So with the bathroom finished and sparkling (for now) we move onto the next part of the challenge.

Day 5 of the Ultimate Fall Challenge means moving into the living room with this list in hand:

-Wash inside of windows
-Change HVAC filter
-Flip sofa and chair cushions
-Clean and scrub down baseboards and moulding.
-Wax floors if needed
-Shampoo wall to wall carpeting and air-out area rugs

The only thing I won’t be doing is shampooing the carpets. I plan to call in carpet cleaners to do all the rooms before Christmas.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before!

We don’t have a garage to park our car in. It just gets parked in the driveway. This usually isn’t a problem. The only time it is a concern is when there is a hail storm when hail stones the size of basketballs (ok, maybe not THAT big) fall onto the car and I just sit and wait for the crack of the windscreen breaking. If we get a chance, we run out with blankets to cover the top of the car to help lessen the damage. We must be a sad sight…lol…but I’m happy to say we’re not the only ones who do it - the neighbours do it too…LOL

We have enough room at the side of the house to put in one of those freestanding carports. It would just mean removing the “garden” at the side of the house. If you saw the “garden”, you’d understand why I used “”!

This would mean that our car would be more secure because of the gate too so that’s an extra benefit.

Adding this to my to-do list, like I don’t have enough on there!

We were meant to have homemade hamburgers and chips for dinner tonight but instead of getting minced beef (ground beef for those playing outside of Australia ;P), I ended up getting sausages out of the freezer to defrost.

So we were now having sausages, vegies and roast potatoes. I put the sausages under the grill. I put the vegies in a saucepan to cook. I put the potatoes in a saucepan to boil for a while and then I was going to put them in the chip pan to fry.

All was going well until I took the potatoes off the heat, drained them and put them on a tray to cool so I could coat the with flour. I reached into the pantry to get the flour down and sprinkled some over the potatoes. I thought it was a little weird that the flour seemed to absorb into the potatoes but didn’t think anything of it until I sprinkled more to coat them when I realised I had just sprinkled ICING SUGAR on the potatoes!

I quickly rinsed them under hot water and then coated them with REAL flour and finished frying them. Unable to stop myself from smirking at the family while they ate their potatoes, I admitted what I had done and got five pairs of eyes rolling at me (I’m sure Annabelle would have rolled her eyes too if she understood what I had done…lol)

Gives a new meaning to sweet potatoes!

UPDATE: When I opened up the cupboard this morning to get the tea bags out, I noticed that one of my children had labelled my icing sugar container for me…lol

I haven’t participated in Photo Hunt for a LONG time! I thought I’d play along again so I have another excuse to play with my camera some more…lol

This week’s theme is TOGETHER.

Smooching our baby, together!

Click on the Photo Hunters logo to check out more hunters.

I don’t think I’m meant to declutter this house. Every time I think that it is safe to finally get rid of something because we haven’t used it in a year or so, you can be guaranteed that as soon as it leaves our house, it will be needed *rolling eyes*

I bought an lcd monitor for the computer that the kids use, late last year. Bill thought it would be a good idea to put the old monitor away just in case, so we stored it up on one of the cupboards for months.

Just recently I noticed that someone had been asking for a computer monitor on Freecycle so I decided that I would offer it to them.

Of course now the lcd monitor I bought is playing up. It was just a matter of time!

I’m thinking there’s about 40-odd days until Christmas, right? I’ve been thinking about our Christmas lunch. I bought a new Christmas table runner. I made the place cards for the new place card holders that I bought. I just need to work out what I’m going to do for the table centre piece.

I need to look for egg nog recipes. I’ve never tried egg nog (sad, I know!) Does anyone know if it’s hard to make?

I’m starting to make my Christmas lunch shopping list. Assuming it’s going to be hot, I don’t want to be slaving in a hot kitchen so we’re going to be serving cold ham, seafood, salads and maybe pavlova for dessert.

What? Aren’t you already thinking about your Christmas menu? So I like to plan WAY ahead…lol

A couple of years ago we had a fire in the kitchen (it was a “Oh my goodness! The chips!” episode!) and I had to get rid of the blinds we had on the window because it got damaged. We were going to do all the windows at the same time, so in the mean time we only put curtains back up on the kitchen window.

I was standing at the kitchen sink. It was a warm night so I still had the window open and the curtains apart. I looked up and saw my reflection. My hair was a mess. So using the window as a mirror, I took out my hair elastic, pulled back my hair as neat as I could with my fingers and put it back up in a pony tail. Looking at my reflection again, I readjusted my bra to make “the girls” more comfortable and smoothed down my shirt.

While I was standing there, I had the feeling that someone was watching me. I turned around, thinking that one of the kids or Bill has walked in the room. No-one. I turned back around to the window and looked through my reflection outside and noticed my neighbour standing at his kitchen window, laughing.

Time to get the bamboo shades and new curtains for the kitchen window, me thinks!