Reliving the past ....

If I ever got the chance to do my wedding all over again .... I might pick a dress a bit like this. It takes my breath away.

All photos from Stephanie Fay.

Cleaning out my closet....

You know, I began maternity leave with a list that was 3 pages long, and contained 60+ items. Evan laughed that I had sorted them into "high/mid/low" priority. But the thing is, I needed to know where to start. I have to get my head around what absolutely HAS to happen before baby makes an appearance, and what might be fun, but can wait a bit longer. That way, if I spontaneously combust (AKA my waters break), then I'm somewhat prepared. And while I would love to be on the couch right now watching Oprah, that's just not going to get my baby's clothes washed. And do you know what the very first thing I did was? I turned this:

into this:

Look, it may not be the most drastic improvement in the world, but it's made a vast deal of difference to my life over the past week. I HAD to sort through our linen, it was driving me bonkers. And perhaps the best part was the fourth shelf down. If you're observant, you will notice that instead of the wide variety of (chemical infested) cleaning products and festy cloths that needed to be thrown out, there's now two nice looking baskets containing a culled version of the above, and ......... a new sewing machine!!!!

My wonderful husband bought me the new Brother NS20 sewing machine as a maternity/finishing up work present. So before I could start all my projects, I had to pick it up, and before I could pick it up, I needed somewhere to store it!

I love it so much!! I've been researching and saving for a machine for a while now. I've been sewing on my mother's machine, which was HER mother's before that. So basically, the thing went forwards, backwards and did a zigzag. That's it. And it took forever to thread, was constantly getting tangled etc. Don't get me started.

This machine is amazing. As a little trivia point, it's the Project Runway model (fun)! Some of the features that I just love about this baby:

• it has an automatic needle threader
• loading the bobbin is super quick and easy, it threads it for you and even cuts it off at an appropriate length
• adjustable stitch width
• electronic dial that lets me pick from a wider variety of stitches than I'll ever use
• 5 automatic one-step buttonholes -- a dream come true!

I've been using it already on a few projects, which I'll blog about soon. I started off with some boring things to get the hang of it (a scarf, another baby blanket etc), but I'm about to get stuck into a very exciting little project that involves little birdies -- fun!

In the mean time, let me show you a picture of how I spent last Saturday -- with a batch of my favourite lemon muffins (recipe from Aunty Carol -- it's honestly the yummiest and easiest thing ever), a pot of tea and some sunshine out the back.

May maternity leave last forever!!!!!!

Back into blog-land

I'm back! Finally!

You'll notice some changes happening around here over the next little bit. I'd love to be able to do it all in one hit, but I'm having to take it slow because my computer knowledge is so woeful.

But, there's loads of things coming up in my life. I'm finally finished work (well, the teaching side of it, there's some ominous paperwork looming on our table at the moment) and getting stuck into nesting. More soon ....

Life's ..... full at the moment. I have two and a half weeks left of work, and about 5 weeks worth of work to cram into that time. Plus, I have a continually unwell husband, which has made for some unhappy times in our household. He's heading off to the doctor tomorrow -- but he may have something more vicious than the common cold or flu, which is not nice.

So, projects are taking a backseat. As much as I dearly want to tick things off the list, I need to prioritise what's important. Evan. Work. Life. So, we have declared this weekend a national holiday in our household, and even though that means NOT finishing the painting, that's okay.

The only thing that will suffer is my blog. I can handle that. So, in the interests of posting something interesting and pretty, here's some images that are appealing to me tonight.

It's been so beautiful to experience the warmth of spring lately. This picture makes me euphoric.

If I didn't get married in a church .... or in the middle of winter ... I would have loved to get married between these gorgeous bookshelves. Lucky I didn't see this picture beforehand, because I showed Evan and he thought it was weird.

If I ever received a wedding invitation like this, I'd leave it on my fridge forever.

I once had a darling pair of ballet slippers in a rose gold. I wore them to death and sadly parted with them at the beginning of the year. I've been looking for an equivalent ever since -- these are pretty close.

This picture was a happy accident during our trip to Europe. Evan and I weren't even together -- but oooooh the vibes were flying. Note that I'm wearing his jacket and his arm is around me. Are you surprised that two years later, we're married with bub just around the corner? No, me neither.

We look young and happy. I like that.

And soon, very soon, we will have one of these little bundles of love to call our very own. There are days when I just can't wait.