moving

All over the shop!

| poppypeach

The days have been dragging on and life has been such a struggle as we play the waiting time to move into our house. We are so fed up with living in this freezing cold rental with its broken ceiling and terrible design. There is awful light in this house and my poor plants have suffered under cold conditions, they will be so happy when they are moved into our new house. We will be too, sure I have a roof over my head and have food in the fridge but there is something about when you are ready to go – it is time! Trying to focus on my study has been problem number one! As I sit at the dining table in a room with two massive windows and no heating (its super expensive and useless to heat this place) it is difficult to concentrate as I suddenly feel cold – so off I go to find a blanket, coat and a beanie. This is how I dress to feel comfortable inside this house. You can see above the cat is even done with living here too.

This is what the outside of our house looks like at the moment as I have called the real estate agent to fix this broken ceiling two months ago. It was certainly lucky that no one was out there the night when it collapsed, as it ruined a couple of my pot plants! Then the wire has been hanging there for ages until I emailed them to see when it could be fixed and they said not for another 10 weeks!! Good bye and good riddance to you all, this is a ridiculous scenario for $2700 in rent per month. Thank goodness we do not have to pay these guys one more cent. This place looks insane with its bubble wrap on the windows and ruined facade.

I have to be thankful for the location we are living near with the amazing, overflowing Merri Creek close by. A couple of weeks ago I went for a walk and a chat to my friend after a weekend of heavy rain. You can see the trees underwater due to the amount of rain – it was scary with the rushing flow of water but exciting at the same time to see all the rain that had fallen. Now it is September and spring is here and we are a bit happier to go outside in the sunshine in the morning to feel the warm sun on our faces.

Winter is in the background but the chill is still here, on a walk to the shops to get fathers day goodies we have found beauty in the flowering birds of paradise and a fresh little leaf on a plane tree. So much to look forward to when the warmth returns to our hemisphere soon.

Today I went for a walk to see our house and here it is, nearly there with its beautiful fence in place. We only have 11 days to go until we get the moving truck in the driveway to fill it with boxes and our stuff to take to our home. I am so looking forward to moving, as are the rest of the fam as we are trying not to complain about our living conditions but we all are done with living in an uninsulated house with hardly any natural sunlight. This is due to being a south facing house and it is a terrace house with windows on the front and back – there are prominent windows but not in the right place to capture the warmth. See our new kitchen below for the afternoon sunlight that we will enjoy through the big windows.

Well the countdown is on and it is the small wins and we celebrate next Wednesday only 7 days until we are outta here!

Our beautiful kitchen island minus the stone top

Light at the end of a COVID tunnel

| poppypeach

Finally I am feeling a bit more focused to begin the next phase in our life. Now that Uni is nearly over and I have a break for a month it is time to get some organisation happening so our packing process in September to our renovated home will be a smooth one! I am absolutely thrilled to realise that this will be our last move to our home. Over the last couple of years I have packed, donated, unpacked, passed on, boxed up and sold a lot of our stuff but now its time for a more severe clean out!

I am so thankful to be living in a civilised society with all the madness going on in the world at the moment with Black Lives Matter. Racism is an ugly undercurrent that unfortunately still exists in our society. Most of us are immigrants who have chosen to live in many parts of the world that we love, away from where we were born people do not get it – we live in a world of many nations and people. As an educator I am always reflecting on bias and this is the one thing that matters to instil in children that everyone is equal, no matter what colour you are. I watch children play together when they are 3 to 5 years old, somehow there is no filter to who you play with – it is the adults in children’s who create the negative bias towards others, for what?? Yes everyone has experience and a story to tell but it is important to process, learn and move on from the negativity towards others. The racist rhetoric that still exists in America and definitely Australia needs to change but how can we do this without seeing other peoples perspectives, the white man is still in charge where colonialism, corporation and greed overrule. Most people know what is right and we all have to believe and support each other, even if this means to go to your local Israeli felafel shop and enjoy a lunch in the sunshine! Get over yourselves, the world would be way more boring if we did not live in such a diverse multicultural world.

Now to the some good news for the next few months. I am finally working again as I was offered a maternity cover role as a co-educator at the kinder where I did my placement last December. It has made me so happy to be working with children again. I feel the impact that an educator can have on a child is something that they can take with them for their future. The early years of a child’s life is a phenomenal growing period where they are processing and learning so much and it is so important that the role models who interact with little ones promote positive behaviours. There is so much at stake for little people and the time they spend at preschool prepares them for so much! My new job is part time and it will balance beautifully with my University schedule so heres to knocking over the rest of the year with a truly positive light.

