What's New This Week? A Weekly Update for You

This week has been hot, hot, hot, as summer in Australia often is. Yesterday was especially so. My husband and I decided to go for a drive in the mountains. It was a lovely day, we took our miniature Dachshund Millie. She had a little play in a stream on the way and we had a lovely lunch at a little take away shop. The coffee was amazing!! 

All was well until we were about 25km from home when we hit a massive bolt that was lying in the road and put a hole in the wall of our back tyre. We should have been able to change the tyre and be on our way but that is not what happened. It all started with the jack and socket to get the nuts off the tyre. When we purchased the car it had low profile wheels on it and we changed it back to stock. We assumed the jack and socket would be ok. Boy were we wrong. The socket was to big. So we through everything back in car and limp back to the nearest town with the hazard lights on. Once there we go to the service station and they could not help us. They directed us to the local supermarket which as luck would have it, one of the staff also looked after the hardware store so they so kindly opened it so we could purchase the correct size socket. That done, we move the car to the shade and change the tyre in 36 degree celsius heat. It was hard going but we got it done. Only problem was, the spare tyre was flat. Back we go to the service station and they do not have an air pump. So again, we head back to the supermarket and ask them to open the hardware store where we purchase a foot pump. The woman who helped us was the nicest person, she even gave us two ice cold bottles of water because we were so very hot and bothered at this point. We pull back into the shade to pump out the tyre and a man next to us offers for us to use his air compressor. Turns out it was a cousin I have not seen in many years. We finally made it home, two hours later than we planned and we finished the day cooling off in the pool. 

The bolt we ran over, as you can see it is as big as my hand!

Overall, it was a great day. I was able to take some photos while we were out and the day before I was also practicing taking photos of one of the work books I am decorating. I am still learning about how to change the setting on my camera, the use of light and the interaction on aperture, ISO and shutter speed and the effects on expose. It is easy to use the automatic function and I did use it for a few photos to compare however I really went to get into the nitty gritty of manual settings. The best way to learn is through practice. I thought about approaching a local photographer about shadowing and learning a bit but I think I will wait until I am more familiar with my camera. 

This week I have also spent some time on our house. We bought it last year and it will be a slow renovation project. Last week I took down all the old curtain rods and put up new ones as well as deep cleaning all the windows. Slowly I am also finding places for all our things. Part of ADHD and autism is the doom piles. I wouldn’t say I hoard but collect, if I am hyper-fixated I want to have and know everything about it. It means I have accumulated a lot of stuff over the years. Slowly, I want to reduce the stuff I have an live a simpler life. For me that is part of the freedom I am striving for, financial freedom and freedom from consumerism. 

The final little creative project I have been working on this week is decorating my workbooks. When I was younger, I used to always decorate my school books. Not just the covers, but I would also decorate pages of my diary with drawings and collections of pictures. It was scrapbooking and journalling/bullet journalling before it was really a thing. In the years since I have made reading journals and other little bits and pieces but nothing on a regular basis. I recently decided to do it with my work books and I am having a lot of fun. I just use things I have around the house like old wrapping paper and washy tape and it is fantastic they way they can turn out. In the one I am sharing you can see the cover underneath but it is more noticeable in the photo than in real life. Doing this has inspired me to go back to journaling and to pull my Cricut out and get creative on that. It goes to show that being creative doesn’t necessarily need to be conventional. 

I hope you have all had a wonderful week and I will see you you in my next post. Please leave a comment and let me know what creative things you have done this week.

xx