Autumn crocheting :: Fingerless gloves

I get so cold so easily in winter. But I don't like having the central heating blasting like the husband does, it makes me feel more tired and uncomfortable.  So I tend to wear scarves and fingerless gloves around the house throughout the 'cosy' months.  In the past I have LOVED and still covet these cuties from a favourite local store run by our friends Joel, Rach and Jane.  But after the big reno we are still paying Tom, Dick and Harry for various unexpected necessities (blinds, painting etc) SO I decided to get to making my own!

I tentatively used this pattern and was very happy with the result! They are different from my F&D faves but short of quickly re-learning to knit or asking my mum to knit me some this was my best option.

 As usual I got myself a bit addicted and am about to start my 5th pair.  I was worried that they wouldn't be very warm with the gaps in the pattern but I've been wearing them heaps and they are super warm and perfect for all day wear (although mine smell faintly of onion after cooking dinner with them on tonight).

AND

I think I might sell them for some extra cash :) Thats if I get beyond making them for gifts first!

Next project: A warm and snuggly crocheted scarf.....

xoxo

Things I'm loving

 The Autumn sun :: my favourite time of year and the best place to be is right here at Barwon Valley, a 2 minute drive from my house. We are having plenty of beautiful sunny days lately and the sun brings out the vivid autumn colors to perfection. I'll bring the girls here or a crochet project, a devotion book or just a notebook and pen and drink in the beauty.

The great outdoors :: We went camping in the Otways National Park last weekend. I expected bush and gumtrees and koalas and cold air. There were all of those things but I didn't expect the green hills and young cows, bunny's tail weeds, amazing views and even the sunshine we found too.

 

 The easy company of family friends :: No pretending, quality company, happy children, good laughs, life-long relationships.

Beautiful snippets of Autumn :: In Forrest on our way home from camping adventures, our own little piece of Autumn in the front yard, and my favourite tree next door to our home that I can't stop taking photos of.

Tea with me {a long overdue catchup}

Hi!

Hasn't it been ages since we've had tea together?

I've been so busy with life and extra little things that are important to us and I have been thinking of you and wanting to say hello but have just had to be patient and wait for time, energy and inspiration to come my way.

But come in, its beautiful and sunny inside as well as outside of our home today. I can seen all the colors of autumn from where I'm sitting at the dining table. Do mind the hydrangeas on your way in. Actually they are not in the way, I just want you to notice them as I adore them and am just a bit proud. You'll smell my vegetables and quinoa lunch cooking away on the stovetop (there is plenty if you'd like some). I'll turn it down and pop the kettle on instead for now and we'll have tea out on the deck in the sun.

I've been sipping peppermint, lemongrass and ginger or rose hip lately, no caffeine for me for reasons I may explain, if you can stomach it! But you have chai or green or black tea if you like, whatever you fancy.

So we've had an eighth birthday since we spoke last and on the same weekend we had church at our place with dinner afterwards as usual.  It was wonderful to open up our home to new and old friends and learn and pray and sing and share a meal together and have so many helping hands to serve and clean up afterwards.  It is a challenge for me and I hope to be continually challenged to have our home, our family space open to others in this way. I find large groups of people intimidating and extremely tiring. I would rather keep 'my space' private and calm and under my control.  But being willing and excited to join this church plant where living as missional communities is key to knowing Jesus and making him known means being stretched and nudged out of my comfort zone. Eeeek. So preparing for and recovering from that weekend was intense but absolutely worth it.

We set off camping again last Friday, this time with friends, two other families but I have to admit that we hired a cabin this time and I'm so glad we did. It was cold in the Otways National Park and having a real bed and a little heater made all the difference.  I hate to say it out loud or put it in writing but honestly, I MAY be nearing the end of my tenting escapades, many and varied as they've been!

I've been reading some lovely books lately. The Enchanted April and Madame Bovary most recently, the language and setting of both books was just dreamy I think, though don't read the latter if you don't like tragic and depressing tales. I'm now reading Anna Karenina again. I've been following along with 1 and 2 Peter podcasts from our established sister church in Melbourne, and in our small group on mondays we've started 1 Kings which is totally different to Peter, the former being a narative style and the latter personal instruction and encouragement but both have so much relevance to our lives. Its exciting to be able to see how two books from the bible that are so different and so far apart in history tell the same message of love and grace and hope.

