We've finished!!!

The last three weeks have been manic at school... setting up my classroom, making resources, doing planning, having meetings and somewhere in between actually getting to teach my new kids! I've got a bit of a rough bunch of Year 5 & 6 this year... (that's Standard 3 & 4 Mum!) but they are beginning to understand the concept of listening to the teacher and each other.

In amongst all that we have managed to finish our patio area (Dave had done almost all of the bits and pieces lately!!!) so it's time for a show and tell so grab a coffee cause this is going to be a long post... but with lots of eye candy!!! LOL

We got the second coat of stain on the outside of the gate and it really finished it off well:

Once that was done the look from the roadside was fantastic... and to top it off I can now park my car back in it's place again :)Then Dave put a stopper on the side of the house so that the latch and house wouldn't get damaged hitting off each other!We finally managed to come up with a colour for the fibro! In the end I bought some white paint and we mixed our own shade of grey... now known as 'fibro grey' LOL and did a couple of coats of that and it looks very smart!There is still one more 'little' job to do and that's to do the mowing strip on the neighbours side. We decided that we might as well do that when we do the retaining wall... which is going to be the next project! In the meantime the neighbour has got a lovely new fence!!!Then I think Dave wondered what to do with his time because I came home from work the other day to find my bbq table getting sanded LOLAnd the next day when I got home he had a big grin on his face and said... 'come and have a look at this'... yep he'd been busy again! This time it was with loppers and a saw:This is the bottom corner of my section and I've been a bit hesitant to do much there because a couple of the trees are native... but I have moaned about the fact that the sun was getting blocked and it was a bit of a waste of space so no more moaning from me!!! There's heaps to go to the dump though.... at least it's all green waste :)And while we've been busy on our side of the fence the council has been busy on the other side... installing a brand new playground... and it's FANTASTIC!!! The park is getting heaps more use now and even my own girls have been spending more time over there which is great :)This afternoon I got busy making a few mosaic photos so that you can see the before and after shots. We've been totally blown away by the difference and it's really hard to remember what it used to be like!I'm so pleased that I took so many photos of this project because I definitely want to make a mini album about all the work we've done... and what I wrote here on the blog will be the basis for my journalling!

On a completely separate note... I've been growing peace lillies for years... and gotten a bit of a collection of them... however, I've had no flowers at all for the last two years! I was over at Mum's before Christmas and she was skiting... (Yes Mum you were!!!) about how many flowers HER peace lily had and she said to pot it up into a bigger pot with new soil and see if that made a difference. I actually did follow her advice and now it's MY turn to skite!!! All of my peace lilies have got flowers now and here's my favourite one:

It's actually got 6 massive flowers on it now so thanks for the advice Mum!!! Right I'm off to do something creative.... YIPPEE!!!