And they are off…

| poppypeach

Well, the time finally came and the kids were off to school. I have to say it has been a bit hard for my son with the high school kids and their cliques and not being so open to making friends. Whereas the primary school community is small enough that my daughter has met some friends, which is great! As for myself, I have friends out of the local area which is wonderful but trying to break into an already established community is a bit difficult. I remember when I went over to the States and I did not know a soul and things do take time and in reality, I have only been here since the 20th January so it has not been that long at all! My daughter’s school is having a picnic next week so with some luck I can meet some other families.

The big change for me is that I do not have to rush home to study after the gym – so I am pretty happy that I have finished my last teaching period! It was really a struggle having to study and move to a new country at the same time. I received an academic achievement for my last subject Teaching and Learning in the 21st century which really helps as trying to keep going is tricky with everything that is happening in my life! So I keep it out to look at each day so I can stay motivated and keep going!!

I have been going to the gym and cardio classes and they are intense but with my excitement to be working out I injured myself and overdid my quads when I did a body pump class. My plan was to do weights every day until I decided that every second day will be better as I can do one of the machines on my rest day. It is fun to go to the gym and it is a friendly place too but it’s not like my lovely dance class full of friendly ladies. Time will tell and you are in the zone when exercising so I can just focus on myself and not really socialise – I will have to remember to bring my headphones and listen to some motivating music :D.

Last Friday I went to see our interior scheme for our house build and it was very exciting. The exterior of the house is burnt black and white brick and the colour will be inside the house. The bathroom will have the Terrazzo floor with blue, green and wood highlights. We are still on plan for the tender process mid-February and fingers crossed a builder can fit us into their busy schedules! Oh, and while I was visiting the architect in South Melbourne, I visited the market for the most delicious food and had a cauliflower and leek pie with salad and roast veggies – so good!

Walking around our neighbourhood and who do I find? My hubby, yay he is here for a couple of weeks but alas he is working. Lucky, we have one weekend to catch up with family and friends to enjoy ourselves before he heads on back to wrap up the rest of the stuff back in California. After school when we picked up the kids, I said, “hey, how about a pie?” so Missy and my hubby took up the offer and they were tasty.

It is nice to be in some sort of routine now where I walk to the kids’ school in the morning and go to the gym. The walk is only 20 minutes away to pick up the kids in the arvo and then they have some free time and then its homework time – Ash is doing some science homework here on his bed with pictures of friends and family on the wall for inspiration, including his Serama chicken Darkstalker. Later in the evening on cooler days when I can put the oven on I made this tasty silverbeet and heirloom cherry tomato pie. I am loving the food from Ceres Fair food as it is organic, fresh and local for most of their produce. They have an excellent selection of kombucha and non-meat products too which I love so that is my fruit and veggie shop sorted with the added bonus of the delivery to the door. Other bits and pieces I can get at Woollies and other places are a 10-minute walk away. I love this area as everything is so convenient. We don’t have a car as yet so with all this walking I am getting plenty of exercise and enjoying the sunshine and fresh air.

With time off from University, I now have time to go through all our stuff! I moved all the boxes from under the bed and now we are sleeping on the floor on a mattress just like student days – lucky its only short term! Anyway, I am taking the Swedish death cleaning approach and thinking that I have not cared about this stuff for the last 12 years so then why keep it anymore. I found cassettes and business cards that are going to the recycling next week – I do not even have a tape recorder so why keep them! There were a lot of business cards and told a story of my other life before kids as a designer and freelancing around Melbourne. It was interesting to look over them and see the names of people who I met at Uni and work, so it was helpful for me to think yeah that is where most of my friendships with peeps began.

The major reason why my post is late this week is that I have been going through a moving box full of photos. It has been exhausting going through all the memories some good and some not so good. Again I thought why do I keep these pictures as it will just be for my kids to clean up when I am gone and they will just chuck it all away, this way I can hopefully recycle it all including the negatives? This is just a handful of the photos I am sending away. Sitting there looking through the travel memories have been great thinking wow I really did that when I was only 23, I am a huge proponent for travelling when you are young as it helps you see the world to open your mind to so many life experiences. It really helped pave the way for my artistic career at the beginning with photography and writing. I also have a lot of 35mm slides and maybe I can make a light fitting out of them or repurpose them somehow – there are many ideas on Pinterest, so next time I have time to craft that is my next project. As for the photos they can go – the memories were great and now it is time for a new phase in my life.

