Merry Christmas & Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a good start to the New Year. I love that the holiday period is relaxed and people are still in that festive feeling and one day rolls into another, the kids are on holidays and the evenings are just casual summer dinners inside or out maybe a BBQ, friends drop in for a hello and a cuppa. I love strolling around the garden especially after the lovely rains we have just had and see everything growing and producing their bounty of fruits and vegs, the greenness of the grass and hearing the frogs and night life in the dams and creek.

As usual life has been busy around here with so much going on. All the concrete slabs have been poured for our new Church and the buildings will start next week. People are amazed how fast the project is moving and how much we have accomplished.

See that water tank there on the right hopefully that will be coming to my place so that it can be cut up into three raised beds for my veggie patch :)

The truck and crane used to pour the concrete for the slabs.

This is the front main building, the last one to be poured.

Check out that crane! The contractors have been fantastic and everything has gone smoothly especially this was just before Christmas.

Now this is my dining/kitchen area and Dave surprised me for Christmas with new flooring and I was so excited that finally we could pull up the old flooring that was part carpet (yuck) and part linoel, it was really old and look disgusting. We were going to sand the floor boards but some parts needed to much work so we went for a floating floor that looked like natural flooring.

Dave, my hard working, talented hubby has so many jobs going I don't know how he keeps up but he likes to make sure everything is done properly and no corners cut

The kitchen is coming together nicely, check out that flooring, very nice.The skirting around the kitchen cupboards is finely done and it won't belong and we can start painting.

We finally had the much awaited rain on Christmas Day and it kept coming, we watched in great delight the dams filling up, the water tanks filling up and the water just flowing in the creeks and water ways.

Just look at it, amazing. One farmers wife I talked to before Christmas said they only had about three weeks of water left in most of their dams for their live stock.

This was good rain that soaked into the ground.

A few of our cause ways were flooded but in the truck it was exciting crossing them, just to see and hear the water was refreshing.

Dave had another surprise for me, he got the timber to do the laundry room and the back door. I know it is another project but they are all connected and once Dave gets started he works to get it done and the finished product is going to be amazing. Where you open the new back door we will be putting up a deck which will go along the back of the house

And when go out the back door you will see my veggie patch, which has just boomed with all the rain and sunny weather. i thought this year will be terrible for the veggies but it has just taken off.

At the moment I have growing a variety of squashes, egg plant, celery, lettuce, a variety of beans, snow peas shallots, onions, potatoes, a variety of tomatoes, spinach, corn and variety of herbs. Not bad for a late start and the lack of water.

Our yard is greening up nicely and sheep in the paddocks are just loving the new green shoots. Well that's about it for the moment I hope all is well with you all :)

My Cup Runneth Over !

We have had 90mm of rain in the last 3 days, the rain was that hard last night we had water come in over the kitchen area where we are renovating, the gutters could not handle the amount of water that was coming down. We pulled out buckets and towel trying to stem the flow and catch as much as we can. The lightening was flashing and the thunder was cracking it was all happening. We could hear the creek behind us roaring with the fast flowing water.


We live about 50km out of town and we are on tank water so that amount of rain was a blessings because it filled up all of our tanks and the over flow was diverted to this plastic tank above which I use for the washing machine and for flushing the toilet. When we renovate this side of the house it will look a bit more tidier.
This is Sarabie curled up in her bean bag, it was a bit too much for her with all the thunder and lightning and the scurrying around with buckets and towels. The other dogs were curled up as well even our cat Kitty was curled up with one of the dogs.


We try to save as much water as we can, this is the bottom half of a water tank that was of not much use to someone so it was given to us and we have put it near the front verandah and it catches the water from the verandah roof.
This is my darling daughter weathering the rain to fill up our 25 litre drums that we usually fill up in town at one of the water mains to fill up the 1000 litre drum out the back for the washing machine/toilet water.
I was helping but having the cold rain run down my back and neck was too much for this little soldier to bear so I retrieved to the verandah.
After the rain had filled up the tanks and the plastic drum we filled up the two 40 gallon drums that are in my veggie garden, what a blessing :)
And to top all of this off we had a black out and had no power but never fail we dragged out our generator which has been so handy. We were able to make our porridge, boil the kettle, have a shower (we connected the generator to the water pump), blow waved my hair and watched a little TV.


This is the monster that has saved us a few times from starvation and boredom (hehehehe). The black out lasted for14 hours, Dave was unable to do any work in the shed but Jess and I went to work in town in the shop and fortunately there was power there.

Ezekiel 34v26 I will bless them and the places surrounding my hill.
I will send down showers in season; there will be
showers of blessing