nest

Bye

It's been one year since I started nest. I've loved sharing my thoughts and stories with my friends and family via the bloggasphere (?), but all good things must come to an end.

I was talking yesterday about simplifying. Taking a break from nest will take one item from my To Do list and help make my life less crammed.

So, I'm shutting up shop, pulling the roller door down and throwing in the towel.

Thankyou to my friends and family for being avid readers and to my new bloggy friends for their comments and for introducing me to their blogs.

My favorite blogs are listed down the right side of the page here on nest. Click through them, they're fab.

I've captured one very exciting year of my life where Jules turned 3, Tom 5, me 40 (!!). We welcomed three beautiful black chooks into our family and discovered the holy grail of breakfast cooking- THE SECRET TO THE PERFECT POACHED EGG! I baked my way through birthdays and Christmas. Tom started school and we travelled through Europe for 5 weeks.

Wow. What a year. It's been a pleasure sharing it with you.

xx Estelle

 

Simplify

This morning I found a blog post that I thought was written by me. And it appears that at least 108 others thought so too, judging on the number of comments left after the post.

It is titled 'How to Make Things Harder and Do Nothing' and you an click here to read it for yourself.

Everyone I know is chasing their tails, we all have a million things to do, and DO a million things. And put off a million things, and feel guilty when we can't do it all (or is that just me?).

I've purposefully slowed down in the last couple of weeks. Regrouping. Recharging. Rethinking my priorities.

Scheduling in time to drink tea and magazine flick.

Laughing in the face of conventional footwear fashions.

HAHA! Take THAT Jimmy Choo!

...in the privacy of my own home, of course.

It was great to read that blog post written by someone on the other side of the world who is chasing their tail too.

What do you think? Does it sound like you too? Here's the link again CLICK HERE.

So when I've ticked off every item on my TO DO list(s) I plan to simplify... maybe I should add 'Simplify' as item# 358 on the list.... perhaps I'll get to it... one day.
 
 

Little People

I mentioned yesterday my feelings towards Yo Gabba Gabba and received enough positive comments to know that I'm not the only one who furrows their brow and has an aimless scratch when faced with the YGG 'team'. Thankyou readers and comment leavers, we should band together and be un-hip, as one.

Friday night is movie night for my two. I started one week by picking Walt Disney's 'Sleeping Beauty' (onya Walt) which was particularly relevant as we visited THE Sleeping Beauty castle when in France just a couple of months ago.

Here it is. Proof...

This castle was inspiration for the author who wrote the Sleeping Beauty story... many a year ago...

Ahhh.

They enjoyed the movie so much that last night I had another of Walt's classics for them, 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. Again, a hit.

When asking for it again this morning Jules said, 'Mummy, can we watch Snow White and the 3 dalmatians?' Hahahaha! Tom laughed along then in a grown up voice corrected her, 'They're not dalmatians, Jules, they're Smurfs.' Oh, stop it, hahahahahahaha. 'I mean elves. And there's five of them.'

At this point I had tears rolling down my face.

Dalmatians, Smurfs, Elves or Dwarfs, add a princess, a wicked witch, a prince and some of Walt's magic and you've got a hit, baby.

 

(image)

 

TV Rules

Ok, I'll put it out there. I'll ask the question and hope it doesn't expose me as an 'un-hip' mum. And I'm going to use capital letters to make sure I get my point across...

WHAT IS THE DEAL WITH YO GABBA GABBA? 

Look at them. (image) I've never taken an hallucinogenic drug but I'm certain, if I did, this is what I'd see. It's all so.... colourful... and strange... and those eyes... kind of sad and kind of weird and kind of spooky. The voices are those of creepy nightmare creatures.... and the songs linger and torment my brain for days... 
 

AND WHAT'S THAT?.......

Looks a bit like a poo to me. (image)

We have a 'no TV' rule for before school EXCEPT if both kids are dressed, including shoes, then they can watch TV until we leave the house. Suffice to say, the TV is never turned on in the mornings. And it's 'no TV' in the afternoons too, but if they remember, they're allowed to turn it on at 5pm then off when tea's ready.

These rules have only been put into play in the last two weeks and the arguments are getting fewer. I find that the DON'T TURN THAT ON argument is less intense and more easily won than the TIME TO TURN THAT OFF argument.

We weren't allowed to watch TV as children and if it was ever turned on the channel changer never strayed from the ABC. I never watched the Partridge Family or The Brady Bunch but LOVED watching period BBC dramas or comedies. A dramatisation of Wuthering Heights sticks in my mind as does a series called The Nanny (and not of the Fran Dreschser variety). I found The Goodies HILARIOUS, and still do, and remember rolling around in fits if laughter while watching Basil Brush. Ah, the 70's.

Not a one eyed, all singing, all dancing poo in sight.

So if Yo Gabba Gabba is new, modern, cutting edge children's programming... and I don't, well, appreciate it... ummm, I guess I'm not the hip-happenin' (that in itself shows my complete dagginess) mum I had hoped. But at the end of the day, if my kids know Tim, Bill and Graham better than they know the green thing, the blue thing and the poo, I will feel I have done my job.

Sunday Afternoon

I can't think of a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than to lie on a picnic mat in your backyard. Particularly during a balmy Brisbane winter when the sky is blue, it's warm in the sun but cool(ish) is the shade. We had a top of 23 degC today in the dead of winter, brrr. The most beautiful day you can imagine.

I didn't sleep well saturday night and I can feel a sore throat starting and a cough (...what's that? oh, just the violins accompanying my woeful tale... never mind them...). After lunch I spread out a picnic mat and carried down some pillows.

Before I fell asleep I looked up into the 'Prickly Tree' or, more commonly known as the Norfolk Island Pine that someone, many years ago, had the good sense to plant slap-bang in the middle of the yard. I love it.

... and will happily fore go a pool to keep the tree. It provides so much backyard shade as well as a home for for birds...

So I looked up into the tree and dozed in the winter sun. At one point J joined me and I marveled at the colour of her glorious hair...

The girls under the cubby house wandered over for a visit and I marveled at the colour of their glorious feathers... black and green and red and purple... beautiful...

...the camera does no justice to their magnificence.

And I watched them scratch the garden onto the grass...

...again. A good reason not to remodel the garden and do that landscaping we're always talking about. I watched them for a while actually. Boring? NO! Never. I even videoed them for a while not noticing the noisy neighbours, loud lawn mowers or aircraft noise until I played it back.

I'd attach said video to this post but there seems to be some kind of technological barrier... shame, the girls gave an oscar winning performance and my directing was second to none. I wish you could see it, I also wish it was still a sunny Sunday afternoon and not this cold, overcast Monday. There's those violins again.