Treasure or trash – seeing the light after 12 years

| poppypeach

Last week we hung out in our house awaiting the old and the new. First I had to get a fridge and washing machine delivered to the house but because the door frame at the house is so tiny the fridge would not fit through the door! Drama #1 meant what do I do about getting a monolith fridge into a small house? Luckily we had some quick thinking delivery dudes who called up their mate to come and take the doors off the fridge and bring it into the house! Next was Drama #2 the shipping container that held a box of our stuff from 12 years ago!! The kids were very excited as they thought there might be some treasure in those boxes but no – they were disappointed as the boxes were mostly full of trash – oops I mean, memories and mementoes of our past life. Funny thing is we have lots of book boxes that I am using as a bed base for now – so I don’t need to look through them. Plus there are so many VCR tapes but luckily I found someone who can recycle them and take most of this stuff away.

We have been enjoying our little day trips into the city by train as it is only 30 minutes away and so easy to get to. The Australian Open is in full swing today so we got in nice and early so we could go to the NGV to see the Escher exhibition nice and early Between Two Worlds.

Going to an exhibition with the kids can seem a bit daunting especially when they go in and are not so thrilled to wander in a crowded space and look at the art on the walls. This exhibit was different as it began with a digital walkthrough in the dark to the beginnings of Escher’s work by travelled through each space or period of his life. For me it was so exciting to actually see these prints in real life! I have been a long time Escher fan stemming from my background in Graphic Art.

A space that I loved was the Transforming House space where the houses were designed and inspired by tessellation. It is phenomenal how the elements of negative and positive space within a tessellation mess with your mind. This is a lesson of instructions Escher created to share to students on a complex design on tessellations.

Gathered House was another fave space of mine where I felt totally disorientated as to where I was going next. It was an installation in a circular room where you looked at the artwork on many perspectives to form the shadow of a house it was so incredible when you look at the detail of die cut paper.

Soon it was time to end the exhibition which was sad, I will have to say it has to be one of the best exhibitions I have been to in a very long time! The whole immersion of the space and the artwork including a soundscape and a video really captured the feeling of each period in Escher’s artistic path. At the end of the exhibit, before we hit the gift shop there was a room dedicated concept pieces for the nendo art spaces and his overall theme of the house shape (I bought a cap for the memories). In the end, the kids were so excited to share their pictures with their dad and friends and loved the whole experience, they especially loved the interactivity of the exhibit and that is something we all loved by being able to play in the space.

It has been two weeks back and I am happy to say that everything is falling into place with where we are going to be living including our plans for our house build and the kids’ school. I still have to motivate myself to study but for now, I got an extension on my essay as I am taking breaks in between organising the move into our house. Still, it is so hot that it is nice to stay inside in the air conditioning. Next stop study and for brain breaks, it is will be time in the garage sorting through stuff! Anyone looking for some crystal glasses? How fancy!

One day to go!

| poppypeach

A good cup of tea is what I am needing each day as now I have just one day until we fly away! The last month has disappeared so fast with parties, travel, coffee and tea with friends, drinks and dinners. Last week I enjoyed more yoga classes than usual which helped me get myself organised about the move. There has been so much to do and the house is taking shape with stuff to be shipped, stuff to be donated/given away and luggage packed for the next 5 months until our stuff is shipped from SF. Whew, it has been quite a trek and the kitchen was organised by my hubby the other day when he said we need to minimise the number of bowls to useful items which I have to agree. My friend has the Vitamix and another friend has my food processor so it looks like I will be researching the Thermomix when I get back to Oz, my sister in law has one so I will be taking notes.

As we did not want to get stuff for Christmas we enjoyed our last family experience at Montalvo Arts Centre to see Bruce Munro Stories in Light. I really loved it though it was a bit chilly in the evening being there for the 7pm showing. It is a self-guided tour of the grounds with so many beautiful installations providing many photo opportunities. The scale of some of the pieces is breathtaking especially Reepicheep’s Wave. I am quite a fan of all the pieces and one of my faves was definitely Gathering of the Clans inspired by the artists time in Sydney with Hills Hoists and fluorescent acrylic pegs and the recordings of cockatoos.

It has been a low key couple of days but I have needed it to research my next essay for school for Teaching Science and Technology. It is a bit tough trying to find the headspace to study with everything else going on but I will get there as the essay is due January 14. I should have my draft done and maybe I will work on the 15-hour direct plane trip to Melbourne, I have a couple of knitting projects to do and have packed 3 bags so far – I hope it all fits in the car! Here’s to our new adventures back home in Melbourne 😀