Gearing up for October

The end of September and October will be a busy month for our house.

School holidays start on the 21st September for most Queensland public schools, which means I'm off work for 2 weeks (one of the joys of working for Education) but also means that I need to keep Master R. occupied over the fortnight. I can see that he'll be waking me up early every day asking to play the PS3 or the Wii!

Our first weekend on holidays will see us loading the two horses into a friend's horse float and heading to her house for a weekend Confidence Clinic. We are looking forward to spending time with our horsey friends, who we don't see as often as we would like, since I sold our horse float to help fund the kitchen renovation. Although I'm not lacking too much confidence handling and riding our mares, it certainly won't hurt me to get yelled at for my crappy riding position and will help me to lead and handle my mare, Flicka, better when she tries my authority. Since Reinhard has only just started to confidently ride his mare, Bella, off the lead-line at walk and trot, with the occasional canter, the Confidence Clinic should really help him to feel more in control when handling the old darl'.

Luckily the local swimming pool opens tomorrow afternoon after being closed over winter. This means long, lazy days in the sun enjoying the sunshine. The warmer weather also means that our vegetable garden is going crazy, we have corn, beetroot, tomatoes, potatoes, garlic, lettuce, onion and various edible flowers sprouting all of the place. Our biggest issue is keeping the various chickens locked away in their coop, there is one hen in particular who is an expert escape artist and she keeps scratching up the seedlings, soil and mulch in our garden beds. Our vegie garden is fenced off, but she just flies over the top.

While we're still in the garden, we spent last Saturday giving one of our Tamarind trees a severe haircut, and also cut back several other trees and bushes that were in desperate need. The job isn't finished, we still have several dozen Captain Cook's to go (they're a declared pest) as well as several hedging plants that were never tamed into a hedge and have gotten out of control. All of these haircuts are in preparation for the upcoming storm season, and also for my upcoming Tupperware/27th birthday party on the 6th October.

I'm getting pretty excited about the party and have finally started using Microsoft OneNote to keep track of my party planning and all the lists of party games, food ideas and guest list. I haven't used OneNote a lot in the past although my Boss (at school) uses it religiously for his note-taking, meetings and general day-to-day stuff.

The Tupperware party will also be my debut into the world of being a Tupperware demonstrator. I'm looking forward to learning how to be a great demonstrator, and the incentives are pretty darn cool, especially for a chick like me who has a new kitchen to kit out!

My Tupperware/27th Birthday party aren't the only celebrations in October though. School holidays wrap up for us on the 8th October and I'll be back to working 5 days a week instead of my current 3. Then Master R. has his Suprise Birthday Tropical Pool Party on the 20th October. As I'm sure you can imagine, I'm having a lot of fun planning his Suprise party, and whats even better is that he hasn't the slightest clue that there is a birthday party on his horizon! This is because I told him at his last birthday party (his 5th) that he would only have a birthday party every 5 years.

'Every 5 years!' I hear you exclaim - yep, every 5 years. I'm breaking with routine here, but he has been so good and done so well at school and at life in general that I thought a suprise party might be appropriate for him. He was so proud of himself today, and so he should be since he got 4 A's and 1 B on his latest school assignment. I'm pretty darn proud of the kidlet too, in case you can't tell.

On top of all these celebrations, the school is going back to swimming lessons, with 3 a week for the first couple of weeks due to a swimming carnival in week 4! 

How are October and the rest of September looking for you and your family? I hope you are looking forward to the next couple of months as much as I am!

Finally, here are some snaps of my nice clean house as part of the 20 Day Challenge. As you can see from the pics, there is still work to do -

• tidy bookshelves
• clean windows
• install kitchen floorboards
• sand walls
• paint walls and lounge room roof

 I'm sure I'll be able to add to that list in a few minutes!

Very lucky chick

Last Thursday night (ok - super early Friday morning) I was laying in bed trying to sleep, when I heard this 'cheep cheeeep cheep cheeep' coming from somewhere in my bedroom.

Of course, I climbed out of my waterbed and turned the light on, only to find this -

Luckily it was caught by the youngest cat in the house (Gremlin) and he had only carried it inside and was watching it 'cheep' on the floor of my bedroom. It was uninjured as far as I could tell so I picked him up and put him in a box with hot water bottles and stuck him under a lamp to keep him warm.

TBH, I didn't expect the adorable little critter to survive the rest of the night, since in my experience birds don't tolerate shock real well. I figured that if he survived I'd drop him into the vet in Townsville since I was heading that way later during the day. At the time we were thinking that chick was a baby kookaburra or kingfisher.

Off to bed I toddled again, and Master R. and I were pleasantly suprised that the baby bird was still alive and still 'cheep cheeeep cheeping' in the morning. I refilled his hot water bottle, took the above happy snaps and loaded him and his box into the car. I then enjoyed his little 'cheep cheeps' for the hour and a half drive to Townsville after dropping Master R. at school.

