diy dinosaur bookends
Last week, Anita and I decided to take a little day off to do some crafty fun. She’d seen this nifty little tutorial online on how to make bookends out of some dollar store plastic animals and plastic photoframes, and once she showed it to me, I got a wee bit excited as well.
Surprisingly, it was pretty hard to find plastic animals that were suitable – we hit up the Reject Shop, as well as several asian variety stores, and settled on some dinosaur toys from Kmart. Instead of photoframes, we got point of sale signage plastic holders, so that there was no slant in them.
We tried several methods of cutting them up in half. They didn’t cut well at all with sharp scissors, so we went for the next option in our arsenal:
nyahahahahahaa!
A little bit of overkill? Perhaps. But it was fun.
In hindsight, doing that with shorts and no protective shoes on was probably not a good idea.
Moving on!
We soon realised that a sharp box cutter worked MUCH better to slice through the animals cleanly.
that's MUCH easier!
see? much easier.
You will have to ignore the “bloodstain” on my hand. It was actually some 24 hr lipstick I’d tried on 2 days before. Yes, I bought it because its staying power is evidently impressive! (You can buy it too!)
Whilst I worked hard on the slicing and dicing, Anita busied herself with completely useful exercises, such as making a mutant managerie.
very very helpful.
After cutting them all up, we stuck them onto their plastic frames. It was hard to get them to stick, even superglue was pretty useless. The hot glue gun didn’t work at ALL, though we did have a fun time playing with it. In the end though, Gorilla glue did the trick.
Anita magically becoming helpful when it's not manual labour.
drying in the sun!
To be fair, Anita’s skillset is the fiddly stuff (like gluing these animals on delicately). I have no such claims to such skills. Once they’d dried, we took them to the very official spray-painting station in my backyard to get made over.
official. spraypainting. station.
Anita went for silver, and I went for (surprise surprise!) GOLD.
And yes, S did come home and ask why the garden rocks were metallic. He wasn’t impressed.
We used plastic spray paint primer, let it dry for 40 minutes, and then 2 light and thin coats of our colour of choice.
Annnnnnnd, TA-DA!
finished products! our own metallic zoo!
pwetty!
indoors under nice light...
in use...
And yes. I am aware that my bookend bodies don’t match. And that has everything to do with the fact that I LIKE mutant animals and NOTHING to do with the fact that we may have botched a few of the first specimens, OKAY?
Good.
Now that’s sorted, one last gorgeous photo of our wonderfully productive day!
TA-DA!
simple home improvements
Sometimes it’s the little things that make all the difference. S and I have lived in this house for a year now, and yet it still feels like it’s not quite become enough of a complete home yet.
An example – our tea/coffee station has been a veritable mess of kettle cords, toaster parking area, random things strewn around, for AGES. And now, with a simple purchase, it has become a joy to behold and made this part of the kitchen SO MUCH more usable.
see?
Whilst my mum was in town last week, she also bought S a new iron – see, the iron we had was a $30 one I bought when I first moved to Australia 11 years ago. Uh huh. Apparently, according to the ironer in the house (S!), it was the world’s crappiest iron. So my mummy decided a great gift would be one of a household appliance for him.
Cue one happy ironing man.
in his Geelong teeshirt, NO LESS.
It’s a good Phillips one, generates more steam than I knew irons were capable of, and cuts his ironing time hugely. Of course, I know all this from being a very keen observer, as I myself do not iron. My relationship with ironing is such that when S does his ironing, I look at him holding my crumpled garment with imploring eyes. AND IT WORKS. Ladies, take note!
Yup, definitely the simple home improvements and a man who irons that makes my day.
Read More5 happy things
It was an incredibly busy weekend, which left me pretty exhausted, but so filled with happy moments that it was hard to begrudge it or deem it unworthwhile.
To start with, Friday night was a gathering of friends to celebrate Lys & Etienne moving in together, and it was nice to catch up with everyone, particularly my girls.
rawking the animal print and happy smiles!
S also keeps upping the “perfect boyfriend” bar by sending me a little “romance is alive” gift after I had a bit of a melt down about being 30 and frumpy (shh, i know, i know, but let me have my moments!). I saw a quote a friend posted on facebook that was something to the tune of “Women aren’t made to be understood, they’re made to be loved” and I’m super lucky S gets this down pat every time. Instead of trying to fix my (totally non issue) problems, he just lets me rave and rant and then shows me he adores me anyway. LOVE.
long stemmed, and gorgeous.
After performing for the first time in months on Saturday night, S and I also spent Sunday in the garden, enjoying the great weather and the fact that we can start working on the house together again now that spring seems to be officially here. I did pretty useless things given my physical limitations, but did manage to pot my gorgeous new azaleas for right by the front door. Aren’t they pretty and welcoming?
