Lately...

So, we have had a huge month. We moved house on Good Friday, immediately all got gastro, then a week later I hosted a huge party for my 30th birthday. What a start to the year, amiright? It has been beyond hectic and I feel like things will hopefully start slowing down soon. Or not. My mind is chockers so consider this post a brain dump (I actually hate that term because DUMP is never a good choice of word).

• Jed is sort of toilet training and is determined to do wees standing up. He is one year old and about three feet tall so it's not really working for him. Cute though.

• I got my nails done for my birthday and they are this gel stuff, very fancy. I love looking down at them and feeling like a glam grown up.

• We are all going to Bali in June and I literally own zero hot weather gear, so checked out the Myer sale today and found a pair of cute denim shorts on sale for $19 down from $80. And they were size six. I am not a size six by any means, so thanks Country Road for the positive boost.

• My car is so insanely messy right now. It is filthy and I am horrified, but clearly not enough to do anything about it.

• I am loving living here. We have seen rock wallabies and kangaroos in the front yard, a brown snake and heaps of cool little birds.

• Speaking of snakes, Jed is pretty into snakes and whenever he sees a millipede he's like 'Mum! Snake! Sssssss!' That's all very cute, but yesterday he was up near our washing line (ie literally in the bush with a stunning view of the Dandenongs) and came down and says nonchalantly, "Snake up dere mum." Is is a millipede? Or a freaking tiger snake? We will never know.

• I am doing quite a bit of writing over at the Creative Women's Circle blog. I love chatting to interesting dames about their creative practices.

• I have been getting really into meditating using the Headspace program. It's really practical and simple, and doesn't have any of the woo woo shite that some other meditation apps love.

• I want to do a bit of a reno update post, with pics of our new house, but we all know that it will be a crappy iPhone photoshoot so I'm putting it off. That said, the house is looking mighty fine and I am loving myself sick in this new space.

• Archie and I spent the day together yesterday and it was ace. We don't get much one on one time so a whole day of library visits, cafe hangs and Legoing was perfect. He is turning out to be such a cool little person.

I think that's all. Now I'm going to watch Broad City and crochet in my dressing gown, like the 30 year old nanna that I am.

xx

How to be a tightass

Because we are currently in this weird no-man's-land where we have purchased one house and paid for it, but haven't settled the old house yet, we are currently paying two mortgages (plus the Brunswick house, but that's cash positive) and holy crap, things are tight. Here's my tips on being super scringy.

Don't go to Kmart or Target. Seriously, I walk into those places looking for a pair of socks or a toddler's singlet and come out with a plant pot, dry shampoo, a new doona cover and some glitter crayons. If you're really serious, basically just avoid them completely. If your weakness is Bunnings (me) or Priceline (also me) or that cute deli with the good cheese, the same thing applies. Don't go there. Or at least make a list of all the stuff you need, then do a big shop at once. You still feel like you get to buy heaps, but it's not crap you don't need.

Track everything. I've heard this advice before and frankly, the thought of putting every expense into a spreadsheet sounds heinous. Luckily, I found Pocketbook, which links to your bank account and categorises all your expenses and incomes. So I can see specifically how much I spent on Xmas gifts last year, how much our utilities are each month and what percentage we are saving (or not).

Do a meal plan. I have a love/hate relationship with meal planning...  I like to think of myself as spontaneous and a fabulous cook who can whip up a delicious and nutritious meal from a can of chickpeas and a carrot, but alas. I'm more of a "Holy crap it's 5pm and I need to go to the supermarket... let's have eggs on toast, guys!" The truth is, meal planning stops you from buying random excess junk (see Kmart and Target, above) and only buying what you need.

Do free or cheap stuff. This is especially good when you have kids. Seriously, my kids are happy with a bit of open space and a stick. Meet your mates at a playground with a cafe, get a coffee then let them go wild (the kids, not your mates).

Don't buy crap. This can pretty much be applied to everything, but it is especially noticeable with clothes. That $10 top? It will fall apart after one wash, pick up a permanent stain and shrink to a size four. Save up until you can find something that is well made and will last a while. I have a Country Road cardigan that I've have for six years and it still looks new, but I can't say the same for anything I've bought from the el cheapo stores.

Join things. We have a family membership to both the Melbourne Zoo and the Melbourne Museum. The memberships were exxy to start with, but we go to the zoo and museum at least monthly, so it works out way cheaper. Memberships like this make good Christmas presents from grandparents too!

While you are joining things, dig out your library card. The library is ace! If you churn through heaps of books (ahem), you can reserve or hold them online, then go and pick them up in person. I always grab heaps of cookbooks when I'm there, cook nothing, then take them all back. Libraries also have heaps of kids stuff on too - story time, author events and homework clubs. Get onto it.

