Q & A With Australian Author - Loretta Hill

I have been reviewing books on the blog for 4 years now and feel quite proud to bring you my very first interview today.

I'm thrilled to welcome to my blog Loretta Hill, a Western Australian author, to celebrate the release of her latest novel.

Loretta's first novel Kiss and Tell was released in 2009 and since then she has written a total of 7 women's fiction books. Her latest novel The Maxwell Sisters was published by Random House Australia on 3 January 2015.

Q & A WITH LORETTA HILL

Q What did you enjoy most about writing your most recent book The Maxwell Sisters?

A    The setting, definitely! I love the Margaret River Wine region so doing the research for this book was such a joy. I’ve always been interested in wine but since writing this book I’ve had to learn so much more about the process of making it.

Q Your books are usually based in an Australian country town, what do you love most about rural Australia?

A    The people. I love the community spirit of small towns. I love the fact that everyone knows each other so well. There’s a lot of comedy and drama to be found in that dynamic and I certainly put these two ingredients in “The Maxwell Sisters.”

Q Do your friends or enemies ever become characters in your books?

A   No, not really. Certain qualities, habits and mannerisms that I encounter in different people do give me ideas. However, I never write a character exactly as they are in real life. Honestly, I think that would be too hard. I want my characters to behave how I want them to behave and if they are real people they often won’t J

Q What has been your proudest moment or achievement as a writer?

A   Having one of my books as number 1 on itunes. That never gets old.

Q  Name your all time favourite top 3 books and/or authors

A   Wow! That question is just way too hard. I could not narrow it down to three. The author I have loved the longest is Georgette Heyer. I have admired her since my teenage years and I do read her books again and again. But there are so many modern authors I love just as much. Too many to name. 

Q Just for fun, this or that:

• Wine or Coffee         -   Wine
• Comedy or Drama    -   Why not both? J
• Diamonds or Pearls  -    Diamonds
• Summer or Winter    -    Summer
• Call or Text               -    Call
• Book or Ebook          -    Book

It has been a pleasure interviewing you Loretta, I can't wait to see what book you release next!

        

You can find  my reviews of Loretta's previous books The Girl In The Yellow Vest HERE and The Maxwell Sisters HERE.

To find out more about the author check out Loretta's website here.

I hope this will be the first of many interviews with authors that I admire!

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[Image via Loretta Hill]

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DIY Birdcage Card Holder

I have a short and sweet DIY for you today on making a birdcage card holder for my engagement party.

Having a healthy obsession with birds and birdcages means that I have a few birdcages at home to chose from to make the perfect card holder. 

I picked this birdcage because the lid comes off so it's easy for cards to be placed inside, without having to open a little door or having to push the cards through the cage bars.

I bought some yellow and blue ribbon in the same colour theme as the party decor.

I tied the wide ribbon around the edge of the cage and used the thinner ribbons to hang strips from the front and top.

Next I used some printable gift tags from Avery which I personalised in the Design & Print online section of the website. There were 60+ designs to pick from for the gift tags and I settled on a pretty heart and flower image and changed the colours to match our theme. 

I printed the tags out and joined the two gift tags together with some ribbon, one says CARDS and the other THANK YOU.

That's another DIY project done for the engagement party, I have a few more I'm working on and having so much fun with it.

Shopping from home also means that this DIY project only cost me a few dollars for the ribbons. The gift tags were gifted from Avery as part of a review I'm doing on their celebrations & events range which I used for my engagement stationary and I'll be sharing more on that on the blog soon.

What do you think of my DIY card holder?

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2014 Projects + To Do List - In Review

It's about that time in the new year when I look back at our project list for 2014 to see how we did ticking off the projects, what we accomplished, and what's still on the list.

So how did we go with our ridiculously ambitious to do list last year? Pretty good actually we have accomplished most things that we wanted to ..... this was our 2014 to do list.