When I took him into the veterinarian's, the ladies on staff cooed and aahed over the poor little mite. They took him off my hands and put him onto a heat pad - that was the last I saw of him. The vet nurse that I gave him over to told me that he was most likely a Curlew, like this. Looks like we have these beautiful birds nesting in the area around our house, since Gremlin doesn't usually travel to far from home.

Life - and death

How many of you wonder about those annoying life insurance and funeral plan insurance adverts on tv? I get sick of being bombarded by ad's that take up my valuable viewing time, and I really wonder whether the ad's are effective or not.

How many of you have actually bought insurance from a tv advert? I know I haven't. When I have bought insurance of any kind, I thoroughly researched what I was after and then got quotes from various different companies.

I have insurance for the following things -

• contents (I rent)
• car
• cat
• dog
• life insurance (with both my Superannuation fund and with a different company)

I assume that I am like most Australian's with the insurance I have. Sometimes I do wonder whether I need more or less insurance, whether I'm getting bang for my buck, whether I could get rid of the insurance for the dog and one of the cat's. That would save a nice $60 a month or thereabouts. Then knowing my luck, the dog would get hit by a car and I'd need the insurance.

The only insurance that I'm considering at the moment is funeral insurance. I guess that being bombarded with all those funeral plan advertisements on tv are having some effect after all!

I investigated one day, and found out the following...

If I were to get insurance for a funeral plan at my current age (27) for $143.28 a year for a benefit of $8000 and I kept the insurance until I passed away in say, 30 years I would pay a total of  $4298.40 over the 30 year period.  This of course, doesn't take into account the increase in premiums as I age.

I just can't wrap my head around spending that kind of money over that time frame, when if I put that money in savings, it could a) be used for other things and b) be used for my funeral if I passed away. Of course, I might have to supplement the $143.28 to make up the $8000 I was quoted on.

Of course, having funeral cover would really help out if I passed away in the first couple of years of holding the insurance. I'm really going to have to give the whole funeral insurance thing a whole lot more thought.

Remember - I'm not giving advice relating to your circumstances, I'm simply discussing my thoughts on the funeral plan idea. Please seek advice that is appropriate for your circumstances and financial situation.

A 'sort of' beginning...

Wow - my first post in my first real blog. I say 'real' blog because I started a blog back in '09 for a Uni course, but never actually finished the course so didn't continue with the '09 blog.

This is a new start, which will be my first real adventure into the world of blogging. Come and join me for the journey, I'm sure it will be interesting to say the least.

Ok, a bit about me now. My name is Shea (as in the Irish O'Shea) and I'm turning 27 this year. I guess that means that I should be mature by now, but some days I'm not so sure I'm not a child in disguise. Speaking of children, I have one. I'm going to call him Master R. in this blog and he turns 8 this year.

For those of you who have done the math, that means I had Master R. when I was 19 for less than a month. Exciting times - sort of. I was never interested in having children, I wasn't a motherly girl, so Master R. was a bit of a suprise, but he has definitely grown on me! Couldn't imagine life without him these days.

So now you know there's Master R. and I. Nope, there isn't a man on the scene, hasn't been one for quite some time but we're not going further into that side of things, except to say that, 'hey! I'm single and while I don't love it every day, I do love it most days'.

We live on an acre block of *mostly* weeds in a rural mining town in North Queensland, Australia. We share our space with 4 roosters (I know! 4!), 7 hens, 1 border collie, 4 cats and 2 horses out in the paddocks, which are also mostly weeds.

I'm hoping to blog about our lives living in this beautiful part of the world, our adventures and mis-adventures with home renovations and decorating, and also with our kitchen experiments. Oh, I can't forget that the blog will also help me to record Master R's ups and downs, the crazy antics of our various critters and my ups and downs - of course!

At this very moment, I'm sitting here watching the news and enjoying a cold drink after installing some new flooring in Master R's bedroom. I'm a little miffed at myself, back in June I ordered a whole heap of flooring from Bunnings (enough to do Master R's room, the lounge, dining and the new kitchen area - or so we thought) and after installing what we had and realising we didn't have enough, I went back for more - only to find that Bunnings no longer stocked that particular colour.

So, since the section of unfinished floor was in the lounge area, we pulled some up from Master R's finished room and laid the lounge area. This of course left Master R's room incomplete, so I decided to buy the same brand of flooring but in a different colour. At least now he has a completed floor once again!

I'm also on a bit of a home organisation phase at the moment. I tend to let things go until the mountains of clutter and miscellaneous items start falling over, or I can't find a school note that was supposed to be handed in last Tuesday. I have decided to follow along with The Organised Housewife's 20 Day Challenge (Day 1) because Kat is so organised and has really come through for all those clutter-sick women (and men!) out there. She has cute printables and gives you a daily task list that is super simple for busy working Mums to finish.

I'm going fairly well with the challenge, I have completed the days 1-5 and have to get my butt into gear and finish today's challenge which is cleaning the bathroom... eeek! Feel free to let me know how you are going with the challenge, I'd love to hear from you!