The beginning of a catch up

Lordy pick a bale of cotton, I cant believe its a whole year since my last entry. Amazing. Its been full! I'm going to stack some blogs up and try and summarise, mainly for my own records cos its so much fun reading back over the blog and going wow did we really do that...

We had an incredible summer in NZ in the Nelson sun renovating the house below. My memory has wiped all the eye scratching moments when we were living half in the building site half in the sleepout half in the car with nothing anywhere it was supposed to be and 2 small children chewing on nails. I just retain the overall utopian vibe, living down the road from the family I've missed for the past 15 years, on our own piece of heavenly land, watching the valley, growing our own food, the girls full of joy. Waking every morning to perfect sunshine and opening the curtains to stare at the sea. Bucketfuls of gorgeous purple damsons, making jam in my freshly renovated kitchen. Making pesto with our own basil - summer in a jar, indescribable flavour. Lots of friends coming to stay, amazing local wine and barbeques. Fresh blueberries on tap from my mothers amazing garden. But I digress. The season has passed and we are now in Melbourne. And thats another story. First, heres the pics of the project.

Lets start with the bathroom -

this...

became this

The kitchen

became this

The living area

became this

The front of the house

became this

the main entrance

became this

the 70's panelled dining room became this...

and coloured chalk paint made it to NZ (it wasnt meant to be quite that colour but the kids didnt mind)...

And we did all that in 7 months. Not bad. And you havent seen the land yet... that was a big job. More pics of that later.