Decorative pillows

The open home went fine according to the real estate agent - he sent through a long list of all the comments people had made and what they thought the house was worth ... which is very depressing. I know intellectually that I myself have walked through dozens (probably hundreds) of houses, given a wild guess as to its value and explained to the agent why I wasn't buying it - but reading page after page of 'dated bedrooms ' 'too many stairs' 'bathroom needs work' is quite disheartening. But the agent isn't bothered so we're trying not to be.

I have watched far too many house selling shows on television so had a stress frenzy of decorative pillows. My brain knows nobody buys a house because of a pillowcase but the rest of me went to town. I even ironed some of them.

We did take the cat for a little drive and sat in a park with an ice-cream (us, not her). She was not at all impressed but as a general rule she likes being with us, so we poked our face in her carry case and said hello every once in a while and she was fine.

Yes, cockies are cockatoos and they can be incredibly noisy! We will find out soon enough. Otherwise, Parliament is back this week so it has been very busy ... I'm trying to enjoy everything before retirement but it is hard to focus. 

Brainless painting

I have not been challenging myself on the art front for a couple of months now ... it's just been splashing a bit of paint on as a distraction at the end of the day. Which is absolutely fine. It usually ends up as flowers.

Lots of flowers.

Although one set of large blobby birds.

And some chickens.

Then back to flowers.

And that was January

Where did the last ten days go? I am still only working two days a week, so it wasn't that ... we have done all the final scrubbing of the house before the photographer came and we've had one showing already. First open home tomorrow which means taking the cat out for a drive for half an hour. I'm sure she'll LOVE that. There is a for sale sign on the pavement and a listing on the websites so I guess we're in for it now! Scary.

I took a small beach break in the middle of it - we had some very hot days and some time apart was probably good for ongoing marital harmony. I had a lovely time with many swims and some sewing and not thinking about anything to do with moving house. But on the way down I dropped in at the Braidwood house to see the painting progress, which is amazing. It makes such a difference. 

My husband had been spraying the blackberries, which are dying but way too slowly for his liking. That is not his spraying outfit, he had a shower to rinse off the poison. Although we went out for lunch and the cafe owner saw the t-shirt and told us about the time Sam Neill came in for a meal! A big name for a small town. Apparently he was very nice.

The painter is from another little town about two hours drive away so he has set his caravan up and is staying there for the duration (going home on the weekends). It means he can set his own schedule and it's quite nice having someone there while we're not. He reckons he's woken at 5 am every morning by the cockies so we'll see how that goes when we move in...

Sketchbook tour

I bought an expensive (for me) Baohong cotton sketchbook somewhere and it's been sitting on the shelf waiting for an important occasion or for my skills to improve. Which isn't going to happen, so I used it the way the people on Youtube say you're meant to use sketchbooks - to test ideas, develop a theme, practice things and generally just chill. It was great to do and it's all in one spot now so I can flick back through it. The pages are about A5 size so not huge, but enough to do some mucking about. I started with an internet reference photo and did various ideas of leaves.

Played about with white pen on watercolour background for a while (there are half a dozen variants not shown! It was all a bit the same).

Moved on to marigolds, or possibly flowers that look like marigolds. And from there to flowers generally for a bit.

Foray into fruits and vegetables was next.

Many pages were really just mark-making. 

I bought some new Kuretake Gansai Tambe graphite colours in Melbourne so played with them for a bit.

And finished with a fiesta of watercolour washes - creepy trees, looming mist and ghostly figures. With varying degrees of success.

Urban sketchers

I went to the January meet-up of the urban sketchers on Sunday - big turn-out of nearly 30 people, which is a lot for us. There's a short pedestrian street in the middle of town that has just been refurbished so we went there to see what we could see.

Definitely more onlookers and bystanders around than we usually have. All fairly interested and asking questions, which is kind of nice. I cannot imagine a situation where I would be comfortable sitting on my own drawing on a busy street but once you're in a group? No problems at all. 

As usual there were all sorts of different takes on the scene and levels of talent. I wanted to include people because my people are AWFUL so I need the practice ... they look like humans but I clearly need to work on it more. Mostly I wanted to capture how very green the street was, which I did! The two hours just flew by, I didn't go for lunch afterwards this time as I had boxes to pack, but it was a lovely morning. 

Meandering through January

Not going to lie, working two days a week is awesome. The non-working days are busy with all the things we have to do and it is a real treat wearing disreputable shorts and no shoes ... We have been out to the house a couple more times to take the carpet to the tip (with the help of friends with a trailer! very handy) and get quotes from a variety of tradespeople. We are already finding out that older houses suck up money ... although our 1970s house is keeping its end up on the money-suck front. So many things to fix. Luckily we have a cat to assist us in clearing out cupboards.

We cleared out the filing cabinet too, so many useless bits of paper. Who has hard copies of anything any more? Why would we need the receipt for our wedding cake? 

That is a great price, even at the time, for a three tiered beautifully decorated cake. We couldn't agree on the cake flavour so had the top and bottom tiers chocolate mud and the middle one fruit. 

And I threw out all the job offer letters (but took photos first, for posterity). I was absolutely delighted to be earning that, back in 2005 ... when you think about it the $10.20 per hour library job was only ten years earlier! I worked there until the start of 1994. So that salary seemed like heaps, although it was the sole household income for a while when my husband took two and half years off to mind the infants and keep the house ... which he did wonderfully. Stay at home spouses are the BEST.

And a passport photo of infant number two, from about that time. Sooooo cute.

So much to do

We had our little break and now it is full on with the cleaning and packing and decluttering and getting stuff done. All of which we should have done ages ago of course ... I forget just how much we have accomplished over the past year when there is still so much to do. I am at the point where I would like to throw out all our belongings and start over, but I realise I might regret that decision in a couple of months. So I will show some of the very brainless painting I am doing - it is basically just doodles to quiet my brain for a bit.

Diane Antone's blobby birds have been popular.

A monochromatic something.

Always flowers if I'm stuck.

An A3 sheet of mini landscapes, this was quite fun and also made me a bit pleased with myself, that I can paint a few different types of scenes. 

I am just working two days a week through January to give me time to do house things and also not bust a foofer valve. January is always very quiet here so I can keep on top of work without too much trouble. The doctor put me on blood pressure pills which should help ... I am blaming work but I should probably blame fatness. Luckily I can do something about both, although work might be easier to discard than the blubber. 

Happy New Year

Welcome to 2025 - the retirement year :) it hardly seems possible, but here we are, and I am ready for it. We managed to get a couple of good beach days in after Christmas, both swimming and doing some sewing. The cat assisted me. 

But that will be the last of the relaxing for a few weeks ... I have to go back to work and it will be full steam ahead getting the Canberra house ready for sale and doing things to the Braidwood house before we move in.

We hauled up a couple of camping mattresses and chairs and some plastic plates to spend New Year's Eve at the new house - start 2025 as we mean to go on. We had takeaway pizza for dinner and a bottle of the good champagne before sleeping in the front room, and getting used to all the noises and creaks of an unfamiliar house. 

So many parrots! And insects, and a tiny skink. We will get it emphatically sprayed before we move in. We put paint samples on the walls (antique white? whisper white? natural white? polar white?), pulled up the tacking strips, despaired at the (lack of) kitchen cupboards, resisted the urge to get stuck into the garden beds and failed to kill any rabbits by running over them in the car. Poison is apparently a lot more effective.