DIY clock

For some reason lately I’ve been kind of fascinated by DIY clocks. I think it’s because I couldn’t find a clock in a store that I liked, and I really wanted one because when you spend all day at home like I have been (I don’t want to talk about it), it’s easy for time to get away from you. So I made this one.

I started out looking around online, and I really liked this one, and these two, and this one. But when I saw a pack of those pre-dyed popsicle sticks for $2 in the craft store, I knew they were for me!

Here are the materials for this project:

• Ikea Rusch clock
• Dyed popsicle sticks
• Cardboard craft box (optional)
• Sticky tack for affixing to the wall

Step 1: Deconstruct the clock. All you need is the mechanism and hands. (Alternatively, you can buy a clock mechanism.)

Step 2: Poke a hole in the lid of a cardboard box (these happened to fit perfectly, but you could also just use a piece of cardstock or some other creative way to cover up the black plastic mechanism- or just not worry about it). Stick the doo-hickey through the hole (um…) and then replace the clock hands on the doo-hickey.

Step 3: Play around with different arrangements.

I settled on the yellow, blue, and green.

Step 4:Stick it all to the wall with sticky tack, using the original clock face as a guide.

Or, if you’re nerdy, use math.

Step 5: Enjoy knowing what time it is!

Admittedly, it’s a little “kiddy” or maybe even modern for me. It might go better in a kids’ room or a nursery. But it was so easy to make, and would be so easy to take down, that for now it will stay in our wannabe grown up apartment.

 

A lazy weekend and Waterfall Gully

This post was written by Stan!

It was a pretty lazy couple of days this weekend. Aside from doing some errands and going for a run, we didn’t really plan any outings until mid afternoons. Saturday we loosely planned to drive up into the hills to watch the sunset, but the stores were closing soon and we didn’t know where to find a good vantage point. So we settled for a walk over to the 8 km² of park lands that surround the CBD. The closest green space is Victoria Park, home of the yearly Clipsal motor race. But this time of year the bleachers are taken down and it’s just wide open with a few trees, running paths, and the tarmac.

The sky had been patchy all day, but the clouds kindly parted for us to take some pictures. Note: these are not post-processed. Who has time for that anyways.

This is the hairpin corner of the racetrack

This tree is enormous, the photo doesn’t really do it justice

Rain’s a comin’

Amanda took this beauty. We literally ran across the park to get the right cloud/tree composition.

The last bit of light

Our Sunday plans for a morning run quickly became an afternoon walk (people don’t use the word “hike” down here). We knew of a place called Waterfall Gully that was in the Adelaide Hills, but didn’t really know what to expect. The main road was very akin to Pine Crest, up Emigration Canyon for you SLCers, with a mix of million dollar homes and hippie ranch houses. Our walk up the Chambers Gully Track began with pavement but after a hundred meters or so became dirt, and then we came to the rather narrow entrance to Cleland National Park:

Foxes are bad. Seriously bad.

Strollin’

Did I mention that it does not seem like autumn?

Before too long, we spotted a sleepy koala in a tree, and then another, and then another. We didn’t bring the zoom lens, so this is all the koala detail you’ll get for now.

So sleepy

We spent the next half hour or so dawdling along, taking pictures and eying the trees while we enjoyed the sun shine.

After walking for a few kms, we realized that we hadn’t seen any waterfalls. The stream beds held only a trickle and definitely not enough to support a torrential waterfall. We reminded ourselves that there is no snowpack to support streams year round (I’ll save you the hydrological explanations) so only after a storm do many small waterfalls appear along the track.

Many side trails to wander about.

When we turned around to head for the car park, we hadn’t really made it to a destination, but the walk had been quite lovely and we had seen at least nine koalas. Plus it was getting dark and cold and we had a ways to go. A rather fit and friendly man in his sixties or so caught up with us. We watched a koala together as it balanced on the skinniest branch, fifty feet above the ground, and pawed for the farthest (and probably best) eucalyptus leaves. Then we ended up walking down together; saw another 20 or so koalas and talked about living in Australia (he’d been here for 15 years) and the many trails to see in Waterfall Gully. So in the weekends to come, we will probably be headed back for seemingly endless km’s of trail running and walking.

One more koala:

Time to get up.

 

Cheery chair makeover

I’ve been digging the secondhand shopping here in Oz. A few tricks of the trade I’ve learned: The thift stores aren’t that cheap, Gumtree (Craigslist) is just as good as it is back home, and Ikea is still a good standby if you can’t find anything else.

Here are some chairs I found and fixed up from the local Salvos (Salvation Army):

They were 20 bucks each, which I didn’t think was too bad. I figured I could give ‘em a coat of paint and they’d be as good as new. Upon further  inspection (as always) I realized they were going to be more work than I thought.