On power and violence

I've been following the wretched story of George Pell and Tim Minchin and the child sexual abuse by clergy in Ballarat. And Melbourne. And Sydney and small and large towns all across Australia and the world. And pondering how this ties in with bigger ideas of power and religion and abuse. Of masculinity and feminism, sexual violence, rape culture and again, power.

We seem to be at a precipice of change:  victims and survivors of long-buried abuse are taking the lead of a the generation of people who didn't grow up under the stifling social norms of the mid-century, and won't accept the what-will-people-think excuse.

But.

The US justice system told Kesha that she must continue working with her abuser.

George Pell won't come home and face the music, and (surprise surprise) a Catholic right-wing columnist defended him.

Bill Cosby. Rolf Harris. Jimmy Savile.

One in three women globally are survivors of sexual violence. This number does not count the women who have been felt up in a taxi, had their hands unwillingly shoved down a man's pants, been leered at on a tram, had their bra strap flicked or their shirt pulled down or or or...  I am yet to meet a women who hasn't experienced any of the above.

I have two boys, who will one day become men and enjoy all the privilege that comes with their gender. The best I can do is mother those boys and teach them about consent, and power, and respect.

Here is a brilliant, wrenching post by Bec Woolf about how sexual violence begins with teaching men not to rape. 

And this article from the Good Men Project on how to do that, starting from when boys are toddlers. 

Go and give your kids a cuddle.

A modern, Modernist kitchen

This is my favourite part of a renovation: choosing paint colours, testing materials, selecting hardware and tapware. Because Yarra Yarra has heritage overlays and heritage controls on certain rooms, we are a tad limited with what we can do. This is a good thing, because I reckon that creativity thrives with limitations. Having quite a strict framework makes it much easier! We want to basically replicate the existing kitchen, but with contemporary fittings, a breakfast bar and more drawers than cupboards. Past experience (this is the fourth house we've renovated, eek!) has taught me that drawers are better than cupboards, and to try to fit in as much storage as physically possible in the space. Also, put open shelving somewhere to show off your cute shit. #interiordesigninglikeaboss

^^ These are the existing colours in the house: limewashed hardwood lining boards on all the walls, dusky green window trims and polished boards.

And these are the new colours we are introducing ^^ We are painting the lining boards in the living room Dulux Rhino Grey, and echoing that with the Laminex benchtop in Midnight, a dark royal blue. The drawers and pantry will be plywood with the handmade steel handles from the original kitchen. Half of the benchtop will be stainless steel, to keep with the retro vibe. The overhead cabinets will have sliding plywood doors, in true 60s style.

^^ The only other rooms we are painting are the boy's rooms, they are pretty tiny so I want to brighten them up with a big, bright colour. Go bold or go home! Archie is keen on yellow so I'm hunting for that real retro mustardy yellow, with a beachy teal for Jed's room.

On that note, I have been slamming Pinterest pretty hard for inspiration, plus my collection of mid-century furniture and design books.

Here are some faves... click through for sources:

How to handle open for inspections when you have kids

 

The auction for our Coburg house is tomorrow. Fingers crossed, y'all, that some megazillionaire comes up and decides to pay a mint for it. Chances are not likely, but I'm staying positive. This is the second house we've sold at auction (we auctioned the Northcote house  and NO ONE BID. Stressful much.), so we have pretty limited experience. We've bought three at auction but they were total dumps - with the exception of Yarra Yarra - so it was a whole other ball game as there were no pretensions about the value of the properties.

That said, I have quite a bit of experience with setting up a house for rental inspections, open for inspections, photoshoots and whatnot. Adding kids to the mix adds a new level of angst to the new process because no potential buyer wants to see a dirty nappy under the couch or unknown smears on the kitchen walls. Also kids = STUFF. There is plenty of other info online about adding value and prepping your house (here, here and here), but here's my top advice cobbled together from the last six weeks of OFIs + watching the Block.

Do one huge clean, then maintain.

We have found it easier to do a humungous deep clean before the first opening, then attempt to maintain that level for the whole campaign. Lee and I both set aside a Saturday morning and did stuff we don't usually do, like clean the skirtings and lights, wipe down walls, wash the windows and sweep the random piles of leaves out from behind the bins. Once that's done, it's much easier to give everything a quick wipe or sweep before each opening.

Get outta the house early.

If you can, try to get out of the house well before the opening. We gave our agent a key so we never have to meet him here before the openings. The main reason is that getting two kids out of the house can be a mission, and you don't want to hold up the opening because someone has lost a shoe or put a cheese stick in the toilet.

