Sunday Selections # 376

Welcome back to Sunday Selections.

Begun way back in the mist of time by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock and now continued by me, with a drastic relaxation of rules.

Originally meant for showcasing old photos lost on your files, never seeing the light of day, the meme has morphed into photos of your choice, new or old, good or not-so-good, anything you please, but nothing rude please.

If you are participating, please leave me a comment so I can buzz along and have a look.
Elephant's Child always participates, and her pictures are always worth seeing.

continuing on with my furniture painting:

(some of you may have seen some of these before)

the first five are from my previous home......which had much bigger rooms

A secondhand chest of drawers. I'd only just moved in and things were not fully unpacked

a new mirror, the box along the base has a lift up lid and that's where I stashed all my hairclips,  scrunchies and combs

and one of a pair of new bedside chests. The pink and green chest on the left is the second thing I ever painted. Can you see the gold trim?

these are my curtains, heavy cotton, thermal blockout lined, bought for huge, 16 feet wide, floor to ceiling windows when I lived near the beach. when I moved to my previous home I had enough to put on all the smaller windows. I love the colours and still have the curtains although they are much faded from many washings and one section is now my tablecloth. 

here is how I painted my furniture, in colours to tone in with those curtains. The miniature chest is the first piece I ever painted, followed by the bigger, small chest in a previous photo. The blue trim you see on the tallboy is actually a green/blue, but always shows blue in photos. If you look closely, you'll see gold trim on these pieces also. 

moving into my current home:

this is my bedroom, with everything crammed into one end. I'm standing in the doorway to the bathroom, to my left is the door to the back porch, to my right is the door to the lounge room; three walls, three doorways, which makes just over a metre width unsuitable for furniture placement.

Here is that small pink and green chest, right next to the doorway leading to the back porch.  You'll notice I no longer have the red/blue/green/yellow curtains here, they've been replaced by this aqua-backed black lace.

I found this cute little Llama in the Reject Shop for only $7, and just had to buy him

because his colours match my room so well

and he's a moneybox. Empty of course

this amber glass lightshade is what throws the golden tint over my room

here we see Yorick with his Easter Bunny ears from last month, he is currently wearing a Fedora, Raymond Reddington style

this final picture shows my favourite salad ingredients; cos lettuce, cucumber, red capsicum, red onion, tomatoes and a fresh peach. Italian dressing of course. I don't like French dressing at all.

 

Wednesday's Words on a Friday

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the words are supplied by Elephant's Child and can be found here.

This week's words are:

1. tick

2. fresh

3. droplet

4. magnificent

5. juice

6. appeal

and/or:

1. clue

2. cancel

3. cheap

4. purple

5. whales

6. love

Here is my story:

We’d had kind of a rough beginning, born to poor working parents, never enough money or clothes, but at least our Dad didn’t get drunk and hit us, like Cheryl’s Dad did.  There was only Cheryl and her brother Simon, while there were eight of us kids, but we were the happier family.

Sometimes Cheryl’s Mum Joan would bring over cakes or biscuits she had made, saying there were too many for just her and the kids, “Dan doesn’t eat sweet things” she’d say and Mum was always thankful, but we all knew that Cheryl’s mum mostly came over for some company and the laughter that rang through our house daily.

As the years went by and we all grew up, and Cheryl’s Dad grew grumpier and harder to live with, Cheryl and her Mum came visiting more often, especially after Simon went off to live and work in another town.  Cheryl and I got jobs at the local towel factory, making bath towels in pretty colours; Cheryl was good on the machines while I was in the packing department.

Neither of us ever married although her brother Simon did and all of my siblings too. “We’ll just have to grow old together” she’d say.  And we did. We were the only two who stayed in the small town after all the parents died. Cheryl inherited their house, but chose to sell it and move into my happier, messier home with me.

In our fifties one day, saving for our eventual retirements, Cheryl brought home some travel brochures from a stand at the library. “Look at these Barbara,” she said. “What do you think? Could we take a little holiday away this year?” We studied all of them and discovered we both liked the idea of a Whale Cruise, four days at sea, leaving from a Port city several hours south of where we lived. “Do you get seasick?” I asked. “Haven’t a clue,” Cheryl replied. “Let’s find out,” I said. “I don’t know about myself either, neither of us have been anywhere near a beach our whole lives. Let’s cancel the caravan this year and try this cruise instead.”

