OMGOODNESS....WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOME!!!!

 It's not really appropriate for me to share every single detail here online but if I could tell you how it all came to be, I'm sure you would be as amazed as we are, as to how this all unfolded.

Miraculous is how I would describe it.

Truly miraculous.

The short version is this....

We've been renting for our whole married life and have been thankful for a lovely roof over our head. It has been a blessing from Yah to be in this same house for 8 years and several other lovely houses before that during our 11 years of marriage. We never thought we would be able to buy, nor was it right for us to do so before this, but Yah has made a way and we are truly thankful and really do marvel at the work of His hands!

What an incredible God to provide for his children; whether that be in a rental home or in one like the one we have just purchased. It's not a 'better' season of our life just because we now 'own' a home, rather we think of it just as a new season!

And we are so excited to have this new journey together as a family.

Six weeks ago today, we looked through this home in a rural town that we have grown very fond of. Six weeks to the day later, the contracts have been exchanged, the final inspection done, the house has reached settlement and the keys are in our hands!!!!

{I won't mention the name of the town (for annonymity's sake) but suffice to say, it is lovely with rolling hills and pastures but also has alot of shops and all the ammenities that we had been looking for. Most importantly, we prayed about where we should live and this is DEFINITELY the place that we feel Yah is leading us to. It is the place that we have peace in. Although we will be sad to leave our town for many reasons, we also are looking forward to calling our new one 'home'.}

We can't believe how quickly it has all happened.
Our family and friends have prayed for us, been excited with us, celebrated with us, held their breath with us, fed us, supported and encouraged us during this time and for that we are TRULY THANKFUL.

They know how precious they are to us. We won't forget all the kind words, the advice or the way people have shared in our joy with us. It has meant so much to us all!

{We popped open some sparkling non-alcoholic wine to have with the kids to celebrate on the night that the contracts were exchanged}

{Our gorgeous next door neighbours who have been SO helpful always but especially during this time brought around a handful of balloons with thoughtful messages like this one plus party popper streamers and blowhorns for us all to celebrate on that same night. We will miss A so much when we move!}

{A little later that week, Heiko and Lori who had been walking the whole journey with us in prayer, came around to spend time together and bought some special wine all the way from Israel for us to share together!}

{Along with Hekio and Lori, so many family members and friends have lovingly supported us during this time. All their prayers and words of encouragement have blessed us so much!}

{When we went to look at this house (and many others!) Channi and Jono kindly allowed our kiddos to play at theirs for the day. All the kids had a wonderful time and their kind hospitality has been very much appreciated}

Anyway, without any further ado, here are some shots of our little home!

There is A LOT to do to it; floors stripped, walls to be painted, decks to be mended, wardrobes to be refitted BUT that's what we've always wanted!! It's an opportunity to be able to fix up, design and renovate a home all in our own way!

{Posing for the obligatory 'sold' photo! This shot was taken there last week when we travelled out to do the final inspection of the property before settlement. Sometime later we will change the colour of the house from salmon+blue to probably cream with white and black highlights} 

{Our agent handing over the keys to our fam!}

{Our agent very kindly hand delivered this lovely gift basket to congratulate us! He put in chocolates and special cheeses, crackers, semi dried tomatoes and pates and lovely little gifts for the kids too - how nice!}

{And just to prove I was there too, here's me eating lunch with the kiddos for our first meal in the new house - low salicylate rice boxes I'd made and packed this morning}

{The hallway + all the walls will be white. Can you picture an old school chandelier here? I can! And the floors here will have the lino stripped up and will be painted black then sealed}

{The kitchen will be staying put for the time being but down the track we would like to replace it and knock out the whole wall on the right hand side, install a breakfast bar there and open it up into an open-plan kitchen+dining area - you can see the wall in the pic below next to where Stass is...}

{Behind Stass in this pic is the dining room big enough to fit our 12 seater table - yay!! So glad because we use our table so often for celebrations and hope to still be able to even in the new place}

{The deck that needs some repair. Down the track we think we'd like to have the deck rebuilt with a cover and the kitchen windows which are near it might be bifolds that open out for serving and unite the indoors and the outdoors even more!}

{The bathroom which will get some paint-loving soon. Another plan down the track for us is to remodel the bathroom so it is one open and light room rather than a 3-way. Again, it's all just plans at the moment and may never happen and that's ok! How cute are the little shutters that open into the laundry linen press for dirty washing down the chute and the top shutters to get fresh towels from!}

{Looking from the lounge room into the learning room area. I really like the built in cupboards there which will house all our baskets, books, games and projects for display. Again, white walls and shabby-chic paint for the cupboards here!}

{One of the front rooms has already had carpet ripped up. The wallpaper will be stripped back, shutters installed, gyprock attached and some electrical work done for lighting I think too} 

{My view from the kitchen sink looking into the backyard and on the right hand side is a big shed, chicken coup and vegie garden area already set aside by the previous owners}

I will share the renovation journey for my own records as we travel this new path!
Anyway, have been SO excited about it and wanted to post it here too :)
So there you go.
More to come soon!

