Clearing A Path To Joy

No more boxes!
Upstairs, at least…
My bookcases are sorted, my DVDs are arranged, and my decorative touches are placed around the house. Some things might be moved again, but it still feels like home.
I didn’t have a good health week last week, but this week has been OK. It was lovely to be able to sit in the lounge and enjoy the space!
So far, this house has been easy to keep clean – not much dust on surfaces, haven’t noticed much in the way of unwanted wildlife (just an ant or two).

There are lots of surfaces to fill with trinkets.
Here’s a metal crayfish I found the other day.

He lives in the bedroom at the moment.

I also picked up a little cat dish type thing.

The head tilts slightly downward, which apparently helps cats to not get furballs when it’s used as a water dish.
This one holds our keys – as Sweet Bean says, we get to decide what the cat’s brains should be 😆
I thought my camphor chest could be an emergency seat if we get hordes of visitors all at once, so it needed some cushions.

My bits and pieces for the glass display cases are downstairs, but I decided to let my giraffe sit on the bookcase for now.

Because everyone needs a random giraffe 🙂

There’s a quiet joy in a lack of clutter, and in knowing you’ve accomplished everything you set out to do in a day.
There’s also joy in finding new songs!
These are two I’ve been listening to the last few days – one because I looked up the song we’d been singing in the online service Sunday, and the other because YouTube recommended it to me.

I hope you have been able to find joy in your day.
And maybe you’ve even been able to find your very own decorative giraffe!
❤

Published in: on October 10, 2023 at 9:53 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Coming Up Roses

I hadn’t planned to get into the gardening just yet…
Yesterday I looked out the kitchen window. We have two rose bushes in the back corner garden, but they’ve been let go and were looking straggly. I had thought they were possibly dying – most of the branches were dry and brown, and there were hardly any leaves. It’s apparently a bit late for pruning, although I was going to do it anyway…sometime.
Yesterday, when I looked out the kitchen window, I saw a beautiful pale pink rose, dancing above the dry sticks and brown foliage, waving over the height of the back fence and into the bright sky.
And I hadn’t even noticed a bud!

Here it is!
🙂

As I was already down there, it seemed like the best time to prune.
The bigger bush would have been something around 6-7 foot tall, so I took a lot off that one.
Of course, I had the pruners out, so it just made sense to take down the overgrowth on the geranium near the house. There were a few florets on the branches I chopped off, so I now have a bit of a flower display.

I can still see my lovely (fragrant) rose from the kitchen.
Just a bit closer than before.

Four weeks into living in the house, and everything’s…coming up roses – and geraniums!
They even supplied my random heart for the day ❤

Published in: on October 3, 2023 at 9:49 pm  Leave a Comment  

Open For Business

…or at least, coffee! 😀
Everything’s coming together nicely.
My books are snuggling together in the shelves, the kitchen is easy to move around in, and the general surroundings are still quiet and a bit sleepy.
Our door is open for sharing coffee and bikkies – had a lovely friend round today to catch up.
We even had time for a morning out last week for our anniversary ❤

Hot chocolate with a lovely melty marshmallow 🙂

My Babe has set up his studio downstairs, and has started some projects for the business.
His website is up and running – check out sajumusic.com for all the details. And of course you can still listen to the podcasts!
My space is coming together, too.

I wonder where dreams will take us?

Published in: on September 19, 2023 at 11:09 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Filling Up The Bookshelves

One of my favourite activities!
It’s all taking shape so far – boxes being emptied, various items finding their place. There are a few niggles to sort out – we’ve had to swap out the roller blinds. There were two, quite old, ones that shed plasticky bits every time they moved. Not what you want for the kitchen…
There are some storage spaces to figure out, but we’ll get there 🙂

We’re settling in well. Even had some asparagus from our own garden for tea!
My shelves are filling up with books, and I’m even managing to get them in some sort of thematic order this time. Maybe.
Tomorrow will be our 29th anniversary. Sweet Bean turned twenty a few days ago. How did I get so old? 😆

It’s been a good 29 years.
❤

Here we are, still happy, and looking toward the next 29 (30?) years!


Published in: on September 14, 2023 at 9:51 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Settling

Just over two weeks ago we were still wondering where we would end up, and thinking about just choosing a place to move to that would be a compromise for all our needs.
And then – we were offered this house.

There’s plenty of room for all we were looking for…
although we’ll have to look at getting a mower again!

(That’s a nice washing line! 🙂 )

It’s a mixture of old and new – the house has a few years on it, but there’s some upgrades inside.

New paint, new kitchen…

Is this what they call a rain shower?

Downstairs has a waterfall tap with a colour changing light.
Why?
No one seems to know…

The garden is a bit weedy, and there are various figurines dotted about.
Including a possible pet cemetery?

A gnome under the stairs…

There’s plenty of mint.

Some asparagus!

Even the weeds are pretty 🙂

It’s so quiet!
We can hear the birds singing.
And the weekend song of the lawn mower…

We’re still organising furniture, boxes…working out the new routines.
But –
we’re home!
😀

Published in: on September 9, 2023 at 10:20 pm  Comments (2)  

On The Road Again

The sun is setting on our time in this house…

…and we’re reaching the end of the tunnel of house hunting and all the admin that goes with it (renting seems to be a difficult process these days, even when you can find a place. Lots of documents and procedures).

We’ve been finishing off the packing and organising for the move, and I’ve even managed a good chunk of cleaning. Tomorrow there should be enough people and large vehicles to make it all a bit quicker and easier 🙂 )

We’re all feeling quite weary already… but you know those “Thank you, God” prayers you breathe when things that look like they’ll be difficult suddenly work out?
I’ve been saying quite a lot of those lately.
YouTube has been helping me along with “out of the blue” suggestions.

