start.

EDITED TO ADD:

Second shop came to $15.70

Spent: $88.15

Leaves: $61.85 which stays in my “grocery” purse for future use if needed.