WHO'S STUPID IDEA WAS THIS ANYWAY?

As a Christmas gift I am flying my Mom out to Australia to stay for a few weeks. When I told her over the phone on Christmas day, I said that she could come out next or next year or she can came out when the plums are ready for picking.

She is officially coming out in March, which is a few weeks after the plums will be picked. Did she time that perfectly or what?

Well, as excited as we are to have her out, it has forced us to 'pull our fingers out' (as they say down here) and finally finish off the projects that we started almost a year ago, but were waiting to finish when the rains stopped. When the rains stopped, we decided to wait until it wasn't so hot.

It is still hot, but now we are under deadline and have been racing around getting everything done.

Last weekend I planted the summer annuals in the few garden beds that were bare, again pruned over 70 maple trees that hang over the driveway, potted up hanging baskets, summer pruned the roses, pulled more weeds.

Stuart fixed all of the retic, bought the extra bits of furniture that we needed and power hosed all of the dirt and redback spider webs off of the veranda.

Then one night before I went to bed, I decided to watch Under the Tuscan Sun. Stuart dreads it when I watch this movie because the next day I always drag him to the home depot type store so that we can renovate something.

This time I wanted to renovate the Cottage. The kitchen in the Cottage, which was all 70s tans, creams and browns, needed updating.

We were planning on renting it out as a holiday stay, so we needed to do it anyhow, just not this week.

So we decided on the colour scheme: black and white.

Rushed off to the homewares store and came back with a bootfull of tiles, grout, paint and E.S.P.

As we started to finish the cottage kitchen, the cottage bathroom (which is off the cottage kitchen) started to look weary so we renovated the cottage bathroom as well.

Then as the cottage bathroom was nearing completion, we realised we had to do something with the main cottage bedroom... which is at the opposite end to the cottage kitchen and the cottage bathroom, but had no furniture except a single bed.

So we rushed out to the furniture store and bought a new bedroom suite for our bedroom and put our old one in the cottage main bedroom.

Now that the cottage main bedroom is done, cottage smaller bedroom is looking a bit like a junk room.

Actually cottage smaller bedroom is a junk room, filled with photos and suitcases and half inflated inflatable punching bag and whatever else we don't want anymore, but don't want to throw away.

I can't bring myself to clean up that junk right now, so we will just keep the door closed and tell people it is where we keep Grandma.

Photos will be posted later on this week, fingers crossed, however plum season is about to begin and we have a newly renovated cottage.... any takers????

Still on the to do list... finish the paddock fencing, paint the main house and pick plums.

STOP! THIEF!

So this interesting statistic came out this past week.

One out of every ten people in Sydney admitted to stealing their co-workers lunch.

I don't live in Sydney, so my lunch is safe. My city just so happens to have the highest rate of people who eat lunch at their desk. As I read this "lunchtime" article (at my desk eating my lunch) I looked aross to those in my line of vision and my assistant was eating lunch at her desk and my boss was eating lunch at his desk.

Maybe this is why we have a low rate of theft? We keep them in the filing cabinet and gaurd them with our lives.

I have never been into stealing other's food, however I did once have a friend who ate any yoghurt in the office fridge that was not eaten by the time it had reached its expiry date.

So what I would like to know is, are you a lunchbox thief?

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DECADE

Today marks the first day of a new decade... although I am not entirely sure if that is true or not. I thought a decade was 10 years and unless I am counting wrong the years 2000 - 2009 only adds up to nine.

Whatever, if Entertainment Tonight has nostalgic specials on 'The Messiest Celebrity Divorces of the Decade' then obviously the decade is over. Who am I to argue with Mary Hart?

I was just reading over on Mom #1's blog and she reminded me of the how, on New Year's Eve when we were just about to enter the decade past, we all thought that he world was going to blow up at the stroke of midnight.

Yes, that was a fun night. The danger that we could be dead when the ball dropped just made us all drink more and dance harder. Then when we realised that we didn't die, we drank even more and danced even harder.

It was the year 2000, and we survived and what a beautiful world it would be. There was going to be spandex jackets, one for everyone.

Did you get yours?