Around our Nest Lately...

 

 

 

 

 

I love being here with my fam in this season of our life...no matter how crazy life can sometimes get!

What's been happening around your place lately?

More to come soon.
Love,

Around at Our Place...

The kids have all been making an extra effort with helping clean the kitchen each night.



They have what we call regular 'meal chores'. One person sets placemats, one sets cutlery, one gets and fills up everyone's drink bottles. At the end of each meal, they take their plate to the sink, rinse it and stack it in the dishwasher. They are the regular things they do each meal.
But, because I'm so pregnant they have wanted to pitch in and help out with doing the extra things like washing the pots, drying things in the rack, putting food into bowls with cling wrap over them and last night Liji got out the vinegar spary and wiped down the whole bench (which is a big job) - all jobs that I usually do. They made me and Brett wait in the loungeroom with Zippi and called us out to show us the 'surprise' (aka clean kitchen).
These probably seem like small things to other people but to us, this is HUGE!
To us, this is our children saying:
 we love being apart of this family!
we know that you are very pregnant mum and we want to help out!
we want to bless you!
This shows empathy and kindness and compassion on their behalf which is no small feat for a 6,7 and 9 year old really.

Yesterday, our family visited several nurseries.
We bought some squash, some vietnamese mint and some spouts.

You may recall a little while ago I bought AN ALDI YOGHURT MAKER.

Hmmm...let's just say it didn't work.

The glass jars though that came with it are MEGA cool and I'll be using them for some gifts I have planned. And the base and lid? Well we thought they'd be good to grow some sprouts in!

 

Popping some layers of wet paper towel down in the base and then pouring out the sprouts...

 

After that we added some more wet paper towel on top and put the lid on.
Then off to a dark cupboard for a couple of days.
Got to make sure the paper towels stay nice and moist!
We are all keen to see how they grow :)

No photo for this one but yesterday we went out for lunch and enjoyed a lovely family meal together...possibly our last one like that before bubba arrives!

This morning, we had yummy freshly rolled oats for brekky...

Zip loves helping to pour the small bowl of oats into the pot...

And she's learnt two things recently by herself:
1. how to open all the internal doors in our house!
2. how to pour out milk!

Found some pre-cut masks up at KMart yesterday.
The kids begged us to get some since just that morning they'd been trying to design some themselves.
When we got home they got stuck into decorating them...

You probably can't really tell from this pic but the chicken run has been extended which is great.
One of our chookies Magpie has a bad case of lice. This is our first encounter with it.
Brett has dusted them all and has bought a wormwood plant.

Anyone else got any tips on how to get rid of chook lice? Ideas GREATLY appreciated! Thanks :)

Well many blessings to you and yours.

More to come another time.

Love,

The week that was...

After visiting the local Grower's Market last weekend and picking up some herbs, we decided it was time to move the herb garden. We had been reading up more on herbs and how to care for them here where it gets quite cold. The spot we'd been previously using for a number of years gets more shade than sun. I was talking to Brett about setting me up with a potting station and instead he suggested that the table we were going to use for that be used as a herb station! It faces the sun and so we are hoping to have more success with our herbs that we have previously. We also decided to leave them in pots this time. Will let you know how it all goes ;)

It was time to make up some new play dough again as the old batch had gone right off.



I'm still happy with the no-cook recipe we use. Have you got a trusty playdough recipe you like to use? Here's mine...

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup water
1 tablespoon cooking oil
food colouring

Method:
Mix together the flour and salt in a large bowl.
Add water and oil to the mix.
Combine well and knead together.
Break off into large balls.
Pop each ball into a zip lock bag.
Add splashes of food colouring into each bag.
Seal bag (with as much air out of bag first as possible) and get kids to mush around the colour and dough in the bag until well combined.
Add a little extra flour if too sticky.
The colour will blead into the dough the more it is used.

Other happenings from our week...

Loads of reading done (as per usual!)

Stass is reading through the Anne of Green Gables sequel still and began reading Pollyanna too this week. She learnt how to record the books she is reading complete with page number, publisher and publication date this week.

We are still making our way through our new family read aloud, 'Stories for Boys' and the story this week was called 'Speckles'.

Liji read aloud THE USBORNE NEW BABY BOOK all by himself and got almost all the words correct. He's growing more in confidence with his reading which is so lovely to see.

I read aloud the Golden Book Classic 'A visit to the Children's Zoo'...

...which I LOVED to read as a child!

This lead to us looking up old photos of THE CHILDREN'S ZOO IN NYC BACK IN ITS HEY DAY on the internet and reading about how it was transformed in the 1990's. The kids LOVE reading about that kind of thing (probably because I do too!) Ethi asked when we could go visit the zoo. Hmmm...maybe one day!

