Still here...

Still here and not giving up entirely... although I have been utterly rubbish at the blog caper in 2012.
I am planning a blog revamp and a life makeover to give it more time. Stay tuned.

Of course I have been doing all sorts of blog worthy things - if only I could connect the dots - my camera, computer and brain.

I've been wasting time with instagram. Actually hardly any time at all which is what makes it so attractive. It's rather fun, give it a go. If you look me up (myvillalife) you can see a myriad of flower shots.  Too many really but I have a nice flower filled walk to school each morning and no life.

For instagram you'll need an iPhone and the App.  I'm typing this up on a shiny new iPad. Aren't I a million miles from here? You couldn't ever call me an early adapter to new technology but I get there in the end.  Yes, those who know how much I like to be right can give me two fingers and say I Told You So.

When not distracting myself with tech devices (and working and mothering) I have had my head in a book. I have a new book club, Book Club Lite as it is dubbed by its new members -  but we've read books that are anything but. Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers   and The Watch Tower by Elizabeth Harrower  - one of the Text Classics I mentioned here. All That I Am waits patiently next to my bed.

Minestrone has been my drug of choice this winter. My Dad gave me his recipe. I believe Stephanie Alexander gave her recipe to him.  It requires half a gallon of olive oil, pork rind and a hunk of Parmesan. His instruction - don't skimp on the olive oil. So right. He also grows his own borlotti beans. A bowl of it is like a hot water bottle and a hug.

We have also been to Vietnam and taken incredible pictures, eaten beautiful food, crossed roads with our hearts in our mouths and discovered pool side service. I like pool side service.

My son is still the sleeping stuntman. Four going on five - many months off five but in his head he was nearly five a day after he turned four. With me?

My older son is racing through books. It seems only yesterday that he was learning. We check every now and then that he is actually taking it in.  I'm thrilled that he loves reading but also annoyed that he stubbornly refuses to read any Enid Blyton.  What is it with kids these days?

As I type I'm watching the new  US HBO cable show The Newsroom. It's excellent viewing for news junkies. For washed up news EPs like yours truly it made the adrenalin pump like it used to and then a sadness settled on me with the realisation that I am washed up and will never work all hours in a frenetic New York newsroom. Ah well.

All these things probably deserve a post of their own. I have it in hand.

Cushions and things...

Cushions and instagram. And I'm very pleased with both.

I finally caved in last week and uploaded the Instagram App.  It was 9pm so my first few pictures were taken in our living room.  When I gushed to my other half about the newfound joys of yet another social media app he said in a rather withering tone, "They're cushions, Ann." I fear instagram, like blogging, may pass him by.

There are plenty of other instagrammers taking pictures of their pillows and dinners and dresses and doors and I'm finding it strangely addictive. I also like the camera tools - I've already really over used the blurr button.

I have finally given in to my absolute love of blue and white. I have two new brown leather couches and a much loved but very heavy dark wooden coffee table made from factory floorboards. They will be fine one day in a fresh white room with lots of windows. In a rather badly lit living room painted rental cream it's all a little dark - the blue and white seems to lift it all a little.

I found these cushion covers on Etsy. Have you ever tried to remember where on earth you saw that Very Useful Something or Other on Etsy? Pinterest is the answer.  I have found and pinned a houseful of cushion covers for that freshly painted light white home. Now we just need to buy it.

By the way, the husband just passed the computer as I write this muttering "Cushions... again."
Thank god for the blog.

A spoonful of sugar...

It was the Cadbury creme egg that did it. An icky sugary Easter creation that sealed my resolve to walk away from the love of my life - at least for a while.

I'm talking about chocolate and more broadly sugar. Like so many others I have phased it out and two months in I'm finding life is just fine without it.

In typically dramatic fashion I decided to start suddenly on Easter Monday. I  sent all the left over Lindt goodies from the house and set about reworking my home-made muesli - toasting flaked almonds, pepitas and sunflower seeds with coconut and sesame seed without the apple juice, honey and dried fruit.

I then downloaded Sarah Wilson's e-book, read through her her blog and sifted back to find these pages from Townmouse and My Pear Tree House. Honestly when I read these at the time I paid scant attention but they stayed in the back of my mind. I then found David Gillespie's latest book buried in a pile of new releases on my desk at work.

