Snow and sunshine

This weekend was glorious. We went out to the Farmers Markets early and then Lil decided to go from there to my Mum and her partner's place for a play. This meant that P could take me to prenatal yoga, which turned out to be lucky because it was a "partners" class and so he was able to stay and join in. (I am not sure that he quite saw this as 'lucky', but that's another issue...)

Image from here.

On the way home from yoga we stopped past the train station to pick up my Dad who came down to help us out and hang out with Lil for the weekend. Then we went to Silo bakery to pick up yumminess for lunch and the week to come. After picking up Lil from my Mum's, we headed home to eat a scrumptious lunch of fresh sourdough sandwiches and tarts in the sunshine. It turned into one of those gorgeous late winter days in Canberra, where the air is still a bit crisp, but the sky in bright blue and the sun is strong and warm.


After lunch Lil forced Dad to push her on the swing, while P and I got stuck into our sadly neglected garden. I pruned the overgrown plants and did a bit of weeding, while P dug out a new veggie patch around the side. Inspired, Lil decided to join in by planting a bunch of tomatoes seeds and dragging some sticks and weeds over to the compost heap. By 4pm I was utterly shattered and took myself off to bed for a nap. Every muscle in my body felt used, but in a good kind of way.


On Sunday Dad and P were planning to take Lil out to Corin Forest to play in the snow. We were being somewhat hopeful about the snow. It had clearly come down in the Brindabellas on Thursday, but we weren't able to find any information if it was actually still around or even if it had fallen as low as Corin Forest... But we thought it was worth a try.

I spent the morning baking cookies (these ones, and I can highly recommend them - with a little less sugar than she recommends) and packing an elaborate picnic for the snow adventurers. (My intention was to potter around the house once they had gone.) However, when they were on their way out the door, P said 'Why don't you come?' and suddenly I really wanted to (partly 'cause the picnic looked so yummy, and partly because of the prospect of seeing Lil's first contact with snow) and so I threw on some clothes and jumped in the car with them.

Our prospects of finding snow were looking grim for the first 45 minutes of the 50 minute drive. We hadn't seen any at all and were preparing Lil for 'just a picnic in the forest and a play' when suddenly we started to see some patches by the side of the road. Relieved we rounded the corner to see the whole hillside at Corin Forest was covered with snow.

After a dressing Lily up into some borrowed snow gear, which was really very munchkiny, we squelched up the sodden hillside into the bush and Lil had her first contact with snow. Don't you just love "firsts"? She squealed with delight when it was thrown up in the air and proceeded to crawl and slide all over the hillside in her excitement. It was gorgeous to watch.

After making the obligatory snowperson, we stomped back down the hill to have a picnic lunch in the sunshine. It was another gorgeous day - topped off by another nap by yours truly in the afternoon.

Sick

Did you watch The Young Ones when you were a kid? I bloody loved that show, wrong though it was. Anyway, I've been thinking about it lately - particularly that episode "Sick" where they all get really sick (Neil in particular) and everything becomes even more gross and chaotic than usual.

[image credit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theyoungones/index.shtml]

You see our little household has been sort of living that episode. We have all been taking turns being ridiculously sick for the past couple of months (with poor Lil having far more than her fair share of horrible sickness) and it is really getting to be quite overwhelming. The fact that it is freezing outside and so we can't really air out the house, or even hang the washing outside, hasn't helped. Neither has the fact that I am now a million years pregnant.

Poor Paul has been taking his latest turn being sick and there is now a frightening tower of dishes in our kitchen. Normally I do the odd load during the day, but he makes sure they are done every night and he just hasn't been up to that since the weekend. I have tried to step up, but whenever I stand at the sink for more than a few minutes my lower back starts seizing up and I find that I can't stand or walk for the next hour or two, which is not so feasible when you have a 3-year-old & a sick husband to care for...

Of course, my PhD has been the first thing to suffer from all this sickness, but Paul's job hasn't fared too well lately either and he is seriously thinking of dropping out of his Masters degree, which would be a shame... Hopefully we can get on top of this plague of illness in the next couple of weeks before Mr Charlie arrives. Otherwise things are going to get very interesting indeed!

