Looking Back

A reader asked me this week how we are settling into our new place. Well, the answer is ...slowly. The past ten weeks have been complete madness. Who would move house in December ?

Here is a summary of some of the events that have taken place in the past ten weeks.

We did the pre-settlement inspection on our new property and couldn't believe that is was ours!

We then had to move our remaining belongings ( we had a HUGE throw out) into this new house. We had about 13 days before we were booked to go away on our annual holiday where we would be away for 3 weeks.

 We frantically unpacked everything, trying to find functional places for everything and work out where everything was ..... like the light switches and blind openers ! lol

We had to settle our birds and chickens in before we went away and undertake the HUGE job of getting our old place ready for our first ever tenants. 

Then we were off on our holiday. Firstly out west to catch up with family and have our pre-christmas celebrations and then back over the mountain to our holiday place....and boy did we need it.

So for the next two weeks we just laid around, read, swam, walked, fished and were generally recharging our batteries.

After we arrived home I headed off with my sister, Mum and niece to take my mum on a birthday road trip.

We headed firstly to the Hunter Valley and had a look at where we used to live and went to school. Then we headed to Bathurst and had a look at my Grandmother's house ( which has been totally upgraded and is truly wonderful!) We then put my father's plaque on his mother's grave and met some  of my aunties.

Of course, no trip to Bathurst would be complete without a visit to Annie's ice cream parlour. This goes without saying.

 We then headed through the blue mountains, stopping for some tourist walks and visiting some local wine stores.

 Then onto Sydney where we stayed at Four Points Sheraton and were tourists in Sydney. We did an historical walk and visited two of the museums, the Sydney museum and the Police and Justice museum.

 On the last evening we went to see Annie -the musical at the Lyric theatre and really enjoyed it.

So, for the last ten weeks I have been away for one month! Now that the children are back into school and I am back into working some hours each week there will be some settling into routines.

All we need now is for it to stop raining so that we can start preparing our new vegie patches. We have had 276mm of rain in the last ten days. On the 8th Feb we had 102 mm in one day! That is a lot of rain. 

My focus is currently on rebuilding my systems and routines. I have been reading back through my old blog entries to keep me on the track. I hope to incorporate all our previous principles and add to them with new found space and fruit trees. 

It is all very exciting! 

Green Acres Is The Place For Me

We are slowly settling into our new place. Although we moved in during December, we were away for almost a month because of holidays that we had arranged before we knew that we were going to buy a house!

Since we got back from holidays life has been about establishing new routines and making discoveries about what is around the property.

We have been doing lots of study, trying to work out what all the plants are and how to look after them. It is such an exciting challenge!

The boys have stepped up into work mode and are taking on more and more jobs. The novelty of a ride on mower with a trailer has a lot to do with that I think.

With the amount of rain we have had this week there has been even more time for planning, organising and unpacking. I am waiting to get to know the place a little - to learn where the shadows fall and where the water lies before we plant too many vegies and herbs.

It is such an exciting new start !

Handmade Christmas Cards

These are some of my handmade Christmas Cards that I have been making and then teaching classes from lately.

I love the gold and brown colours as a change from the traditional green and red. They look like a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates!

You can check out further details over at my papercraft website Splendid Stamping. 

Moving House

If you have been wondering why things are so quiet on the blogging front, it is because we are moving. I thought that we would be staying in this house forever, but over the past few months a series of things have just fallen in to place and before we knew it we had made an offer on a place out of town.

I feel quite okay about moving. I thought I would have a really difficult time leaving this house, after all,  a lot has happened here in the past 16 years. Firstly, it is the longest I have ever lived in one place. It is the home that I lived in when we were first married and the home I brought my babies home to.

In the past 16 years it has seen me be a teacher, a stay at home mum, a solicitor, a business woman, an author, a blogger and an urban homesteader.

What started as a little cottage has expanded over the years to accommodate our growing family. We added rooms, built bathrooms, took down walls, pulled up carpets all to keep up with our changing needs.

Now, as the boys are physically getting bigger they are after space. I am looking forward to new gardens, fruit trees and the next stage of family growth.

With our move shortly upon us, I thought things would be more chaotic. They are busy, but haven't fallen into total chaos......yet. One of the best things we did when we thought there was a possibility of moving was to have a severe cull of our possessions. We donated, sold, gave away  or threw out everything in every cupboard, drawer, shed and shelf that we did not need or completely love. We also shredded years and years of paperwork no longer required. Even if we weren't moving, this was a FANTASTIC feeling of freedom !

Now we have been working on preparing our house for tenants. Painting, cleaning, fixing. It is funny that jobs we have been meaning to get around to for years have all suddenly been completed in a fortnight.

Everyone is so excited about the move. I am really looking forward to having a place for everything and everything is its place. I am excited about creating new spaces for cooking,   baking and making. The most exciting thing for me, however, is the established fruit trees. Strange, I know, but having trees that are bearing so much fruit is really exciting !

Most of all, as usual, I am looking forward to creating......................a vision splendid ! 

Only an 80s Gal Will Laugh.

