Soggy Spring

We have a had a cold and wet spring. Everyone has been complaining - especially about how cold it is. I just kind of shrugged because I remember when I first came last year I was SO cold in the house and it took me a while to adjust to the cooler temperatures coming from summer in Canada (and in Montreal no less).

Well, I may be converted to thinking that we actually are suffering with colder weather. I just went to look at some pictures from this time last year - and posts so I try to repeat myself as little as possible (since I was thinking about talking about the Melbourne Cup) and this time last year we were at Wilsons Prom soaking up the sun on the beach.

The plus side to all this cool wet weather is that our dams are at 50% which is a first in many years (I've read varying reports from first since 2006 to first in 30 years... Either way it's a big deal).

Anyway, the first Tuesday in November is Melbourne Cup day - the major race in a spring horse racing carnival. It's the race that "stops the nation" and everyone at 3:10pm stops to see who wins. We thankfully had the day off though we were surprised at the amount of stores that actually opened.
Glen and I put a small bet on a horse each and spent the day at his sister's house with the rest of the family. We all picked two horses out of a hat and put $1 in just as fun (convenient in a family of 12 to have 24 horses running).
If you don't go to the actual races, having a BBQ and having family over is a pretty typical way to celebrate.

I spent the day yesterday getting the spare room into better shape. We inherited a great old (large) shelf from Glen's grandpa so I wanted to start unpacking some boxes to get the room in working order and then I'll be able to suss out what other furniture I'll need for in there (looks like a few short bookcases like we have in the living room and a table as well as storage bins).
Here's a picture of the shelf with tonnes of stuff piled on it (it's a great shelf made of real wood - it's solid and heavy - a real quality piece of furniture - there's two doors on the bottom that open up to small shelves).

I managed to empty 7 boxes yesterday (or condense a few anyway). I think I have around 10 more to empty before we're completely box free.



Temperature: +21C
Sunrise: 6:07am
Sunset: 8:01pm

New Phone! yay!

I managed to snag myself an iPhone this week after a bit of drama with the phone company (basically I couldn't sign up in my name so Glen did it in his and because of that, I couldn't keep my old phone number). Besides having a new phone I'm really excited about the camera portion of the iPhone and downloaded a few cool camera aps. I'm hoping to do something similar to project365 but with my phone - my camera is just too big to lug around everywhere every day and there are some seriously cool photography aps out there.

So because I've gotten a new phone I'm getting a case for it. I bought one for the time being because there's no way this phone is going to go without a case (I put a case AND screen protector on it before I did anything else) and I want to order a custom case for it. I found a site that will let you upload a photo or artwork and it turns it into phone case. I picked 16 of my favourite pictures and I can't decide which one to choose!
I thought I'd open it up for public opinion to get some help.


In no particular order:

Berries & Grevillea 1


Grevillea 2 & 3


Bird & Crocus


Rainbow Lorikeet & Koala 1


Koala 2 & Inuvik


Crocus 2 & Fireweed 2


Fireweed 3 & 4


Fireweed 5 & Rainbow Lorikeet 2

In other news we've been getting brief snippets of warmer weather. It was +29C yesterday and now it's back to rainy and cold. We had a bit of wild weather a week or so ago but there doesn't seem to be as much damage as when we had those storms last November.


Temperature: +13C
Sunrise: 6:25am
Sunset: 7:45pm

Remembering

Glen's grandpa passed away back in December and because of how things work over here, his parents are just now able to get into the house to properly go through things (I know that sounds weird - basically Glen's family had a certain amount of time after Grandpa passed way to get out anything the family wanted to keep and after that, everything in the house got valued. If there was anything else you wanted you have to pay for it unless it had been deemed to have no value. It's been a really complicated, drawn-out process compounded by the fact that all my stuff was still taking up room at Glen's parent's when they were trying to get stuff out before the valuation started).

So, Glen's parents have been going through things lately and found two old ice cream pails full of shells and they asked if I wanted them and I -of course- said yes. I had no idea what sort of shells would be in these pails or even what sizes there would be but since I love shells, I couldn't resist.

I already have a few small jars of shells on the bookcase and was trying to think what I should do with these. I thought about picking out some of the interesting ones and just putting them on the shelf but then thought they might get broken easily. I also thought of some sort of craft but then I thought the shells might just sit around forever before that happened. I really wanted to do something with them right away so they wouldn't just gather dust. I decided to look for a vase/jar or two and figure out how to display them that way. When we were out yesterday we found two really great vases (I think they're meant for candles actually) at a bargain type store - so they were cheap. I bought some glass pebbles and some marbles then set to work trying to divide the shells evenly and have them displayed nicely (sure you want it to look random but you don't want it to look like the shells were just dumped in).

It took me a few tries to get the arrangement right and after filling both of them once, I dumped them out and tried it again since there was quite a bit of a gap at the top (there's cardboard in the middle!). There is still a bit of a gap but I'm happy with it for now. We also bought a circular metal candle holder thing (the kind that has the spike on it for you to put a larger candle on) and put that at the top and five tealights fit on it. I might adjust the cardboard tubes in the middle and have it so the shells go right to the top without the candles, we'll see.

I really love these and it will be something nice to keep around and to be able to say that all the shells in the two jars are Glen's grandpa's. I really wanted to make sure we only used his shells especially since there are some unusual ones in there (basically ones I've only ever seen in mixes you buy at craft stores). I really love these vases (they have such a great shape!) and I'm thinking we should go back and buy more of them for all sorts of things!


Temperature: +9C
Sunrise: 7:35am
Sunset: 5:16pm