With the travel brochure highlighting the cheap cruise managing to tick all the boxes for us, off we went, enjoying the fresh sea air, sipping orange juice each morning, marvelling at the magnificent views, the purple shadows on the icebergs in the evenings, catching sight of whales now and again. Neither of us were seasick and we loved every minute, even the few droplets of rain that fell the last evening. The whole trip had so much appeal for us, we did it again the next year.

Sunday Selections # 375

Welcome back to Sunday Selections.

Begun way back in the mist of time by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock and now continued by me, with a drastic relaxation of rules.

Originally meant for showcasing old photos lost on your files, never seeing the light of day, the meme has morphed into photos of your choice, new or old, good or not-so-good, anything you please, but nothing rude please.

If you are participating, please leave me a comment so I can buzz along and have a look.
Elephant's Child always participates, and her pictures are always worth seeing.

continuing on  (again) from the previous two posts:

the gnomes corner of my TV cabinet, I think I've shown this one before

more of my oil/polish work, this statue was on my front porch for several summers and beginning to crack from dryness, so I moved it inside and gave it two coats of the polish/oil

here's one of the cracks and also some of the detail which is more obvious now 

the top, which the statue person is holding up,

now holds a small black pot with a new, fake plant.

I bought a couple of lengths of static cling film for the windows on either side of the front door, so when the days aren't too hot, I can raise the venetians and see pretty windows, while people outside can't see in. Of course I can't see out either....

here is the other window, you may notice black gaffer tape along the bottom and top of the film, because the area gets so warm, the film began to unstick and roll down

I have some film left over

which I may put on the bottom half of this window, on the right side only because the left side is a screen and I can't get to the window part easily.

it's the window right above my couch, a lovely warm place to take a nap on a sunny winter afternoon.

These next few photos are for Val, and I forgot to resize and put my blog name on them.

my kitchen cabinet when it first arrived at my previous residence, notice the birdcage over to the right of the photo? I wish I still had that, I foolishly gave it away :(

here all the beige paint has been sanded off, I had some help with that part, L did it all while I was at work and left the fun part for me, the painting. Interior first of course, pink, aqua

blue and purple

here it is in the kitchen with doors and drawers back in place, exterior framework is pale lemon yellow

top left with the glass back in and my dishes installed, Mavis the Kitchen Witch hanging from the door knob

and the top right hand side. This cabinet doesn't fit inside in my current home, so it is in the closed in back porch, holding most of my plasticware, only some of which is actual Tupperware. It gets quite dusty out there and the paint isn't gloss, so I can't wash it down. Now and again I wipe it over with a damp cloth after brushing off the dust.

Several of you have seen this cabinet before and may recall me saying L wanted to paint the whole thing baby blue so I said she who pays for the paint chooses the colours, so off he went to the paint shop and came back with flat paint instead of gloss "because it was cheaper." :(

Wednesday's Words on a Friday

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the words are supplied by Elephant's Child and can be found here.

This week's words are:

1. ghoul

2. ambiguous

3. forgery

4. benefit

5. affair

6. parade

and/or:

1. delight

2. whisper

3. bottle

4. homicidal

5. sawdust

6. circle

Here is my story: 

Voodoo Circus

The statement given by the witness was ambiguous at best; clutching an almost empty bottle of Baron Samedi Rum, with another empty bottle in his coat pocket, he’d been found roaming drunkenly through the field next to where the “Circus” had been held. It was decided to put him in a holding cell for a few hours, as many hours as possible of course, until he slept off some of the drunk, hopefully he’d be speaking more clearly after a few cups of the notoriously bad brew the station called coffee.

The “Circus” had been held in Farmer Hickman’s field, once the home of many profitable tobacco plants, now empty and dryer than a desert. Farmer Hickman, given name Raymond, had rented the field to various organisations over the years, but according to him the permission slip found in the debris had been a forgery. He hadn’t rented that field at all this year, had come home from visiting his parents in Florida to find the ‘big Top” already up and cages of animals set up under the shade of a large tree shaped awning.

The permission slip, with Farmer Hickman’s supposed signature, declared the week long affair was to collect money to benefit the orphans in Haiti, those sad children left behind when business empires crashed and those involved committed suicide by the dozen. Farmer Hickman of course had given a copy of his signature immediately and it didn’t match the one on the forged paper at all. Crushed tickets had also been found in the field, sent anonymously to the people who had attended, business partners and company executives of the parent company that had recently caused much of the closing of the Haitian branches.