Something a little less serious

A catch-up post in dot points:

• Lily is completely obsessed with the Faraway Tree series. She has had it read to her (and listened to it) so many times now that she is talking in Faraway Tree language: "It was simply marvelous." "No, that's just horrid." etc... She is also making up "Saucepan's silly songs." They are quite funny.

• Lil's also been sick for over a week now. She's been up and down in that time and seems to be properly on the mend now, but it's been a long week. Poor kid.

• I am heading up to Sydney on Thursday to do a faculty presentation on my thesis and meet with my supervisors. It will be very useful, but I am sort of dreading it. I know that the list of things that I still need to do will be long and daunting...

• A lovely friend of mine gave us a pressure cooker as a present for leaving her our house to sit while we were in Mexico (they were moving to NZ and needed somewhere to be after their stuff had gone on ahead). It was ridiculously generous since it was just as beneficial to us to have people staying in our place and taking care of the garden etc. But, it has also been a revelation. I LOVE IT. I really like cooking, but it can be quite stressful to try making dinner when Lil is already hungry and is getting impatient and demanding. The pressure cooker means that everything is so quick to make and I can do other things while dinner is cooking. Win, win, win. It also makes cooking dried beans so very much easier, which means that I am resorting to far less cans.

• Lily and I finally planted our bulbs last week. I am hoping that it wasn't too late, as I love seeing the daffodils and tulips popping up in the Spring. I helped Lily to make little labels for the pots, but we didn't make them water-proof enough and they are fading already. Fortunately it will be fairly obvious what they are (if they survive).

• Winter has really arrived here in Canberra. It is cold. It has also been raining quite a lot, which is very un-Canberran. The absence of blue skies is starting to get me down a little - though, of course, the garden is very happy.

• My pregnancy is progressing well. We had a 20 week scan a little while ago and found out that we are having a boy. A new adventure! We are planning to call him Charlie. He is a very active little munchkin - especially in the early hours of the morning and whenever he can hear his big sister's voice.

• I made this banana bread with choc-chips on Saturday morning. It was truly delicious. I can highly recommend the recipe. (But, of course, you can rarely go wrong with anything from Molly).

• That's all for now, I think. I hope that you are well. I plan to get back on tops of things when Lil is back on her feet. Expect some Wintery photos and maybe even a few lunchboxes.
  

Quick catch up

Argh, where is the time going? I can't keep up with life at the moment. But I did want to just stop by and post a quick catch up - a little list of the most significant things going on for us right now.

• I'm pregnant. Yep, odd declaration for a bullet point I know, but life's been a bit like that at the moment.

• I am flying to the US on Sunday to attend a conference on the Right to Water... without Lily. Ahhh! I am a little sad about this and anxious about how it will go, but I think she'll be fine. She's gotten so big recently.

• The following Thursday P and Lily are flying to the US to meet up with me and then we are all flying to Mexico! Yay!

• We'll be in Mexico for three weeks and plan to do lots of beachy stuff and a bit of cultural stuff too - like visiting some Mayan ruins etc... Most significant of all (as far as Lily is concerned), we are also planning to swim with dolphins.

• I am massively behind schedule with my PhD due to 3 months of severe nausea and vomiting. Yes, I was lucky enough to get hyperemesis gravidarum (severe morning sickness) and it wasn't very conducive to thesis writing...

• I am a little bit stressed right now...

I hope that you are all going really well and plan to be back some time soon with some more interesting stuff and maybe some photos of faraway places.

I covet

image via design inc.

I have been yearning to put a tree on the wall in Lily's room for ages now. The problem is, of course, that we rent. In Australia this means that we have extremely limited rights to do anything at all to our home (i.e you need permission to put up a picture hook!) and we only have a 12 month lease, so anything we do do may have a pretty limited lifespan...

image via home sweet home

Despite all this, I thought that I would share some of my recent finds with you. Maybe you'll be able to use them? Or, maybe they'll still be available next century when we can afford to buy our own house...

First up there is this gorgeous fabric wall sticker from I love my messy room.

