lazy weekends

I have been doing an online blogging course called 'blog with Pip' with Pip Lincoln of Meet me at mikes fame. It has been so awesome and I finally feel like I am getting my blogging mojo back. Not to mention all the awesome people I have (virtually) met during the course. (Hello!)

This week we had a little assignment which was to take 5 photos of our weekend. Our weekend was pretty lazy as I have been getting over a horrid virus that left me in bed for 4 days straight last week. Ugh! I have never been so sick in my life!

It did, however, give me a bit of time to catch up on lots of bloggity blogs (as my husband always calls them). Here are a few great posts I read this week:

+ 12 eco-friendly gift ideas -just in time for Christmas!

+ These beetroot, quinoa and chocolate muffins look amazing!

+ Check out Anna's awesome Brooklyn abode!

+ Excellent tips for getting a better nights sleep, and

+ A fabulous Christmas giveaway (if you are good at writing poetry!)

Would you like to share a link to something great you read this week?

P.s Look at the roses in our courtyard!

Sophie and Henry!

Henry is 18 days old now.
I still can't actually believe that he is finally here!

We are doing well.. just trying to take it as easy as possible and spending our days at home pottering around. I'm quite sleep deprived and surviving on copious cups of tea during the day, but that's to be expected with a 2 week old!
Sophie has started her new school which is just down the street from our new house and I'm still mastering the art of getting out the door with two little ones. She has been 45 minutes late for school every day this week, but practice makes perfect I guess!

We still have no internet at the new house which is why I have not been posting as often as usual (well, that and the fact that I am too busy staring at Henry instead of the computer screen!) but hopefully I'll be able to post 1000 pictures of him shortly..

Date night and news

-Well, baby boy has still not arrived.. We can't believe it! I never, ever thought I would make it to 38 weeks.. Even my obstetrician can't believe it! But any day now I guess.

-We are all moved into our new house. We are surrounded by boxes and piles and piles of stuff in every room, but we are slowly getting through the boxes and having lots of fun setting up house.
(It's actually quite good that baby boy is taking his time because every extra day gives us a little more time to set up the house).

-Moving house at 38 weeks pregnant is hard work but at least I am allowed to be up on my feet now.

-Tom and I went on a date last week. It was the first time we had been out at night together for more than a year! We went to see the ACO perform Beethoven's 'Ode to joy', which I thought was an appropriate outing for two people who have so much to celebrate at the moment.

-We have no internet connected at the new house which is why I have been off line for the last week or so, but of course I will update you all as soon as baby boy decides to make an appearance!

Approaching life..

I am really looking forward to having a blog that is actually full of delicious homemade food, pictures of all the delicious veggies we grow in the garden and post after post of all the pretty things I make on my sewing machine.

I am not sure if it because I am feeling so incredibly lucky at the moment or if it was the 5 months of full bed rest that did it, but for some reason I am feeling so motivated to approach life with absolute energy and passion at the moment.

I keep imagining life in our new house, with our new gorgeous baby and me.. unlike I have ever been before.. A new version of 'me' that is organised and motivated and has a new passion for life and motherhood and creating a wonderful loving home. Someone who shops at the local farmers markets and cooks delicious homemade meals from scratch, spends her time gardening and sewing and being absorbed in every moment with her kids. Someone who has the laundry sorted and the house clean and has time to bake muffins before playgroup in the morning. I imagine dancing around the house at 5pm with my kids laughing and happy and having fun because I will have prepared dinner at 10am instead of thinking about what to make at 6.45pm. I will be a better mother, a better wife and a better friend.

But then reality sets in..

I will be tired. Really tired. I will have a newborn. I will have a 4 year old who has to deal with moving house, changing schools and getting a new sibling all in the same month. I will have a husband that now takes an hour to get home from work instead of 10 minutes. I will be really out of shape after spending majority of the last 9 months in bed and I will probably spend most of the day in my pyjamas..

But you know what? I am okay with that. I'm more than okay with that..

I am going to spend every second just savouring that newborn goodness while eating take away in a house that resembles a junk yard. I am going to sit there with a smile on my face and hope that the motivation to make my life look like a pinterest board is still there in 6 months time!

Yeah!

These are some of my favourite photos from Instagram.. You can follow me on Instagram if you like (@grow_cook_sew) as I may be a bit sporadic in posting over the next few weeks (You know.. moving house and having a baby and all!)

Home sweet home..

Here are the photos I promised of our new place! We settle in just under a month but when we actually move in will depend on when this little baby decides to arrive. (It's going to be a crazy few weeks when we have a baby and move house at the same time but I promise I will not complain a single bit!)