As the night wore on, most of the policemen signed out and went home, leaving only a desk clerk and the current overnighter, Inspector Vittorio. Unusual to have an inspector as an overnighter, but Vittorio believed in not asking his men to do anything he wouldn’t personally do, and when his turn came around he took the overnight shift. He settled himself at a desk nearest the holding cells with instructions to Manny at the front desk to call him should anything need his attention. He began reviewing the paperwork as the sounds of drunken snoring filled the short hallway.

By eight in the morning, as constables started signing in for the day, the drunken witness was pacing about, demanding a toilet break and some coffee. He was escorted to a washroom to relieve himself and clean up as best he could with a supply of cold water and paper towels, then brought back to the holding cell where Inspector Vittorio now sat next to a tray with coffee and a couple of bacon sandwiches. The not quite sober witness licked his lips, looking longingly at the tray. “That for me boss?” “Yes it is,” replied Vittorio, “as soon as you tell me your name, we didn’t get it from you last night.” “Alexander Sandman,” said the witness. “Most people call me Sandy.” He sat on the edge of the steel cot and gulped down half the coffee before biting into a bacon sandwich. ‘Oh, this is heaven,” he declared.

Vittorio let him eat a full sandwich before asking him to state again what had transpired the previous evening. “Well, it started out like a regular circus, but the animals were different, goats and chickens, couple of snakes in baskets, stuff like that. No one knows where the tickets came from, they were sent in the mail and free, so of course all the bigwigs came along, there was supposed to be free food and drink too. But the tent, what they call the Big Top, didn’t look regular and the performers were dressed different.” “Different how?” asked Vittorio. “There wasn’t any of the colour and sparkle you’d expect to see, they was all dressed in black, shiny black and decorated with skulls and skeletons like you’d see in Voodoo movies. They all had masks on, couldn’t see any faces.”

Vittorio made a couple of notes on the pad sitting across his knees, then Sandy continued, after another big bite from the second sandwich. “It started out like a regular circus, with a parade of animals and performers around that circle covered in sawdust, the lights around the tent were all dark red and glaring white, mostly the red ones though and I could hear some whispers from some of the younger women. ‘Isn’t this delightful?’ and other stuff like that. Maybe they thought they were going to see some sort of smoke and mirrors Voodoo magic. Anyway, the parade goes on and suddenly there’s a poof of sparkly red smoke and the ringmaster appears, real tall he was and dressed like a ghoul, all tatters and blood stains, probably red paint, but then he starts screaming at the audience, real homicidal he was, some stuff about revenge shall be mine and he’s flashing a big knife sort of thing, like a sword but curved and the people in the parade all pulled out knives from somewhere and slashed the throats of the animals so the blood spattered all over the audience and there was screaming and people tried running away but the seating collapsed and they got trampled and then the fires started at the entrance and around the outside of the tent, I only got out because I’d rolled near the edge when my seat collapsed, so I wriggled under and ran.”

Vittorio asked, “are you able to identify anyone? Any part of….well anything really? When we found you there was nothing left but a burned circle in the field and blood spatters, but no bodies. Did you see what happened to the bodies? The audience? The performers? Anybody?” “Nothing,” said Sandy. “I was already pretty drunk, they’d handed out free bottles of Rum, the good stuff, Baron Samedi brand, as we walked in and I drank a whole bottle waiting for the parade part to start and just kept drinking after I ran away. I tripped over something, probably my own feet and stayed down and saw the fires burning then next thing I know you people were hauling me up off the ground and bringing me here.”

Vittorio knew he would get nothing more from Sandy and sighed. The FBI would be getting involved and he would have to set up stations to accommodate them plus teams of evidence collectors, forensics people and whoever else the FBI brought along.

Sunday Selections # 374

Welcome back to Sunday Selections.

Begun way back in the mist of time by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock and now continued by me, with a drastic relaxation of rules.

Originally meant for showcasing old photos lost on your files, never seeing the light of day, the meme has morphed into photos of your choice, new or old, good or not-so-good, anything you please, but nothing rude please.

