Isn't this interesting.

Yesterday I felt clear headed and clean-eyed.
Without thinking twice, no nuance of guilt, I left 10 minutes early to pick my son up from school. Leaving the two younger ones at home with the mister, I slipped away (Through the mud! The rain!), with my novel tucked under my arm. At the school gates I reclined the driver's seat and stretched out my legs. The radio was playing some perfect relaxing music.* The rain pattered cosily on the shell of the car with droplets gliding silverly down the windscreen like a secret veil.

Wouldn't you know, the bell went early!

Heather blogs now of the 'crowding out' of unwholesome habits that occurs when wholefoods and healthy ways are welcomed into our lives. How interesting, On day 3 I again find myself in tune with the schedule she has worked out for these 30 days. I am finding myself drinking less alcohol, my most challenging, worst habit.

*early Red Dragon.

Back to the blog (again).

This time for the purposes of journalling, which is after all, why I wanted a blog all those months years ago.
Having started the 30 days Vegan Cleanse, I went to bed last night with some reflections on the whys and hopes for me, and lo! On browsing the Nourish the Whole Self blog, Heather suggests a journal for the month, with some helpful prompts to get started.
I think this process would be superficial for me without taking the time to write stuff down. So here I am.

My kitchen is my favourite room in our semi-renovated house. We're almost there.

I've been eradicating plastic storage for several years now. I collect jars from op-shops and my partner tries not to roll his eyes when I haul another clutch in clattering and clunking. We use them all though!


Sadly, my kitchen stylist was unavailable, so hello shelves in all your cluttery reality. There is plenty there in plastic yet, but I'd say we have a higher glass to plastic ratio than your average Australian kitchen.
In my twenties I was vegetarian for 8 years with nary a meaty morsel. I lived in a vegatarian share-house and we always had a pot of vege curry or soup on the stove.
I fell off the wagon when I moved back in with my folks to complete some post-graduate study, and things have slid downhill from there.
With an eldest child so sensitive to taste and texture he mainly sits at the dinner table with a ready look of distaste on his face, I seem now to have ingrained the habit of pleasing everyone else in the kitchen.
Butter wouldn't melt in this little darlin's mouth. Literally, he'd more often than not wrinkle his nose at it!
In retrospect this misguided rythym of catering for everyone else has left me, the mama, the heart of our home and family tired, overweight, and unhappy in appearance - in essence, out of sync with me. I almost forget who me is. I do so hope to rejuvenate, refresh, revive me. And not just for the 30 days. This is a reinventing, a rediscovering an invigoration and a shaking off of lethargy, apathy.

It is time to take this bull by the horns my friends.

Back to the Blog and Some Dolls.

Hello! After a series false starts I am determined to give this blogging caper a go.

What's been happening in this neck of the woods?

So much!

Boy 1 - now also going by the title of Biggest Brother, has started school. Twice actually. Apparently we do false starts with school choices also, and so Boy 1 got to do Day One of Prep and The Beginning of his School Career twice. Choice number 2 seems to have hit the mark though.

Boy 2 - also known as Big Brother, well, he's 2.5. Obviously this involves a lot of change, generally from one moment to the next and in the form of an unpredictable temperament and inexplicable points of obstinacy.

Their additional titles - yes, we now have Little Sister. Also known as Shnooksy Woo, Boody Woo, Wooster and other improvised pet names. Little Shnooksy Woo is now 4 months old.


Oh, did I mention the major renovations, involving no kitchen through the newborn period, with some features of the kitchen still in progress, including a working stovetop?

Well, never mind that.

My latest craft bandwagon Waldorf Dolls. Oh my, I love them. Love them with an obsessive, I must make make make them, and lie awake at night turning design problems over in my mind. Like feet. My perfect Waldorf doll will not have club feet.


Anyway, what's better than a craft you can knit and sew and buy lot of yarns and fabrics (dolls need nice clothes too you know) and crafty books for, oh and learn loads of new skills (like crochet), and maybe buy a new camera so my pictures in my new Flickr account, where I have also joined crafty, doll-making type groups, well, so those pictures there look really really good!

Yes!

I think I can breathe a big sigh of relief, release, relaxation. Christmas, New Year's, and Master Arlo's birthday - the Year's End Big Bundle - are wound up and we can in earnest start 2010. We started off the year with a spot of baking, given the bakery was closed and people must still have their bread.

That's nude baking. You could give it a try sometime.

Boy 1 had his first proper party on the 9th, with friends and games.

I baked and baked and I think fun was had. The food was good anyway.


I was proud of my efforts and was so tired afterwards I (and my bump) spent the next day in bed with a book. Then the next day I had a nap. Then the next day I had a nap. And today I feel recuperated. Of course, before the party on the 4th was Arlo's real birthday, when the postman brought a lovely parcel from Yew Nork (which I forgot to get a documentary photo of).
He got a bike, which he is dedicated to learning to ride.
What a whirlwind! And that's not including everyday incidents, such as sibling altercations. Arlo denies pushing, but in all fairness, I think the forensic evidence contradicts his version of events.

Jesse's hair was getting rather too long, as you can see, I think it turned out OK, all things considered. Lucky I didn't use the nail clippers after all.

Hello! Merry Christmas!! One week to go! Our tree started off pretty but now looks wonky and fondled and ragged. The angel is facing the window like she yearns for escape from this lunatic place.

Evidence of lunacy:


Further evidence of lunacy:

We are having another one of these??

Meanwhile, inside...such scenes as this:



and this!

So there you go. When are you coming with your paintbrushes?

Also, outside epic fence-making is going on, with Uncle Colin* at the helm. His latest suggestion - that we should have just got chain link and lined it with shade-cloth. I am not confidence inspired.

I won't launch into a homebody-whinge about the trails of mud, left particularly in clumps in front of the toilet every day. Or the comments from various builders, builder's helpers and feral uncle fence foremen about the noteworthy contents of my pantry (I cook, OK?), or how everyone would benefit from 'throw it out! throw it out!'. Because I am grinning and bearing it.

Love, Anna.
*names have been changed.

Back again!

OK so it's been umm...7 months give or take a few weeks, since I tried posting here. In the meantime, I have been roaming the web, enjoying so many entertaining and informative and generous blogs. Maybe I have a better idea of what I want to do here. Maybe I don't. Either way, I may try to pick up where I left off.

So many things have happened in the last 7 months. Boys 1 and 2 have changed and grown phenomenally when I think about it. I am 10 weeks knocked up with #3 and not very well with it. My fabric stash just keeps on growing although, the way I've been feeling, not much is being done with it, except scattered and ambitious schemes. Should I try to render these in pictures, I suspect they would resemble my sewing corner. Shamefully chaotic and non-committal.

Summer is upon us, in September. I've been envying our Northern Hemisphere sisters, with their talk of fall and knitting. Oh for a little rain...

Oh Dear!

Where have the days gone. It's the 2nd of February! 2009!! I have become so obsessed with searching for new crafting tutorials and getting wound up in other women's sensational and addictive writings that I have done no crafting or blogging of my own.

I am currently making a handbag, tweeny style, for my niece Bea who is turning 12 on Feb the tenth, but yesterday my bobbin case spat its spring in my face, so I am temporarily without sewing machine. For the first time in 15 years!

The house is strewn with toddler trade - bank statements pulled from their temporary filing (ahem piled on top of something else within Boy2 reach), vintage Glomesh handbags granny-style (ahem waiting to be listed on Ebay), a toy drum, empty egg cartons. Oh boy, I could list so much stuff just looking around from my seat and I had better get up and tidy. Later I will come to figure out how to add some of these wonderful crafting links.