I've given up sugar again. I've been pretty much sugarless for 2 - 3 years now. But then came Easter and adventures in Melbourne and eventually poor diet and doing too much caused a sharp decline a my health. Blah! My reliance on dark chocolate blew out a fair bit after Easter and the caffeine and sugar addiction began to mess with my sleep and blood sugar levels and I was just feeling wound up all the time.  Soooooo I gave it up three weeks ago and grudgingly took up the coffee enemas again. Yeeeeees, I take organic coffee beans, grind them up and boil them with filtered water in a saucepan. I then get to enjoy a fresh brew most mornings through the opposite end from where you'd normally enjoy a quality cuppa (if you were a coffee person). All I can say is it helps. You may research into it further if you'd like to. :)

I've still been crocheting and baking cakes (though less frequently). We've started lighting the fire again and gathering around it to read before bed - its the oldest and best place in the house to be in these colder months. We finally got Blake's old piano back from storage and he plays and the girls practice or pretend and I'm so glad we kept it for so long waiting for the day when we'd have room for it.

Have I gone on too long? Of course if you were here I'd have been asking you where you've been lately, what you've been reading or doing and what you are enjoying most right now.  Do you enjoy camping? have a piano? Feel free to tell me if you like. Or have 'tea with me' through Em's linkup. How gorgeous was her video post!?

Thoughts on turning 8

Eight years ago today I held a teeny tiny angel in my arms. Our first. She was perfect

Today she is tall and mature and cheeky and resilient and too much like me.

Unlike with her little sister, I've never had a problem with her getting older. We sent her to school at the age of four because apparently 'she was ready'. She is always after a challenge, she likes to know everything and analyse everything. She is as intense in personality as her eyes are blue. She is passionate and extroverted. She is polite, particular and 'perfect' (in public at least). Her love language is quality AND quantity time. She craves, needs. wants it all. A whole day playing games with her would fill her cup nicely, until tomorrow.

She loves animals and her grandparents.  She can sing and she is clever. She loves to make things and to have pretty things.

She is eight today and wishes she was nine. I'd quite like her to slow down now, to keep her innocence for longer.  She has already begun to pay too much attention to her hair or clothes in the morning. It must be about now that they become all too aware of themselves, their bodies, their face and how it feels to be 'in their skin'. It's scary.

Sometimes she turns into someone who is not my little angel. For 30 minutes or an hour she is uncontrollable, angry, bursting with the insufferable unfairness of life. She yells and cries and can't let it go, can't be reasoned with. Sometimes she knows she is being unreasonable but can't help herself and she is becoming aware of the pain it is to have one of these over anxious complicated female minds. She's not perfect, she is like the rest of us.  She can no more be perfect than I can love her perfectly( although I try) We both need Someone other to love us and accept us perfectly.

She's just started talking to me about sex, telling me she knows what it is and sounding smug when she describes it to me as 'married people cuddling with no clothes on.' Blake and I may have to close our door from now on. *blush*  She can stop now I think, stop at age eight. I tell both our girls that growing is a punishable act in this house and they'll be sent to their rooms if I catch them at it. Lucky for them they seem to grow while sleeping.

And they won't stop. Sigh. Next year they'll walk together to school and that thought makes me not want to think anymore today.....

Happy Birthday to our beautiful Malya Hope.

xoxo

Little Golden Books {in every Nook and cranny}

Do you collect things? Little treasures that mean something to you from childhood or from places you've been or things you simply find pretty?

I collect vintage teacups and linen and pretty, old or useful things. I have a small collection of seaglass.  I collect crocheted cup cosies and classic novels.  But by far my largest collection is my 'stash' of vintage Little Golden Books. I have over 300 in my keeping, some battered or coverless, perfect for preserving through crafty skill, some extra old and precious, and some we just love to read and admire.  Harper has her own collection of twenty odd 'first little golden books', the small ones, and we have a decent pile of giant ones now too.  The earliest copies are from the early 1940's and the earlier they are dated the more beautiful and saturated the pictures are.

Its no wonder you can find a Little Golden Book or a salvaged picture from one in nearly every nook and cranny in my home.

You'll notice I particularly love the Little Golden Books that are illustrated by Eloise Wilkin and I'd like to think I own 85% of these.  I fell in love with her illustrations as a child and when the girls were born I found them comforting in a way.  But there are so many others I love just as much.

