The short version of why we are moving.... Writing this while holding a grumpy baby, on hold on the phone, occasionally chatting on facebook and while eating breakfast.

As you know we are moving soon this has happened so suddenly, I though I would be living in Toowoomba for years and years.  The move has taken us both by surprise as neither of us thought we would ever move to Bowen.  Even though I grew up there I moved away when I was 17 and was sure I would NEVER return.

The past year it seems like the doors have been closing in my husbands face with work then two weeks ago he went from full time Salary to part time work.  We had been feeling it was time to move on from his career as it was not very family friendly working for 5am to 8am in the mornings and then 2pm till after 8pm at night plus extra hours during the day, some days he could work 12 hours or more. 
He was also away most weekends and for a week 4 or more times a year.  Last Wednesday the possibility of moving to Bowen was presented as an off hand comment.  Within a week this comment, lead to us moving to Bowen, housing arrangements have been taken care of and being called to help out in a small Church.
It as quite funny as two weeks ago I actually let go of my dream to own my own house any time soon.  I had just had another house inspection and handed the long list again of all the things that needed to be done.  I was sooooo over renting but felt that I had to hand over this dream that I had been hiding in my heart. and said whatever happens I will be happy to serve God and do his will.  It is not that is was a bad or wrong dream but in a way selfish what I wanted.  I was starting to resent renting and this was starting to show by how I was keeping house. Then just under one week later we are offered a house for very little money, on a big block.  Big enough for the kids to be kids on, have chickens, pets grown our own veggies, renovate everything I have been secretly wanting.  The last few days the words from a word that I had been given when I was a teenager keep coming back to me Ï will grant you the desires of your heart if you follow and obey me."

So now we have to pack and find a new school :( I love the school they are in and really don't want to take them away from there.  Have to make new friends and get to know my old friends again.  So I am now on a recruiting mission anyone want to come with us.  Below I have added some pictures to see if you feel led to come with us. 

 

I have been having trouble with blogger I am unable to leave comments, I have been reading what you guys are up to but just can't comment at this stage. Joyfullmum loved your last post. 

Here is a lovely blanket rack I purchased from someone on eBay.  I am going to do paint it white, it will be perfect for hubby to hang his clothing on that he wants to wear again, instead of on the end of the bed!!!!

Today I was feeling a bit down about having to move to a new town (and needed to get away from a clingy, screaming baby for a few hours) so I went out and purchased some renovating and decorating magazines and a tin of white paint:)  I am excited about having our own place that we can do up and having a bit of land to plant lovely gardens, have hens and space for the children but just wish it was not so far away.  It is not that I don't want to go and do what God has called us to do it is just I don't want to do it in the location he wants us to go to.  At least I have the house reno plans to help me keep my mind from having to move.

I went window shopping to get some decorating ideas and found these wall decals.  So glad I found then today as I was going to purchase a set from ebay, these were half the price from House and Garden.

This writing will be going on the patio wall after I bag and render the walls. The front patio in this house is like another room without 2 walls the patio leads to the front door and will be the perfect games/reading and morning/afternoon tea area.

This book I purchased today is divided into 4 areas and has little pockets where I can put clippings and paint samples.  I am going to divide the book up into 4 areas bedrooms, wet areas (bath room, toilet, laundry, kitchen), living areas (lounge, dining room and office) and outdoors (patio's and gardens)

My stash of Mags I got, when I went to Mitre 10 I found all these free plan project planners I grabbed a heap covering everything from rendering, painting to building guinea pig cages and forts.

Back again :)

It has been 6mths since I last posted can't believe we are in June already, where has the year gone.  It has been a very busy year so far, in March we welcomed the newest member into our family a little boy. 

I have started doing some craft again and am about to embark on a huge challenge, life has taken a turn and we are being led somewhere I never though and actually said I would not go unless God really wanted me to, but more about that later.

I am planning to be blogging more and will be blogging the house reno I will be starting in the new year which I am sooooo looking forward to I am so over renting and house inspections every three mths. 

Cookie Exchange

This year one of the ladies in our church had the great idea of having a cookie exchange.  The basic idea is to make one batch of cookies, slice, or something like that.  Make 10 for each person, bag them up, and a plate to share then get together and have a cuppa and swap our goodies.  It was such a great idea and so helpful to me, I usually do a lot of Christmas baking but have not been well enough this year to do as much as I usually do. 

Yesterday a few of the mums from playgroup came over and got to feast on all this. 

I made Spiced Christmas Tree Biscuits you can get the recipe here.  The day I baked for the swap was the hottest we had had in ages, the mixture did not like the heat at all. 

It's beginning to look alot like Christmas

Such a long time has passed since my last post, my computer got a virus and we lost everything on the computer, I got bronchitis and school holidays have started.  That mixed with the continued morning sickness has meant I am so not ready for Christmas and have not been blogging or on the computer much. 


