Bonsai Starters

I was never really interested in Bonsai until one day I walked into this amazing shop called Collectors Corner. It has a massive collection of Succulents, Cactuses, Air plants, Orchids and Bonsai and the Bonsai section was breath taking. 

I was inspired by the 50 year old Bonsai they had and I wanted to make one myself so I bought a couple of Bonsai starters. I don't have any 'before pictures' but both of these starters had their roots and their branches trimmed. I had the branches wired for couple of months to get the tree like shape.

They are still very tiny but aren't they cute? :)

Deck Building Weekend 5

It's the fifth weekend we are working on our deck and since we managed to fix the joists in during the week all we had to do was fix the decking boards on to the extension. 

The extension of the deck was about 8.5m in length and 2.5m wide. It was a big area that we had to cover with decking boards. There are no decking boards that's 8.5m long and even there was I don't think the local Bunnings sell such lengths. So before we bought the decking boards we thought it would be a good idea to plan how the decking boards should be laid so that we can figure out which lengths and how many decking boards we will need. This diagram was created by one of my friends and it turned out to be very helpful for me to come up with the amount and the lengths of decking boards needed.

Firstly we cut and laid the decking boards we per the diagram and shifted the boards here and there to get the best fit.

And then it was very similar to how we did it last weekend, pre-drill, counter sink and screw it in. It took four people and about 12 hours and we were done! We still have to trim the joists and the edges of the decking boards but that will be some other time.

Deck Building Update

I am falling behind on blogging on building our deck so here's a quick update.

After working on the deck on the long weekend we thought we should work on it a bit more during the week on the extension. Since the bearers are all concreted in the worse is over. Now it's all wood work which we (especially my hubby) were looking forward to.

So we got ourselves into it as soon as we came home from work. We already had the timber and the screws so we started screwing in the joists to the bearer. We spaced the joists 450mm (or less) apart so that there will be no bending of the decking boards when you walk on it. 

We have done fairly well getting the extension to be the same level as the decking in the Alfresco area, however when we were screwing in the joists we discovered that the joists of the extension were sitting about 5mm higher than the joists in the Alfresco. The only way we could level the joists of the extension with the joist of the Alfresco was to shave off the bearer by 5mm. We shaved off the area where the joist sits on the first bearer and got it level with the Alfresco and when we checked the joists with the spirit level it was still in level. Phew!

It was pretty dark when we finished the work so I took these pics the next morning. Kinda looks like a rail way track.. doesn't it? :)

We haven't trimmed off the bearers or the joists yet. Need to trim off the bearers before we start with the decking boards and will leave the trimming of the joist until we are up to the last decking board. 

Next up, joy of laying the decking boards :)

Tea Light Monster Jars

This is another cute little project I posted in halloween decor ideas. I first came across it in shelterness which led me to crazydomestic and then to notsoidlehands. I absolutely loved the idea of the glowing monster jars and I knew I had to give it a go.

One fine Saturday I made a trip to the Recycle Centre hoping to find some jars. Recycle is the best store if you need to find materials for your projects dirt really cheap. You can almost find anything to everything there. I can spend hours browsing through the store and usually I come home with pile of junk really cool stuff. You know what they say one man's trash is another man's treasure :)

While I was at the Recycle Centre I came across these jars and they were 50c-$1 each. There were 4 of the same size jars, one small one and one big round one. The whole lot cost me less than $5!!! (See what I mean)

I gave the jars a good clean and I removed the metal bits with a pair of pliers.

I already had some orange and pink tissue papers and I bought the white and green tissue papers so that I got all the colours to make the monsters. 

I cut strips of tissue paper from each colour for each jar. I mixed the clear glue with a little bit of water and applied the diluted glue on the tissue paper strips and pasted on each jar (You need to be careful when you do this because the tissue papers tend to rip when it's soaked in glue).

