Yesterday Long Jetty put itself on the map! It was fantastic to see such an incredibly successful street party happening in my eclectic little suburb!

Thompson Street was closed off from the traffic from The Entrance Road down to Tuggerah Parade and there was a massive crowd all afternoon and well into the evening. Enjoying the music at the Live Stage in the carpark of the Long Jetty Pub, the food in Food Truck Alley, the quirky stalls in the Art Precinct and the deck chairs by the lake in the Chill Zone!

Congratulations to everyone who put this together…I heard it started at the The Green Tangerine. I was so happy to be a local resident and am looking forward to this becoming a yearly event for Long Jetty!

Check out my pics and come and visit me soon x

I have said on many occasions how blessed I am throughout this blog. I truly feel the move I have made has brought me closer to nature. Yesterday I spent the day cleaning up my messy yard, burning off some piles of old timber from the renovations, levelling out the massive mound of dirt that had been dumped in the backyard from the front path project, weeding the garden – what there is of it, and mowing the lawn. Big day.

I was pretty tired by the end. Sitting on the swing underneath the trees I was looking at what I had achieved. Feeling a great sense of accomplishment I was happy I hadn’t wasted my weekend indoors. I noticed a bird flying into one of the low lying branches of the tree. I watched as I sat there, it flew out and came back again several times. On closer inspection I could see there was a tiny nest in the tree. I ran inside to get my phone to try to take a photo. As I approached the mother bird flew away. The nest was no bigger than the palm of my hand.

I said to myself I must take a closer look tomorrow because with a ladder I think I can see into it.

And so I did. I Grabbed the ladder and up I went. How adorable. I discovered a teeny tiny baby bird which must have only just hatched! There was another egg ready to hatch too. The nest had been built to perfection with love, including the lovely soft blue padded interior! Impressive! Mumma bird was sitting on the nest keeping baby warm all day.

I will take a look each day and try to capture the progress of these delightful little creatures so stay posted!

These baby birds will however grow up to torment Muffin I know….just as the adult birds do. They gang up on her, swooping and chasing her until she runs inside the house! I don’t particularly like this breed of bird (Minor Bird), but you simply cannot resist the attraction of this fragile little life.

I am so lucky x

Hi there, I have been working really hard over the past few weeks on the interior of the house. I feel like I am finally at a stage where I have made significant changes to the look and feel of my little beach cottage. I have created a new small bedroom from the old bathroom, have opened up the hallway by removing a doorway, and have widened the wall of the third bedroom to include a built in wardrobe. I also introduced a panelled feature wall in the main and small bedrooms. The most dramatic change though has been to continue the white floors throughout the house. I felt like I was living in half a house with the floors being half white and half yucky old stained orange timber. I am pleased to announce however that the ugly timber floors are all gone! I wanted to wait until everything was finished before I put up some before and after photos but I just can’t wait! So I still have lots of holes to fill, walls to do a second or third coat, architraves and skirting boards to paint and some gyprock to fix but I am hoping that all of those things can be overlooked when you see the pictures of where I am up to so far! Thank you to the girls who helped me move all the furniture out of the way last weekend – and four coats of paint later, here is how it looks! I have also included photos of my gorgeous new bathroom!

Please let me know what you think. If you visit my post but have never commented, I would love to hear from you. Knowing someone is interested or likes what I do keeps me motivated!

It’s a beautiful day outside today. What am I doing indoors? See you next time x

My favourite place in winter!

The weather over the last few weeks has taken a bitter turn. With freezing conditions all the way along the NSW coast and even snow in Queensland no wonder I have been feeling the chill. I am not complaining though because my beautiful daughter is living in Canberra and we all know what that means! I visited her a few weekends ago and the temperature was -5 degrees overnight and reached 7 degrees in the middle of the day!  But no matter where you are or how cold the day is, retreating to your favourite sunny spot to have your morning coffee will do wonders! Normally I would sit on the front deck but the chill in the air on a few occasions has been too much to bare. So this it is. My favourite indoor spot for morning coffee.

I love my chairs. These are one of the projects I accomplished a few months ago. I mentioned them before and promised to upload the photos so here they are. An elderly neighbour was throwing them out and put them on the kerb to be collected. So of course I collected them. Dragged them from his place to mine (two houses away), straight into the garage ready for sanding and painting. I stripped all the old fabric from the chairs and use it as a template to make new coverings. I upholstered the base with new fabric and upholstery nails and had the curtain company in Long Jetty sew the cushion covers for me. I bought the fabric at Spotlight for $11 per metre. All up they cost me $120. Bargain!

Before and After

The house is coming along. I still have not managed to complete all the areas I have been working on though so no photos just yet. I am almost finished the new bedroom and the master bedroom – just time consuming painting to go. Soon. It will be complete soon.

I am really missing my daughter. This is so hard for me being separated from her. Think I’ll go and call her now and fingers crossed she will answer!!!

Where did all that time go???

I noticed some time back that the council had started to replace the timbers from the Jetty’s and I called to ask them what they did with the old timber hoping that they recycled them in some way. They said it was difficult to tell me exactly when the guys would be down there working and said if I wanted any I would just have to be there at the right time. So I have kept an eye out however seems to miss out. Every time I went to look I was too late!

The timbers were the main feature of the Jetty. I loved the look of the old wood as it had weathered over time. You just can’t go and buy timber like that. I am sure they would have been replaced periodically over time, but still……

So many feet have walked along the Jetty. So much history and memories. Just like the Salt Water Creek Bridge, these timbers would know a lot about the people who belong to this place and the visitors who come in droves to experience this unique little part of The Central Coast.

