23/52

"A portrait of my son, once a week, every week, in 2014."

William - holding Jock at the park. Whenever we go on walks now, William holds the dog leads. Until he gets tired of it, and just drops them. Luckily the dogs are good at staying close by. I love seeing the little friendships develop between William and our pets. I'm so glad we have them. He loves them.

Linking up with Jodi's beautiful 52 Project.

Gifts for Mums and Thoughts on Blogging

We had the family visit to celebrate William's almost 6 months. A nice way to catch up. William of course charmed the pants off everyone [he always does]. And the mothers were both supposed to take home some of our homemade soap, and both forgot. But since we'll be seeing then soon, I thought it might be nice to package them up a little bit. 

I've been thinking about this blog lately. About where it's going, and perhaps that it's not on track with what I originally planned it to be. And that's ok, I'm happy for it to evolve into whatever it becomes, really. I often feel though that I don't write freely. That's the problem with knowing that people actually read the words I write [and thank you, I'm happy that you do!]. I just need to get over what is probably a fear of being judged, or criticised, for what I write. Not that I have ever experienced that on my blog, so the fact that I feel like I will be is just plain silly. And even if I was, would it matter to me?

Well actually, the answer is probably yes. I mean, I will never in real life meet most of the people who read this blog, but readers are real people, and I'm a real person, and well, you know. It's real. So I tend to play it a bit safe. As in, I don't like to stir things up, and I guess my experience in the real world is that I do tend to stir things up. Even when I don't want to, I just can't seem to help myself. Anyway it's been on my mind lately. There are so many blogs out there that proudly declare they fall into this category or that. But that's not me as any kind of label makes me feel so restricted. I know I walk an offbeat path through life, but not with the intention of being offbeat. I just can't imagine living any other way. 

Blah. I've been thinking about writing about the way we parent our son. And I will. When I find the courage to stand up and say hey, we're not mainstream, and we have one awesome happy, healthy little kid. 

The westringias are flowering beautifully at the moment. I've got little bunches of them in vases and jugs in the house, to pretty things up a bit. I do love to bring the outside in with fresh flowers from the garden. I think I get it from my mum.

Sunday Outings: Sustainable Houses

We've been getting in the habit of a family outing on the weekends lately. It's a habit I'm loving. And I'm determined to capture us in family portraits, even if that means setting a timer on the iPhone and getting us all to stand a bit awkwardly in random places. Anyway, this weekend saw Sustainable House Day roll around again and there were a couple of places we visited for ideas and inspiration.

The first place we looked at was a small reverse brick veneer place, with only passive heating. Let me repeat - only passive heating. No wood fire, no split system, no gas heater. Just relying on the sun, and storing the heat from the sun in the structure of the house itself - thermal mass. This place was also fully off grid using solar panels for electricity. Plenty of north facing double glazed windows and a concrete floor. Not fancy, but beautifully simple and self sufficient.

The other place we looked at was a new strawbale build. I'm a bit of a lover of the strawbale look, I especially love deep window seats as wide as the bales themselves - what better way to while away some hours dozing in the sun [ok that is totally a pipe dream in my life right now but one day it will happen again]. Anyway, it wasn't my cup of tea the way this particular place had been done, but it was nice and rustic all the same. It had solar and wood heating, and was connected to the grid.

I definitely learned a few more things about building a sustainable house after visiting these places. I've always wanted to build a strawbale house but the logic in reverse brick veneer is hard to beat [ bricks on the inside, timber on the outside]. If there's one idea that I've taken away it is this - thermal mass, thermal mass, thermal mass. All added to the growing list of things we now know about the sustainable house we plan to build. You've got to know what you want to make it happen, right?

Oh and orange pants again. Do you know how long I've waited to be able to start wearing these things? About 12 months, that's how long. First spotted in Target when I was very pregnant, then they were still there half price after William was born, so I took a punt and bought a pair in my old size. Of course they didn't fit so I tucked them away in the back of the cupboard but I knew [hoped] that one day... I'd be able to get my legs into them. I am making the most of it!

Moving

We're moving.

Yep, moving. In about 3 weeks time, our beautiful little house on our half acre block, with the beautiful old trees and the garden we've been lovingly pouring our hearts and souls into, will no longer be our home. We're going back, but hopefully forward. Back to my old home, in my old town. Where I met Charles and where we played and had fun and pottered and grew vegetables in a small backyard, with neighbours over very close fences.

We have been considering this decision for so, so long. I think the minute we knew I was pregnant we thought we would need to move. It's no place to be having a family, miles from services such as doctors and hospitals. But we stayed. Then when we were deciding on where to actually have the baby, we were adamant that we would have to move, to find the birthing outcome that we wanted. But we stayed, and found a suitable option in the nearest town. We have considered moving to be close to a Steiner school/playgroup, but when we looked closely, we realised Steiner was not for us. So we stayed. We decided to move to Brisbane, for warm weather and study options and good mountain bike trails. But we stayed put [turns out we like the cold more than we thought].

And then in one day, after so very many months to being indecisive, we decided. We need to move. And so we're moving.

It's one of those decisions that is both painful and uplifting at the same time. We have invested so much in this home, not just financially, but with our labour and our sweat and all our hard work. We're only just scratching the surface of what we wanted to achieve here. But things have changed. Whereas once we had full days to work in the garden, now we have full days of caring for a baby, of washing nappies and clothes, of just barely keeping on top of life. Precious hours get spent running to get jobs done in the garden, but we're only just keeping up, and we're not getting ahead. And we're not spending those hours with our baby boy. We have decided to reduce the time spent on maintaining this property, and move to a smaller place, with a smaller vegie garden, and a lovely patch of lawn that is perfect for a toddler.

There are so many positives in this move for us. We're going to a bigger town, but it's still a town. We can walk into town, rather than driving for half an hour to a town from our current home. We can walk to the library, and to playgroups, and to the shops, and to a pretty lake, and to parks for when William is old enough to play on the equipment. We can go out to dinner again, at the nicely re-done old pub, and the Indian place, or get take away from the noodle bar. We can walk to the cafe where we had our first date, and enjoy lunch there, our little family. There are mountain bike trails, and other mountain bikers, and there is a lovely gentle place where we can teach William how to ride a mountain bike [he will be a mountain biker, trust me..]. There is that pilates class I used to go, and a farmers market close by, and a doting grandmother 10 minutes away.

So yeah, we've conceded that at this point in our lives, moving back into town life is the way forward. It isn't forever. Our plan has always been, and still is, to buy a large enough block of land to keep some horses, and have an extensive vegetable garden, and fruit trees, and build a sustainable strawbale house to suit our lifestyle. But for now, we're making life as easy as we can for ourselves, and focusing on baby raising. And small vegetable gardening. And living as naturally and sustainably as we can. We're pretty sure we'll be able to take those chickens with us. Except for George... I don't think he can come. So there's plenty of loose ends to be tidied up, but the decision has finally been made. We're moving. And I won't be living on a dusty country road any more. Do you think I need to change my blog title? 

Orange pants. It was definitely an orange pants kind of day.

This Week We...

Slept when we could - enough said. Drank tea together - blissful moments to stop, talk, relax. Ate too much Easter chocolate, and then wanted more. Did copious amounts of washing, our new reality. Getting through our second week of parenthood. I think it's possibly the toughest week we've had together. But we're still here, and we're happy. And our little one is beautiful and precious and amazing. I wouldn't change a thing.

I hope you all have had a great week!