I finally started to get the house decorated last week for Christmas and though I would share a few photos and some traditions I have started to make Christmas decorating less stressful with you children under foot.


While my hubby and I do the "boring" jobs like set up the tree, string the lights and do the little fiddly things I have a few things that I get the children to do to keep the busy while they are waiting to trim the tree.

I get the children to decorate their own special tree, this tree they put on the decorations they have made at school and playgroup and any fav's they have made in the previous years.  They have so much fun decorating this I let them do it all and resist the tweeking urge I get. 

It is a simple metal tree that I ordered from ebay from the US and it is perfect for the kids.

On top of the TV cabinet I put most of the stuff the children have made or their favourite decorations.

 The next thing I get the children to do is fill any glass bowl or vase, display plates I can find will baubles.  They love doing this and it keeps them busy for ages. 

When I went to take a photo of the tree I discovered someone had moved all the ornaments.  I will tweek it and post a new photo soon.

The next 3 photos of some easy and pretty decorations my children made.  I use glass baubles and get them to fill them with glitter and pretty things in what ever colour theme we are going with that year.  These glass baubles can be used year after year, just empty them and full them up again.

 Last year I got the Children to paint wooden Christmas shapes then we covered them in glass glitter.

A bit of a close up of the tree I usually do not use tinsel but the children love it and it is only for a few years.  I also usually use white fairy lights but this year my hubby got to the lights before me and let the children talk him into using the coloured ones.  Oh well.  My neighbour is getting me a real Christmas tree 4 days before Christmas for the family room and I am going to decorate it :) 

Every year I splash out and get one nice Christmas decoration this year I got this sign cute hey :)

Last year I made these little trees as table center pieces they were so easy just glued beads on little glittery Christmas trees. 

I put out a nativity the children can play with every year, usually we make a stable and manger but this year things have not gone to plan.  I also put out some stories about the true meaning of Christmas.  In a later post I will tell you how we have handled Santa in our family.  Both my husband and I have never grown up with Santa, and we really want to focus on why we celebrate Christmas and reflect on the real meaning of Christmas. 

GIFTING and the origins halloween

Yesterday we attended a birth celebration.  The family is from Zimbabwe so this was the first birth celebration I had attended, from what I understand it is cultural for the women to stay home after the baby is born for about 4 weeks and then they have a big welcoming celebration aka PARTY.  :)

I love to give gifts homemade or bought.  When I give gifts I love to include something homemade or special in gifts if I can, even if it is just the card that I have made.  (Sometimes it is impossible to do and I did have a few years where I did not do this much.  I had 3 kids 3 and under at the time)  We need to be realistic on what we can do and realise there is a season for everything.  As much as I love to make things and find it relaxing there was a year or two when it was totally impossible to do I had to focus on getting through the day, not on whether I had made a gift or card.  One thing I found that even if you are unable to make a gift or card you can always be creative in the wrapping.  Nothing nicer than getting a gift, that it is obvious someone has taken a lot of care in wrapping.  And wrapping can be quick, easy and not expensive.  A ribbon with embellishments, tea towel, it does not take a lot to dress up a gift.  At the end of this post I will post some pics of nicely wrapped gifts.  There are plenty out there google for ideas.

Okay back to the birth celebration, for the gift I made a name hanging for the baby Taanaye.  It did not cost me anything to make I just used bits that I had in my craft box.  This is such a cute and inexpensive gift to make.  I usually make these for friends after the baby is born or for their first birthday.  If you have limited funds it is surprising what you can make that is both unique and worth more to your friends than if you spent a lot on the latest designer outfit that the baby will soon grow out of.

Sorry about the photos I was in a hurry and took them on my bed, next time I will take them on  a white table.

Click on photo to make it bigger

I used buttons, scraps of material, flowers to decorate it.  You can use anything. 

This is a quick craft to do, the bit that takes the longest is putting the letters on this time I printed the letters I needed then glued them on, using hot glue ran some around the paper that I had cut down to size and quickly applied glitter.  You can use sticker letters, little wooden or cardboard letters, cutouts from paper you are recycling.  I once made one for a friends child who is into music and I used old sheet music.  I will post detailed instructions and put a link here soon.

  

I wrapped it all up in pink tissue and finish the package with a white organza ribbon.  In the gift I also included a cute summer all inone and a lovely card.  I put all of the gifts in a gift bag with lots of scented tissue paper.

Wrapping ideas

Christmas is coming up and one thing I love to do is use an ornament as decoration for the gift that they can reuse on the tree the next year.  For the children I often use candy canes or Christmas candy shapes.  I will do lots of posts about Christmas in November/December.

Waste-free Holidays

Martha Stewart has lots of tips and ideas about wrapping.