Ethi and Liji are also continuing to read through their boy-spy series that they are loving.

Speaking of books, I got this cool books about the Human Body for only $5 from our local Angus and Robertson outlet. Very cool illustrations...

Zip got stuck into some water paints this week...

I love that our house often looks like this: paintings drying right next to our clothes lol :)

Tomorrow I'm 39 weeks pregnant!
Woohooooo!

We put together a funky SOLAR SYSTEM FLOOR PUZZLE which I scored this week for $7 and took turns to read aloud facts from it...

The SHEPHERD'S PURSE TINCTURE is ready to go now. It's a much darker colour. We just need to strain it off now.

We've been going without our microwave for a while now for a number of reasons.

Here is the little place where it used to live.

It is an excellent little space for our recipe books and our Family Planner on a plate stand...

We played a really simple game where we scrunched up scrap papers into balls and took turns at throwing them into a cane bowl we have. Stass recorded all the results and we are making a bar graph from the results together...

Doing some maths book work...

I made another pot of fresh veg stock.
What do you put in yours?

Mine today had:
all the leaves and offcuts from the celery
3 carrots
an onion
purple carrot peels
garlic salt
basil
parsley flakes

Oh and here's the purple carrot. We have seedlings to plant of these soon (this one was bought from Coles) after having read about the HEALTH BENEFITS OF EATING PURPLE CARROTS (note: we found many articles and videos about these but this was just one of them).

And Loz...this one is for you; the new look for the loungeroom :)

Had lovely phone catch ups this week with:

Bek, Elissa and my mum and dad :)

Got out to:

 an ABA planning meeting. Was lovely to see all the girls there even though I was feeling a bit out of it (headspace wise!). They are a lovely group and have welcomed me so lovingly.
Was great to catch up there with my Hazel too :)
Also got to chiro twice. My chiro is a l.e.g.e.n.d
I praise Yah for him because I know I wouldn't be walking now if it wasn't for the work he has done. Am so glad that I was lead to him.

And of course, as I mentioned in another post, got to catch up with Lori too this week along with the Vandors and Leonards.

Other learning activities included:

Playing a new reading/spelling game together which we kind of made up using some sight word cards that have different levels of words on them. Kids LOVED this game!

Liji had another dental visit and went with Brett.
We looked at this website this week called MOUTHPOWER.ORG. It was a FABULOUS website! It's set up so that the kids earn teeth with each activity and then can get a little certificate at the end (which my guys thought was awesome!). It touches on so many things from the Food Pyramid, the dangers of smoking to your mouth, to the older v's newer styles of dental tools and what they were/are used for.

I stumbled somehow across THIS SITE during the week which has a whole list of links to cool website games about the human body. We took a tour of the brain and a quiz and learnt about a guy from the 19h century called Phineas Gage who had a massive brain injury in his frontal lobe and survived and the effects that accident had on his personality. The kids were intrigued by this story and asked if we could do more research and find out more about this man. There is a WEBSITE that we found on him and the kiddos were intrigued by the photos and stories there about this man.

The kids got into gardening with Brett, played UNO, 'Sorry' the board game, Zingo and Pilgrim's Progress again this week along with backyard cricket, making heaps of lego creations and using Fiskars stencils which Nanny brought around.

Stass has been offering to help heaps in the kitchen and around the house in general which has been lovely. She showed us this week that she could cover bowls of left over food with cling wrap by herself. She basically cleared the kitchen after dinner a couple of times by herself (aside from doing the boys' regular after-meal chores) which was a real blessing.

We got our journal out again (the one just the two of us girls share) and began writing in it after a good heart-to-heart chat this week. She really needed us to write again and I really needed to listen to her.

Craft-wise, I found a great MCN diaper tute on youtube and will be trying to make that this week (if time permits!)

And I'll finish off with the beautiful Psalm Brett read aloud to the fam last night before bed:

{A psalm of David. When he was in the Desert of Judah}
¹ You, God, are my God,
earnestly I seek you;
I thirst for you,
my whole being longs for you,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water.
² I have seen you in the sanctuary
and beheld your power and your glory.
³ Because your love is better than life,
my lips will glorify you.
⁴ I will praise you as long as I live,
and in your name I will lift up my hands.
⁵ I will be fully satisfied as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise you.
⁶ On my bed I remember you;
I think of you through the watches of the night.
⁷ Because you are my help,
I sing in the shadow of your wings.
⁸ I cling to you;
your right hand upholds me.
⁹ Those who want to kill me will be destroyed;
they will go down to the depths of the earth.
¹⁰ They will be given over to the sword
and become food for jackals.
¹¹ But the king will rejoice in God;
all who swear by God will glory in him,
while the mouths of liars will be silenced.


Well I hope you had a lovely week and have a lovely weekend ahead!
Shabbat Shalom for tomorrow!
Much love and more to come soon,