1. Laundry/Powder Room Renovation - DONE

Yippee yiy yay those ugly yellow mosaic tiles are just a distant memory now. Not to mention I have a laundry bench to sort clothes and work from and more storage than I know what to do with.

There's a basin inside the toilet so you can wash your hands and check yourself out in the mirror without having to traipse through the house to the bathroom. Oh and a toilet that actually flushes ..... three cheers for that!

2. Finish the inside of the house - ALMOST DONE

We replaced most of the internal doors and a new front door. We just need to hang 2 more and we are done. We also need to paint all the doors and install new handles. I will be doing a How To blog post on this very very very soon!

We have finished painting the entire house and have wallpapered a feature wall and door. I have another wallpaper project in mind once we decide if we'll wallpaper the living room or man cave .... decisions decisions!

3. Front of the house - Landscaping the courtyard - NOT DONE!

We will start work on the courtyard in the next few months.

We have some awesome gardening tools to try out which will hopefully turn my black thumb green and help us get this courtyard landscaped so we can actually use it and enjoy the space.

Not to mention the wood Vs metal courtyard slats debate continues ..... can you believe we still don't know what we want. We have priced up timber and it will work out not that much cheaper once you take into consideration you will need to stain the slats and continue to maintain and stain it each year. Our goal is to order more metal samples and fingers crossed we find a colour we like to match the garage door and can then get the courtyard finished.

4. Backyard - Remove Granny Flat and Patio - IN PROGRESS

5. Build a deck - IN PROGRESS

These two items are on hold until we have our subdivision approval which we should get in the next month or two (the Department of Planning has 3 months to approve/reject our request).

We have organised for someone to remove our Granny Flat for free, they will crane it over the house which is both terrifying and exciting! We have started to clear out the Granny Flat so we are ready for this.

The patio will be removed at that same time, I can't believe the rusty ole thing has lasted so long! We've had some fantastic dinner parties, BBQs, and hosted our first Christmas under here, it has served us so well over the last 5 years!

6. Render back of house  DONE

The back and sides of the house were rendered just before Christmas and it looks absolutely amazing like a different house with all the old 1960s bricks covered with render.

We painted the whole exterior of the house too - the rendered walls, facia and eaves and window frames. It was a huge job but so worth it for the impact it makes.

7. Start subdivision process - Done

We had our land surveyed and the paperwork sent off to planning to see if we can subdivide the property. Now we are waiting to get the go ahead, and once that happens we will tackle 4 and 5 above.

We will also pop a bottle of champagne to celebrate this massive achievement as first time renovators to have our property dreams come to fruition with a lot of hard work and determination!

It's reassuring to look back at all the work we did over the year and see the progress made. 

We still have a list of jobs to finish off, but sometimes it's easy to lose sight and instead of taking a moment to acknowledge what HAS been done, we worry about what HASN'T been done!

I'm reminding myself to do that often this year, not just for the wedding preparations, but life in general. To look at what we've achieved and celebrate the small things because the small things are the big things in life!

How did you go with last year's To Do List?


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Recipe: Pina Colada Bread In A Bread Maker

If you like pina coladas .... dancing in rain .... then you'll love this pina colada bread recipe!

I've made this pina colada bread a few times now and since it won the Naughty Vs Nice Christmas baking competition at work last year (in the naughty category of course!) I thought I'd share the recipe with you.

Pina Colada Bread
750g loaf in bread maker

225ml Water
2 tbs Rum (I used Bacardi Rum)
1 tbs Margarine
2/3 cup Pineapple, crushed and drained
1 and 1/2 tsp Salt
2 tbs Sugar
1 tbs Skim milk powder
1 tsp Bread improver
480g Plain flour
2 tsp Yeast
1/2 cup Coconut, shredded and roasted

Place all the ingredients in the bread maker in the order listed above.

Turn the bread maker on and leave it to work it's magic. 

