I’ve always wanted to make a Wordle picture. It gives me a little insight into what I’ve actually been talking about all this time and it gives it to you in a pretty format!
I have been meaning to post for quite some time to catch you up on all the happenings of my life (and there are many!). More posts will come but in the meantime I have a few photos that I have been dying to share. They’re from a wonderful morning in the gardens of a beautiful and significant house in my local area. The house is called Baddow House, one of the earliest houses in Maryborough. It has only in the last few years been beautifully renovated. The house is beautiful, but it’s the gardens that made my heart sing. Take a look for yourself…
I don’t know if you can see it that clearly, but there is this beautiful garden gate under the tree in the photo above. That corner of the garden was my favourite part. The gate just led to a lovely green hill, but there was just something about it that just made me imagine a rambling cottage garden spilling colours onto the grass, a little piece of random colour in the formal gardens. My future garden will have a gate. Just so you know.
The house and garden is only open once a year, so you’ve all missed your chance this year, but if you get a chance to have a look next year you won’t be disappointed (unless gardens aren’t really your thing, in which case you can have a pumpkin scone with jam and cream while some other awesome people explore the house and garden). I really needed this garden visit, I had been feeling a little disconnected and it helped to ground me.
xo
I just wanted to post in the relative calm before the storm…if you have no idea what I’m talking about that’s ok. I’m sure a future post or two will explain! It has been pretty busy around here. I just wanted to say hi and let you know I haven’t forgotten my lovely readers. I will leave you with a photo of something that has been keeping me really calm lately…I must be a little old grandma in disguise!
I’ve been getting a lot of work done on this beautiful rainbow crocheted blanket lately. I think the last time I was crocheting it was on Sunday when I was watching Doctor Who. I have to admit that although I was never really a fan of Doctor Who before I have sort of fallen in love with the latest season and the 11th doctor is just adorable. And the last episode actually brought me to goosebump-y tears. It was beautiful and it played out a dream that I’m sure many Van Gogh fans would have fantasised about.
That’s all for now, I have to go bake bake bake!!!
xo
I have always been a believer that it’s the little things in life that can make you happy. Long long ago I started a blog-ish type thing with my best bud where we would talk about all the things we were grateful for. It never went very far, but the concept has always stuck with me. I think it’s important to find enjoyment and appreciation in everything in your life, especially the little things that make up the bulk of the day. As cheesy and hippy-ish it sounds, it’s almost as though you need to open your mind to being aware of the small things. Sometimes the things that have really turned my day around have been tiny.
Once after uni a few years back, in the early evening, I was feeling particularly grumpy and I decided to go for a walk. I wandered around thinking that I was so sick of seeing the same things everyday, hearing the same sounds, learning the same stuff. I was probably a teeny bit homesick too. Anyway, after wandering for a while, I heard these strange birdcalls that I’d been hearing at night. I never knew what they were. It sounded like there were heaps of them and the sound kept getting closer…I ended up walking through an entire flock of them. It was amazing. It turns out they were Bush stone-curlews. Maybe it wasn’t such a little thing, but it was amazing all the same. I recorded them on my phone and I used to use it as an alarm tone for a while so I could wake up to the sound of birds while I lived in the city. That moment woke me up and made me feel as though the world was there for me discover, wherever I was at the time.
My inspiration for this post came from picking tomatoes. I could pick them in a boring bowl and be done with it but there is a nostalgic joy from putting them in a basket. Everything is more fun when you use a basket! Well, maybe not everything, but picking tomatoes, collecting eggs and picking flowers is always better in a basket.
See what I mean? If I was being cynical and boring, I could say that it doesn’t matter what the heck I put my tomatoes in, they’re still the same tomatoes and I would be right but there’s no fun in thinking that way!
So today, I hope you can find enjoyment in something…whether it be picking tomatoes, seeing a particularly amazing sunset, having an unexpected conversation with a friend or stranger, watching the stars, eating your lunch, discovering a flock of birds or smiling at a stranger and getting a smile in return…the possibilities are endless! You can make life much richer without having to spend a cent.
I will continue to use my basket. Just because.
Everything was beautiful this afternoon.
See?
My dad, an art teacher, was asked to do an illustration for a primary school reading program called ‘Ride the Reading Wave with Hervey the Whale’ or something to that effect. Dad passed the job onto me and this is what I came up with.
It will be used for stickers, posters, t-shirt and whatever else they like. I’m pretty happy with it! I will get samples of all the products they come up with and due to this illustration I might have a foot in the door to get a few paid illustration jobs! Exciting!
It’s the music that when you listen to it your heart stirs to life and comes out from it’s hiding place and makes you actually want to live, to dance, to cry, to feel. If you have that kind of music in your life savour it and explore it. Appreciate it.
At the moment the music that does it for me is definitely the Polyphonic Spree. Oh goodness me, the song that really cinched it was called ‘We Crawl’ but there are lots more that just make my heart sing. And look at what comes up if you do a Google Image search for the band right here. They practically wear costumes. I love costumes.
If you want to hear some of the Polyphonic Spree for free, try finding the NPR podcast ‘All Songs Considered’. There are some great recordings of live concerts there, I highly recommend them.
I hope you find your music.
She’s a bundle of joy. An occasionally badly behaved bundle of joy. Georgie is currently obsessed with fetching, or at least her version of fetching. All you have to do is go outside and she looks at you with that look and and she’s off to find anything that you can throw or kick for her to fetch…balls, sticks, plastic containers, you name it, she will chase it.
I love this dog.
The only thing missing is the ham.
Green eggs. They were surprisingly delicious and probably a great way of adding veges to a simple breakfast. The green is from comfrey. I just blended some young comfrey leaves with a few eggs and made scrambled eggs. It just tasted a little spinach-y. Pretty tasty actually and I think it looks awesome! I just love a hot breakfast on a Saturday or Sunday. I think I would like to make it a tradition. I love thinking about the traditions I would like to establish in my life… hot breakfasts on weekends, regular unpluggings of technology…and a few more…and a healthy dose of flexibility if it doesn’t turn out my way!
I hope you can feel the warmth of the sun on your skin today.
How cool is this? Bread is my latest weekend hobby. Bread in a camp oven over hot coals. The first two attempts resulted in absolutely delicious bread but it was a little burnt. This one was a smaller batch and I did it all by myself. I even decorated this one so it looked a little bit French. I am a little in awe of how satisfying it is to make bread completely from scratch. You can gather so much enjoyment and pleasure from food, growing it, harvesting it, cooking it. All food should be enjoyed. It’s an amazing blessing and it is a beautiful thing to share home cooked and home grown food.
Homemade bread tastes far better than purchased loaves and I can’t see myself going back to supermarket for bread at the moment. In a normal week I won’t eat much bread. A large loaf cooked on Saturday or Sunday generally keeps me going all week. And it makes the most perfect toast and the best bruschetta bread with my homegrown tomatoes.
I’m still adjusting to the changes in my life and sometimes I feel as though I have to validate my lack of social activities with other events such as gardening, cooking, going out for coffee or jazz or organising a camp oven roast and dinner under the stars. They’re all lovely things to do but I can’t deny I’m a little bit lonely. It’s good for me though, I plan on going rural when I finish my education graduate diploma and it’s going to be just me on my lonesome. I can do this!
Love to you all,
xo
