long live the queen

Not really, but we are super-grateful that Australia hasn't gotten over its colonial status enough to drop the queen's birthday long weekend (though a spot of sorry day or invasion day public holiday would be pretty nice too). We're revelling in the fact that we have 3 days to work on our little house, and have called a working bee to celebrate! But that's for tomorrow...

Today, Pearlie cooked and I hung out with the kids and sewed up some matching pyjama/tree-climbing pants for Olive, Taylor and Taylor's doll, Isabella.

These came about after Tay admired Pearlie's almost-falling-apart pair of 70s purple floral PJ pants that I made for her from an awesomely decorated sheet. I promised that as soon as I found a suitable sheet, I'd make some for the girls too. The sheet came along quite soon thereafter (that tends to happen when you're a compulsive op-shopper/fabric hoarder). Fortuitously, it was orange-themed (these girls love their orange) so we were all set to go. I would encourage you all to have a go at making some sheet PJ bottoms. They're fun and beautiful and pretty good for beginners who want to learn how to copy an item of clothing they already own. If you're interested in a tutorial, leave a comment and I'll post some instructions.

After the pants were all done, Oski, Evan and I headed up to the land to try to sort out the major erosion issue that cropped up after the spillway on our dam kind of failed in the rain we had at the beginning of this week. Well, truth be told, the spillway would have been fine had it not been for the fact that a section of the dam wall was actually lower than the spillway. This is not the way it's supposed to be, and what it meant was that as the dam filled (yay!) it actually started to flow over the dam wall, washing out quite a large gully as it went (definitely not yay). Before I worked out what had happened, I thought a wombat had burrowed into the dam wall (that's what it looked like!) but then I had a look at how everything was arranged and realised what had happened. So the first job was to fill in the wombat hole, then build up the dam wall.

 Tomorrow I'll dig out the spillway so it's the right height.
While we were up there I realised, with no small degree of horror, that our water tank was leaking! Just a little drip, coming from where the tap is attached. Unfortunately our giant shifting spanner was too small but a trip to the nursery we got the tank from soon fixed that - the dude there lent me his big wrench!

It was a pretty glorious, productive day (my favourite!) and to celebrate, we all went to look at the house we're about to start minding.

Yep, it's a crazy beautiful old tiny farm cottage nestled at the bottom of Mumbulla Mountain, with outrageous, panoramic views of the surrounding countryside. We're excited.