gardening hack

we live on top of a hill i like to call 'mount doom'.

it's solid clay, it's almost always windier than the rest of the suburb, and i struggle to learn how to garden here.

five years ago my lovely and talented sister taught me a bit about gardening, and she helped us lay some pavers down.  the carpet thyme hasn't spread between the pavers as we'd hoped, but it slowly moves... sadly not as fast as the clover and other weeds.

i found a solution: take broken/ugly garden pots or kitchen plates, give your kids some tools, and permission to smash, and voila! you can have some colourful fillers inbetween the pavers while the plants take their sweet time to grow.  they still blow around or away in really powerful wind, but i'm not losing nearly as much soil. and it looks purdy!

washi tape

umm. i think i have a little bit of a problem.

is there such a thing as too much washi tape??

surely not.

upcycle of dresser drawers for the 3yo

i saw these cute yellow/white drawers in 'your home & garden' magazine in about february this year. i couldn't get the idea out of my head.

fast-forward to october and i came across some dresser drawers just begging to be spruced up for my almost-4-year-old son (cue panic - he's my youngest!). took said child to op shop to see if he liked: he loved making funny faces in the mirror, they'd been reduced to $40, so i bought them.

hurried searching for ideas and tips on how to successfully paint something like this, bought some test pots, mini rollers, spray paint, bought/made stencils, spent small fortune on new wooden drawer pull knobs, and set to it.

the 3yo helped too. he vacuumed drawers, rolled paint, made more funny faces in the mirror.

i don't remember ever being so quick in actually doing a makeover on anything!

this went up on instagram ...

the response from friends and randoms on instagram and facebook was overwhelmingly lovely. and then yhg got in touch to say how much they loved it! what a blessing.

best of all though: the 3yo loves it and takes great care of the drawers and what they hold. love that kid. they're a manageable height for him to be totally independant which fits with a montessori book i have been skim-reading - at times it's like reading about him.



goshorty is on instagram here.

radio silence over

the radio silence is over.

i didn't feel there was much worth blogging about. but then realising that things get lost on social media sites like facebook and twitter, i thought it'd be nice to come back here.

it's almost advent ... "prepare ye the way of the Lord" ... so I've been clearing out a grocery-bag sized lot of things from our home each day for three weeks so far in an effort to live with less.

i am reading joshua becker, 100 things challenges, kim john payne, and more to inspire me to downsize, declutter and live with less.  

i have spent time with wonderful women who embrace life, seasons, gifts, creating, children, laughter. i feel ready to start recording my creations here again for myself, and for anyone else who stumbles across them.

i'm not starting over. just evolving.