I particularly like it with the addition of animals and the fact that it is fabric is pretty cool too. Apparently it can be re-used and will come off the wall without damaging it...

Next up is a wall sticker from the wall sticker company. This one is made of vinyl, but it is a Lara Cameron pattern that I have always loved...

It's also available in wallpaper, which would be very cool (but would really really need to go on the wall of a house that you weren't renting...)

Gathering flowers

Yesterday afternoon Lily asked if we could go outside to pick flowers. It was a beautiful afternoon (we have been blessed with the best weather lately) and so we went outside in barefeet and wandered about the front garden picking flowers.

It's funny, native flowers aren't always very big and bold and sometimes they seem to take a while to reveal themselves, but soon we found that our garden was full of colour. So we brought just a little bit of it inside.

I really should remember to do it more often...

A week of mornings

Getting organised

[image credit]

As a child I was intensely disorganised. My room was a mess. (Once, we had mice in the house and discovered that their nest was at the bottom of my cupboard - ewww!). I struggled to submit my homework, not because I found it difficult, but because I (a) forgot it was due; (b) had misplaced it; (c) had left it until the last last minute and didn't have everything I needed on hand; or (d) some combination of the above, etc. 

I also lost my jacket at the beginning of every winter and froze for the remainder of the season because I was too scared to tell my parents (scared of their disappointment in me, not of punishment - I can't really remember being 'punished' as a child unless you count being sent to your room to calm down for a few minutes). The "lost property" box at school was full of my possessions, but not all of them made their way to it. I remember one time I was given a super cute umbrella by my aunt and uncle. It was bright blue and had a wooden head with soft fluffy hair. It was cool. I loved it. The first day that it rained I was so excited to take it to school with me, but it never came home. I am still sad about this.

[I should mention here that the fact that I moved house every weekend (and, later, every second weekend) between my Mum and Dad's houses probably didn't help me out very much. However, it didn't have the same effect on my brother and so there was clearly more to it than that.]

Anyway, I think that you probably get the picture. Being disorganised was actually a real problem in my life. It plagued me.

For some reason all this changed when I moved to the States with my Dad (aged 14). The change of country, school, living arrangements, (and maybe just the age that I was at?) all seemed to effect me and I suddenly found that I was really organised. My room was clean (aided, no doubt by my lack of stuff and the fact that I didn't have to move every second weekend). I always knew where everything was. I handed in everything on time. In fact, I often completed things early.

The thing is: it was great. Instead of constantly feeling stressed about the chaos that I was creating around me - instead of rolling from crisis to crisis - I was, actually, in control of my life. I even became a bit of a control freak, if I'm going to be honest.

I think that I have found a bit of a happy balance now, which is good. But the interesting thing is that this loss of control that I did experience when I was so disorganised now comes back to haunt me in my dreams. I frequently dream that I am back at school (usually some conglomerate of all of my past schools mixed together) and have suddenly realised that I haven't done an assignment that is due. Often these dreams spiral into the realisation that I haven't actually attended a class that I've been enrolled in all semester and now have to sit the exam... Or that I have actually managed to miss school altogether for the whole semester without realising and now have to sort it out without FAILING. These dreams never fail to stress me out.

Anyway, lately P and I have been trying to organise our house. We have been de-cluttering like maniacs, attempting to institute a bit of order on our stuff - including our paper. (Argh, why does paper seem to breed in our house?) It's been very satisfying. 

We went through our bookshelves the other week and culled every novel that we had read and didn't want to read again, and books that we were never planning to actually read. We also culled all of our out-of-date reference books. Those books filled many boxes. It felt so good.

We also cleared our closet of clothing that we no longer wear, and even went through all the stuff that has been accumulating in our garage. So good.

To celebrate all this de-cluttering we decided to host a swap party yesterday. Friends came over with all their unwanted stuff and we all got to rummage through the piles and take whatever we wanted.

It was fun. Everyone left with less stuff than they brought - we is a good thing for all of our clutter-free home aspirations - but everyone still picked up a few things that they were really happy with: a funky watering can, a wooden glockenspiel, new novels to read, a new green cardigan...