Once I glued all the strips of tissue on to the jars I left them to dry and I started cutting faces for the monsters. I didn't use a specific template as such. I just cut the faces free hand looking at the images in crazydomestic.

I glued on the faces to the jars and lined up my little monsters on the hall table and lit tea light candles bringing them to life. They look soooooo good! I love the fact that they are made out of recycle jars and the best thing is it cost me less than $10 to make these.

Can't wait to show them off at my (post) Halloween party :)

Mummy Wrap

Remember my post about Halloween Decor Ideas? Well I've been busy making various decoration for our birthday party and guess what, it's this Saturday! According to the weather bureau it's going to be a gorgeous sunny day in Melbourne. So excited but I am trying not to jinx it because we all know how unpredictable the weather in Melbourne can be.

So I have informed all my friends and family it's a Halloween themed party (more like a post halloween party) and to attend the party a costume is a must! It is a bit of an effort to get some 29 year olds to dress up in costume so as an encouragement I decided the best dressed he and she gets a little something from me. 

For me Halloween is all about spooky decorations and lots of candy so I bought two boxes of chocolates to give away.

I was thinking of the best way to wrap the chocolates and I thought it will be super cool to wrap it like a mummy!!!!

I manage to pick up a piece of white cloth for like $2 and I managed to find some left over wrapping paper. I wrapped the box of chocolate with wrapping paper and I tore the white piece of clothes into strips.

I made eyes for the mummy with a black and white pieces of paper pasted on top of each other. Then all I had to do was to wrap the mummy with the strips of white cloth like... well.. a mummy! :) 

I also had some plastic spiders which I wanted to get rid of (Yes I hate spiders.. absolutely terrified of them actually) so used to hot glue gun to stick them on.

And Ta Da!!!! Aren't they gorgeous???? :)

Deck Building Weekend 4

It's that time of week again. Actually this time it was a long weekend. Tuesday was a public holiday thanks to Spring Racing Carnival and we took a day off on Monday making it a long weekend. I was really hoping we'll make some considerable progress on the deck.

We had three days, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to work on the deck. Last weekend we managed to concrete one of the bearers in and I was determined to get the other two bearers concreted in by the end of Sunday. 

Yes thank fully we had our lovely friends to help is with the concreting. 

Despite the bad weather we managed to concrete all the bearers.

It was hard work not to mention very messy. We were covered either in mud or concrete at the end of the day but it was done. The hardest part of building the deck is done. What a relief.

We spent most of Monday in Bunnings sorting through their pile of decking boards to find the sizes we need.  We started screwing the decking boards to the Alfresco area (which already had the joists bolted into the concrete) that evening itself.

It was Tuesday morning and we were back on to working on the deck. We started with the extension by lining the decking area with weed mat. That should take care of weeds growing through the deck (hopefully).

Fixing the decking boards took some time to figure out what and where to start. But once we got going it out it was a piece of cake :)

Okay this is what you need to do..

First lay all the decking boards..

Draw a straight line to mark the mid point of the joist and also mark where the screws are going in..

Pre-drill..

Counter sink..

and last but not least, screw in the screws..

and that's it!

Having three drills helps to speed up the job. No they are not all ours.

By end of Tuesday we managed to finish decking the Alfresco area and it looks so goooooooooood!!!!!!!

Next up the extension of the deck.

Happy Halloween!!!!

Trick or Treat anyone?

Deck Building Weekend 3

Picking up from where we left off last week, we were on to building the deck again.

The holes were dug, the bearers were prepared so we were ready to concrete the stirrups in.

Well... that was until we realized that it wasn't as easy as we thought. Getting the bearer to be the same level as the concreted alfresco was quite difficult and time consuming. However by the end of the day we managed to concrete on of the bearers in.

Once the bearer was in level pouring the concrete into the holes was not too hard, but we had to use 2 concrete bags per hole to fill it up. I expected it to be one concrete bag per hole so now I need to go out and buy more concrete.

Did I mention concreting the posts was a messy job?

