Home

Today the whole family has been home. It's beginning to feel like that's a rare occurence these days. No football today so we all enjoyed a quiet day pottering about the place. Actually, DH has just taken DS to a sleepover party but up until mid-afternoon, we've all been here together.

I spent some time in the kitchen. The kids helped me make some buns (I made the dough in the breadmaker) and then I made some pies. Mmmm....there's nothing like the smell of baking to make a house a home. :-) Warm fresh pies with real chunks of beef and real butter in the pastry!

DH spent most of the day outside building a gate and fence and painting it to match in with our house. I'm so proud of him. He's used all recycled materials except for the hinges, latch and 1 post.



The gate he cut down from a rectangular gate that must have been a part of the garden here a long time ago (there was a very old house here that we had to bulldoze as it wasn't really in good enough condition to fix up). It feels really special to have a part of this farms heritage as part of our home - like a connection to the past in some way. The fence he built out of some pieces of timber he found under the shearing shed. Even the paint was paint we had leftover from painting the front verandah. :-)

In thinking about making a house a home, it got me thinking about how far we've come in the past 5 years. From making the decision to build our own house and move here, to designing the house, getting it ordered, built and then trucked here. And THAT is really only the beginning!!! Verandah, fences, garden, lawn, base infill, carport, steps.... and the list goes on.

Here's some of our progress:



This is what the place looked like just after it had been unloaded from the truck. Dirt all around and some pallets for steps. My FIL did end up rigging up a kind of handrail for those "steps" for me as I fell down them one day (during one of my seemingly endless trips between one house and the other with all our stuff)! They were our front steps for a few months. :-)

Now, just over 2 years later, this is what it looks like:



You can even see DH's gate to the side there. :-) The next stage is to put down some slate around this garden area and up the front path. We have plenty of it on our other farm (an earthy colour slate not a black slate) so it seems like a good material to make use of. There is currently some gravelly type stuff on the path to the front door (otherwise it would be a complete mud bowl) but it's a lot of work trying to keep the weeds down. My poor roses have taken a bit of a battering in recent weeks with heavy winds and heavy frosts. They'll bounce back though. You can't really tell, but there are flower carpet roses in the garden there as well. I'll have to take another photo when they're in full bloom. I LOVE them as they flower for so many months of the year (and unfortunately this month isn't one of them).

It's good to reflect on the progress we have made as at times our minds are so full of what we want to do next that we feel like we're not getting anywhere.

OK. One last photo for today:



Can you really have a home without a pet? This is Max and he's my baby. He's less than a year old and has such a beautiful nature. He often "stands guard" at the back door (or curls up asleep on the mat). Our backyard is to the north so most days it's a nice sunny spot. And if he's hungry he likes to duck inside as soon as the door opens and see what little tidbits the kids have spilt under the table. I love it - makes my clean up job so much easier. :-)

I guess that's enough photo's for today. I might post some of the backyard another time. I'm sure my tortilla dough has had enough time resting. My arms have been getting a good workout today - rolling out pastry and now kneeding and rolling (well I'm about to roll) tortilla dough. Chicken wraps tonight with homemade tortillas (hopefully - this is my first attempt lol) and fresh lettuce I picked from the garden only half an hour ago.