Tom and I had our heart set on buying a weatherboard house with wooden floorboards inside, a decent kitchen, a bit of space outside for kids to run around and room to build a little veggie patch. We had been researching different areas around Perth and prices since we moved here over a year ago so we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted.
Although I have to admit that while this house ticked all our boxes, it's not the type of house I thought we would end up buying.. Tom and I both really love old rambling places with overgrown gardens and lots of character. We both found this house a bit too "clean" and we were devastated to learn that the house used to have about 4 beautiful mature gum trees in the garden that had been pulled out before it was renovated.
But, we decided that buying a simple, clean house provides the perfect canvas to create the type of home we want from scratch. We can't wait to cover the walls in artworks and have a garden full of trees and veggies and do all those little things that will help turn this house into a home.
(The first thing I am going to do though is remove those ridiculous letters from above the bathtub!)

Life is happening

I have struggled to find the time or energy to write a post lately. My life is completely preoccupied with the imminent arrival of our little boy and moving into our new home which are due to happen within a week of each other! I have been so busy trying to get organised but still trying to rest as much as possible.

I also feel like I have nothing to write at the moment because all I can tell you is how happy I am, and I fear I might start to get awfully boring if I keep going on and on about how things are finally falling into place for us (but seriously.. being weeks away from holding the baby that we have been longing for for years and buying our first home just seems unbelievable to me! I can't believe that the things we have spent soo long working towards are almost here.. it's so incredibly exciting).

On that note, I'll leave you with a picture of the cutest little French baby shoes..

x

Hello stranger

I love that when I go a week or so without writing a post I get emails from total strangers asking me if everything is alright. (So sweet.. Thank you!)

Everything is going really well, as I said in my last post.. better than ever! I can't believe that we are so close to having a place to call home AND a little baby! (Although it's a little scary when these things are so, so close but you are not quite there yet).

I have been so busy all week trying to organise everything to make our dream house turn into a reality (Building inspections, wood ant inspections etc. etc.) but we are now just waiting for the bank to give us the green light and hopefully they will! (I've been preying to the mortgage gods all week!)

I also reached 30 weeks yesterday which feels like such a huge milestone.. I am finally starting to get out of bed for an hour or so each day and it feels so good to be back in the world again! I managed to get a hair cut (for the first time in almost a year) and make a very quick stop at the local fabric store last week.. both things that I have been dreaming of doing for months.

I wanted to post a photo of my belly to show you all but Tom was busy cooking dinner (and making the most delicious pears poached in red wine for desert), I didn't want to disturb him so I asked Sophie to take a photo for me..

This is what I ended up with.. Either she is a brilliant, creative photographer in the making or just can't manage to hold my phone still enough.. I'm going to go with creative genius!

Our new home!

Less than a week after this house turned out to be a dud, another beautiful house popped up just around the corner. We went to inspect it on Monday night with Tom's dad, mum and step-dad. We put an offer in on Tuesday and yesterday found out that the owners had accepted our offer!!

I can't believe it.. This is the first house we have ever bought and the first time we had ever put an offer in. Lots of our friends had warned us that finding the right home takes months or even years of putting in offers and being knocked back.. So we were so incredibly happy (and a little in shock) to find out that our offer had been accepted and the house is (almost) ours!

I've been told that I can't celebrate just yet.. Our offer has been accepted and we have put a deposit down but until the conditions of the offer have been met and settlement occurs I can't technically call it ours, but I think that we can still pop open a little champagne (or orange juice in my case!)

I can't even begin to tell you how much of a dream come true this house is.. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I would ever live in a house like this, let alone own it! I was lying in bed last night looking through the pictures of our new place (I'll post some more photos soon) and as I was lying there I could feel our little baby boy kicking in my tummy..

For the first time in a very, very long time I finally feel like life is going our way.. things are falling into place and all the stress and heartbreak of the last few years is finally starting to fade.

12 months ago we were living out of a suitcase at Tom's parents place, had just moved to a city where I didn't know a single person, were still in shock over the death of our baby girl, didn't have a cent to our names (in fact, we were in debt) and the only thing that I could think about was why I was not falling pregnant again and how I desperately longed for a little baby..

To be sitting (well, lying) here now, 28 weeks pregnant, which is over the risky stage and so close to having a healthy little baby in my arms and having just had our offer accepted on our dream house is an incredible feeling. I can't even begin to tell you how good it feels.

We may still be living with Tom's parents but it has allowed us to save up for this house and have help around while I have been on bed rest.. and it will all be so worth it.. In just a few months time we will be sitting in our new home with our darling little baby boy safely in my arms and our gorgeous little girl running around in a garden that is bigger than most of the apartments we have ever lived in!!

We are so, so close..

Looks can be deceiving..

I have spent the last few days imagining my days spent here, on the veranda of our new house that overlooks the park across the street and the local kindergarten.. but it's not going to be I'm afraid.