Pay attention to the garden and front door.

This a real estate mantra: first impressions count, curb appeal, etc etc. I think it totally makes a difference if you make the entrance and front path area look extra decent, though. Shake out your doormat, yank out the weeds and put a plant next to the front door. Easy.

Don't have a stinky house.

I listened to something the other day about the inventors of Febreze, the cleaning spray that dissolves bad smells. Apparently they thought it would be super-popular but the sales were really low and they didn't know why. They did some more research and realized that people get so used to gross smells that they don't think they have a problem. I have this secret fear that my house smells bad and I am so used to it that I can't tell, so I make sure to take out the bins, clean the toilets and light a magnificent candle before the opening. I sometimes spray lavender oil around, especially if Jed has had a blueberry nappy explosion recently.

Get rid of stuff.

Do a humungous declutter. Pack away anything that is too personal, too weird or too ugly. Make sure your indoor plants don't look too dead, try and hide any annoying cables and leave plenty of open space and clear surfaces. This might mean that your cupboards are bulging, but most people won't open the cupboards. And if they do, they will be punished by the avalanche of random clutter that falls upon them.

Be prepared for random questions.

Things that people have asked our real estate agent about include questions about nearby building developments, the wall colour, whether the deck and pergola have council permits and if the pizza oven is a fixture (because an oven made from 300+ bricks is pretty portable, right?). You will get weird questions. Be prepared for them.

By the time you get to the opening for inspections, it's usually too late to do any big painting or landscaping stuff. The most important thing is that your house looks clean, tidy and appealing. And doesn't smell weird. Good luck!

Demolishing a Boyd

Most people spend their Wednesday nights demolishing the ceiling of their new house, right? Approximately 40 minutes after we picked up the keys from the real estate agent, we did a quick inspection then yanked off a Cane-ite ceiling tile. A bug puff of fibreglass insulation mixed with possum poo and fifty-odd years of scum came crashing down. We weren't planning on doing quite so much demolition last night but got slightly carried away. I was wearing sandals and skinny jeans which were not conducive to being covered in layers of itchy fibreglass and softboard splinters, but hey. Safety first, kids.

Because each ceiling tile is a slightly different shape, we had to measure them and draw a grid so we can replicate the exact same size with the new tiles. I love the Modernist attention to detail - each room has between four and five rows of tiles, with no weird short bits at the sides because they have all been laid out on a grid. Slightly OCD, yes, but definitely not something you would see in a cookie-cutter suburban development today.

Anyway, we donned our dusk masks, turned on Johnny Cash and ripped out the ceiling in the living room, dining room and half of the kitchen ceiling. We were on a roll, so started smashing out the old kitchen too. God, it is so gorgeous, but in serious need of an update. We are aiming to get the big, messy jobs done before we actually move in March. So that's demolishing, insulating, wiring and replacing the ceiling, replacing the kitchen, sanding and polishing the floors and plastering the ceiling in the bedrooms and bathrooms. Totally doable for two people in about six weekends, right? Right.

On parenting challenges

These past few weeks, my gorgeous, funny, kind three-year-old has been replaced by a grumpy, shouty monster child. There is a lot going on: he's started kinder two days per week, we are getting ready to move (again), Lee and I are back at work after the holidays. Our little family feels a bit like we are in limbo - our Coburg house is open for inspection but we spend weekends building the kitchen and scheming plans for Yarra Yarra, the boys kinder and swimming lessons are in Warrandyte but all our friends are still in Coburg and Brunswick. All the disequilibrium must be rubbing off on my sensitive little dude, because oh boy is he playing up. He is not one to have big temper tantrums (except for one time at the Melbourne Zoo gift shop when I literally had to promise him that Santa would bring the seaplane toy he fell in love with (PS Santa delivered the goods)), but he throws things at me, runs away or collapses onto the floor giving me 1001 reasons why he doesn't need to have a shower, or put his shoes on, or immediately build a firetruck out of a cardboard box just as he's getting his jammies on for bed.

I am a pretty relaxed parent and encourage lots of playing outside, getting messy and taking risks. My kids use knives to chop food, can drill holes with an electric drill and (attempt to) skateboard on their own. I figure that taking risks now, when the stakes are pretty low, will minimise the risk taking when they are teenagers and the stakes are much higher.

We have tried time outs and reward charts but frankly, they don't work for my kids and led to a ridiculous bargaining system that Archie quickly outsmarted. I let them jump on the bed and run around screeching like banshees and play cricket in the hallway. My theory is that with two parents with 'anxious tendencies' (read: full blown anxiety disorders), my best tactic for protecting my kids' mental health is to encourage them to find their voices and strengths early so they are confident enough in themselves to be resilient in the face of anything the world throws at them. Some of our family rules posted on the pantry door are "We are loud", "We can talk about hard things" and "We are kind to each other and to ourselves" along with the usual no hitting, no punching, no being mean.