And as I did this, S, to my utter awe and amazement (see above re “perfect boyfriend”) – pulled up ALL the grass and soil in the backyard with a spade, then re-soiled with over 20 bags of soil, and then reseeded it all. It took him over 9 hours of solid work, and he never stopped. And now, we have what is looking like a lush and healthy backyard that will be some very pretty lawn soon (hopefully!).
that cherry blossom is just about to bloom too!
Lastly, we did what we always do for the week ahead – prep our lunches. It’s a soothing 1-2 hour activity that we adore doing together. Except this week I also made a bunch of asian boxes for me – rice covered in sambal eggplant tomato and mushrooms, stir fried vegetables and grilled pork belly. Oh, heaven that’s gonna last me all week long.
i had one today for lunch and it. was. good.
So yes, it was a good weekend. Did you have a nice one what with the incredible weather? Any particularly good moments? Somehow the sun being out seems to correlate with good things happening, or at least a better mindset to view everything in a better light, don’t you think?
Read Moresuper clever food serving dish
S and I LOVE to entertain, and there’s nothing I like better than cooking up a feast of multiple dishes for a whole bunch of people. Watching people feed hungrily on things you’ve spent the day whipping up seems like such a great way to spend an evening to me.
When we moved, we bought a square dining table. Great for dinner party conversations and very good for the kind of many-plates-of-shared-food banquet I tend towards. Not so great for when you want a second helping from a serving bowl all the way across the table.
The last time I was in Singapore, I saw these brilliant things.
Basically they’re extremely large (about a metre across) rotating lazy susans with dish serving bowls BUILT RIGHT IN. All you do is fill the serving sections with food, and plonk the entire thing in the middle of your table. And then rotate merrily between your guests. No standing up and pretending you want to offer everyone else food when all you really want to do is start stuffing your face. No awkward “pass the plate” moments. And definitely no more elbowing someone accidentally in a bid to reach eagerly for the sweet potato mash.
My heart stopped, and I would have just bought one on the spot if not for the slightly hideous designs they had and the inability to cart them to Australia.
My question to you – have you seen these anywhere here, and do they come in prettier designs? I NEED to know!
Read More
horse love
I’ve written before about how terrified I am of horses, and yet I have now been on horseback, and enjoyed it!
A few months ago I found this horrific excuse of a ceramic animal in a thrift store.
WHAT IS IT?
It’s a unicorn. With a broken horn (see the forlorn hole in its forehead?). AND you can’t tell in this photo, but it’s not only white, it’s covered in glitter. Subtle glitter. You know, to make it extra classy.
Something about it thrilled me though (maybe its bubblegum pink and sparkly mane and tale?) and I bought it for the whole princely sum of $8.
I took it home, and placed it on a brick in the back garden, for…
plastic spray paint primer
Now I KNOW this is the wrong kind of primer, BUT you have to hear me out. The entire THING was covered in a plasticky like substance (I think to make it shimmer a bit more) and I didn’t feel like sanding it down. So, plastic primer it was.
I gave it a nice even coat and let it dry overnight, and voila, the finish became roughed up like it had been sanded. YAY!
Then out came the bling. Why the bling? Well I’ve had a recent obsession with brass/gold things. From jewellery, to belts, to homewares, and even lamps. YES, entire gold lamps. Behold just one of the items of magnificence I made my long suffering man cart home from Egypt.
oh yeah baby!
Umm, yeah. S doesn’t entirely approve of my obsession with gold animals, but I’M ON A ROLL HERE and beware anyone who steps into the path of the ROLL.
ANYWAYS.
To cut a long story short, I spray painted the damn unicorn horse morph GOLD.
And here it is. Ain’t she purdy?
And, she looks magnificent on our dining room sideboard, with our newly framed Egyptian papyrus art!
(Excuse the crappy reflection of the light in the glass. I err, didn’t plan on that.)
So, I’m officially addicted to spray painting, and I may or may not have run around the house looking for more things I could spray paint gold (cue diabolical laughter) but yes, how good is that $8 investment in my home decor?!
Read More
single happy moment: garden joy
I’ve always been a bit useless at gardening, but since we moved into our house-with-scary-garden 8 months ago, I’ve really taken a shine to it. I’ve been experimenting, with varying results, with flowers, annuals, perennials, fruit and vegetables, creepers, herbs, hanging baskets, mulches and fertilisers – all terms and things I’d previously had zero knowledge of.
Mostly though, I was just a little bit tentative about my foray into gardening, and so for the most part, tried to leave it as the old owners had left it to us.
I did make one huge change though – my ultimate pride in the garden for the first summer I had with it, was harvesting some delicious tomatos from my 2 plants I bought as soon as I moved in and found a sunny spot.
pride and joy!
They were just regular tomatoes from the nursery, Burkes Backyard ones I think, but they were the single successful thing I grew that then gave me the confidence to tackle other plants, and even a bit of a landscape makeover (which is still in progress!)
Delicious, and inspiring. What helped you gain confidence as a gardener when you first started out?
Read More
Who Is This Girl?
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