Renovations and new products!

Its been a crazy few weeks, with family life as well as renovations still firing along - we are about to finally start work on the garage!  We applied for consents back in October last year, and its taken this long to get the permits all approved.  We did a lot of earthworks and preparation ourselves while we were waiting, so this is how the area looks now.

Compared to:

and

We've moved the shed and the playhouse to other ends of the section (both huge undertakings, as they are both huge and heavy, and needed 6 people to lift them); and we've had diggers to excavate backwards and sideways by several meters each.  Three truckloads of clay were taken away and the rest of the clay and all of the topsoil was redistributed around our section to level it, as the incline was quite steep before.  Hubby did this himself with a hired bobcat, and it was all full of bricks and broken glass and bits of landfill that we had to remove by hand.  Then we had to add topsoil and plant new grass, which took about 3 months.  Three truckloads of stones were brought in, and plenty of timber and scoria to build the retaining walls.  We've chopped down trees, relocated a mature feijoa tree, and had stumpgrinders remove about 6 stumps and a gigantic crop of bamboo, and we've filled I think 8 skip bins full of waste.   Hubby built the retaining walls himself, and we have painted the whole damn thing (those individual batons, oh my goodness).  The waterblasting of the existing fence was only done last weekend, and since we are in Winter now, we will paint the fences to match when some nice weather aligns with hubbys days off.  HUGE amounts of work have gone into this, I am so proud of my husband for all his hard work!  And our kids have been pretty amazing too, to put up with all the noise and inconvenience, as well as their parents going missing for hours at a time to work outside!

On Friday afternoon another digger arrived to start digging up the old pipes and divert all our water and drainage connections, as well as the electricity and phone lines, as they run right through the area we need to build over.  Tomorrow the nice tidy, level area hubby created will be ripped apart again by the digger, but hopefully by the end of the week we will be ready for the first concrete to be poured!

So as you can see, plenty has been going on around here to divert me from crafting and blogging!  I am taking lots of photos to scrapbook though!!  However I've managed to create some samples to show at my first class with the new Catalogue this coming Friday evening.

Mixed Drinks and Serene Scenery paper stack:

Tropical getaway anyone???

Swirly Bird:

Quietly rocking the Dapper Denim water-washed backgound!


The Pineapple background stamp, inked with new Ombre inkpads in Bermuda Bay and Calypso Coral, on Pop of Pink DSP (love) with a delicate lace doily and some gorgeous enamel dots and Pool Party ribbon, nom nom nom.

I am in love with this one, its the Jar of Love stampset gone shabby chic.  Pool Party and Flirty Flamingo are a fabulous pair.  The background is a 6x6" piece of Serene Scenery DSP, and like all the flowers and the doily, it is sponged in Crumb Cake.  The jar is stamped on vellum and sponged on the back with Soft Sky.

I can't tell you how much I adore this card.

Thats all for tonight, its almost 11pm and the digger fires up at 7:30am.  I work mornings at the kids' school, so I need to be up and organised early!