My favourite book about parenting (and business, and marriage, and anything involving humans dealing with other humans) is How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen so Kids Will  Talk by Faber and Mazlish. The emotion-based philosophy is really coming into its own for my moody kindergartener. When he is cross, even when he is trying to hit me, I hug him tight and give a name to his feelings. When he is sad, we talk about things that might make him feel better. I try hard to take him seriously and set firm boundaries which he constantly comes crashing up against. I read once that setting loving boundaries as a child helps encourage self-discipline as an adult. And after all, he will be an adult for a lot longer than he is a child. I need to remind myself that he is still tiny, still learning and that his big emotions are terrifying, to me and to him.

And now I'm going to go kiss his sweaty little sleeping head and hope that tomorrow is calmer

Recent readings: colonials, Hollywood and Zadie

I have an unofficial goal to read at least 52 books this year. I've already read five since Christmas, so am well and truly on track. I'm trying to focus on female writers, mostly because, um, I am one. One of the things that helps me read so much is picking up my Kindle or a book instead of picking up my phone to look at pointless Facebook sh*t, especially when the kids are around. I figure it is better for them to be ignored because their mum is reading a book than if she is doing a Buzzfeed quiz on 'Which Kardashian Are You?', right?

Here are a couple of recent reads...

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar

This was a dark, bittersweet read about a colonial family in South Australia. The most poignant parts were the interactions with the dwindling Aborigine community and the family dynamics. Poetic and evocative prose.

Lucky Us by Amy Bloom

Easy to read, eccentric story about two sisters who move from Ohio to Hollywood in the 40s, with their wayward father, a stolen adopted kid and a Spanish makeup artist.

Zadie Smith's On Beauty

I really loved this. Some of Zadie Smith's stuff can be a bit much, but loved the characters and the life injected into this novel. The descriptions of academia and families and growing up are spot on.

Up next, I'm burning through last year's Miles Franklin winner The Eye of the Sheep by Sophie Laguna, Clutterfree with Kids by Joshua Becker and Marie Kondo's new book Spark Joy.

On bravery

I make new year's resolutions every year. And every year I fail. I actually recently found a list of goals for 2015 and guess how many actually happened? Zero. They were things like 'Give up carbs' and 'Run 3 x week and Pilates 2 x week' and 'Blog 3 x weekly'. Ain't nobody got time for that, especially not a mum of two little boys with a business, a renovation and a Netflix addiction. Clearly, something is really wrong with my goals. This year, after completing the workbook for The Resolution Project (and ending up in happy-ish tears) I have decided on two guiding affirmations, rather than strict but totally unachievable goals. They are...

Be brave,

and

I can do hard things.

A lot of the stuff that I don't do but want to (write more, take bigger risks, finally get more into roller derby, tackle my weird food shit) is based on a fear of failure, rejection and pain. By telling myself to be brave and that I can do hard things, it will help shift the day-to-day decisions I make about facing the hard stuff.

In light of this, I am planning on implementing a few strategies. This year is the Year of Hard But Rewarding Things - writing more, both here and elsewhere; weekly roller derby training; and the hardest one - no dieting. Wish me luck.

To being brave and doing hard shit!

xx

2015 in review

This is technically my last day in the office for the year (which is not to say that I don't have stacks of work still to do) but from next week, it is all about cooking, wrapping, shopping and eating. Merry Christmas, baby!

The highlights:

Renting out our Brunswick house to my best friend.

Jethro turned one, started walking and developed his ridiculously feisty ratbag personality.

I did more freelance writing on all sorts of interesting topics.

I started running, then stopped, then started again, then gave up on being a 'good' runner and just embraced my sweaty, beetroot-faced style.

I got back into reading books and smashed through some epic reads.

Our Brunswick house was photographed for the Herald Sun.

I met some fantastic ladies through the podcast I co-host, The New Normal.

I dyed my hair pastel pink!

The lowlights:

We encountered some serious bedtime dramas with Archie for a few months, until I just let it go and enjoyed the snuggles.

My mum and grandma have been besieged with scary health dramas.

We moved house. Again.

We had no bathroom for a week thanks to our previous tenants and had a messy court situation to get recompensed.

Most embarrassing:

Archie dacked me (pants and undies to my ankles) in a busy cafe. #cry

Most spontaneous:

We bought another house!

Most improved:

Lee has been home a lot more and working less, thanks to our excellent awesome workshop manager.

