Here & Now

I thought I would try something a little different today and link in with the blog "Say Little Hen" and her invitation to share our HERE & NOW.  If your interested in joining in, follow the link and play along!  Or even if you are wanting to add some more blogs to your readers list, there are some beautiful blogs out there yet to be discovered!

Loving
Lazy winter school holidays! 

Eating
Goden syrup dumplings, I have discovered the most simple and delicious thermomix recipe HERE

Drinking

Coffee, always coffee.  I would like to say Im brewing some special ultra healthy, winter, disease killing potion but I'm completly boring.  Tea, coffee, milk and water here for me, though I did get a scoby from Sally at Jembella Farm, so wish me luck with that!

Feeling

Thankful after a visit with Sally at Jembella Farm for friendships and the oppertunity this blog has given me to meet with new people who are treading a similar simple pathway.  Im thankful the boys and I get to visit a beautiful, ethical farm, to feed sweet baby lambs and for knowledge and wisdom shared.  Experiences over things any day! 

Making

A little knitted scarf and blanket for one of my neices waldorf dolls I made HERE.  I'm working on my knitting after a lesson from a friend the other day.  I can now knit pearl.  Woo hoo!

Thinking

That I need to get on to college and find out what text books I need to order this semester.  Time to get reading and organising. (Where do the holidays go?!  Nooo!)

Dreaming

About our farm to be, always about our farm to be and what it will feel like to finally get there after all these years of hard work.  Hurry up and SELL little shop!

Much love,

Emma

xx

ponderings and a cement truck.

Here I sit, listening to the rumble of the cement truck outside.  Pondering about life.  The next stage of renovations.  The new slab gets poured today.  The beginning of a new stage for the little old cottage. 

I have learnt alot living in this little cottage of ours.  First when we lived in the outside room, all five of us sharing a tiny room.  Then into the main cottage, all five of us sharing a room again, but a bigger room.  Then the boys shifted into their own little room, once that was fixed up.

It feels like we have been here longer than a year or so.  A lot longer. 

So much has happened.  You know the best part? 

Realizing how little we all need.  Joyfully appreciating the simple things in life, like running hot water, a celling, working lights and heating/cooling.  When you renovate on this scale with a young family, you spend a lot of time essentially camping. 

I have learned to let go even more, to go with the flow.  (There may have been the odd period where I let go of my sanity temporarily also, but let’s not go there....kidding!) To work within the periods of work and rest with the house.  I LOVE clean floors.  Love them.  I’m a shoes off in the house kind of girl.  Renovating does not lend to clean floors.  At all. 

So, we have a deal.  On a Sunday, after a weekend of dusty dirty work, we stop, take the time to tidy our space and vacuum and mop.  Because it keeps me sane.  I appreciate it while it lasts.  We do it at night, when the kids are in bed so I can savour it for a few hours before the chaos starts again.  It might sound strange, but I appreciate that window of time.  Where I can relax, forget about the chaos and things are relatively calm and clean.

It is easy to look at those around us who look to have everything.  But do they?  No one really knows another’s story.  The feeling that person has deep in their heart of hearts. 

There is something that happens when we are challenged.  Like when a fruit tree is pruned.  It sometimes hurts, it sometimes seems rough and brutal.  Sometimes we are left feeling bare and exposed.  But then something changes within the very core of who we are.  It triggers a new growth.  A more resilient growth.  The old and restrictive is stripped away, the light and air is allowed into our hearts and then that....that is when the best fruit appears.

We are entering a new season of renovating here at the little old cottage.  A new extension, a new kind of building.  The demolition is finally finished.  Now we get to the good bit.       

But throughout it all we give thanks.  For the good, for the lessons we have learnt through the challenges.  For the surprising closeness and thankfulness, we have found as a family by choosing less.   

Aggie is growing, so much love for this wee girl.....she looks like she is guilty in this prcture.  She probrbaly was.....little terror!

Giant Jenga we made for church.  $40 of  2"x4", cutting and sanding and we have an awesome game with so many open ended play possibilities.  Grant is going to make Henry a set with ramps for his cars for his 4th birthday next month. 

Puzzles, I love puzzles.  So does Gus in particular.  They suit his need for order.

Henry continues to kick Grant out of bed on a semi-regular basis.  Grant continues to good naturedly tolerate it. 

Still studying.  Always studying.  With a sleeping cat to keep me company usually.  Or two.  Thank goodness for cats!

Much love,
Emma
xx