Hooray for holidays, and not a moment too soon. On Friday afternoon Hannah and I left school 30 seconds after the bell rang, and we were on the road to Sydney within 15 minutes of us getting home. We spent the weekend with my family and then went to the Easter show on Monday. The crowds weren’t as bad as we were expecting, and we had fun taking in all the displays. We ate all the food samples we could get our hands on, watched the woodchop, checked out the animals, as well as the arts and craft displays. A show bag each and a ride on the dodgem cars topped off a great day, but getting home at 11 pm was quite a stretch. It’s not something we want to do every year, but it was totally worth the effort.

The kids are obsessed with Ed Sheeran, so we have been listening to him a lot. To be honest, I am loving listening to him too. Ed is forming a background to this phase of our life, and I imagine, in years to come when I hear these songs I will remember renovating our house, and living elsewhere, and dancing in the lounge room – trying (and failing) to do an Irish jig.

Speaking of obsessions, we don’t have any television reception at this house we are renting, so I have been on the hunt for DVD series (no Netflix either) to binge watch when I need a little brain break. I picked up season 1 of Offspring for $3 at an op shop in January, and have been working my way through all 6 seasons over the last term. Obsessed might be an appropriate description. I know I’m a little late to the party. I picked up season 1 and 2 of Friday Night Lights in Sydney last week ($3 each at the op shop – love that op shop!) and will start them soon!

The renovation is going well. Fingers crossed we will be in by the next holidays. We have been making all the decisions lately: tiles, floors, kitchen cupboards, benches, sinks, vanity units, door handles, cupboard handles, drawer configurations, light shades, carpet, paint. Incidentally, there are way too many shades of white. Despite the feeling of overload at times, I feel really happy with our choices. The picture in my head seems to be coming together… slowly. Over the Easter weekend, we painted the main part of the new extension with the help of my parents. In my head, it was going to be a quick and easy job, but the reality was that the whole room needed to be primed before 2 coats of ceiling paint, and two coats of wall paint. We wanted to get the ceiling done before the lights went in. With down lights as well as several pendants over the bench, it just seemed like it would be easier to paint the ceiling first.

We spent quite a bit of time trying to choose the perfect white for the room, and after several test pots, settled on Antique White USA, which was my original choice. The moral of the story is to not over think things and go with your gut. On Monday afternoon, as we put the first coat on the walls, I looked at it and just knew we had made the right decision.

We’re currently trying to decide on what colour to paint the outside of the house. The new windows are a charcoal colour (colourbond Monument), so I’m thinking probably a lighter grey, with the Monument grey and white trim, and a red front door just because I’ve always wanted one. Got any suggestions of a good grey colour? So far none of the test pots we’ve got have been right!

On Easter Sunday we went for a drive over to Iandra Castle for their open day. In the grounds, they have some massive old Moreton Bay figs. Of course, my country kids wanted to climb them straight away. As we were leaving, I picked up a small fig in a pot for us to plant somewhere on our farm. Our kids will never get to climb it, but perhaps someday, our grandkids or great grandkids might be thankful that we picked up a twenty dollar tree one Sunday in April.

The garden has suffered from our enforced absence this year. We have got enough vegetables to keep us supplied, but we haven’t managed to store much for the winter. The corn never recovered from the 46*c days in February, and some of the tomatoes got a disease. I guess that this is the reality of life on the farm. Some years we have a bumper crop, while others we barely make enough. The old fig tree and the orchard have both had good years, however, and I had grand plans to make some fig bread, and several other treats. The realities of working and doing a home renovation meant that this plan (and many others) have been shelved for another year.

The busyness of our renovation has put lots of other bits and pieces on hold as well. Our camera is not getting as much use as usual, and I keep forgetting to take it down to the farm and snap some pics of the farmhouse. Since finishing my last crochet blanket, I haven’t found my wool stash. So crochet has also been put on the backburner. I’m desperate to get started properly on my hexagon blanket, so I might have to bite the bullet, and start rifling through the pile of boxes in the back corner of the room to find my elusive, missing wool.

Have you got the perfect grey colour paint? Been to the Easter show? Got a good tv series for me? Know where my wool stash has gone??? Share away!