I love natural wood, and at first I thought I would refinish them. But the veneer was chipped and generally in bad shape and it would have taken hours of patience to patch them with new veneer pieces. Since they’re not antiques or anything, I decided to introduce them to my friend, spray paint.

First, I squished some wood glue in between the peeling veneer and the chair and clamped it:

Then I went back and, using wood patch, filled in the nicks and dings as well as I could:

Sneak peak to this same angle all patched and painted:

Then I gave them an allover sand so my primer would stick better.

They each took a whole can of $16 Zinsser stain-blocking primer, at which point I realized this “cheap little makeover” might not be as cheap as I thought.

After a couple coats of paint, I realized my patch job still left something to be desired in some places, so I went ahead and patched over the paint. It turned out fine, but next time I’ll know that if I’m dealing with super old dried-out veneer that looks like it was painstakingly peeled off by a bored kid in time out, I need to patch it better. They ended up requiring three cans of Circus Yellow Dulux spray paint at $11 each. So the total for these chairs was over $100. This fact is a bit painful considering you can easily find chairs for $50 apiece, but these are unique and they’re mine so I love them.

Here they are again, my sunny little beauties!

For now, I kind of like the brown leather cushions, so they’ll stay. Now what is this scene missing… oh yeah, a table! It’s hard to find a teensy table that’s small enough for a 2-person breakfast nook, so the search continues, as do our meals at the coffee table.

There ya have it! My first project down under.

 

News from the motherland

One perk of having my brother-in-law live in our house is that we get periodic updates. News! Word! Photographs! Of our beloved home!

Can I just whine for a second? It’s spriiiiiiiing back home. All in all, we got to experience five total days of spring this year before coming to this strange land where the seasons are reversed and the deer hop instead of run. As the weather gets cooler and rainier here, it’s kind of fun in a sick sort of way to see how beautiful our yard back home is looking.

Look at our glowing Japanese beauty:

There’s a good mix of purchased plants and free starts, and it’s all exploding.

Remember the parking strip? (Also known as the “verge”)

Oh, back yard, how I miss you and your green pastures (even though I kinda sorta killed part of you last year… don’t worry, Duncan is probably a more competent gardener).

Meanwhile down under…

Downpour.

I actually like the rain. If only I could be in two places at once.

Jesse says hi!

 

Hahndorf and an iconic Australian artist

We find ourselves with quite a bit of free time these days. My weekdays are spent job-hunting, buying us more and more stuff (finally got a vacuum!) and generally exploring. Oh and cooking. I’ve been cooking a lot AND doing the dishes, a gravy train which I’ve warned Stan might end once I find gainful employment.

So a lot of weekends we become tourists. Last weekend we visited the South Australian Museum, which had lots of cool Aboriginal artifacts and some interesting taxidermy. This weekend, we decided to take a 20-minute drive to Hahndorf, an historic German town in the Adelaide Hills.

The fall colors are out, and the streets are lined with touristy shops and restaurants. We had a German lunch of several kinds of wursts (my vegetarianism has definitely transitioned into flexitarianism down here).

Hahndorf is also home to St. Michael’s Lutheran church, which is Australia’s oldest Lutheran church with an actively worshiping congregation.

Next we went to a nearby property called The Cedars. All we previously knew was that it was a gallery of some sort, but when we got there we learned a lot from the guided tour. It turns out The Cedars was the home of Hans Heysen, an iconic German-Australian artist who became famous for his depictions of the Australian bush, particularly gum trees. He also captures light really well.

Droving into the Light, via here

His work reminded Stan of Maynard Dixon, who painted the American west.

We toured the historic Heysen house, where Hans and his wife Sally lived with their eight kids. I love stuff like that. We were by far the youngest people there, proving that we’re retired senior citizens trapped in young bodies. The house was full of his original paintings, which were really cool to see. It was also “chock a block” full of antiques and Persian rugs, which I tried not to drool on. The house’s decor hasn’t been changed since the family lived there. The kids still have family functions in the house and stay over. Pity we couldn’t take indoor photography, because there were some killer window seats, sunrooms, and wood-inlay furniture pieces. You’ll just have to go there!

A funny anecdote was that the Heysens had Anna Pavlova, the famous ballerina, over for dinner once. She loved a still life that Hans had painted for Sally, and pestered him and pestered him all throughout dinner to let her buy it. At one point she even got out her checkbook, but Hans refused because he had painted it for his wife (um, cuuuuute!). He finally convinced her to put down a deposit for a commissioned piece, which she reluctantly did. He then painted her a still life that was very similar to the one she’d wanted so badly and sent it to her, but it was almost immediately returned with a note saying that if she couldn’t have the one she wanted, she didn’t want one at all. Can you say Prima Donna!

