Decisions, decisions...

Well now that we have seen the back of the current House of B (well almost), Mr B and I have set our sights on the future. We are extremely keen to regroup in a new house and move onwards from the last 14 month challenge . So we have been keeping our finger on the local market and checking out houses along the way.

Now comes the dilemma.....our ultimate aim for quite a few years has been to slowly upgrade to an acreage (finances permitting). The luxury of where we live is that you can still be sort of urban but feel like you are living out amongst nature without the acreage. Currently there is nothing (read zero) that appeals and those that have appealed to us have turned out to have serious mold problems (or landslip issues...eek!!) :-(

But we have found one gorgeous little 1920's cottage that has been renovated some time in the past (badly..read: not period). It is big enough for us (so small to most of the general population) and has the obligatory garage fr Mr B and some fab areas for Little B to play and me to to garden. Drawback - it would have to be in the most suburban area of the Hills. Very very 'burban' as we would say. But you cant see the neighbour's too much and the roof is perfect for solar (couldnt be more perfecter).

It is also a fairly flat block, a house with no stairs, and I can park very very close to the house - why is this important?? Because we still dont know how extensive my arm and leg damage is, whether it will continue or whether it will get better. I had my first fall recently due the weakness in my legs (all I can say is ouch!!) so this is at the forefront of my mind as we search.

So the question is do we settle?? I know I'm answering my own questions here but after our quest to buy acreage it feels a bit weird to look at something so suburban when we have spent the last 6 years moving heavily away from that. I know deep down the answer is yes...we can obviously only work with what we can find within the parameters of our life at this moment.

I draw inspiration from blogs such as Bec and her Urban Homesteading, from cittyhippyfarmgirl and her adventures as well as Amanda from Soulemama who was more 'burban' and has now realised her dream of a farm. This sweet little house we are looking at obviously has like minded owners as it already has a decent size veggie patch, water tanks, and 4 fruit trees. They also used to have chickens.


It's early days yet but maybe this will our next house LOL.

this weekend i'm grateful for family

It's been a lovely long Easter weekend and this weekend I'm grateful fo:

* family - it's been a lovely weekend of family traditions, get togethers, and all round loveliness

* the vegan anti-inflammatory Easter Bunny - since chocolate is out, what is an Easter Bunny to do? Bring me all my favourite ingredients for a dairy free chocolate banana smoothie - yummm!!!

* Snugtime blanket sleepers - I cannot keep Little B under a doona, so short of velcroing him to the bed, I've resorted to a Snugtime blanket sleeper. With great success!! So you can imagine my joy when I found out that you can now buy real lined Snugtime blanket sleepers in Size 5, 6 and 7 :-)

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  Inspired by soulemama

 

 

Garden Update

Well with ill health, I’ve kind of abandoned our autumn garden (hey who am I kidding, I totally abandoned it to the snail gods for a few weeks LOL). So I’ve made peace with the fact that we only have planted what we have planted.

So our autumn garden consists of:

Peas and snow peas (I cant remember what I planted where)

Plus a bed of Russian purple garlic

I also joined in the Burke’s Backyard winter tomato challenge back in late January. The pic above is of the three seedlings that survived my neglect in the green house (I started off with 7). I’m trying to grow them on a warm concrete bench (in the vain hope that it might be a sort of micro climate during the cooler weather). So far so good – they are growing really well but probably not as advanced as they should be (hmm I was a bit slow moving them out into the sun).

These are more of an experiment since we didn’t have the best tomato growing season in Spring / Summer this year.

But we still have strawberries fruiting all over the place - they seem to positively thrive on neglect :-).

Now I just need to dig over two of our spring / summer beds with compost and manure and then let them rest for Spring. Hopefully an Easter break job but with the weather might be more of a “in a few weeks” job.

Easter Traditions

And so Easter is nearly upon us again (and isnt the Autumn weather at the moment just gorgeous!!).

Today Little B and I set up our Easter Tableau. We have our little creature shapes and also lots of autumn leaves to celebrate the changing of the seasons. You can also see his little bucket where the Easter Bunny leaves his hat and egg.

I've said in previous years that the focus in our household is not chocolate at Easter (originally because of allergy, and now because we prefer it). For Easter, Little B gets one chocolate egg (home-made), a knitted beanie for winter and a book about Easter. From one set of grandparents, he gets new gumboots for the winter ahead and the other have chosen a series of books, whereby he gets one to add to his collection each year.

Last year's beanie

 

I love Meagan's recent post about growing grass for the Easter Bunny. I hope implement something like this next year. But for now we will leave him a carrot :-)

We also spend Easter doing other things – lots of family and outdoors time, Little B and Granny B blow and paint real or paper mache eggs and we like to reinforce the change of seasons by playing with him outside in natural settings or working in the veggie garden.

 

This year we hope to set up his own story / fairy / nature circle with some of the wood left over from the tree that fell down. The leftover wood lends itself to being great natural seats in the garden and Little B is super keen to set one up at Granny B's but we are also putting aside some wood for our new house wherever it may be :-)

this saturday i'm grateful for sold signs

We came, we bought, we reno'd...sayonara baby...our house sold late yesterday - woo hoo!!! So this Saturday I'm grateful for:

* sold signs - champagne anyone?? :-)

* new opportunities - the new opportunities and potential that selling opens for our future abode

* local community festivals - I love the community spirit, meeting like minded people and bumping into people we know

Check out Maxabella loves for more grateful goodness...

Backyard Ovens

Hmm we are still without an oven (long complicated story involving retail stores) but I'm still enjoying the experimentation that it brings. Rather than putting off cooking things as I was, I'm attempting them in the Weber.

We've made muffins, cakes and even tried out our first batch of gluten free bread (still a work in progress). It takes forethought to get the coals going early and getting them nice and hot but well worth the effort.

I read an article in Country Living recently about a family with a wood fired oven and they said "we have no mains power, we chop our wood and I have to start thinking about dinner at 5pm so the stove is hot for cooking and there will also be enough hot water...for baths" (p36, Issue March 2011).

Now I have no intention of solely relying on a wood fired oven as my main cooking source (yet ;-) but love the idea of it as another option in my repertoire.

So I've been eyeing off these books

Drooling at these pictures

and with a new house on our horizon, Mr B and I are contemplating putting in an outside wood fired oven sooner rather than later :-)