A couple of weeks ago I visited the local plant places – today I want to show you a couple of photos I took while there. Above you see Hydrangea – Strawberries and Cream. These were a little up money at $22 but I did like the look of them. I have never grown Hydrangea – if I were going to this is the one I would try. :)

This is Abutilons – also known as Chinese lanterns – I actually have three of these here. I do not have an orange one, though. This is gorgeous but also $22. So it was a no.

This is what I ended up buying – Portulaca Tropicana. The tag says that the flowers will be the tropical fruit colours of coconut, guava, watermelon and strawberry. This was $4.99, for 6 plants. Much more down money! Of course they are seedlings but my experience says they won’t be for long..

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections?? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

Weekly Wrap Up –

A couple of weeks ago, finally after a long wait, Hungry Jacks opened up within 15km of where we live. Previously, we would have to drive an hour to get to one. The place is being absolutely hammered by locals and tourists at the moment, every single day it is packed at both lunch and dinner time. We went for dinner the second day they opened and I have to say the food was really great for fast food. It was super fresh.

Locally here, there are not a lot of fast food options – most of the things that are here eg chicken shops, fish and chips, hamburgers, they all usually close by 6:30 or 7pm. After that it is pretty much Mcdonalds, KFC or Oporto. There is something in Oporto which I do not react well to, so we removed that from our list of options a while ago. KFC have provided uncooked chicken on more than one occasion, so that is also a huge NO.

We do have a Dominos and an Eagle Boys, neither of which we like, we gave up on them a long time ago. There are a couple of decent wood fired pizza places.

We did have a great sushi place but the owners have become very unreliable. Often it will be closed when the opening hours say it will be open, sometimes with a sign on the door, sometimes with no explanation at all.

Last weekend we drove to Warrawong to buy chicken in bulk. I thought the new Hungry Jacks would have organised to put a sign up on the way into town by now but we did not see one.

Christmas at Domayne can be very sparkly!

It can also be somewhat costly. This Christmas Deer was $34.95.

I really love the whole look, the white tree, the gold sequin balls, the sparkly pastel teal leaves.

The deer jars were quite awesome. The small teal feather wreaths would be awesome on my front door. In fact my Mother who strongly dislikes Christmas almost bought one.

Who would not love a sparkly deer?

These peacock feather Swarovski crystal tree ornaments are stunning!

It is worth remembering, this time next month, Christmas will be over for another year. :) Are you looking forward to Christmas? Got any big plans?

Sunday Selections

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections?? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

Also Linking Up With

Sunday Snap @ JibberJabberUK

Today I will like to share some photos of the current state of the candle shelf. The first and most obvious change – there are now 3 fake flowers in my vase. One of them is an Apricot Rose. I’m not sure what kind of flower the two purple things are, but I like them. I wrapped them together with some jewelry wire. I left the stems long because I did not want the flowers too close to the flames but the flowers have now developed a significant bend, so I might have to reconsider this.

But wait, did all the colours just change? What the?

I found these submersible LED light changing tealights at a local shop. At 4.95 for 4, they were great value. They are the kind of thing you would put in a table centerpiece for an event and they are seriously awesome. Depending on how long the batteries last in the first 4, I plan to pick up at least 2 more sets this week.

When we last visited this shelf, there were 7 candle holders. Now, there are 16. That is a significant increase! But wait, Snoskred. Have you been burning 16 candles every evening? No, I’m not. That would be pretty wasteful.

Along the front of the candle shelf there are 10 candle holders which sit on a ceramic tray from IKEA. The other 6 candle holders sit behind those. Out of the 16, there are 14 candle holders I most enjoy using..

Before I got the new LED tealights, at the start of each week, I would place one candle in each holder. Each night I would choose 4 candles to light. That would mean you got a different effect each night. On one night – either a Friday or Saturday, I would light up 12 of the candles.

With the new LED tealights I’m going to be able to put on a bigger light show each night without wasting too many candles.

When buying the candle holders I have tried to make sure there is a wide range of colours – there is a green crystal skull, a red and orange mosaic candle holder, yellow, green, pink and purple candle holders. There are also some reflective metal holders with shapes cut into them. You can see the stars being thrown onto the wall from one of those, which has an LED tea light in it.

I am on the lookout for a couple of Christmas related items here over the next couple of weeks – maybe a sparkly and reflective tree.. (see update below!)

I think the shelf is at maximum capacity now, and I may start rotating the candle holders on a weekly basis if I find more items that I need to buy.. So there you have it, the current state of the candle shelf. :)

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections?? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

Christmas Cards –

I was at Kmart doing some wandering while The Other Half had an eye test – turns out he has almost perfect vision, of course! – and I saw these beauties. In past years I never sent Christmas Cards but this year I am more into cards and I will be trying to send one to everyone in the family. I also thought if any of my readers would like a card, I would send them one.

If you want a card from Snoskred, drop me your postal address via my contact form, and I will post them out soonest to make sure they arrive by Christmas. It may not be one of these cards pictured above, I might surprise you with something different, it depends on how many I need to send. You might find another surprise inside, as well.

I also picked up a couple of these for my candle shelf at the massive price of $2.50 each. They are at the back inside the metal IKEA candle holders. :)

I have to give a big thank you to River for having a succulent garden and making me think I might like to try growing succulents. I have never grown them before. You may recall, I chose some Portulaca. In the photo above you can see how they looked on the 20th of September.

And here they are just one short month later on the 20th of October. They have taken off like mini rockets.

Above you see them on the 21st of October – as you can see, each day can make a huge difference in the flowers that appear. Some days there aren’t any but there are always loads of buds growing and so the suspense of when each flower will open is lots of fun to watch. :)

I had no idea how much I would enjoy watching their progress. These Portulaca plants have been an absolute revelation for me. Every morning the first thing I do after putting on my glasses is head to the back door to see whether they have any new flowers for me today.

You can see two of the plants are reaching out branches to each other..

I do have a routine of watering. Every second day, I give all the plant pots a good drink of 1 litre of water poured into each pot from some 2 litre milk carton friends I kept and drew a line on.

I am very careful not to wet the leaves, just the soil. If it is a hot day, I will usually do this about 3:30pm because around that time it is pretty shady out there thanks to a tree in the right spot. Around 20-30 minutes later, the sun peeks out from behind that tree and things get hot again.

On the alternate days, once the sun is on the way down, around 6-7pm, The Other Half waters with a hose – not a long water or a soaking, more like a sprinkle.

The flowers are truly gorgeous and there are many different colours. So far a lot of pink, yellow, and two different apricot shades have appeared. I’m sure this plant has many more lovely flowers in store for me this summer.

Would you like to join in with Sunday Selections?? The rules are very simple:-
1. post photos of your choice, old or new, under the Sunday Selections title
2. link back to River at Drifting Through Life, somewhere in your post
3. leave River a comment so that she knows you’ve joined in and can come over and see what you’ve posted.

I’m also linking up with Sunday Snap over at JibberJabberUK –

And the Maple Hill Hop.

Weekly Wrap Up –

It has rained almost every day this week. Sadly when it does rain, the portulaca flowers do not open! This has caused many sad moments here. However the chooks are having an absolute blast out there digging for bugs in this weather.

I discovered some submersible LED colour changing tealight “candles” this week and I’m a huge fan, they are gorgeous. I will have to update you urgently on the state of the candle shelf soon. :)