This one randomly turned up in an email newsletter!

It’s a collaboration between CityAlight and the Philippine Survivor Network Choir.

Well, it’s an early start tomorrow.
At least soon there’ll be less of this –

– and more space, light and silence!

I’ll probably still miss the coloured glass.

That’s our back door at the moment.

This one’s the side window in the toilet.

There’ll be more beauties to capture when we settle.
We went to have a quick look around the yard in the new place the other day. There’s a lot of mint in the garden, and a largish chilli bush. Also what looks like a spear of asparagus!

We shall see what tomorrow brings.
🙂

Published in: on September 1, 2023 at 7:15 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Dance On It

Well, looks like we’re moving next weekend! 😀
We’re off up the road to One Mile – it’s the house I really liked when we walked through it, and there seems to be a lot of space.
So, we’re nearly out the door here.


It’s funny – Tuesday we were on tenterhooks, wondering if our offer for another house would go through. I had forgotten about this one! In the space of a few hours we found we’d lost the other house, but the agents for that one put us forward for yet another place, and were happy to take our application before it was put up online.
And then, we got the phone call to say our application for the One Mile place went through 😆

I still have bits and pieces to pack (the teacups!) but I’m thankful that I started the books a while back. The heavier things are done, and we’re thinking this move should be a bit easier than the last one. Our stuff hasn’t had a chance to pile up in random places yet, and cleaning should go well.
Some nights I don’t sleep well, so there’s a wave of tiredness that swamps me sometimes, and confuses even simple actions. As an example – I wear different glasses for everyday and for the laptop. This afternoon I knew I had to change glasses so I could go downstairs to get a cup of tea. Put them on, puzzled as to why my eyes were even blurrier. Realised I was trying to put my everyday glasses on over the top of my reading glasses…
Obviously, I really needed that tea.

The title of this post is the title of a song I hadn’t heard for a long time, but rediscovered yesterday.
Seemed to fit, but I could only find an audio clip for it.
Since I’ve done so well with packing today I decided to rest and enjoy some time online tonight. In the absence of an official video for the titular song, here’s another clip to make you smile!

Don’t you just love people?
❤

Published in: on August 24, 2023 at 7:35 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Making Music In The Mess

Powering my way through packing at the moment (you know, with rest and coffee breaks included…)
I feel like the hardest bits are pretty much done. I have to remember how I packed my teacups safely last time, but I’ve finished the fragile things from the glass display cases.
Books are all packed.

Still got most of the art room to go.
The TV room has been my main point of packing so far. This means it has been a mess, even though most of it now is actually boxed or in some other kind of order.

Still life with cardboard 😀
Time to put my feet up…

We’re waiting to hear back about a couple of houses.
It’s all quite exciting!
My Babe is still getting his business off the ground, so there are various things to do with that, in between the house viewings and box packing. He’s waiting for a website to be finished, but in the meantime, there’s his YouTube channel. Go and listen to some podcasts about songwriting, or relax with some music.

❤

Published in: on August 21, 2023 at 9:23 pm  Comments (2)  
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Catching The Corpses Breathing

I’ve managed to pack a fair amount of boxes in the last few days. Mostly books, a few trinkets… books are easier – they’re mostly some form of rectangle, so they can fit in any type of box.
When I finish for the day, I like to just watch stuff, settle down a bit for the evening. Lately I’ve been catching up on a bit of CSI. I don’t really like horror, or even actiony/thriller type things, but I love a bit of forensics 🙂
The only thing is, I’m watching the earliest seasons. One of the fun things is catching the supposed corpses breathing, or showing other signs of life. Some are quite obviously breathing, and I’ve caught a few eye twitches. I can only suppose that later seasons will refine the non-breathing technique!

When you think about it, all TV shows are artificial. They’re all actors acting – making us believe that what we see is what is there. We get so caught up in the story that it’s a bit jarring to see a corpse breathe. It snaps us out of the narrative, and can make the scene seem absurd.

Life’s a bit like that.
We’re wandering (galloping?) along, thinking what we see is real, and then the corpse breathes, and we’re looking from outside at absurdity.
Where we are now (as in moving again) has been a bit of a snap back to reality, where our plans can sometimes veer off at the last minute.
Good thing there’s still breathing!

Still, I can appreciate a bit of absurdity. The boys have shown me a few AI song mashups, and YouTube has given me a few to watch…
I’m not sure if you’ve ever wanted to hear Johnny Cash “sing” Barbie Girl?
Here it is anyway…

I listened to that one, and YouTube seemed to think I would also enjoy this –

They were right.

Well, I’m off to check out some forensics. It’ll probably be more comprehensible than the clips above.

There are random boxes everywhere at the moment, but my clay sculpture (John) continues to look cool and ready for anything 🙂

Published in: on August 12, 2023 at 10:21 pm  Leave a Comment  
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Looking Past The Testing Moment

Passed the house inspection today. We’ve also been given info on what needs to be cleaned to get our bond back – at least we don’t need to pay a bond cleaner.
We’ve been turned down for one place, and are looking at another next week.
It would be tempting to get a little panicky now.

My Babe sent me this to listen to, so now I’m sharing it with you 🙂

All things considered, it seems we’re right where we should be…

YouTube also threw this onto my suggestions page – not sure why, as I don’t think I’ve ever heard of the One Voice Children’s Choir before.
I love hearing children singing out, using their voices – the stated aim of the choir is to “to inspire the world through the power of children’s voices”.
The song gives something to think about.

I’m not going skydiving, though.

Published in: on August 8, 2023 at 8:08 pm  Leave a Comment  
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