On the weekend my parents, hubby and I went and had a coffee down at Point Walter. Its a great spot with lots for kids to do as well as a cheaper cafe and a restaurant. If you are into swimming, canoing, fishing or boating you can do it all there and there are BBQ’s too. Anyway, this time round there was a very tame group of black swans standing near the grass edge. They totally ignored the people around them so we could get up really close. Here is one of the shots I managed to get (I took lots, you can see them on my flickr), amazing how they stand on one foot like that.

I’ve always wanted to do up a dolls house if I had girls and now that I do, the time has come. A friend of mine picked up this one on the side of the road during junk verge collection week about 3 years ago. It sat in our shed for a while and then we let K play with it but I did nothing to improve it. Somewhere amongst my thousands of photos I have a pic of her playing with it before we changed it. It was plain scratched up varnished pine with a whole lot of pen marks on it.

While my Dad was here last week he sanded and painted the outside (with a little bit of help from K). She chose pink for the roof so pink it is. Now the plan is to make the inside look pretty.

Dad showing her how to paint

K showing off the finished paint job

A while ago I saw these floor tiles at Bunnings. They are designed to be put together for your kitchen floor I think but they were too irresistible for the inside of a doll’s house. Each one was only a couple of dollars, under $2 I think.

I made a template using a sheet of thin paper inside the bottom floor section and then used it to guide where to cut along the laminate. Then we simply peeled off the backing and stuck it down. K loved helping with this and is itching to paint the inside walls. I have plans for that too, might involve a bit of scrap-booking paper as wallpaper (I don’t scrapbook so might as well use it for this).

I’m quite pleased with how its going so far. I’ll keep you posted so you can see the renovations as they happen.

These are little L’s hands at play. I look at this picture and wonder what will she do with them? Where will they lead her? I found a little poem online which suits this photo perfectly:

My Hands

These little hands can wave Hello
Or put smudges on the wall
They can fold in prayer, throw a kiss
Or reach up so very tall
They’ll clasp your hand for a little stroll
Or shape a ball from clay
But most of all, they’ll stay with you
When I’m grown up and far away

Its that time of the week again. I am noticing a trend in my trays, they seem to be mostly green and yellow each week!! Will have to work on that. Here’s this weeks tray:

We had grapes, slices of apple, yoghurt, butterfly shaped cheese, cheese and pickle sandwiches and corn and peas.

Isn’t it funny how standing in the middle of my 30s I can see the stages of life as they group into little boxes. I don’t know that I could see them clearly when I was in high school and in fact I was of the mindset that I would determine NOT to be part of certain stereotypes or stages. For one thing, I was never going to want to talk endlessly about the type of washing machine I was going to buy and what sort of powder (or would liquid be better?) I would put in it. I was not going to be interested in the housing market, the best way to make a potato salad or in discussing the most important political issues. No, I was going to be different and avoid all these things.

I remember being bored silly listening to other women talk about their washing machines at work functions. I wanted to talk about deeper things, more interesting things. Now, standing in the middle of my 30s I can clearly see that I have become one of them. Not only that but I’m HAPPILY one of them.

I wonder if you adjust your thinking more if you have your children in your early to mid twenties? My twenties were spent working, studying, traveling for fun and traveling for missions. We did not buy a house when we first got married, we saved our money and went on a world trip 2 years in. We did not buy a mainstream car but instead we cruised around in our modified VW Beetle with our sausage dog squeezed in the back. We did not have kids right away but we led youth group, taught Girls and Boys Brigade, worked in missions at home and focused on those things. We were doing our best to be anything but mainstream.

Us with our sausage dog with our modified VW Beetle

The modified back.

I suppose it all comes down to what you view as ‘normal’. Many of our friends chose to buy and house and have kids right away (within 2 years of being married) and our viewpoint for ourselves at the time was that if we did that, then we would get too comfortable and not do anything. We were especially concerned that we wouldn’t want to be involved in Christian missions overseas. For us, I think that was right. Now that we have a mortgage, two kids and talk in depth about washing machines and potato salad recipes the thought of breaking away and taking our kids overseas is overwhelming. For me it is very important to be willing to go wherever God leads so if he leads us overseas in the future I am going to have to get over that.

Have we become the thing we were avoiding? Maybe. Do I now fit into the ‘normal’ category? Probably. Is that ok for now? Yes, I think so. As long as, when the time comes I can put what God wants before what I want then for now its alright.

Today my photo of the day shows something that little L has discovered she can do, stand up on the fence post and she can see over! She looks very cute with her head poking up over the top.

As well as picking up the book in my previous post I managed to snag these two knitting books which are, as you can see….from the 80s. Interesting to say the least but plenty of patterns in there that are still doable. As I mentioned before, these were half price so I got them both for around $3.00.

First, here are the patterns that belong in the ‘Yeah……nah’ category:

I should point out that the ‘yeah…nah’ part of this pattern really belongs to the pants, not the jumper. Really? Who would put pants like this on a kid?

Circus anyone?

I realise this looks sweet on this little guy but can you really, truly picture yourself dressing your son this way?

I’m fairly sure I remember this sort of jumper being in fashion. What on earth were we thinking?

Now for the more doable stuff. These are my favourites after flicking through:

This is just so sweet

Maybe not in these colours. This is a skirt and a top and I could see the skirt done in a different colour.

I think this would be my favourite in the book.

So, you never know what you’ll get when you pick up old books like these, most things are doable in different colours I think.

This week we got to go to the local second hand bookshop and I picked up this book. It cost just 60c as he’s having a half price sale. Sadly his reason is that he needs to clear stock and close down, rent is too high and people are not buying books. What a shame. Now that I know he’s selling off his books cheaply I might go down there again and buy a few more. It seems that people don’t read as much as they used to. If anyone wants to know where this bookshop is, send me your email address and I’ll let you know.

Another flower! Again I don’t know what this one is called but its just gorgeous. Not sure if the purple is natural but once again God has created something of beauty. What a colour!

The other day I mentioned that Narelle over at Moment’s for Mum had a Giveaway (its still going so pop on over there). The giveaway is part of a series of interviews that Narelle is doing with Christian Aussie Mums and today my interview is up. Tomorrow I share with everyone a few thoughts on Trusting God. To read my interview go here.