Going, going, gone....

See this kitchen, this is my old kitchen featuring in her own glamour expose. Consider this picture the equivalent of a magazine cover shot, all flaws conveniently airbrushed and photoshopped away.    My disaster of a kitchen never actually looked this good in the harsh light of day, actually the harsh lack of light in a south facing position with a view onto the carport gutter. But hats off to Legoman who managed to take a picture that actually made the kitchen look good enough for someone to want her for $850. Woohoo!

This is more the reality. While the cabinetry was all structurally ok, there was no where near enough storage, the glam looking stove barely worked, the dishwasher kept popping its rollers out every time you opened it and the light fittings had all corroded, hence that sexy Bunnings task light clipped onto the one section of usable bench.

The biggest issue was really that this kitchen had been poked into a skinny spot, wedged between two bedrooms in a south facing position and was dark all the time. (See my portable stove on the bench that has been performing the real actual cooking for the last five months while the glamour puss freestanding supermodel just stands around looking fab).

If you opened the windows in an attempt to get more light, you would be greeted with the spectacular view of leaf detritus in the carport gutter.

I knew a coat of white paint would not fix the biggest flaws in this kitchen and also thought the kitchen would be easier to sell as is. While wood kitchens are not at all my cup of tea, they are apparently easy to match and the man who bought the kitchen is going to reconfigure it all completely differently, and add some extra cupboards. I am really pleased that this kitchen is going to a good home and not to  landfill. And I am super excited to see this new space.

And the kitchenette?

Yep, it's gone.

And what about the carport, I hear you murmuring?

Yep, it's gonski too. The two mates who drove 5 hours from Lismore to remove it reminded me of Legoman and I when we attempt to assemble something from Ikea. There was much swearing, abuse and public ridicule. Now you see it,

Now you don't.  I guess even though it took the pair of them about 5 hours to pull it all down, for $530, it was a bargain. Our builder had planned to just demolish and dump it so it's a win win for everyone really. We were both a little surprised that it actually sold but there were several other people interested so it shows that second hand is the way to go.

Meanwhile, we have been dealing with mountains of these.

Can I add that moving house with small children is positively gruelling. I'm firmly remaining in denial over the fact that we will be doing it all again in a matter of months. Choosing instead to focus on all the empty rooms, a hot shower and the coma like sleep I plan to fall into very soon.

Never the same

We moved house yesterday, into the lovely house two streets away that will become our home for the next few months. As I spent the last two weeks packing our life into boxes, it occurred to me that Betsy will never be the same. She will never look just like this again. All the bits and pieces that my two small children create and bring home from school and kindy have been pulled down from the walls and many may not go back up there again. There will be new creations, new school awards, new interests and fads and the entire feel of our house will be different.

So with every box packed, pauses were made to snap pictures of all these colourful memories of the little children we have had living in this house. Roboboy was four and Liongirl was 18 months when we first moved into Betsy and there are so many memories of early childhood tucked up into the rooms of this house.

When we move back into the new improved Betsy, my little children will not be so little anymore. Roboboy will be seven and a half and Liongirl will be almost five. When we unpack their treasured items, some of them will not be wanted anymore. Will Roboboy still have all these favourite stuffed animals sharing his bed every night? I can only hope we have a few more years yet, especially for that vintage wallpaper dresser that makes me happy every time I walk past it.

Liongirl's room will be quite different when we move back as these big windows will no longer be there, instead there will be a set of high louvres. No doubt she will want considerable say in how we decorate her new room.

Despite a tinge of sadness over the fleeting nature of childhood, there is high elation over the hopefully fleeting life span of my remaining custard walls. This is the last section of wall in the hallway that remains custard, it will be the first to go when I get stuck in there repainting my very empty house.

Back soon with some pics of a very bare Betsy, serious deck demolishing action and hopefully the arrival of some excavators to start the old girl's makeover.

2012 Before and After

I was unsure about how to start this new year. Do I acknowledge the last twelve months at all or do I just sweep it all under the rug and make a fresh start today? This last year has been the least chaotic for our family in a long, long time. We did not buy a house, sell a house, have a new baby, have children that were constantly sick or needing operations, start at a new school/kindy or discover any new dietary limitations for anyone in the family.

Our complicated child in this last year has seen his paediatrician twice. Prior to that he was known by six specialist paediatricians and a selection of therapists. For us, it is quite a novel thing to only be dealing with the usual, the everyday. There are of course ongoing complexities for our family but they are all old and familiar and I am a seasoned veteran with these and mostly in the last twelve months life has become much simpler. 

My chosen word to represent 2012 was " Grow". Ironically, this is the first year in six that I probably did not have to grow much at all. In hindsight, the previous six years that were so hard, so challenging, caused me to grow so, so much. Of course you don't realize while you are doing the growing.  So this year was perhaps a year to "Bloom" instead. For me that meant being able to take the time to do things that make my heart sing, instead of just doing what is needed to keep everyone else afloat. 