This is his studio, which cost 400 pounds to build back in the 19-teens.

The other side featured a huge etched glass window imported from France. His studio was also full of Persian rugs, which he freely painted over. There was not a single drop of paint on any of the rugs; he was a very tidy man. But they were well worn, and you can see the holes where his easels wore through.

Sculpture work abounds on the sprawling property as well. (The property is about 130 acres- he bought out his neighbors to preserve his beloved redgums.) This is made from railroad nails.

The Heysen Sculpture Biennial was also going on, and we got to watch the artists work.

Lastly, we got to see the Model A Ford and caravan that Hans Heysen used to take to the wilderness to paint.

Looks cozy!

Here he is painting in the Flinders Ranges. I love how he’s in his suit and hat. What a gentleman.

Image via here

Thanks for indulging my touristy posts. I have a project coming up, and it involves sandpaper, wood patch, and paint, so stay tuned!

 

Wordless Wednesday

photo by me

 

photo by Stan

 

photo by Stan

 

photo by Stan

 

photo by Stan

photo by me

WW rule breaking here: Isn’t this guy the cutest? He’s waiting for his owner to get his hair cut. (You can even see some hair on the floor in the background.)

photo by Stan, hipsterfication by me

 

Open floorplan challenges

I’m actually a pretty big fan of “small space living”. Especially if I have an outdoor area (preferably a big yard, but a small patio will do for now). I’m also a fan of open floorplans and creating different “zones” in one big room. It feels cozy but not isolated.

In our “lounge room” as it’s known down here, we have to fit in an entryway, a living room, and a little dining nook. Below is my first stab at a layout.

It looks like there’s a lot of wasted space near the top, but I assure you the room is not that big. Plus, with a door and a short hallway, I think it would be bad feng shui to put any furniture there and impede the flow of the doorways.

Of course so far, the only things we have are a couch, a coffee table and two side tables, and two neat dining chairs I picked up yesterday. Now that we have the basics for eating (couch + coffee table = a just dandy impromptu dining room) and a place to drop our keys and mail (one of the side tables) I can relax a little more on finding things like comfy living room chairs, an actual dining table, a bookshelf, and a real console table for key-dropping. Oh and stuff for the walls.

So until the Gumtree gods smile down on me with a cute small table, this is where we’ll eat dinner:

And as always, if anyone has any genius ideas for the layout, I’m listening! Anyone else been drooling over the Small Cool entires? (Especially Yellow Brick Home’s!?)

 

Adorable Koalas

I told Stan I can die happy now, because I have seen both a koala and a kangaroo (or a wallaby?). Last weekend we went to Belair National Park just outside of Adelaide. The weather was gorgeous, and it was hardly even crowded (except at the picnic sites and cricket ovals).

Here I am on a walkway:

And if you think THAT’s cute, wait till you see this guy:

I MEAN COME ON!! I was squealing (mostly silently, because I didn’t want to wake him).  We were actually pretty far away; all of these were taken with the zoom lens. Those little guys like to sleep waaaay up high.

Don’t worry, we didn’t make noise or be obnoxious hoping to elicit a response, we just let him snooze. However, we totally lucked out and caught this one in motion!

Since koalas spend most of the day sleeping and lazing about, I was pretty stoked to see one move. Then he noticed us.

He totally looks like he’s slightly annoyed and saying, “What.”

One more:

Love.

 

We have an address!

I like to think that our marriage is free from binding traditional stereotypes that could hinder our progress. Case in point:

Yeah, I’m the truck driver in our relationship. I’m okay with that.

But you may notice that my smile in the above photo is more of a forced smirk. I was not having fun that day. I was having so much not fun, that later when politely asked how moving went, I couldn’t even lie. I think I just made a face and shook my head and commented on the weather.

It all started when I had to walk 6.2 kilometers across the city to get to the rental place. It’s supposed to be fall here right now, but it’s more of a swampy  sunshiney summer feeling. Walking almost four miles across town with my sunscreen melting off into my shirt collar wasn’t a good way to start things off. Then, when I got to the place, I couldn’t see the entrance. It was surrounded by a big iron fence, and finally I had to make an idiot of myself (AGAIN) and call the guy and say, “I’m standing outside and there’s no way in, mate!” It took two phone calls.

When I finally got in the “ute”, I felt like someone was pranking me. It is sooo weird to find yourself in a situation that is weirdly familiar, yet totally different from what you’re used to. Everything was there- the gear shifter, the blinker, the rear-view mirror… but I was like “Whoahhh… this is not correct.” People who say opposite driving is not that different must have superpowers. It was different.

