Update

I've been rather sporadic with updates since I'm not spending much time on here, so here's an update of what's happening in our household..

House: The house is starting to look great - if I do say so myself lol. I've been trying to tackle an area every day and declutter / tidy / clean - even if it's one shelf. It's gradually making a difference. Last week (I think it was), I tackled the spare room - it'd been used as a junk repository since about Nov last year. You couldn't even walk in there :( It took me a couple of days of working on it but it looks fantastic now. On Sunday night I got Pete to move the dead microwave out of the kitchen - I've decided not to replace it, so that left me with a spare shelf. I reorganised the kitchen a bit and inspired by Joyful Keeper's post, I took everything off the main part of the bench. It looks great and makes that area so much more useful.

Garden: Seeing me poring over the Digger's club catalog & Jackie French's book, Pete commented that I was "back into the gardening stuff".. :) I have a list of seeds I want to buy - I'll order them after this. I don't have a gardening category in the budget as yet - I'll have to take it out of the household stuff, but I want to keep track of what it's costing and see if I can recoup it out of the grocery budget once it starts producing.

Our fruit trees are really overgrown with grass so I spent a couple of hours yesterday out weeding (and being eaten alive by ants :( ) - I got 2 trees weeded and mulched with the lucerne hay I got the other day. 7 to go! (or possibly 6, I think one citrus is dead and it's just the tree that it was grafted onto that's still growing - not sure what it is but it's dreadfully spiky!!). I'll try to get some more done tomorrow if the weather co-operates. Billy built a flower garden while I was doing that - not sure if anything will grow but he enjoyed it :)

Finance: Our building society just raised mortgage interest rates again - I'm going to have to squeeze the budget a bit more to find the money.. We're not about to lose the house or anything, but it will start meaning some more sacrifices if it keeps up. I'm really hoping this ends soon - I just cannot imagine how some people are coping. I was pleased to see the govt is talking about introducing measures to reward people for saving and to cut their own spending - about time!

School: We started school back last week. We spend a little bit of time in the morning on "formal" stuff, and then the afternoon is free play, cooking, computer time etc. The great thing about this time of year is the school holiday activities that are on everywhere. So far he's been to a hands-on science show run by the CSIRO, a fantastic storyteller named Bronwyn Vaughan who dressed up and told multi-cultural stories and a claymation workshop run by the Art Gallery. I was really nervous about how he'd go with that - it's the first activity that I've actually dropped him at and left (I felt like the first day of school!) . It went from 10-2, he was the youngest student - they worked in groups and he was in one with 3 pre-teen boys (and an instructor), but he lasted the day (I left my mobile no just in case). They'll be sending out the results of their animation on CD - I can't wait to see it. I know the story their group was doing was something to do with Pinocchio not cleaning his room, so I can see my child had a hand in the script-writing lol.

On Friday we're going on an Aboriginal Bush Art walk run by the National Parks to see some aborginal art and learn how they do it. It'll tie in well with our theme atm - we're doing Australia. His drama class starts next week - he's really looking forward to it!

Me: I'm trying to have some quiet time for me each day - I'm being anti-social and going into a room where there is no tv going and having a quick break. I'm breaking a lifetime of conditioning and sitting down with a book! (My mother is simply incapable of just sitting - she *has* to be doing something. I think that's why I got into the habit of using the computer as a break - it was "working"..)

I think that's all that's been the main things going on. I'm sure I'll think of something more as soon as I hit Publish Post though :)