An inspection of the property with Tom's dad (who has spent the last 30 years restoring old weatherboard houses) revealed that while the house certainly looks pretty, the current owners have done a really cheap and crummy job of renovating the property. They have obviously renovated to try and sell for a premium price but it has been done with no love or thought whatsoever.

The worst thing is that the entire house has been covered with fake plastic weatherboard and the old weatherboard underneath was just left raw and untreated. While it certainly looked pretty on the outside and provided a quick and cheap fix, it means that eventually that old weatherboard underneath will start to rot and we will be in for a huge bill to replace it in 5 years time.

This was just one of a very long list of things that had been done in a quick cover-up kind of way and would have caused us a lot of time and money to fix down the track. It is obviously really disappointing as it would have been the most perfect home for us (4 bedrooms, huge new kitchen, wooden floors, lots of light, a fireplace that worked, a studio out the back and across the road from the local school and a park.. Agh!) But at the end of the day we don't want to pay a premium price for a dodgy renovation that we will have to fix ourselves over the next few years.

I'm a little sad as I had spent the last few days imagining how every piece of our furniture will fit into the new house and all the things I could do to turn it onto a home, but I am confident that something else will pop up and that it will be even more perfect and hopefully, done with a little more love.

So the search goes on... but you know what? That's okay.
Sometimes I think that we will be so happy once we have this little baby that it won't matter where we live.. we could live in a cardboard box and we would be content just because our little boy arrived into the world safely. If we do happen to find the perfect house as well? Well, I think I will feel like the luckiest girl in the world!

Dream house

When we lived in Sydney the idea of buying a house was a fantasy.. one that we thought might become possible in 10 years time when I was back at work and Tom's salary had doubled (wishful thinking), but like many of our friends, Tom and I had accepted that buying a house was not an option for us and resigned ourselves to be (apartment) renters for the foreseeable future.

When we moved to Perth early last year we planed to stay with Tom's dad (in the most gorgeous house that Tom had grown up in- see here) for a few weeks while we looked for somewhere to rent. After a couple of weeks looking around it became clear to us that the amount we would be paying in rent would be pretty close to having a mortgage. We spoke to the bank and realised that a small mortgage was not out of our reach at all.

The only problem was that we didn't have a deposit saved, so we decided we would stay with Tom's dad for 6 months while we put away as much money as we possibly could. (Luckily, it's a seven bedroom house so there was plenty of room for us to settle in).

It was only a few months later that we found out that the next time I fell pregnant I would have to be on full bed rest. We had only just lost Grace shortly before moving to Perth and were already desperately trying to fall pregnant again. We decided that we would stay with Tom's dad (and Tom's little sister) until I fell pregnant and while I was on bed rest as we would need SO much help once I was sentenced to 6 months in bed!

The plan would work out quite well as we would spent the whole time saving a deposit and by the time I was due to give birth we would be more than ready to buy our first home. Living with Tom's dad was easy.. we get on really well and he lives in the most beautiful suburb with the local primary school across the road and a beautiful lake about 50m from the front door (the same primary school that Tom went to as a kid and the same park that Tom played in as a child). Because Tom had grown up in the same house he felt right at home, I made lots of friends in the local area and Sophie thought that going to the same school that her dad went to was the best thing ever.

What we did not plan on is the fact that 12 months later I would still be TRYING to fall pregnant. (and that our lives were literally 'on hold' until I did).

Of course, as you all know, I finally did fall pregnant and here I am 4 months through bed rest.
It means that we will have been living with Tom's dad for almost 2 years by the time we move out. (So much for a few weeks!!)

There are days when I long for our own house, our own space and to finally have all our stuff out of storage but I am lucky that I get on with Tom's parents so well and that we have had the opportunity to save some money and live with family while I am on bed rest (and require so much help). In a funny kind of way it worked out quite well. (Well, hopefully it will when, at the end of this year, we have a beautiful little baby boy and are settled in our own home.. I feel like Tom and I won't know ourselves anymore.. it will be like all the stress of the past few years will be lifted off our shoulders).

Yesterday, our dream house popped up in the suburb we have been looking at and at the right price. It's opposite a park, 5 minutes walk from the local primary school with wooden floor boards and lots of light. Plus there is a little studio out the back.. perfect for fulfilling my ultimate fantasy.. a sewing room! (See above.. isn't she pretty?!)

I called the bank straight away. Tom is telling me not to get my hopes up to high as it is the first  house we have seriously considered and to be honest, the timing is not quite right (it would have to sit there empty until I have this baby) but...

It's pretty exciting none the less. For someone who has never lived in a house that was 'my own' (my parents could never afford to buy and we moved about 10 times in 15 years because we were in government housing) it's so exciting to be so close to finally living in a place that I can really call 'home'.