I turned on the GPS and after a silent prayer I was off! I’d arranged to go and buy a bed and a washing machine that night, off of Gumtree. The GPS, which was still on pedestrian mode, was useless. After turning on the windshield wipers instead of the blinker about six times (trust me, you feel like a total idiot with your wipers on in an intersection, on a blistering hot sunny day) I pulled over and called Stan, sobbing. (By the way, the utilities people were supposed to come and we had to be home at all times between the hours of 7am and midnight. I know ridiculous. So that’s why he wasn’t with me.) He told me it was okay, that I didn’t need to go get all that stuff tonight, we’d just extend the rental, and to just come home. He’s such a gem. But being the cheapo that I am, and also being a flighty human whose emotions are capable of turning on a dime, told him that I just needed to bawl to him a little and then I would be fine. And it’s true- I was fine. So the bed and a washing machine/dryer combo purchases were a success. Go me.

Here is our bed.

And here is our washer/dryer combo.

It’s interesting. It doesn’t vent like a regular dryer and it takes like 3 hours to dry clothes. I’m sure we’ll be using the clothesline on our patio most of the time, but it’s nice to have this ol’ pig for when it’s raining.

The next day, we were scheduled to go look at a couch that we’d also found on Gumtree. I’d been told that it had “some marks but not too noticeable! ” but it looked pretty good from the pictures. You guys, it’s gross. The “marks! ” turned out to be where someone had apparently lain down every day for six months after a long hard indoor workout with no ventilation. But we’d driven so far, and we only had the ute for a little while, so we felt pressured to just get it. Ugh. I regret it, but not enough to rent another ute and try to get rid of it and get a new one. I bought a slipcover and it’s not a nice one like I had before (they’re not paying me to say that). So if anyone has any suggestions on how to make a dumpy slipcovered couch look a little nicer, I’m all ears.

The last big thing we needed was a fridge. Everyone I’d called the night before was flaking on me, so I started calling on any and all fridges on Gumtree. We found one, picked it up, and drove home. Then we drove the ute back and walked home. Then we collapsed or something- I can’t really remember.

Sigh… I’m just so glad the big stuff has all been moved. I feel like we’ve just been bleeding money, even though we got everything used and I feel like for pretty good deals. Here’s the tally:

$280: Solid wood bed including mattress (sorry if you’re sicked out by other people’s beds)

$350: LG washer/dryer combo

$100: Gross couch

$190: Fridge

Plus a bunch of stuff from Target and Ikea.

And there was another exciting development this weekend, which will make it a lot easier to get the rest of the things we need/want, like a dining table and chairs, coffee table, chairs, etc!

Here’s a sneak peak:

Representin’ with our UofU sticker! And Science, of course.

 

Stocking an apartment when you have no car

I’ve lived without a car before, and I’ll admit that given the choice I’d rather have one. But we don’t really want to rush into buying one down here until we find “the one”, so our search has been casual at best.

Shopping is… interesting. Especially when on top of groceries, I’m trying to buy things like dishes and other housewares for our new place. Each purchase, even something seemingly small like a set of sheets, has an impact on my journey home.

Stan is comfortable enough with his masculinity to endorse those pink striped sheets. Am I a lucky gal or what?

It’s probably good for the ol’ budget to go grocery shopping on a bike, because I can only buy what I can squeeze into my messenger bag. (But boy do I test its limits!)

Sure I could get panniers or a basket or something, but then I’d have to get an adorable dog wearing a beret to ride around in it.

Here is a pile of stuff I bought in two trips:

You might notice that there are some heavy items in there. Like the mortar and pestle. I don’t know of any of you have ever hauled a hunk of granite 2.6 km under the antipodean sun, but let’s just say there was no guilt over that ice cream float I enjoyed. None whatsoever.

Of course, hilarious as it might be, I’m not about to try and push a fridge home in a stolen shopping cart or dolly, or hitch a ride with a stranger in a truck with my couch. We have some big stuff to buy, and that’s why today I’m renting a “ute”. For one glorious 24-hour period, I will be able to drive to my heart’s content (well, within a 150 km limit) and stock that thing to the brim. (BTW, ute = pickup.) I’m a little terrified of the fact that my first driving experience in a new country on the wrong side of the road is going to be in a rented ute, but let’s just not think about that.

My cheaponess can’t handle even Ikea prices, so I’ve already arranged to buy a bed and a washer off of Gumtree (the Craigslist equivalent). I’m hoping we’ll be able to score a couch and a fridge as well, and maybe some night stands and/or a coffee table if we’re really lucky.

I’ll share the full list of what we need to buy, as well as our budget, in another post. In the meantime, wish us luck!

(PS- My brother-in-law Alex has helped someone move using only bikes. We’re not that hardcore.)