It seems that 2015 was a hard one for lots of people, but when I look back over the past 12 months heaps of awesome stuff has happened. Here's to a happy, renovation-filled 2016.

Yarra Yarra

I'm just going to ignore the fact that I haven't written anything here in, oh, FOUR MONTHS and proceed onwards...

On Saturday we bought a new house. Not just any house (apparently fourth time's a charm?), but a Robin Boyd-designed home - the Arnold house, named after Kelson and Ann Arnold who commissioned the house in 1963. We purchased it directly from the Arnold's kids after Ann's death in April this year.

The first house I ever lived in is about 200 metres up the road. It feels a bit like coming home and a bit like going backwards, but I know first hand that Warrandyte is an excellent place to grow up. We can see the river from every room in the house (besides the poky little bathrooms), have plenty of land for my grand plans of chickens and beehives and a robust vegie garden and a pizza oven and a mountain bike track, and are only a short walk from the bakery, the river and the playground. It is a two-minute drive or 15-minute walk from my parent's place.

To be honest, we didn't buy it because it is a Boyd. We bought it for the above reasons, but we can appreciate the history and significance of the home. People have done their PHDs on this house! It is magnificent. True, it needs heaps of work (No insulation anywhere! No storage in the bathrooms! No laundry!) buy god knows we love a project.

Above you can see some original photos of the house, and below are ones from the real estate agent of what it looks like today.

The first thing to do is insulate the ceiling, as there in nothing in there at all. As soon as we get access, we will rip down the Cane-ite ceiling tiles, shove heaps on insulation in and add a few downlights, then replace with new softboard tiles in exactly the same way. The house is full of hard surfaces, so while using MDF would be cheaper, softboard will absorb sound too.

We are planning on replicating and echoing Boyd's design as much as possible, especially in the kitchen and garden, whilst improving the functionality of the house.

I'm feeling in limbo at the moment... my mind has already moved house, but we still have to go through the process of tidying up our Coburg house and preparing it for auction in mid-February. The next six months are big for our little family - moving a house, selling a house, renovating a house, beginning childcare for Jed and kinder for Archie, more work hours for me (finally!) and a big phase of growth for the business. Fun times ahead!

x

The new New Normal

It's been, like, three weeks since I wrote anything here, but I just haven't been feeling it. After moving house, dealing with a succession of colds and gastro and snot, and a teething toddler, there hasn't been a lot of time to sit and write. At work, we are getting ready for a big photoshoot of our new range in mid-September, before our first Finders Keepers stand in the first weekend in October. We are launching a few new additions to our kid's range there. We've designed everything, but have only actually built about 30% of the products yet, so best get cracking!

I've been listening to heaps of podcasts lately as I've been unpacking and dealing with sick kids. God, I love podcasts. I can whack one on and half-listen to it while the kids are playing or I'm getting dinner or schlepping the kids around somewhere.

If you don't already know, my friend Tess McCabe and I have our own podcast called The New Normal. I realised that I haven't actually written about it much here, which is weird. It's heaps of fun to do. We basically chat to all sorts of awesome ladies (and a couple of men) about parenting, being creative, running businesses and all the chaos that ensues. We have covered big, scary painful topics like miscarriage, premature birth, depression and a partner having an aneurysm (you'll need tissues for that one), chats with women who run successful businesses, creative ladies of all disciplines, mums of heaps of kids and our poor, ravaged pelvic floors. It's really shaped how I parent and how I view the whole messy business of motherhood, and more broadly than that, the whole human experience.

In a time when women are yanking our fellow ladies down and criticising each other to the nth degree, I love that we have created a little community of mums who support, share and listen.

We've just launched a new website here.

Have a look and a listen!

xx

Recent readings - Winter edition

So, due to the FREEZING cold weather and our under-heated house, I have been going to bed early (sometimes as soon as the boys are in bed!) with a hot water bottle and my brand new Kindle. Here are a few books I've read in the past couple of weeks... Cosmo Cosmolino by Helen Garner.  I LOVE Garner's work. Her writing is so spare and eloquent, tightly edited and carefully woven. This book, however, was MUCH more purple and flowery than anything else of hers I have read. Still awesome, but definitely not the Helen Garner I know and love. It's probably my least favourite of her books, but still an excellent read.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by Ryan Stradal. I have about 100 pages of this to go and have really enjoyed it so far. The story focusses on a girl who was born to foodie parents, and she grows up to be a culinary whiz. The story is peppered with recipes and homages to perfect tomatoes and corn. Definitely one to read if you want some cooking inspiration!