When finished the bread will come out golden and smelling deliciously of sweet pineapple and coconut.

Turn the bread out and leave it to cool.

It's now ready to slice and serve with a soft cheese such as walnut and apricot cheese.

This sweet loaf is perfect for a crowd as it goes a long way and it's a perfect accompaniment to a bevvie  of your choice ..... or double it up with a pina colada cocktail!

Do you have a favourite bread recipe?




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Book Review: The Maxwell Sisters By Loretta Hill

This is a book review of The Maxwell Sisters by Loretta Hill which was recently published on 3 January 2015.

Loretta Hill is a well known author from Perth, Western Australian my very home town! Loretta is one of my favourite authors since reading The Girl In The Yellow Vest and now this book, I'm hooked she's just brilliant. Loretta in her spare time enjoys reading, good food, great wine, and travel, a woman after my own heart!

The Maxwell family have a winery in Margaret River, a beautiful wine growing region of Western Australia. The 3 Maxwell sisters grow up and move out of their family home and each is focused on their own lives, careers, family, and love interests and it's only when one of the sisters is planning a wedding on their family's estate, that they all return home to help with the wedding preparation.

Whilst this is a romance story, it's not the fairy dust romantic kind, but the real life dramas, ups and downs, and serious issues that each of the sisters are dealing with in their own lives. The story includes their parents who are growing older and also have their own change of life they are going through.

The writing is upbeat and witty and with the various love interests and dramas happening all the way through the story it was engaging and a really easy book to read.

I loved the references to wineries and places of interest in and around Margaret River, being a regular visitor there myself I could picture the bakery in Dunsborough and the wineries in the region. I also loved the talk of working on the winery, the variety of grapes grown, and how they are harvested,  I think this added an authentic element to the story and I'm sure the author enjoyed researching the wineries (and wine!) for this book.

I recommend this book to wine lovers who like a bit of light hearted romance.

I give this book 5 out of 5 stars

Jarrah Jungle's Star Rating:

1 Bad - I'd rather eat brussel sprouts topped with anchovies than read this again
2 Not Good - I'd rather watch paint dry than read this again
3 Ok - I'm sitting on the fence - its not great but not terrible either
4 Good - I'd pass up the last tim tam for this read
5 Great - I'd pass up a date with Johnny Depp for this read

The Maxwell Sisters can be purchased from Random House Australia 

Sharing my book review on Good Reads here and Netgalley 

You can find the author's website here

Disclosure:  NetGalley partner with bloggers such as me to help promote authors and their books and I was given this eBook published by Random House Australia to review. As always, all opinions are my own. 

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[Image via Random House Australia]

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My Word For The Year 2015: Love

I have been playing along with the 'word of the year' on Maxabella Loves for a few years now and I just love the concept behind focusing on one element and one word to aspire to for the next 365 days.

My previous words for the year are: 2012 Decision, 2013 Embrace and 2014 Motivate

For 2015 the word that popped into my head instantly was LOVE

Getting engaged on our cruise holiday just 2 months ago certainly brought that word to the forefront of my mind. Saying YES to Mr P to spend the rest of our lives together and choosing to be in love forever and ever which is a very long time you know!

It would be so nice to stay in that love bubble of excitement straight after the engagement but soon enough it was time to get down to business and start planning our big day and our friends and family were asking us questions we didn't have the answers too ..... When's the wedding? Whose in the bridal party? Garden or Church? Band or DJ? Just elope to Las Vegas!

With so many things to plan and think about I can see that love bubble get pushed to the back as the business side of things come to the front but I'm determined to not let that happen.

This year is going to be all about the LOVE

I'm not going to sugar coat it, planning our lovefest is going to be hard work, stressful and daunting especially for me as I'm feeling the pressure already to have everything absolutely amazing, magazine quality, perfection.

I know I bring that on myself because I love party planning and this is by far the biggest party of my life so the pressure is on to make it just that!

