Everyone needs a Project!

Last night, I gave in to my tired eyes and put myself to bed earlier than midnight. I promise myself every morning that I will go to bed earlier that night, and the vast majority of evenings I find I have broken my own promise. There is stuff I want to get done - whether its doing my laundry at 10pm, reading Trueblood, or in the lounge wrapped up in my quilt from Penny googling or more recently pinning to my hearts content. I am not a morning person. The girls in my theatre change room can vouch for that.  Thats not to say that I am a grumpy bum, it just takes me a while to look and feel awake. 10 hour shifts on 6 and half hours sleep probably doesn't help the problem... Having completed my third 10 hour shift in a row, and a full day of mixed-bag ENT as the only ENT experienced nurse... I was buggered when I finished work at 6pm and headed straight to Mum and Dads to celebrate cousin Meg's birthday!

So after a delicious dinner, chosen by the birthday girl, made by Nick, supervised by Mum and eaten by me...  We gave the girl her presents, ate some cake and when Meg and the boys headed off to see Transformers 3, I went home with good intentions to write my third blog this year.  
It didn't happen.
Instead was in bed by 10, and whilst it took me quite a while to fall asleep, I am now feeling the benefits of a little extra sleep. Another 10 hour day of ENT today and I'm still perky at 9pm.  It might have something to do with today being my 'Friday'. Two days off - WOOHOO!  
Last weekend, I completed the very un-fun task of the spare bedroom cleanout. Having accomplished that, I now figure I deserve to do something fun and creative. I originally had plans to DIY something awesome and perfect for Miss Meg's birthday present, but being that until last weekend, my sewing machine and overlocker were buried deep in the spare bedroom abyss it was made somewhat impossible. Now that I have extended the deadline of Meg's super present til Christmas, I want to make something for me. So, what to do?
Remember this picture from my last blog?

Notice the purple cover on my overlocker? That's not a cover.  It's a green bag. Yep, the ones you put your groceries in, and it has been covering my overlocker for years. Being that it is one of few items now visible in our spare bedroom, being pinspired by Pinterest, and wanting to improve my sewing skills - I've decided it's time to make me a cover! I found the following pictures on Pinterest which links directly to their original sites here and here which give tutorials on how to make them!

I look forward to pawing through the patchwork section of Fantazia Fabricland tomorrow to see what I can find.  And, of course will be sharing my successes/failures right here.
So I now have a short term project for this weekend, and Adam recently began a project of his own. His is much more long term, and has been a long time coming. For a couple of years now he has dreamed of building his own cocktail cabinet. No, it's not a cabinet full of alcohol... It's an old-school sit down gaming cabinet.  One of these - 

...but a bit more stylin', and without the gaudy sticker panel. It suits us don't you think? Unlike the original cocktail cabinets of the past, on which you could play only the one game - you can now make these babies with like 8000+ games. Every game from the late seventies onwards. Space Invaders, Frogger, Cookie Monster Galaga, Wonder Boy, Street Fighter, Psycho Fox, Alex the Kidd, Bubsy - you name it, we will have it.
Creating one of these for us will require Adam to learn a whole bunch of new skills.  He has already bought an old dead empty cabinet off eBay.

Yup! This one is ours, and it is a little worse for wear.  Adam is currently in the throes of deciding whether to refurb this cabinet or simply use it as a template to make his own from scratch. We have enlisted Rossco, and his mad carpentry skills, to be his mentor for this part of the process.
In addition to building/refurbing the cabinet, Adam will be building a computer from scratch that will be able to run the games. This will involve him putting together the hardware of the computer and connecting it to a monitor, joysticks, buttons, coin-slot etc. He will also have to configure the computer.  It's a long road ahead, but he is already on his way.

This was Adam testing a game on his work bench in the garage, having already built the hardware of the computer.

And here is Leo (isn't he handsome?), who thought he would jump in and help his daddy with his new project!


Is anyone else in the middle of an awesome DIY project? Do your substitute children pets insist on helping you aswell?


Just like the Policeman with the ukulele, it's time to twiddle my fingers and say...
Sweet Dreams. See You Tomorrow!


P.S. I really shouldn't beat up the true awesomeness of your present Miss Meg, you may be disappointed. Your present will be perfect total crap.

Feeling liberated, satisfied and in control!

Since we moved into our home 1 and a half years ago (eeek!) the second bedroom has always been a mess. It is our 'don't know what to do with it' room. In fact, you could call it our massive 'too hard basket', and it has been weighing me down for a long time now.  I have hated showing people through our home and either choosing to not open the door, or throwing caution to the wind and showing them anyway - and instantly feeling regret when the door won't open the whole way because there's too much crap stuff on the floor, and dear god I forgot how bad it was runs through my head.  So for many months on end I have been trying to clear it out.  Problem is, there is always something else to do.


The truth... is for a two bedroom duplex housing two people - we have ALOT of stuff. As you may or may not have seen on Facebook... I have recently confessed my sins - I am a bulk-buying hoarder-holic. In attempt to rid myself of this demon, I decided that it was time I cleaned out the multiple boxes of crafting/beading supplies I accumulated whilst in Uni.  No, I wasn't studying any type of creative artistic degree - I was studying the science of Nursing!  The result of my DIY obsession was carting this around from rental to rental for the last 7+ years.

