via pinterest

Hola my darling hearts,

Two things to talk about today. Birthdays & Offices.

Oh, and dreams come true.

Birthday! Scrumptiousness!

My birthday yesterday, was *suuuublime.* Presents in bed. A mermaid satchel & Papaya calendar. Walking outside to this great chorus of angels singing “HERE SHE IS!!!!!” and getting a beautiful healing from them.

My birthday mermaid satchel.

And a morning road trip to Mackay. Feasting my eyes on so many pretty shiny colours & new things – even shopping centres can be inspiring for creative souls. I didn’t buy much – just another Eric Carle book for Ostara & some candles. I just ate it all up with my eyes instead. Colours! Shiny things! Architecture! Store design! I’m a typical highly sensitive creative – I get SO excited & stimulated & enthralled by anything. Cue me gasping and oohing the whole way through “Oh honey! Look at the wooden beams! SO beautiful! Eeeee! Smiggle! I need to go harvest some colour with my eyes! Okay I’m done! What’s next? Oooh wow look at that elevator! OMG! They have my favourite muffins here! I want to devour it with my being!” And on and on. Until two hours in, me, Chris & Ostara all reach our excitement-limit & retreat to the soft quiet of our car & eat dates the whole way home.

Cue necessary photo essay:

Our view. Not seen: The ridiculously amazing Illawarra Flame Trees that were in full, raging red bloom the whole way down. Total beauty to the eyes.

Appropriate road tripping fashion: paint streaked jean cut offs.

Mr Dawson is hot.

Obv, Ostara didn’t manage to stay awake the whole way down. At least she had her favourite Eric Carle book to rock her to sleep.

And the rest of the day?

We spend the rest of the afternoon napping & watching Groundhog Day & eating Anzac/chia slice.

Finished off with the earliest night possible.

Best.birthday.ever!!!! (I say that every year & about pretty much everyday… BUT IT STILL COUNTS!!!! BEST DAY EVERRRR!!!!)

The! Creative! Caravan!

via pinterest :: caravan inspiration!

In other magical, exciting news, I’ve been longing & praying for a backyard office to work in. I usually work for a few hours each afternoon while Ostara naps and Chris tends to her. But our house is too small for me to actually be able to work while she’s awake. For the last year, I’ve been working out of trees, the library, my favourite cafe, a dear friend’s spare office, a makeshift office in the shower, in my car, in our garden when it’s not busting down with rain or steaming hot or in our laundry.

And my artist heart and introverted creative self has been crying out & praying & longing for a little space to call my own. A sanctuary. A creative retreat. A place I can work undisturbed and comfortable. A wee place to hang my crystals and prayer flags and curl up on a couch and just be. Make art without having to worry about anyone else’s space, work without getting distracted. My own office.

We looked into building one. We looked into buying a ready made cabin. And it was all super expensive – way more than we could really spend happily. We’re two months from being car-debt free, and we have a fairly small mortgage, and we really really love living credit-free. We prefer to pay for stuff out of savings instead of getting loans or credit cards. We’ve had credit cards and store cards before, and the best decision we ever made was paying them all off and just using debit cards.

So we really didn’t want to fork out $15k+ for a little office in the backyard.

But still, my heart longed.

And then last week, I took a quick sunset drive out to go visit my dear Jewel & pick up paintings to send out for the Proserpine Goddess Gift Packs. And we were wondering around her beautiful block, and our two lil blonde fairies – Starry & Savvy were squeeeeeeing up & down piles of dirt. (Despite their four year age gap, these two have a connection that takes our breath away!) And Jewel pointed out the two caravans living under a grove of trees. “You can have one if you want one! They haven’t been used in years! I’ve got no idea if there are trees growing through the floor or not!”

And my little heart hoped.

And the first one was a wee bit too holey for my beginner-renovator skills. But the second one? A big beautiful army green caravan?

I fell in love.

It’s been stripped back & there’s just a metal shell. And it will need love – lots and lots of it – to clean it, fix metal tears, mend the floor, get a new window installed…

It’s basically a metal shell on wheels…

and yet, and yet.

It’s perfect.

via pinterest

Best of all? It used to be a caravan on the nudist park that Jewel is blessed to live next door too (hee!)

So when I think of my sweet lil green caravan, I just know it’s been blessed with essence of boob & wang. And that, dear friends, makes me giggle snort to no end.

And as luck would have it, Jewel is good friends with a Dude With A Towing Truck, and we’re getting my newfound Creative Caravan shifted to our place for less than our usual weekly grocery shop!

LIKE OMG!

It only took me 47 minutes to plead my lil mama-space-needing-heart out to Chris for him to see the wisdom in my wild plans.

And ever since, we have been oohing & aaaaahing over wild gypsy rainbow ideas of backyard retreats.

I’m beyond excited that this week my darling Creative Caravan will arrive. And we’ll begin the work of restoring her to a new level of divine! EEEEEE!

Even just to set up a little desk in there, and one of our old armchairs to meditate on… ohhhh the sweet bliss of it.

Sacred time to myself. To work. Uninterrupted.
Bliss.

I remember in Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s sweet mama’s retreat tome Gift From The Sea, she talks about how essential for us, as women & mothers, to have a space to call her own.

And I haven’t had a space like that since Ostara was born.

I feel like it’s perfect that my Creative Caravan is just a shell.

It’s the sea shell for this mermaid creature to move into… a space to call my own & make my own.

And of course, I’ll share more as the Creative Caravan adventure unfolds.

Today! First Day of Initiation!

The first day of post-birthday celebrations, we move into the Cycle of Initiation. It’s a whole lot of seed-planting & intention-setting for the next year of our life.

This morning I woke up with a deep-seated feeling of boredom & unsettledness.

Whereby Chris gets to enjoy my monologues of internal happenings:

“I’ve finished reading the internet! I’m bored! I’m uninspired! Yuk! There’s nothing to do! I have nothing to do! I’m bored! Uninspired! The house feels so stifled. I either need to get a new creative project or clean the house! The house needs cleaning! Maybe I’ll read a book instead!”

(insert five minutes of me trying to read a book)

“Nope! That book is boring! I think I’ll clean instead!”

I’m pretty sure Chris LOVES these internal-happenings-monologues.

And so began a five hour long jag of house cleaning, clearing & cleansing. I decluttered. I put away vast boxes of Ostara’s toys (that inevitably become a toy carpet that spreads over the house like a tidal wave), and instead left out just five toys.

I’d read somewhere that children (and adults too I’m sure) feel more settled & play better when they have less stuff to be overwhelmed by. And judging on today’s effect, it seems to be the case. Ostara’s been LOVING the new space & toy options… she cosied up in her area & strummed her ukelele & sang songs with it for the FIRST TIME EVER.

And I finished it off with some sacred space clearing.

And the house feels SO much better. So much clearer and calmer and more settled.

I feel like I needed to let go of all the old – the unfinished projects, the stuff that didn’t fit, the annoying, the stuff I didn’t like –

in order to step into this bright dazzling new year of mine.

What do I want to create this year?

I don’t know yet…

all I know is I needed a clean slate in order to let it emerge.

Oh beautiful, happy day,