Dietland by Sarai Walker covers a lot of territory: feminism, the (evil) diet industry, body image, women's magazines, self care... all wrapped up in a rollicking narrative. A really easy read.

Why French Children Don't Talk Back by Catherine Crawford. I've read a heap of French parenting books, or American books about how the French apparently parent much better than the rest of the world, and they are all interesting and eye-opening reads. This one in particular focusses on how the French aim to raise good citizens and well-adjusted adults who can hold interesting conversations, have decent manners and respect their family. All noble goals! I don't think I parent my kids in any particular way (I try and focus on lots of outside time, roughhousing, talking about everything, having manners and trying new things) but this book gave me lots of food for thought.

And online...

Having babies makes you better at work. Amen!

Hairstylists in the delivery room? Not for me, but hey, whatever makes you feel good!

This has done the rounds already, but it really resonated with me.

I want to print this out and wallpaper my house with it. I was nodding along the whole time.

Have a good week

xx

Apps I've Known and Loved

I am pretty addicted to my iPhone, but aren't we all? I regularly have freakouts that smartphones are the cigarettes of our generation and we will be looking back in 40 years, after all our brains are turned to mush and all our kids have ADHD and think WHY DIDN"T WE DO SOMETHING but then we will move onto something else, because our attention spans will be 0.05 seconds long (I blame Buzzfeed).

Anyway, I obviously am not too concerned because my phone is basically a lifeline between my and the outside world, not to mention my main way of keeping an eye on the business. I LOVE finding new apps that make my life easier or at least slightly less chaotic, and love peering at other people's home screens to see what they use.

So, onwards to the apps.

Any.Do

This is quite literally my life, in list format. It is a to do list app, and you can divide it by Today, Tomorrow, Upcoming and Someday. The tasks automatically shift forwards, and you can also sort it by folders. The app syncs with a desktop app, a web app and Chrome extension too. The best bit? It calculates how many total items you have completed. I am up to 4,609 *fistpump* I recently got Lee addicted too and it has really helped streamline our work.

Pocket

I read lots of different things online, and with the Pocket Chrome extension I can save longer articles to my Pocket account to read later. This kind of app is pretty common (instapaper etc) but the BEST part about this particular one is that my Kobo ereader has a Pocket extension so I can read my saved articles on my ereader, offline. Gold.

Podcast

This is the standard iTunes podcast app. I listen to quite a few podcasts, (*cough* shoutout The New Normal *cough*) as I can pop one on while hanging around the house with the kids, folding washing at night, or driving somewhere. I've also got Stitcher and Podbean on my phone, but I mostly listen via Podcasts.

Xero

Lets me do our business bookkeeping from my phone. Amazing and life changing.

Latergramme

Awesome tool for scheduling Instagram posts in advance. I tee up a few at a time for Gratton and for The New Normal, then just post them when I need too. A big time-saver, especially as Instagram won't let you use more than one account at a time.

Feedly

This is where I read blogs. I only try and keep my list to about 20 blogs at a time, and I usually just whizz through it a couple of times a week and save anything that looks good to Pocket (see above) for reading later on.

Instagram (obvs), Gmail, Pinterest, the Notes app ( I currently have lists of books to read, music to find, things to cook, and a million weird notes to myself that make no sense), the ABC news app and Google Maps, as I am extremely directionally challenged.

xx

Our house is a J-grade celebrity

  Our house was in the Herald Sun a couple of weekends ago (actually the same weekend we moved OUT of the house). You can read more about the photoshoot here, but they only used about a quarter of the photos that they took. The spread looks great, although I sound like a bit of a wanker in some of the interview questions. (How do you chill out? Me: We're always working! #nottrue I didn't want to confess that I chill out by eating snacks in bed at 7.30pm while reading feminist literature). There's some gorgeous photos of the kids, and all the furniture looks ace which was kind of the point.

The teacher at Archie's Gymbaroo class commented on it on Wednesday #awkward so I am feeling like a very, very, very minor celebrity this week.

Have a look!

Organisation is overrated, AKA how to move house with kids

We have moved house five times in the past five years, and are due to complete our sixth move this weekend. This will be Archie's fourth move in his short life. I like to think that I have gotten moving house down to a fine art, but that would be like saying I had basic cooking skills, or blowdrying my hair, or parenting, down to a fine art. NO WAY, JOSÉ! Or as Archie says, NO WAY, HOSIE!

I have minimalist tendencies so we don't actually have that much, considering we are a family of four. Since reading Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, (weirdest/most awesome book ever) I did a huge purge and got rid of heaps of extra crap. I am pretty strict about toy and clothing accumulation, but don't set limits on kid's books, plants, or art, so we have a lot of those. However, when you pile all your stuff into one room, which is what we are in the process of doing, HOLY CRAP there is a lot of stuff.

