Oh January

I don't know what it is about the month of January but I go into a state of apathy. When we lived in the U.K. I blamed it on the short days and cold weather but now we live in Australia so that can't be the reason. Now it is just too hot to do anything but flop around the house and moan about the temperature.  This is a bit of a problem as it is also holiday time when I should be full of inspiration and energy but to be fair it has been a stinkingly hot summer. February is finally here so no more excuses.   Ready for a bedroom update? We are nearly there!  The floor was laid and finished over Christmas, took far longer than it should as the lacquer was taking three to four days to dry between coats instead of twelve hours. There was plenty of heat around so we are blaming humidity.  After Christmas I traipsed through every bedroom furniture shop in and around Newcastle trying to find something that would fit and we both could live with, an almost impossible task. In desperation we drove to the central coast and found something. It only arrived this past Friday and we picked it up yesterday.    Last week we decided the wardrobe we had bought many years ago and had stored out the back was not going to work.  It was going to have to be an IKEA free standing one and a complete change around of the layout of the room, honestly this one room has caused  us more grief than any other so far! As I now don't work one Tuesday a fortnight, we took off to Sydney after our baby sitting duty was finished.  Anyone reading this that lives locally will know that it probably wasn't the smartest move due to being a really hot day, the car guage read 45c at one stage and the fact there had been a crash between a truck and a crane that had the highway closed to all north bound traffic. Not a problem for us on the way down and would be cleared by the time we were coming home you would think. Well no, the road surface had been too badly damaged in the fire caused by the accident. By late afternoon a contra flow had been set up, yes it did take that long, and from what I can gather, a bush fire broke out on the alternative south bound traffic route. It was a day of chaos and frustration for anyone traveling on the highway that day.  We were lucky in that we only sat in crawling pace traffic for about fifty minutes having decided to wait until later in the evening before attempting to get home.  Of course, after such a hot day came the the rain, only light but we still had to buy a tarp and tape to wrap up the boxes, wood and water are never a great mix. It was well after nine by the time we got home and as some of the boxes weighted 60 kg, that stayed in the back of the ute for the night.  Normally with our IKEA shopping sprees, everything is ok but this time we had missing screws, bits that weren't the right finish and we cracked a corner on a door panel, so yesterday saw another trip down the dreaded highway to put all to rights and pick up the bedroom suite on the way back. Fingers crossed, we now have all we need to finish the wardrobe and get the furniture in and we can finally move rooms. Let's hope the next one doesn't give us as much grief!   No sewing or creativity has been happening here, even my little pile of triangles did not get finished for Christmas. I did however make these shopping bags from all my patterned hand dyed half meters for gifts at school.  

The next room we attempt will be my new work room, seems a long time coming but hopefully future posts will see a quicker transformation of an old room into a lovely organised place to create.