Heya! How are you? What have you been up to? We’ve been finding our feet and a new routine on the farm after heading back to work, so are now juggling work and the commute into our daily lives again. Each day is a thrill to pull up into the driveway after a long stretch of driving, we sigh and exhale then take a deep breath in of the fresh country air and it fills our lungs and hearts. I find something instantly calming about looking out over grassy hills dotted with wandering cows and sheep.

The return to routine has also heralded the return of my crafty mojo… I actually wondered if it’d permanently vanished but I now realise that I just didn’t have the capacity or energy or motivation, physically or mentally, to invest into crafting when I was preparing for the move. I don’t think I realised just how much of a toll it took. Gosh I found moving house a big deal! I can’t show you any pictures of my latest crafty project as it’s a present for someone who reads this blog (hiya sis!), but rest assured I’ll bombard you with crafty photos again soon.

The other morning I was woken by a strange – not normal sounding – mooing from a cow, only to check out the window and be greeted by a huge kangaroo bouncing in our back yard! And by back yard I mean our little house paddock… he was so close! I think Mr Cow was unimpressed with Mr Roo eating all the green grass and making himself at home! The timing was perfect though, the sun rise was beginning to throw a lovely soft peachy pink glow over the horizon. I wandered outside to hear the birds come life, there were no other sounds but for the gentle breeze through the cypress trees. I mentally pinched myself. Again. A regular thing since we’ve moved in. It still feels incredibly surreal that we live here now, smack bang in the middle of our dream. Granted the full scale of the dream has not blossomed yet, but we are here, we’ve made a solid move into the dream and that feels pretty cool.

The wedge tailed Eagles are regular visitors up the valley, we’ve watched the full moon rise over our home and loved seeing hills become tinged with lime green after a little rain. We’re looking forward to watching the seasons roll by imparting their special qualities on the land. Autumn is my favourite and when we visited the local little community schoolhouse at dusk I was reminded why. The colour on the leaves as the sunlight sparkled through them was beautiful. Such a sweet little old schoolhouse it is too. If I’ve got the story right, apparently a long long time ago the community decided they wanted a school for their kids so a local land owner donated a portion of his land and it was built. Unfortunately the original schoolhouse was burnt down but the community rallied together and rebuilt it with donations, so now it’s totally owned by the community. Sweet hey? It hasn’t been a school since the 1960’s I think but seems to be regularly used by the community which is pretty lovely really. On the way back from the schoolhouse I photographed our house from a distant road as the last of the light was dusting the top of our surrounding hills. Our little home perched on the hill glistening yet subtly blending in to its surrounds. More mental pinching goes on.

I’ve also decided to look at the commute to work as a positive thing. There’s nothing we can do about the situation for the moment so best to embrace it I reckon. We now have 3-4 hours a day sitting down where we can’t do anything else but drive… and listen. I’m choosing to fill my head with the good stuff and have been working my way through a podcast series. Of course I listen to lots of other ones too but this is by far my favourite and so worth a listen if you get a chance. It’s called ‘the one you feed’ and it’s based on the premise of a parable ‘The tale of two wolves’ which goes like this:

A grandfather is talking with his grandson and he says there are two wolves inside of us which are always at war with each other. One of them is a good wolf which represents things like kindness, bravery and love. The other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed, hatred and fear.
The Grandson stops and thinks about it for a second and then he looks up at his grandfather and says ‘Grandfather, which one wins?’ … the Grandfather quietly replies, ‘the one you feed’.

The series covers a huge range of topics and has a really varied mix of guests from Monks, to Rockstars, to Doctors, to Authors… But the theme running through all of the podcasts is about what these people do to feed their ‘good wolf’ and keep heading in the right direction in life. It’s totally fascinating, interesting, knowledgeable, sad, mood lifting, realistic, enlightening, funny, and entertaining and I would recommend it in a heartbeat! It certainly makes the long commute pleasurable and actually beneficial to my mental health. Win win right? If you want to have a listen to one but have no idea where to start (there is over 100 after all!) may I suggest this one, this one, this one, this one, this one, or this one. Let me know what you think if you do ok?

Hope life is treating you sweet and your ears and hearts are filled with life enriching things! X