We hired these plastic moving boxes which are awesome. They all stack up on top of one another, are waterproof, light-weight and hold heaps of stuff. They drop them off a couple of weeks before your move and pick them up from the new house a week after you move in. So much easier than cardboard! I'm recommending them to everyone.

So, my tips for moving with kids...

1. Get rid of the kids. At least for the actual moving day, you want to outsource your kids to someone else. Give them to a doting grandma, friend or random stranger, if that's your jam.

2. Make it a game. After too many games of Let's Empty the Boxes Mummy Just Packed, I gave in and gave them a couple of boxes to make cubbyhouses out of, on the condition that they weren't allowed to unpack anything else or I would tape them to a wall with an industrial-sized tape gun.

3. Make them help you. Once I gave up on the idea of putting everything neatly into the boxes, I just let Archie see how many things he could stuff in each box. Thus, some boxes are labelled "Lego, toaster, Lee's socks, cookbooks" which will make for interesting unpacking at the other end, but at least I got Archie working for me.

4. Let them play with Christmas decorations. You know what kids love? Christmas. And you know what they love even more? Playing with all the stored Christmas stuff when it's July and Mummy is highly-stung, wearing her pyjamas at 3pm and stalking the house with a labelmaker and a tape gun while attempting to dismantle a king-sized bed on her own. It's Christmas in July, kids!

5. Turn your rage into excitement. When you feel a surge of anxiety at the thought of your to-do list (update house insurance! redirect the mail! tell the neighbours! clean the freaking skirting boards!), try and reframe your rage into feeling excited about the move. I am genuinely looking forward to getting into the new house, unpacking all our stuff and making the house feel like ours again. Try to hold onto that feeling when you are daunted by the sheer amount of effort required to move a household.

x

Me, elsewhere: How to work from home with kids

On Mondays and Tuesdays, I work from home with Jed underfoot. I also manage to get quite a bit of work done from home with both kids around, too. It is bloody hard work, and I frequently feel like I am doing nothing right, but it is what works for our family at the moment. There has been a few times where I've hidden in the laundry (with two noisy boys banging on the door) to call a client or let Archie watch heaps of TV while I write an article, but we are continually getting better. I wrote an article on this very topic for the Creative Women's Circle blog.

The ‘juggle’ of working motherhood has become a bit of a cliché, but when your days involve filling sippy cups while simultaneously emailing clients on your phone and trying to stop a baby chewing through your laptop cord, it certainly does feel like a circus.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my husband and I run a handmade furniture business together, so we use a combination of grandparents, crèche and flexible work hours to care for our two young sons. This works well for us at the moment, but the wheels often fall off and I regularly find myself needing to work from home while the kids are around. It can be a challenge – there’s been plenty of of nappy changes on meeting room floors and client calls while playing Lego, but I’ve managed to come up with a mish-mash of solutions that work for our family, and may work for yours too!

Read the rest!

Recent readings, and tips on how to read more

^^ These are the books I keep on my desk. Woodworking, some business-y stuff, design references and a random book about vernacular architecture.

It's been a good week on my bedside table. A bit of fiction, a bit of non-fiction, an anti-dieting book and a book basically written about my husband.

First up was Craft for the Soul by Pip Lincolne. LOVED IT. It's like a conversation with a chatty friend about how to be slightly more awesome, mostly involving tea and blankets and reading. I have a few of Pip's craft books and love her writing style, so was equally happy to read her first 'proper' non-crafty book.

I also just read Pretty Honest by UK beauty columnist Sali Hughes. I actually bought it accidentally, thinking it was another book, but I was surprised at how much I like it. It felt a bit like reading a grown-up version of the beauty pages of Cosmo. Lots of advice about skincare (my secret obsession), lipstick, doing your hair and girly stuff like that.

And last week, I read Anna Quindlen's Every Last One. Wow. There is a huge plot twist about halfway through which totally threw me. A very readable book. And god, I miss reading fiction. A good, rollicking story is like a holiday from your own brain.

Right now, I'm enjoying Quiet by Susan Cain. It's billed as a book about "the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking". As I am married to someone who is super introverted and gets easily overwhelmed by groups of people and social situations, it has been a bit of an eye-opener so far. Again, very readable and interesting.

And up next, Just Kids by Patti Smith. I think I am the last person on the planet to read this, despite it being recommended to me eleventy-billion times. I don't always love memoirs, especially ones by rock stars, but her prose is pretty freaking amazing, so I'm looking forward to it.

