Happy New Year!

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New beginnings are wonderful, especially the first day of a new year. There is so much promise and positivity because you have the chance to start afresh and make changes in your life no matter how big or small. This year rather than set myself big resolutions and let my motivation for them fizzle out if they aren't seen through within the first few weeks, I am going to span out the things I want to work on and change across the next 12 months. First up on my 2014 agenda is working on this space here. I will be changing my blog content slightly, starting new features & posting more regularly about the things that I want to post about. Blogging has been such a positive & productive hobby for me, and especially so the last 6 months. When I started to plan blog posts, I found I started to get more ideas for this space and I became more interested in what I was trying to achieve. I originally started this blog because I wanted a space to share my illustrations as a way of motivating myself to draw more and to do more with those drawings. And this year I would like to get back to basics and make better use of my creative side, which I feel as been quite lazy of late. 

This year I want to read more, and watch less. Lighten up & let things go. Take advantage of the fact that I have a chef as a husband and take him up on his offer to teach me how to cook. Discover my green thumb and plant some herbs. Stay positive. Get to the bottom of my craft box and make more things. Ditch some bad habits. Learn to sew. And get into the habit of doing things now. I have a great feeling about this year, happy New Year everyone!

See you later 2013, its been a blast!

2013 has been incredible, and has gone incredibly fast. Even though this is the last day of the year, I still have this unsettling feeling about it coming to an end because it still feels as though the year is lingering around the April/May/June part. It most certainly does not feel like the 31st of December. When people told me that having a baby makes the time go by faster I didn't quite understand how that could be, especially when some weeks during my pregnancy seemed to go by at a snails pace. But now I am ending the year with an 8 month old baby and that alone is quite overwhelming. This year was big for Luke & I, we started the year off with a dinner picnic in the park talking about how much things were going to change for us in 2013, but we had no idea just how much they would. We both kept busy working and on the odd day off together we would rush around trying to get things organised. We  bought a new car, applied for and paid off our very first bank loan, we moved house at the last minute, and welcomed our beautiful daughter Romy into the world a month early.

Romy's early arrival was one of the biggest challenges Luke & I have had so far, firstly because we had barely unpacked our things in our new house, and secondly I did not prepare myself for a caesarean, or the recovery process. I kept my mind occupied with working and making lists of all the things I had to get organised before hand that I never actually read any of the material I was given at my midwife appointments. I started to read a little bit about the birthing process and got really overwhelmed, and that was that, I had read enough. Even though my hospital experience was awful, in hindsight I can't help but think that everything happened exactly the way it was suppose to. And although the start was a bit rocky, this motherhood thing has been one of the best experiences of my life. Luke & I didn't plan to have a baby, but the universe gave us Romy at exactly the right time. It is sometimes even hard to believe we never had her! Before Romy, I had next to no experience with children, so much so I changed my first nappy in hospital. I didn't know how to bath or burp a baby, or the importance of being organised because I've never had to organise anyone else except for myself. And I can sometimes get a little too laid back with things. So 2013 has been a big learning curve for me. 

When the end of the year comes around I start to panic about finishing off books, projects, drawings and crossing the last thing off one of my lists. And this year is no different, only I am just as excited about the new year ticking over as I am panicked. So many wonderful things will be happening in the New Year, for one we will be moving and will no longer be living amongst some of the most unreasonable people I have encountered in all my renting years. Which will take a huge pressure off, as these neighbours create a drama on a weekly basis. Even as I type this my neighbour is watching my house with the creepiest smile I have ever seen. Luke will be changing jobs so he no longer will be working for an employer who has little family values. I will be able to see more of my best friend who has recently had a baby herself, so that will be wonderful seeing our babies play and grow together. And I will be changing some things up on my blog in the New Year. There is so much to look forward to, and I am looking forward to sharing it all here! See you next year!

How Has Your Year Been So Far?

It feels like forever that I've been actually able to use my computer! I mentioned in my previous post that my internet connection was down for almost a month, but as of today it has all been sorted so I'm back in business. Which means that this post is a little late.

I've been trying to work as much as I can before the last month or so of my pregnancy approaches when I might not be able to do as much. So lately I've been working six days a week, and it has really been the best thing for me. During my first trimester I was working around four to five days a week and I found on my days off I would just sleep and eat unnecessarily. I had a conversation with my sister Ash one afternoon where I was telling her how hungry I was and how I had been eating more often and she quickly snapped some sense into me that I wasn't in fact eating for two and I was eating unnecessarily. And I had noticed that I had put on a little bit of weight quite quickly, so even though I thought it was a little snappy initially it was one of the best things she could have said to me. After that I planned my meals more carefully and found that I haven't put on much weight at all. And as of next Friday I'll be six months pregnant, and my baby belly is starting to show now! Keeping busy has definitely made these six months just fly by.

Since the Christmas period I've only had a couple of days off, one being New Years Day in which I got to spend it with Luke. We went out for breakfast, spent a couple of hours with my parents and went on an evening picnic in the park to have our dinner. Dinner picnics are by far my favourite kind of picnic. Luke made a salad, some bruschetta with sour dough toast, he packed some deli delights for himself and I cut up some fruit. The park near our house backs onto the beach so it was nice to eat dinner on a picnic rug by the water. It was especially nice to see families on holidays with their children having dinner picnics, and to think how next summer we'll be able to take our baby on dinner picnics with us. 

The only other day I've had free this year was last Friday where Luke & I ventured to Sydney for his birthday. It was a bit of a disastrous day, but for the lovely part of the day we had a nice breakfast together, I bought some cute shoes, and we went to the Francis Bacon retrospective exhibition at the art gallery. Even though a chunk of his paintings he destroyed, he left behind such a great body of work. I haven't always been a fan of his work, but after seeing it all together it made sense and flowed intrinsically. If you're in Sydney while its still exhibiting I would definitely recommend paying it a visit. 

So that is what I've been up to so far this year. I'm looking forward to having an afternoon where I can catch up on all your lovely blogs. Leave me a comment if you've found new blogs, stumbled upon old ones or would like me to visit yours. I'll need somewhere to start when I have a spare afternoon later in the week!