Halloween

Last week while shopping I noticed a lot of halloween items out.  Yes it is that time of year again.  Every year there seems to be more and more halloween items available and more and more houses and shops decorating for this holiday.  In my old blog I did a post about halloween and its origins as I did not know much about the holiday as we in Australia never use to pay much attention to it.  But with the world becoming a smaller place and the influencing of other countries and cultures through such mediums as television, Internet, some Aussies are starting to celebrate halloween.  This post gives the history and background to halloween, I looked into this as I wanted to know why we as Christians do not celebrate this holiday, and also wanted to be able to give informed answers to my children not just hear say.  I would suggest you check my facts and research for yourself there is so much information out there and this post is a summary as I could have written a book with what I found out.

I believe we should not just go on hear say, it is our responsibility to check the facts and the bible in regard to anything we are taught whether it is from the pulpit, books, newsletters, homegroups or blogs.  We should be informed so if we are ever questioned as to why we do or do not do things we can give answers that are correct and backed by the word of God instead of answers like because that is what we do.

Click on the above pumpkin to go to the post.

Some of the links in my old post are now not available I will find some more and link them here.  So check back in a few days if you are interested.

What about Halloween.
Halloween : Treat or Trick?
Halloween -  a harmless ritual? by by Jean Claude Boulenaz (Teen Challenge, Brisbane, Australia)
Should Christians Observe Halloween This is a great post lots of history and information backed by scripture.

My Decorating Style

When we moved into the house we are currently living in 4 years ago and I changed my decorating style many people told me I must be crazy to paint my furniture white.  And to tell you the truth a few years ago I would have thought the same, white furniture and young children just don't mix.  Well it was the best thing I ever did, for starters you can see if it is dirty and if the coffee table happens to get scratched or marked you can either say it is part of the charm or take it outside and give it a fresh coat of paint. 

It is such a great style to have with young children you can pick stuff up cheap and make it over, then there is not concern if accidents happen.  I would much prefer my kids to be able to be kids and learn to take care of things that are not valuable.  How much more will they care for items of value.  I also have never put things up when my children are toddlers, I taught them what they could and could not touch and when we went visiting I did not have to worry about them touching and breaking things.  And yes one of my children was a strong willed child and it did take a lot more work this this one than my other two but it can be done.  Will post about how I did this at a later stage.

At the moment my decorating style is shabby meet cottage with french provincial twists and a bit of contemporary.  I am not a true shabby chic as I am not really into lots of floral, lace and frills around the place.  I love french and cottage kitchens and love white furniture and two toned furniture.  I also love country stuff as well.  Decorating with this style has made our house a lot more homely.  And another great thing about this style you can pick up old pieces of furniture and give them a face lift.  It is perfect for my stage of life.  I love to mix and match stuff from different styles.

Here are a few photos of my house.  You will see more in later posts.

I painted our old coffee table white and put baskets under it.  One basket for news papers one for decorating/craft magazines and one for knee blankets.

 I picked this kitchen hutch up for next to nothing it had been used in a garage to store tools and stuff I sanded it and gave it a fresh coat of paint and new draw knobs.

Yes we even have a whitish dog, well where we live he is quite often tinted orange as he has a love for dirt and mud.

I did up our old pine bed it was starting to look dull you know the look pine gets when it is getting old.  I painted it antique white and got the spray of flowers sent over from America and it has made such a difference.  I will be doing a post on our bedroom in the coming weeks.  I gave our room a makeover as an anniversary gift for my hubby.

Moving here was one part of discovering me I had always been kind of tomboyish, trying so hard not to be a girl, but also wanting to be a girl but just now knowing where to start or wanting to look silly in the process.  Learning to like me has been a long had hard journey one that I am still on.  Growing up I was constantly aware that I never really measured up, though no one would have known.  How easy it is to hide how we feel inside. I am the Master of mask making.  I was a pastors kid and ran the youth group, and Sunday school, song lead regally, shared in Church, while all the time feeling that I was not good enough.  I had a good relationship with the Lord as he was my only real friend, but still struggled with who I was and that I was not good enough. 

I have to remind myself daily that I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  I am a child of God and was created by him and by not liking me I am telling God that his creation is a mistake.  I am sure I am not the only one who battles with who they are, but once we start to discover God and his heart we can learn to accept our self.  For me this is my struggle, the one thing I battle with, the one thing I do not want to pass onto my children.  Oh how I want them to be secure in who they are and know they are amazing and measure up. 

So how did I get onto that oh that's right decorating, learning what I like and to put pretty things out is okay, to let people know I like china and girly stuff is okay.  To want to make a nice homely home for my family is again okay.  I don't have to keep all this inside I can let people see me and if they don't like it that is okay.  It does not change who I am.

Psalm 139:14 declares, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”