It was the way I was feeling that spurred me into action. I was feeling rubbish in the afternoons - close to death at three o'clock with an overwhelming need to lie down. I would eat something sweet to pep me up which in turn would make me feel a little shaky.

I'm not one for diets, self-help books or advice I hear on the radio - heavens I'm the cynical one putting it on the radio...   but eventually all the 'sugar is poison' talk made it through my cynical filter.

I still don't think it is poison but I do think we eat an enormous amount of sugar without realising it.

It dawned on me that giving up sugar in most forms wouldn't trouble me too much and it hasn't. Juice, dried fruit, dessert, cakes, ice cream are not things I crave and we don't eat much processed food like bottled sauces.

Breakfast has been the hardest meal but I've adapted well to my homemade muesli mix with natural yoghurt. I also buy this fruit free muesli when I'm sick of mine.  The muffins and biscuits I bake for the kids go in their lunch boxes and not in mine.  I take cheese and almonds and grapes to snack on at work. I still eat whole fruit - it sounded mad to me to give that up.

I dropped the sugar from my tea and haven't missed it and even chocolate hasn't been too hard - although of course there's been the odd lapse!

I am still me after all - but a much less sweet version and I feel a whole lot better. I'm definitely more mindful of what I eat and how it makes me feel.

Goodness I sound almost sensible. I'm turning forty in less than a year. That could explain it.

Check mate...

Sometimes I get a little distracted in the house search and spend more time pinning all sorts of beautiful spaces instead of nailing the perfect trifecta of price, location and potential.

We're getting a feel for the areas of Melbourne we'd like to settle in. Actually it's all going to be determined by just how far I'm prepared to drive to my son's school. He and I have made friends and we're not moving far.

In fact ending 2012 without some sort of house move would be just fine, thanks.

And definitely not to an undersized and probably overpriced terrace house with a chess board in the garden - no matter how beautiful it looks. I'll just visit it on pinterest occasionally.

Image from here - while it lasts.

Farewell to summer...

Summer is well and truly done. Melbourne has been blessed by a lingering Indian summer which left us this week. The boys were swimming last weekend, now we're in winter mode.

Funny how weather dominates our conversations in all corners of the world.  I find the obsession a little tiring sometimes particularly the competitive conversations - 'hot, you don't know hot' or 'freezing? I used to walk five miles to school in the snow.' Yet here I am talking about it too.

I'm always surprised by people who don't love summer. How can you not? I want to shake them and shout a little but I know that's frowned upon in modern times. Particularly when the summer-hater is the check out chick at K-Mart. I think they'd probably call security.

I can't revel in Autumn. All that orange and brown... not my best colours.

I like Autumn when the weather's still warm. Crisp mornings and 27 degree days. And when I say crisp I mean T-shirts for school drop off at a quarter to nine.

I like Autumn when I see it in pictures on blogs from the northern hemisphere - far far from me.

Melbourne may well be the wrong place for me. But hell, I'm not moving again.

I think I might just have to stock up on the funereal Melbourne uniform of black and more black, don myself head to toe in mourning gear,  keep my head down and the heater on until the worst of it has passed.

Bring on Spring.

Late summer blast... of colour.

Colour that's courageous. Loud, clashing primary shades, neon green, orange, classic blue and yellow beachey stripes. 

It's loud, it shouts and it's happy. So happy.

Many of Melbourne's bayside beaches are lined with beach boxes. They're sought after and expensive.

I think they're fabulous.  Just like summer.  

In the pink...

A chill wind is blowing through my garden and the leaves on the silver birches are starting to turn. Oddly enough in the garden across the road the birches have completely turned already and one tree is already showing its silvery bare branches. Perhaps there is such a thing as the right side of the road.

The roses have given me so much pleasure in the past few months. The bushes in this garden are old, gnarled and woody. Our house has been rented out for fifteen years or so which probably means 15  years of neglect from tenants. Or more fairly, mistreatment by well-meaning but brown-fingered tenants like me.

I wasn't expecting much from the old dears but have been given a lot. A little dead-heading, not a lot of water and a lot of lovely soft pink blooms. Thank you summer.