When they started working on “My Jetty” I was determined to get some. On several occasions I drove down there only to find men loading up the back of their trucks with the timbers and I missed out. When asked what they would be doing with the timber I was crushed to hear “burning it of course!”. I kept persevering and in the end with my sheer determination I was able to get some. I loaded it up in the back of my car – to the point where the car almost scraped along the road driving home!!! Heavy timber! Some of it was a bit rotten but most of it was just old and tired, perfect to do something creative with.

I don’t know what I will do with it. It may end up in my back yard as part of my garden or I may cut pieces and make some creative mementos to sell at the markets or some such thing. Not sure but i have a few ideas floating around inside my head.

Today at my Jetty.

I can’t believe it’s winter. My house is cold at night but the days have been magnificent. The weather turned on its charm last weekend for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. I was lucky enough to have some friends visiting and we sat outside until midnight sitting around the bonfire chatting about all sorts of things while the old timber from the renovations burned away before our eyes. I ate way too many toasted marshmallows, feeding my ever increasing craving for sugar (since giving up alcohol at the end of last year) This certainly didn’t stop the present company from having a bottle or two or three!!! The following day we rode our bikes to the beach and had breakfast by the sea. Heaven. Absolute heaven.

The renovations are going well. The builder has been great and in the four days we have been working we have managed to clad the driveway side of the house, fix a timber feature wall to the main bedroom and the newly formed third bedroom (former bathroom). Both second and third bedrooms now have built in wardrobes and doorway to the dining/kitchen has been opened up making the hallway look much more spacious. The plasterer is in the process of fixing the gyprock and the work should hopefully be finished ready for painting by the end of this week.

I have so so much painting to do! once i have the painting done I will photograph the finished rooms for my blog. In the meantime take a look at the progressive photos – not so glamorous but worthy of showing (exciting for me anyway).

I have had a dream, a business idea in the back of my mind for quite some time. I am in the process of investigation to see if I can make it happen. This could be the perfect extension of my “whispers from the jetty” journey. Time will tell.

Oh and by the way I must mention my new neighbours. They moved in about a month ago and they are just lovely. One of them is so friendly and I often find him wandering around inside my house if I happen to have the back door open. He just wants to say hello. His name is Roy! I am sure that one day Muffin and Roy will be best buddies, however right now Roy has learnt that cats are different to dogs and if you’re not bigger than they are the cat will bark back!

He is so cute!

Actually, winter has arrived. Today in fact is the first day of winter and chilly it is. My feet are like ice today. Probably not the most suitable time of year to strip the entire side off the house!

A couple of weeks ago we took on the challenge of demolishing the old bathroom. It was tough. Can you believe we found a whole gate in the concrete floor under the tiles??? Its unbelievable what people did in the past. No wonder the floor was so uneven!

Once the bathroom was completely removed, floor and all, the builder and I started working on turning that room into a bedroom. We put in new flooring, widened the room by building a new wall and included a space for a small wardrobe.

In order to complete the new cladding on the outside wall (after removing the wall to get the bathroom out), I had to strip the rest of the side of the house at the same time. So as I type, the guys are outside doing just that.

Asbestos removal is costly but needs to be done by the professionals. Once they have finished I will put the insulations batts in and cover with sarking, ready for the builder to come and do the cladding tomorrow. It’s a slow process and doing things in small stages is quite frustrating, but that’s just the way it is and the only way I can afford to do it. I am trying to do as much as I can myself, however most things need professional trades to do it properly. I also have the plasterer organised to finish the inside walls of the room at the end of the week. As a finishing touch to the room, I am doing one wall in timber panelling as a feature. The panelling is being delivered today from Mr Plywood and is called Easycraft Regency primed MDF. Fingers crossed it looks great. I haven’t actually seen it anywhere, only in pictures so lets hope I have made a good choice.

I had better get outside now and start preparing the wall for the cladding. Thousands of nails need to be removed and lots of cleaning up. Unfortunately the wind has picked up a bit today and it is really cold. Im in for a cold night tonight.

The builder better turn up tomorrow!

I have many things going on at once at the moment and my little house is in a bit of chaos on the inside. Soon I will have another room completed and I will post the story about the the old bathroom demo and the new bedroom taking its place. In the meantime I spent the weekend working on a path for the front garden. Remember the timber I rescued from the beautiful old bridge that was demolished (refer to previous post – “Today is my Birthday”), well the process has begun to create something with it. To begin, I have built a path at the front of the house. I have been procrastinating about how to build the path for weeks until finally I said to myself “just do it’. Spray can in hand I drew the shape on the front lawn of the curved path I was imagining. I googled a few ideas but always went back to my original plan. Once I was happy with the shape, I began to dig. I dumped each wheelbarrow load of grass and dirt at the very back of my backyard in a spot that need filling. With all the recent rain it was a workout in itself just pushing the wheelbarrow through my boggy backyard!!! I didn’t finish the digging all in one day. It’s amazing how what you think is just a small section of grass is actually really huge – especially when you are digging down 150mm deep. (Thanks mum for helping me get the last lot out!) Next I placed the plastic edging around the shape of the path. This is quite tricky, not so easy, its stiff and sometimes wants to go its own way. Not perfect but it will still work OK.  I then positioned the timbers into the path and one at a time trimmed the edges (with my sliding drop saw) so they all fit where they were suppose to. I had half a ton of base stuff and quarter ton of decorative snow river pebbles delivered from tumbi landscape supplies. Covering the ground first with weed mat, I then shovelled the base in and lowered the timber treads into place. Levelling them was the hardest part and very time consuming but I did the best I could. Now for the final part – filling the gaps with the decorative stone. And there you have it. I have a front path made out of the rustic, recycled timbers from the 100 year old Saltwater Creek Bridge.

Sounds easy. It was quite challenging but its amazing what can be achieved if you just do it! I love it and am looking forward to creating the rest of the garden.