As I was cleaning out, I hyperventilated every time I opened another box and found more stuff in it. I see now, what I couldn't see back then. Why on earth did I think I needed this many beads, that many bag handles, a blister pack of pliers and a rainbow selection of wire?!?  Even the fluffy feather things at the front of the table... I remember thinking at the time - 'these will be great for pulling apart to make earrings'.  But instead of saying "I'll take this one black fluffy thing please" I obviously had a brain implosion and said "I'll take one in every colour. Yes, also in fluro green". The thought of how much I spent on everything was overwhelming.  Seeing my pain my beautiful mother and cousin Meg volunteered their services to help me come to terms with removing the wares. Being hoarder-holic by nature, I saw parting with all of them as impossible and wasteful - but am very proud of the strength it took to only keep this much -

Yup!  Thats all.  Proud?  I am. Couldn't have done it without my sponsors tho.  The rest is packed into boxes to take to the markets.  *sigh* I feel so much better already.


This weekend I finally committed and conquered the spare room.

Spare Room Clean Out in Progress

I should have taken photo's of the room in it's original state, but I plum forgot.  And that being said, the shots I have taken are not so awesome as we don't have a zoom lens yet for our DSLR. And let's face it, I have no idea how to use the damn thing yet.  Adam always complains that we have a great camera and I never use it. It's not that I don't want to, I just don't know how.. I am hoping that this blog forces me to pick it up more often and get some awesome skills, so that one day I will be able to take some photo's worthy of being hung on our whitebrickwall. Oh! It's raining.  Sweet, that means the garden is getting watered, I have been on 10hr morning shifts and with the short days we've been having lately, I haven't seen the sun - or watered my plants. Distracted?  Yes... so photo's of my spare bedroom success.

Ta-dah!!!!!!!!!!!

There is even space in the cupboard!  Everything else was sorted into storage boxes or market boxes.  Thanks to Rossco and Adam as his handyman-in-training, we now have storage shelves that line 2 of the walls in our garage... but that boys and girls is a story for another day.


So many people say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem.  I confessed to my affliction to all my family and friends on the Facebook interwebs.  And whilst I don't know what the rest of the steps are - I'm sure I have passed through a few of them with my beading and big room cleanout.  I have also vowed to never purchase in bulk again - be it food, stationery DIY supplies. I'm on my way to recovery, and I'm feeling good.


Sweet Dreams.  See you tomorrow.
(insert crazy horizontal spirit-fingers here).

And............We're Back in the Game!

Over a year has passed since our last blog post!  Our intentions were good...but life gets crazy and things fall by the wayside.  In the past year and a half we bought our modest little duplex, quit both our jobs, moved south into our new home, got unsatisfactory new jobs, found better jobs, painted a brick-wall white, spent 5+ weeks in Thailand, planned a wedding and got married(!), Adam went to the Academy for 7 months, graduated and since January 2011 we've been trying for a baby.  No success yet....  And yes! I would tell you :)


I figure that's quite an impressive list so I am trying not to beat myself up for not following through with this blog.  Even though we are both full-time shift workers - we really want to do this - for us, and for the people who can't be with us as often as we'd like. I'm feeling so committed that I hired books from the library on blogging, and have even bought a domain name!  No more 'blogspot' in our name.  We are now known simply as whitebrickwall.com


The reason I wanted to start blogging in the first place, was largely inspired by the website YoungHouseLove.  And the next real kick to get me re-started was the discovery on Pinterest.  I'm officially addicted.


In our little world of home renovations and DIY, last year started and finished with the whitebrickwall.  We are still in love with it, and have only added a few pieces to it.  We hope to eventually fill it, but we really see the wall as a work in progress - adding the occasional piece as we find it/make it/are given it.

This artwork was a wedding gift from Tim and Lisa, created by an artist in London-town.  The more you look at this, the more you find.  It's intricate, funky, beautiful and sentimental to Tim and Lisa which of course makes it very special for us.  A little piece of them hanging on our wall.

This canvas is of Fingal beach and was painted by Teresa, mother of our wedding MC Daniel, and given as a wedding gift from the Fraser family.

Adam and I bartered with a blind artist for this city tuk-tuk painting and carted it across Thailand.  It was almost left behind at the floating raft-houses, but thankfully retrieved in the nick of time!

Adam put these photo's together.  They are just a mere taste of our last Thailand trip.  We originally planned to plaster the walls of this blog with photo's and tales of the trip - but alas - we were too busy enjoying it.  Perhaps I will have to post some of our favourite pictures and places on here at a later date.

And, finally a frame with some of my favourite photo's from our wedding.  Our fantastic photographer, Lara Pape took these candid shots during our first dance as a married couple.  No fake first dance or fake cake cutting photo's for us.  No sir-ee.  These babies are photo's of us in the moment, and we love <3 them.


Well pumpkin pie.  It's time for this little worker to go to bed.
Sweet Dreams.  See you tomorrow.