Some other favourites:

Outside my window

Bambi

Wheels

Susie's new stove

My little golden book about God

Good-bye Tonsils

The Lively Little Rabbit

Snow White and Rose Red

The Christmas Story

The kitten who thought he was a mouse

The wait for me kitten.........

Do you have a favourite Little Golden Book? What do you collect?

xoxo

Those forgettable days

You know those days when everything goes wrong. When you wake up and have to fight back the sinking feeling that its going to be a bad one, to fight the negative emotions and the strongest wish for it to be over already.....

Yesterday I woke around 5am with the dreaded feeling of a bad day ahead. I've always loathed the time changes for day light savings as I'm a bad sleeper. I loved living in Cairns for those two blissful years of no winding clocks back and forward and having sleep-confused babies and a cranky body clock!  After my big weekend in melbourne I knew I'd take a while to recover from the walking and talking and shopping and bag carrying but I'm never prepared for how horrible the recovery is.  The day after a huge event I usually feel hungover and sore but there is still that lingering adrenalin to keep me from despairing and feeling the all consuming malaise that inevitably lands upon me the next day an lingers for two or often three days.

So the forgettable day began and always one to make the best of things, I kept our play date with my gorgeous friend Neesha and her adorable children because we rarely see eachother and threw a cake in the oven for the occasion. FAIL! My gluten free banana cake was a miserable fail and the usual success I achieve from throwing in a bit of this and that and changing a recipe to suit my mood let me down, thanks very much!

Feeling nauseous and puffy eyed we welcomed our friends and for a while they took my mind off my sleep-deprived malaise and this gorgeous 'tea time' print, a house warming gift from Neesh warmed my heart and continues to cheer me.

(photo from Etsy, I haven't taken one of mine yet)

I blundered through the afternoon in a mostly horizontal manner until Harper went upstairs on the balcony and got her knee stuck in between the balustrade slats and it was stubbornly and painfully wedged there for half an hour! I called Blake who rushed home from his worksite twenty minutes away and just as he arrived, Sarah and Amelie popped in and saved the day in Sarah's calm can-do manner which was wonderful but made me feel even more useless and annoyed that Blake now had to work late to make up time. Aaarh.

Today I've slept better but the aches and pains are worse, the girls both have colds and I'm frustrated that another day is all but written off. Wow this is just one big whinge isn't it!? Please forgive me, I just feel like writing it all down.

My lovely hot soothing bath this morning got gate crashed by two little nude bodies who were clamouring for a dip in mummy's big bath. I'd started to listen to the first and latest podcast in the new series on 1 & 2 Peter for our church called  'More than Gold' which I'm sure will be just what I need when I get some time today. It was worth the lack of peace and extra headache to have my not-so-small girls still want to have a bath with me. The old 'they grow so fast' cliche is far too true and I'm grasping on desperately to any time with them that resembles the closeness that we have with our little ones.

I'm nearly at the end of this forgettable day. At the end of each tough day I do come to the conclusion that they are never altogether forgettable. I can always find something to be grateful for, always. I'm going to bed now, to curl up with my audiobook and crochet project. And I promise not whinge again any time soon....

xoxo

Things I'm loving

 AUTUMN:: My friend Sarah and I wondered through the beautiful Carlton Gardens to get to the Finders Keepers Market yesterday. There aren't as many autumn leaves about as is normal this time of year but this hardly limited the beauty with the morning sun shining through the trees. Autumn is simply beautiful.

 TEA:: and strawberries with cream surrounded by three gorgeous friends at Belinda's charming cottage. Vintage china and precious company:: things I'm always loving!

A COSY CAFE :: the sight of good coffee usually means I'm with my lovely (crazy) friend Sarah. At Kinfolk cafe on Friday her coffee was instagram-worthy and my peppermint tea was extra aromatic and served in a vintage teapot so with the easy comfort of old friends and the pleasure of people watching we were completely satisfied.

 THOUGHTS TO MAKE YOUR HEART SING:: I'm reading this with my almost 8yr-old and we are loving it! It does exactly what it says, it makes your heart sing :) Malya is really responding to it too and is eager to look up the corresponding bible verses afterwards in our adventure bible.

I DID IT! :: I am loving that I have started (or even finished) the plate display wall in our cubby that I planned aaaages ago, and the vintage hankie curtain I finally sewed together with the window in mind fits nicely across the green cabinet for now. I am loving being back in our home and being able to slowly tick off my half completed crochet, craft and sewing projects. It is really one of the best feelings.