There is a lot of colour and pretty on this blog. There are a lot of frills and fluff. When your life is a layered cake of complex and difficult, it is so good to have a space to go that is all about the icing and sprinkles.  Here are all the befores and afters from this year while I crafted and created to my happy place. (I didn't feel that I did much at all this year, but surprisingly it's not as insignificant as I thought).

What became of my gratitude project? The one where I planned to post a letter of thanks every day for a year. Well, I did around 90 and then gradually life just got in the way. Many months passed and I had not written a single thank you. Then our much loved neighbours, the Menace brothers, moved , to the new house they had built a few streets away.

They may as well have moved to the Outback. Our yard was suddenly quiet after school and I realized that the year of  precious memories of happy, noisy  gangs of children playing in my backyard was a moment that had passed by. I wrote my neighbour (the mother of those wonderful boys who accepted my complicated child wholeheartedly) a thankyou card for making such a difference in our family's life, just by sharing her children with us. 

She turned up at my house a week later to thank me in person. She told me that she had just been out doing a presentation to the Country Women's Association in rural Queensland. That she had been envious of the solidarity and support that these country women had for each other. That she was saddened that her life in our little suburb did not reflect this kind of care and connectedness. And then she arrived home the next day and there was my card in her letter box. We both had a cry. And if that is not a sign that this gratitude project is an exceptionally meaningful commitment, well just bludgeon me with a hammer.

I did in fact write a list of resolutions last year but given my penchant for scribbling on scraps of paper, it is nowhere to be found. I suspect I achieved very little of it. I am only cross about not doing a camera course to learn how to use my camera properly, I did try three times but each time the course was on a day that I work. Hopefully, this year it will be easier to make it happen.

This year, I suspect is going to be very full, very busy. There is supposed to be a renovation for Betsy you know. It is supposed to start in March. I know in advance that it is supposed to take around four months. I have the good sense to know that this could be delusionally optimistic. I also have the good sense to know that it is probably going to be somewhat painful to live through but at the end it will be so, so worth it.

But the mantra for the year ahead I could not distill down to a single word this year. About a year ago, a lovely girl posted a few comments on my blog. I popped over to her blog to see what she was all about. I liked her blog a lot. It was about living simply, with less. Strangely, after commenting that day on my blog she did not post again and has not for over a year. So I won't link you over there but will say thank you to her for providing the words for me for 2013.

Less Stuff, More Life. 

I have felt bogged down by our stuff for the last three years. We have been culling and selling and donating more than I could ever have imagined and we are not done yet but we are getting there. As each item leaves our house, I feel a bounce in my step. It all started when I read this book, It's all too much by Peter Walsh a few years ago, when we were moving into Betsy and realized we had way too much stuff. 

Much of our stuff was child related paraphernalia and as time passes much of it is no longer needed. A small number of the most treasured toys and books have been boxed up to keep, most is going or gone. It is getting easier to be ruthless and emotionally detach. I am quoting William Morris daily.

"Have nothing in your home (life) that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."


Ugly serviette holder made by me in Grade 9 woodwork- gone. Shoes from my wedding that were ugly and uncomfortable - gone. Every sipper cup in the house- gone. Thankfully milk glass and vintage sheets fulfil both criteria to stay  so there will still be some very selective op shopping.

Luckily, these two are both useful and beautiful so they get to stay. Hugs are a rare commodity, sometimes she gets lucky and he tolerates it. This is twelve months ago.

This is yesterday. She is catching up with him now, soon they might look like twins.


Happy New Year to you all and may you all have more life and less stuff this year too.

Best bits of Betsy

The jacarandas have all burst into bloom and it is a whole party of purple on Betsy's front lawn. We have five jacaranda trees in our yard and this sight reminds me why October is one of my favourite times of year. The hot days are upon us, see the dryness of my lawn and that washed out, heat hazy sky? We really need a good dump of rain, perhaps a thunderstorm would be a good start.

It reminded me that I wanted to share some other bits of Betsy. Some of her gorgeous trimmings that inspired us to buy her more than two years ago.
Firstly there are the ceilings, horsehair apparently, with amazing decorative features. This is the hallway, we cannot wait to choose a new light fitting.

Roboboy's bedroom , quite simple. We will be replacing the fan but will be keeping it as it makes sleeping in summer so much more bearable.

But my absolute favourite is our bedroom, I could lie in bed looking up at that giant sunflower all day long. Another ugly but essential fan, has anyone come across a fan that is not really ugly?

And now for something that I didn't notice straight away. A 1921 penny stuck above the old front door entry. See that brown spot at the top of the door frame? (Ignore that nasty stripe of custard that I haven't got to yet). Before the front verandah was enclosed, this was the main entry into the house. We have the old leadlight door but it has weathered poorly and is not able to be re used elsewhere in the house. 

There is a matching half penny above the external verandah doors dated 1953. Both coins are glued head down and Google tells me that this was done to bring luck and fortune into the house and because the heads are facing away the evil spirits will also be looking away and not into our home.  I wonder if the 1921 coin is symbolic of the year Betsy was built, or just random luck. I would have thought she had been built in the 1930's based on her style but I think I just need to get down to the City Council archives and see what I can dig up.