I had a short frenzied moment gathering myself some (more) kitchen utensils (I have a kitchen utensil problem), including a cute cookie cuter, a wire whisk, and a fancy grater thingy. I also picked up two books. But I got rid of far far more stuff than I took, so it was OK.

We also ate cupcakes, rock buns, pide, hummus, crackers, fruit and some scrumptious brownies - and drank some 'sparkly' drinks (as Lily calls them).

Like I said: it was fun.

The best part is that Zoe is coming back around today to pick up all the left over stuff for her son's school fete. Goodbye clutter!

Spring, she is coming

Over the last few days the promise of Spring has been lingering in the air. And now we have a little bit of evidence of this in our garden.

Of course, this is Canberra, it is going to take quite some time for things to actually get warm around here, but still, Spring is coming.

Yay!

Cross roads

Excuse the long absence, but illness paid a prolonged visit to our house and it hasn't been much fun.

However, something interesting did come out of my illness. It all started while I was lying on the couch on Friday watching a recorded episode of Grand Designs. The episode in question involved the construction of a passive solar house in Kent, a ridiculously massive passive solar house in Kent, but a lovely one nonetheless, and I realised why I have been so completely uninspired by our house hunting of late.

(image from daily mail)

You see, I grew up in a passive solar house and it was very comfortable. In contrast to my childhood home (one of many, I must add), most Canberra homes are built without regard to the climate. The orientation is determined by the street or just by sheer madness, as far as I can tell, and it is very rare that you will find a house with north-facing living areas. They are also constructed out of bad materials, have stupid/or no eaves, lack adequate insulation and are generally silly. As a result, they are freezing in winter and stupidly hot in Summer.

No wonder I was uninspired.

And so, on a whim I did a search for vacant land in the ACT and came across something that looked kind of interesting...

Then I did a search for environmentally friendly builders in Canberra and found a passive solar house design that I really liked...

And then I sat back and pondered my discoveries.

By the time Paul had come home I had convinced myself that I was being a little crazy. The land is not in the inner north (which is where we have been looking). In fact, it is really quite far away from town.

But Paul was keen. Quite keen.

Ahhh!

And so we went out to look at the land on Saturday, and spend Sunday talking to various builders (for comparison quotes) who seemed to have no idea what a passive solar house is, and spent the next couple of days talking to some builders who do and to the developers about land dimensions, contours and site access, and... well we are still not quite sure where we are at.

It mostly comes down to budget now. It is far from clear that we can actually afford this little adventure.

However, if it turns out that we can, well... Things could become very interesting around here. Interesting and terrifying.

Friday - tea for one

This afternoon P came home a little early and whisked Lily off for a walk to the park (and the local Farmers Shop) so that I could have a little rest. Before he came, Lily and I made rock cakes (from Jane Brocket's recipe).

I haven't had a rock cake since primary school, when they used to be sold in my school canteen. I must say that these ones, with their delicious fresh nutmeg and lemon zest, are a bit of a cut above the ones that they sold back then.


Now, I am off to enjoy my 'tea for one' and a bit of another lovely Jane on DVD.

I hope that you have a lovely weekend.

Long day (EDIM - Photo 4)

Oh dear. Today was a long one. Lily did not nap. Sadly this was not for want of tiredness... Argh.

To add to our joy, poor P. really really hurt his back and came home incapacitated.

Now they are both in bed and I am waiting up to take Midnight for his last walk of the day before collapsing myself. The touch of my pillow is going to be the best feeling in the whole wide world.

[Oh, BTW, above is a photo of my dirty dishes - which seemed to somehow sum up my day. Don't complain now. At least it isn't Lily or leaves...]

Weekend

So far this weekend I have:

Shopped. Second failed attempt to buy jeans. But I did buy a potato masher and a round cake container, which are making me very happy.

Cooked. Moroccan tangine for a very dear friend.

Finished. Chapter two of my thesis (second draft)!

Ate. Breakfast at Satis. Scrambled tofu, with spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes on toast. Plus excellent company (and organic coffee).

Baked. Veggies for pasta sauce, spicy bean patties for burgers, Anzac biscuits, and granola.