Hello September

Image Source: http://sayingimages.com/hello-september/

Hello September. I am enjoying you so much. Just when I had settled into a life of rugging up, adding layers, snuggling under blankets on the lounge, you turn up and surprise me.

You get me every year!

I get the first hint of you in the breeze. Then I notice you in the song of the birds and the sound of a distant lawn mower. Then I smell you in the blossoms and when your light hits the new green leaves on the crepe myrtle tree.

Then I remember what is to come.... the early mornings, the long summer evenings, the swimming and skiing and playing and gardening and holidays and Christmas and mangoes and watermelon and prawns and shorts and t-shirts and thongs.....

.....and I am one happy spring chicken.

Such an Eighties Girl !

 Going through some old photos tonight I remembered these from the 80s display that was at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney last year. It was so fabulous to walk through the display and be reminded of things that looked so familiar, yet I had totally forgotten about.

Are you an eighties person ? Are you smiling knowingly when you look at these images ? The photos were snapped on a phone so the quality is poor, but you will still be reminded of a piece of the past.

I love this teen bedroom ! One of my friends ( Hi Trudi if you are reading) had this exact Ken Done bedspread, I am sure of it!! And what about those movie posters? Who remembers Flashdance and The Breakfast Club? What about Dirty Dancing ( a personal favourite... I now own the (hmm hmmm) 25th Anniversary DVD. Can you believe it was so long ago ?

Oooh the beginnings of the lycra movement - love a good leg warmer !

Oh, and the music!!! Some of the best rock songs ever written came out of the eighties. Khe Sahn anyone ?

Strawberry Shortcake !

This is a really blurry photo taken through glass, but I just had to add it. Do you remember when the top hits were printed each week and appeared on Countdown and you could get a free copy at the record shop ?

Some of these record covers are instantly recognisable. Can you spot Footloose ? What about John Cougar .... or was he Mellencamp then! lol

Oh dear... I am such an eighties girl! What are your memories of the eighties ?

Should We All Be More Frugal ?

Recently I have been thinking more and more about the instability of our lifestyles and the way that we are set up as a modern society to live.

If you tune in to television or magazine advertising they will have you believe that everything is wonderful. It has never been better! 'Live for today', you hear them say....'go ahead, your deserve it'.......'you only live once'....... Pay tomorrow.... interest free...

I look around and see a very different story. I see people wondering why 'everyone else' seems to have it so easy when they are doing it tough. I see people who just completely block their financial circumstances and live from credit card to credit card and keep refinancing their blues away.

I have really started to sit up and take notice because I see more and more people whose lives have been turned around by such a simple event that pulls the rug out from underneath them.

I have seen friends go through a separation and divorce, the death of a spouse who was way too young, a job loss for the only income earner in the family, serious illness which turns a family upside down and people wiped out through once in 150 year floods.

We all subconsciously believe that it will 'never happen to us', but I am sure people who have been through a change like this have thought exactly that.

Do you think it is prudent to tighten our belts in the name of securing a solid emergency fund ? How many of us could truly survive for six months if our current income source dried up ? If your income stopped tomorrow, how prepared would you feel ?

As you know, I am always using 'times gone by' as a reference point when it comes to being frugal, living green or living more simply. Perhaps because of the instability of the times, people from older generations always put money from good times away for times when they may not be as good. They stood by the traditional wisdom of saving for a rainy day.

Are our times today any more stable today than what they were back then ? Does easy credit disguise society's true position ? I am not sure, I can only judge it by what I see, hear and read around the community and in the blogosphere.

Why suspicion is.....yes.

RIP : My Father :

 20 May 1940 :  9 July 2011 
 aged 71 years 

Capturing The Life That Was

Last week I purchased an external hard drive to make a double back up of my digital photo collection. Gee it was easy! I had lots of photos ( I mean LOTS) on CDs all carefully labelled and categorised and I even had proof sheets printed of what was on each disk.

It was so easy to just whip them into iphoto ( I am a Mac girl) and there they all are - in chronological order and able to be sorted in keyword categories at the click of a mouse!

I skim through all the photos they really reveal just how much I have a love affair with days gone by. There are so many photos capturing aspects of a life that was.

I am always intrigued by the lifestyle that people led in the past. The days of hard work and little reward, an instilled work ethic that is rare to come by these days, a complete life of self sacrifice to others with no chance of any recognition.

My Grandmother told me once that the girls of today just don't have the stamina to be able to do all the things they did.....and I would have to agree!

Although, I have been quoted as saying that I could do without electricity and running water, grow my food and still get by quite okay ......as long as I had wi-fi and a solar powered lap top to blog about it! LOL

Look at this tired old truck - can't you see the expression on his face ? Years of hard work can be seen across his brow!

I don't have to walk four miles to school barefoot in the snow. I haven't birthed 13 children all 9 months apart and I will never have to fight for women to get the vote..... but I really do think that there are some traditions and principles that we should not let go of in our modern world.

We should not shy away from hard work. We should only eat our fill. We should show respect to our elders. We should live within our means and we  should raise our children with values that we want to see reflected in our society.

......and then we should blog about it to share the message !