BUT I am reminding myself it's about the LOVE

I want to make decisions this year based on how I feel inside, and how it represents Mr P and I. I don't care for fancy limousines, or a designer wedding dress, I just want to share in special moments and memories with Mr P by my side and surrounded by family and friends.

The reality is we don't have a lotto winning budget and even if we did I don't want to spend it on "one day". A wedding doesn't have to be expensive to be memorable.

The Do-It-Yourself in me thinks that I can tackle a lot of the wedding plans myself and I will for the most part but there's a fine line I don't want to cross and DIY myself silly and forget I was meant to be having fun along the way.

All you need is LOVE

So every time I'm on my Pinterest pinning like a crazy love struck engaged bride to be to bring all the ideas and inspiration together that I love, I have to remind myself that I can't do it all and that the most important thing to focus on this year through the engagement and wedding and our honeymoon and then our life together is ....

Mr P and I and our LOVE for each other

So bring on the lovefest I say! I'm so happy and excited for what lies ahead this year and it's not just about Mr P and I, but it's also bringing both our friends and families together too, which is really special.

My goodness I don't think I've ever written anything so mushy before, I'm all warm and fuzzy inside now, but think I'd better go and hang some wallpaper or paint something!

I'm exciting for my word for the year ..... Bring on the LOVE!

What's your word for 2015?

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[Images via my Pinterest 1, 2, 3, 4]

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Painting The Exterior Walls And Window Frames With Dulux Paint

You have seen our before and after on having the exterior of the house rendered recently and while we have hired a scaffold for the project, we decided to paint the exterior of the house as well while the scaffold was up, much easier and safer than balancing on ladders and crates!

I have been lucky enough to work with Dulux to review their paints recently and for this project they provided their exterior paints Dulux 1 step Acrylic Primer, Sealer and Undercoat and Dulux Weathershield Low Sheen Acrylic - both of which we had tinted to Colorbond, Classic Cream.

We also used the Dulux Aquanamel Gloss tinted in Colorbond, Monument which we had leftover from when we painted the window frames at the front of the house. 

Ok so let's get painting, this is the order that we painted the exterior ....... 

Working a few hours here and there over the Christmas break on our holiday at home

First of all, the scotia which we removed for the renderer to render all the way to the top of the eaves, had to be re-fitted. The scotia is the wooden moulding that attaches to the eaves to give it a nice neat edge. 

To save time we bought a cheap nail gun for about $40 and used it to nail the scotia in all around the house. We went through hundreds of nails so well worth the money, can you imagine doing that by hand? No thanks!

My job was to hold the scotia in place while Mr P came around and nailed it in, being a shortie I used a broom to hold it up high above my head which worked a treat. I wasn't a fan of standing close to the gun and flinched every time it went off but lucky for me (and lucky for him!) Mr P is a good shot and didn't miss!

Once the scotia was nailed in and we had filled all the nail holes with filler, we were ready to paint them and the eaves which are a concrete colour. We used a standard Ceiling White paint and painted 2 coats onto the scotia and eaves. The white paint instantly lifts the exterior, while we were tempted to use the classic cream paint I'm glad we went for the fresh bright white.

Mr P cut in while I followed with the roller on an extension stick, I tell you this was really hard going having my neck back and arms up walking backwards on the scaffold for hours. I felt very much the DIY Queen doing this paint job and was very proud of myself when we finished!

Once the scotia and eaves were painted we moved onto the window frames. The window and doors frames use to be painted white all around the house but we made the bold move to paint them in Colorbond Monument and have not looked back since, the colour looks great.

We had to prep the frames by sanding back all the old flaking paint down to the jarrah wood, filling any cracks with filler, and sanding the surface smooth. We borrowed a heat gun which helped to remove the paint but there's nothing like a bit of elbow grease to get it all off!