Made. A 'treasure book' for Lily. Plus copious amounts of 'spaghetti' and 'hair' with playdough.

And there's still another day to go! How good are long weekends? What have you been doing with your weekend?

An update

We spent last weekend in Sydney staying with my father and his partner. In an attempt to be more active I joined them on one of their morning walks with Midnight (Dad's dog). It was hilarious to see just how similar Midnight and Lily actually are. They both ran around on the grass like mad fools and then proceeded to gnaw on sticks.



We also went to the beach and it was shockingly warm. I didn't swim, but I did sit on the sand eating hot chips and soaking up the sunshine. It is quite blissful.



I have been having fun in the kitchen lately. Yesterday we baked gingerbread people. The day before we made falafel, homous and tabouli for dinner for the first time in forever. While on Monday we made a delicious miso soup for dinner. I have been a lot better at including Lily in the cooking process, but really need to work on my tolerance for the mess and destruction that tends to accompany this process.

I am planning to got shopping for a new pair of jeans this evening after a failed attempt last week. Please wish me luck. I don't really enjoy shopping and shopping-for-jeans is possibly my least favourite kind of shopping.

Easter

We had a lovely Easter long weekend. My mother and her partner came down to stay with us and spent the weekend on 'operation front yard blitz' - clearing the burnt stuff out of the front garden in readiness for some new veggie patches. It looks a little bare now, but it's nice to have all the dead stuff gone and exciting to think of the future veggie beds.

We also had a picnic out at the Cotter with P's family (and I got to use my new favourite picnic food containers - aren't they cute?). Lily had a ball going on 'adventures' along the river with her cousins (and aunts, uncles & grandparents). She also got a new Easter book that she loves.

Lily barely consumed any chocolate over the weekend. This surprised me a little. I had expected her to be a little more interested (not that I'm sorry that she isn't!).

Mum and her partner may be moving back to Canberra in a few months. This would be great, except for the fact that we would have to move out of their house...

Lily turned 25 months old yesterday, which means that I am late with my letter.

Lily has started falling asleep earlier in the evenings (due to the end of daylight saving) and I'm loving the extra time for reading, doing and uninterrupted conversation. She is also getting up earlier and generally this has also been a good thing too. Mornings have become more relaxed and enjoyable.

Autumn is well and truly upon us and it is glorious. The light is beautiful. The weather is perfect for being outdoors in the day and snuggling up with blankets and tea at night. And the colours of all the deciduous trees are just stunning.

We are heading up to Sydney in the morning to spent time with my Dad and his partner, and to celebrate Dad's birthday. I plan to make him a very rich chocolate cake. Yum.

I hope that you had a lovely long weekend.

And then it all washed away...

So I feel much better today. I'm not entirely sure why, but it could be due to one or all of the following:

I cleaned the bathroom
She slept for 3 hours this afternoon
I re-arranged my study and sewing space
She woke up asking for food, not milk
It rained
Actually, it bucketed down
We went outside and put our hands in the fragrant wet soil



Have a lovely weekend!

A space to sew

OK, next up is my sewing space.



This is still a bit of a work in progress. I found this great sewing organiser thing-y at the secondhand shop some time back and it was previously holding a good portion of my sewing stuff. However, it sits on the ground and it far too attractive to a certain little person - and so my thread etc ends up all over the floor and in a big tangled mess. For the moment, therefore, I have decided to remove all the tempting things from this little cabinet and to take the opportunity to fix it up a little.



In the meantime I borrowed one of Lily's little bookshelves and put it up on a chest-of-draws (out of little person reach) and arranged my stuff in there. The nice thing about this is that I have also been able to fit in some of my favourite bits of fabric (the rest of which live in the linen closet) and some of my growing collection of craft books. The 'inspiration board' was hanging on the wall behind this little shelf and so now it needs to a new home next-door...

A space to play

Lately we have been rearranging our home a little - creating better spaces for stuff and our activities. As things settle in, I thought that I would share some of our new spaces with you.

First up are a couple of Lily's spaces:

A space for crafting

A space for dressing-up

A quiet space

A space for toys