Also, if you are wondering how I get through a few books each week, despite having two young kids and a business and a husband, here is my advice:

1. Don't watch TV. It is all crap and will rot your brain. However, I will make exceptions for Girls, Orange is the New Black, anything by Louis Theroux and the very occasional movie.

2. Go to bed earlier. I am in bed at 9pm at the latest, which gives me at least an hour of reading time.

3. Keep a list of books. I have a list on my phone of books I want to read, and I make an effort to download or buy them so I always have stuff to read. I get lots of book recommendations through friends, the Kobo book-recommender thing (see below) and from podcasts like Chat 10 Looks 3.

4. Get an e-reader. Unless it's a particularly gorgeous book or a book that a friend has written, I read pretty much everything on my Kobo. I can buy books straight off the Kobo too, and have found lots of new authors that way. It also saves space, paper, energy and all that too.

xx

If not dieting, then what? AKA The one where I overshare about my food issues

I have just started a book called If not dieting, then what? by Dr Rick Kausman. I randomly picked it up in Brunswick Savers because the title is kind of catchy, and seriously, I think this book will changed my life.

Since I was about 13, I have been on countless diets. Weight Watchers (twice), Atkins (constipation!), gluten-free (gross), vegetarian (oh hell no), vegan (for about 3 hours until I realised I couldn't eat cheese, chocolate or bacon #veganfail), paleo (missed bread too much), juice fasts (missed chewing too much), raw foodism (WTF) the Michelle Bridges one (ain't nobody got time to exercise for an hour a day), the I Quit Sugar one (Sarah Fucking Wilson) and some bizarre thing where I ate a lot of cottage cheese and spring onions and had to have monthly blood tests... and the weird thing is that besides my student exchange to France in Year 11 where I put on 12 kilos due to basically eating cheese and butter for several months, I have hovered somewhere between 65 and 70kg since I was about 17. For a 175cm woman who has had two kids, I am not overweight. Rationally, I know this. I even mostly like my body - it has made two incredible humans and allows me to do all sorts of cool things.

I am a rampant feminist and get such rage when I see magazine covers and advertisements that are aimed at making women feel like shit. I know that weight is just a number and that scales should be banned. I know that exercise and eating well should be about feeling good and being healthy, not being 'bikini ready' - whatever the hell that even means.

I've always had this feeling that if I just found the right diet, the right way of eating, then I would feel better. I would be able to calmly eat dessert without spiralling into a pit of guilt. I wouldn't automatically calculate calories in my head when assessing a menu. I'd be able to enjoy my food more and be disciplined and resolute and glowy. After getting halfway through the first chapter of this book, I had a huge light bulb moment. It isn't food or fat or diets that are the problem. It is my relationship with food, and eating more broadly.

I kind of had an inkling of this a few years ago when I went to see a nutritionist who specialised in eating disorders and appropriate eating habits. I ended up in tears in the first session and was so affected by the experience that I never went back. It brought up all my feelings about food and I realised just how deep this stuff goes.

Anyway, I've only read the first chapter so I'm sure there are many more truthbombs to come. There are loads of resources about mindful and positive eating on the If not dieting website.

Here's an article by Dr Rick about the realities of weight loss. Mind blowing stuff.

And another one about how a healthy relationship with eating is more complex than just ditching the diet.

I know this is a pretty personal post, I just needed to write it out. And god knows I've shared everything else on here, so why not my weird eating angst ?!

xx

Fluffing a cactus: what it's like to have your house photographed for the newspaper

Last Wednesday our house was photographed for the Herald Sun's Home magazine. I don't actually read that newspaper, but I think it will be in their interior design section. We made sure all our handmade furniture was in prime position, and I tried to display all the artworks and books my creative friends have made or written!

The shoot took the better part of a morning, and was pretty fun! I've been on shoots like this before, but never in my own home. Having it on a Wednesday was actually perfect timing as Archie is at creche on Monday and Tuesdays, so I cleaned like a maniac and kept the place relatively tidy.

The photographer Chris Groenhout was lovely and made the boys laugh. When Archie smiles for photos he does a terrifying grimace, so we had to work hard to get some natural shots. Jed ate about seven mandarins as we tried to get a shot of us all looking natural in the kitchen. At one point, I had to pretend to 'fluff' a cactus in a pot while Lee gazed off broodingly into the distance.

A journalist interviewed us about our house, our renovations, our business and all that stuff. It was actually really good to stop and answer those sorts of questions - we don't often have time to sit down and think about the Big Picture stuff, like why we renovate houses, where the business is headed, why we make furniture.

I took the opportunity of having a clean house to take some of my own photos...

              

And in the interest of keeping it real, this is what my house usually looks like...

           

The story will come out on July 18th. Keep an eye out!

xx