One bearer down and two more to go.

Deck Building Weekend 2

Since both of us work full time, the weekends tend to be jam packed with other plans hence the deck building is travelling very slowly. 

However we managed to squeeze in a trip to Bunnings and bought the timber required to build the structure of the extension of the deck.

Thanks to the courtesy trailer from Bunnings we brought it all home :)

Halloween Decor Ideas

It's October meaning it's Halloween time!!! I thought it would be a brilliant idea to do a Halloween birthday party as a treat for our friends for me and my hubby's birthdays. I've never hosted a Halloween party so I am so thrilled about it!

Halloween = lots of spooky decorations so I am planning to make as much of the decorations myself as possible. Here are some of the ideas I collected so far. Can't wait to start making them.

Source: dana-made-it.com

Source: shelterness

Source: shelterness

Source: craftinessisnotoptional

Source: shelterness

Source: shelterness

Source: shelterness

Deck Building Weekend 1

When we had our house built we were very excited about getting an Alfresco. Nine months after moving in, the Alfresco have been collecting lots of pots, pieces of wood and any rubbish that gets blown in by the wind. Finally we thought it's time we start building the deck so it becomes our outdoor area we hang out in summer. Our Alfresco area is concreted so building a deck on it would have been a relatively easy job.

Well.. not really.. I thought it would be really cool if we can extend our deck from our Alfresco, on to the garden on the side of the house. That will give us a bigger area for entertaining. Here's a rough sketch of what I had in mind.

The hubby wasn't too excited about the idea at first but agreed to do it. Since none of us has built a deck before we didn't know where to start. Couple of trips Bunnings, hours of research on the internet reading homeone forum I managed to draw up a basic frame to determine the quantity of timber, stirrups and other bits and pieces.

So basically part of our deck is on concrete and the extension of the deck will be on posts in level with the concrete to make it appear as one floor area. 

A deck built on the normal ground can be built on timber posts or metal stirrups. On top of the post/stirrup comes the bearers. Right angle to bearers comes joists and then the decking boards. Here's a basic plan I found on a website.

A deck built on concrete do not require any posts or stirrups. From the information I gathered the cross section of a bearer is normally 90mmx90mm and the cross section of a joist is 70mmx45mm. The thickness of a merbau decking board is 19mm. Since the step down from the house to the concreted Alfresco was only 80mm, we thought we'll have only the joists but side ways, with 10mm window packing underneath which brings up the height to be 55mm (45mm + 10mm). When the decking boards are added 55mm + 19mm = 74mm, there should be only 6mm step down which should be hardly noticeable (hopefully). 

Once we had everything planned and sorted, we went to Bunnings and bought few things we are going to need to get started.

According to my calculations we need 24 posts to hold the extension of the deck, and each post needs to be concreted in. We bought 26 bags of concrete just to be safe.

We bought the metal stirrups for the extension. We went with stirrups. Why? we thought it will make the job easy also with timber posts there is a chance of timber rotting.

The bearers and the joists are treated pine so I bought this timber protective power (which needs to be de solved in water) called RE-TREAT, to apply on any exposed timber due to cutting or shaving. I was determined to do everything right ;)

The window packing and the dynabolts to bolt down the joists on to the concrete.

Finally the 70mmx45mmx4m joist. We bought the timber that was required only for the concreted area as I was a bit sceptical about buying everything at once (although the shop assistant in Bunnings told me to do so)

We marked where we want the joists to go. Drilled holes in the joists and the concrete. Glued the 10mm packing on to the joists and bolted the joists to the concrete using the dynabolts. Sounds simple doesn't it? It wasn't. But between me measuring the spacing of joist incorrectly and dynabolts getting stuck to the concrete, it wasn't as bad as I expected.

Alfresco area half done. Looks pretty cool so far!

It was getting dark but guess he couldn't stare at the bolts that were sticking out so he decided to shave them off with the grinder before ending the day.