If you are participating, please leave me a comment so I can buzz along and have a look.
Elephant's Child always participates, and her pictures are always worth seeing.

continuing with last week's post:  

this is my old bamboo garden chair, folded

I've noticed some of the wood isn't actually bamboo, but replacement parts

the bindings are bamboo, I think, maybe some form of wicker?

not in the best condition anymore and it was already old when I found it during kerbside collection week about 10 years ago

a good brushing to remove dust and spiderwebs

and loose bits of timber/bamboo

I'm using this furniture polish and restorer. I planned on decking oil, but this was already here in my cupboard and Bunnings is several suburbs away

a scrappy old paintbrush, which was once a make-up brush that I cleaned dust off the keyboard with

I laid the chair sideways to do the bottoms of the legs first

here you can see the difference between the oiled right hand legs and the unoiled left hand legs

some of the seat binding has come loose, I'll stick that down with a bit of super glue later

the difference here is really noticeable, I wish now I'd brought the chair in for oiling a couple of years ago

here it is finished, drying and waiting for a new (old) home on the front porch, where I had it when I first moved in here

more next week....

Wednesday's Words on a Friday

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over by a moveable feast of participants when Delores had computer troubles.

The aim of the words is to encourage us to write. A story, a poem, whatever comes to mind.
If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please let us know so we can come along and read it.

This month the words are supplied by Elephant's Child and can be found here

This week's words are:

1. game

2. bag

3. torch

4. queen

5. fit

6. pardon

and/or:

1. beach

2. shadow

3. orb

4. chilly

5. collision

6. desperate

Here is my very short story:

The biggest grey cloud covered the sun and cast a huge shadow over the beach. The girls both decided it was getting chilly and time to pack up and go home before they needed a torch to light the way.  “Hold the games bag open properly” demanded Connie. “I can’t fit the Monopoly box in.” 

“Well pardon me Queen Connie,” said Jenny, feeling a little out of sorts at having to leave early. She stretched the bag as wide as it would go. “How’s that your highness?”

A squealing of brakes and skidding tyres accompanied a loud crash that wasn’t thunder, startling them and the Monopoly set dropped back onto the sand.

Kamal and Rory came racing across the dunes. “Did you hear that?” shouted Rory. “We saw it,” said Kamal. “A boat slipped off a trailer and caused a three car collision. Have you got your phone? Call an ambulance before the people up there get desperate for help.”

As Connie began phoning, Rory raced back towards the roadway. “I’ll let them know we’ve phoned an ambulance and ask if there is anything we can do to help right away. Monopoly forgotten, the others ran after him.

Sunday Selections #?

Welcome back to Sunday Selections.

Begun way back in the mist of time by Kim of Frog Ponds Rock and now continued by me, with a drastic relaxation of rules.

Originally meant for showcasing old photos lost on your files, never seeing the light of day, the meme has morphed into photos of your choice, new or old, good or not-so-good, anything you please, but nothing rude please.

If you are participating, please leave me a comment so I can buzz along and have a look.
Elephant's Child always participates, and her pictures are always worth seeing.

inside my home:

things in the freezer don't always get a pretty fern frost pattern, sometimes it's pearls instead.

you all liked EC's smiley spoons so much, I thought I'd show off mine. These are hard plastic and were a Christmas Only item on sale in Target several years ago.

Here's Gracula, guarding his hoard of garlic.

one corner of my TV unit

a closer look at the fake Bonsai plant

right down by the tree trunk, 4 miniature plastic park benches. I bought them online, 2 in a pack, for $1 a pack, free delivery, all the way from China! The Bonsai had just that green whatever-that-is "lawn" and I added the pebbles myself, to make it look better. I have another one on the ledge above my sink, again with pebbles, but without the benches and at Christmas I hang tiny fake gifts on it.

this is my green glass vase which holds 16GB usb's which hold TV series such as  Agatha Raisin, Jack Irish, Murdoch Mysteries etc. I'm currently watching The Librarians.

the blue glass bowl, which is rounder than it looks, this is a bad camera angle and I couldn't be bothered taking the photo again. This holds 16GB usb's with movies, I have the movies listed in a notebook and the first movie on each one is written on a label and stuck to the usb. Each one holds between 15 and 21 movies depending on the length of the movies.  The 8GB usb's hold fewer movies of course. Very handy for when I'm laid up with back pain, I can plug in one of these and just watch movies without having to get up and change DVD discs.

my glass ashtray holds shells collected from a trip to the beach.

moving on to household tips:

buy a regular bottle brush and cut the bristles until they're only about 1cm from the wire,

use it to scrub the kitchen and bathroom drains, but beware the spatter effect. Wear an apron and wipe down nearby surfaces after, including your eyeglasses (*~*) if you weren't careful enough.

when cooking a yummy yummy potroast, prepare the cooking liquid before you start,

and always, always, make too much, in case you need to top up the liquid level, because topping up with plain water dilutes the flavour and no one wants that to happen.