Once the frames were ready we did a prepcoat in Dulux 1 step Acrylic Primer, Sealer and Undercoat tinted in Colorbond, Classic Cream. As this is the same colour that we'll paint the walls it means we didn't have to be too careful cutting in, so the prepcoat didn't take too long to paint on.

A great tip if you are undercoating is to have the paint tinted in the same colour as your wall paint.

Once the prepcoat had dried Mr P did 2 top coats on the window frames in Dulux Aquanamel Gloss tinted in Colorbond, Monument. This is the same paint we used to do the window frames at the front of the house and ties in nicely with our exterior colour combination.

Using an angled brush on the window frames to cut in makes painting a lot easier, it is worth investing in a few different sizes and shapes of brushes for the different painting projects you do.

There are 6 window frames and a door frame to paint which Mr P smashed out in about 10 hours, what a champion with the paint brush he is!

Painting in hot weather is never recommended, but as we were paying for the weekly hire of the scaffold we had to push on and get the work done so we could return it. So we were up painting at the crack of dawn in the heat and even on the shady side of the house the paint was drying out too fast and crusting over which was leaving lumps on the walls.

There are some things you can do to beat the heat - firstly, we hosed down the walls with water to cool them down and stop the paint drying so fast and this definitely helped.

Secondly, we thinned the paint down - we tried using water but found that wasn't working too well so we went and bought some proper paint thinner.

We picked up a few cans of the Dulux Hot Weather Thinner which worked brilliantly by slowing down the paint from drying too fast. The thinned out paint is also easier to apply to the walls and makes the paint go further too.

Anytime we paint with exterior paint from now on we will use a paint thinner, it was a bit of a life saver really because it allowed us to get on with painting even on a 38 degree day! We used a 1 litre can of thinner to 10 litres of paint, poured it straight into the paint can and gave it a really good mix and then it was good to go.

Once the window and door frames were painted we moved onto the walls and for this we used the same prepcoat as we used on the window and door frames Dulux 1 step Acrylic Primer, Sealer and Undercoat tinted to our wall colour Colorbond, Classic Cream.

Once again Mr P was the cutter-iner and I was the roller girl. I tell you painting the outside is a lot different to inside - the walls are not flat and smooth like inside the house and the concrete walls are porous which means it takes twice as long and you use a lot more paint too. 

Once the prepcoat was on the walls we could apply the top coat which was Dulux Weathershield Low Sheen Acrylic tinted with Colorbond, Classic Cream. The first top coat went on a lot easier and the second even easier again thanks to the prepcoat. 

Mr P cut in all around the edges while I came along with the roller. Our lovely neighbor who is a retired painter and could no doubt hear my squeals every time I got too close to the edge of the scaffold, came over and helped us finish off the very last coat of paint, for which I was extremely grateful.

As the sun was fading we cleaned up the brushes and rollers, sat out on the patio with a bottle of wine and looked back at the mammoth job we had of painting the house exterior - scotia, eaves, window and door frames and rendered walls.

What a difference a fresh coat of paint makes to everything! Just a reminder of how it looked a few weeks ago ....

And how it looks now all rendered, painted, scaffold removed .... like a brand new home!

It was hard work painting the exterior especially when we were working in the heat of summer. Setting the alarm on our days off over the Christmas break to get up early to paint when everyone else was on holidays having a good time.

But look what we've achieved and saved ourselves thousands of $$$ doing it ourselves too.

Now the front and back of the house has been rendered and painted it looks so good, I'm just so happy with it ...... Never underestimate the power of paint!

Sharing with link parties:

Curly Crafty Mom - Motivational Mondays Link Up

Savvy Southern Style - Wow us Wednesdays

The Dedicated House - Make It Pretty Mondays

Disclosure: Thanks to Dulux for providing me with this paint and painting products for review. I have not received any payment or compensation. As always, all opinions are my own.

For exclusive extras and daily updates ... follow Jarrah Jungle on Facebook and Instagram

[All images my own]

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