Moving house and parting waters

Oh yes, we disappeared again! Littletree and I have been a little exceedingly busy moving house. In a flood.

Surprise! We have a new home. It’s still in Fern Gully, but on the far side of the caldera.

The new house is gorgeous – it’s like our dream home. We have a large block of land in the bush, rainforest, dozens of fruit trees (mangoes, guavas, rose apples, pomegranates, bananas, papayas, pears, sapotes, and loads more!), established, fenced veggie gardens, a large creek with swimming holes and stretches we can kayak on, and a small, freshwater spring that cascades down little waterfalls in the rainforest – clean sweet water we can drink!

And the house itself is so perfect for us!

The front of the house

The kitchen (all wooden – yay!)

My bedroom,

with extra awesome rainbow window

And my own little balcony to enjoy the morning sun

And a sunroom off my bedroom, that shall be my office :)

Littletree’s room

The most enormous covered deck ever!

Adorable fireplace in the funky living room

Veggie gardens

The gorgeous rainforest…

It’s honestly the most amazing place ever. I go to sleep at night hearing the burbling of the spring below my window, which cascades from one pool to the next…

The only problem is that since Cyclone Oswald, which hit us the day after I got this new house, it’s been raining heavily, and flooded here. The creek has been up over the driveway and we’ve been unable to drive in for a whole month!

At some point, it even got up to waist-deep over the causeway, with a very strong current – at that level, I didn’t even try to cross, having decided that anything over knee-deep was unsafe (and even then it was a bit iffy), and it was deemed only safe for Littletree to wade through if it was no more than halfway up her shins. Definitely not possible to drive poor Sunshine (our van) through!

So, not being able to drive in, we couldn’t move in properly – we managed to get some camp mattresses and bedding up to the house in backpacks, wading through the creek (when it was low enough to do so), and then schlepping up about 200 metres of muddy, rocky hill to get to the house.

We had a good friend come to stay who helped out a lot – she even lugged a little bar fridge through the creek and up the hill for us!

And I did about 57 trips back and forth, down to the van, fill up storage bins and a backpack with stuff, wade through the creek, put storage bins on a cart, and lug the lot up to the house, unload, return with empty bins, rinse and repeat.

We still don’t have furniture at the house, or a proper fridge, but we have what we need, and slowly, one box at a time, I’m getting stuff in. And in the meanwhile, I’m getting a LOT of exercise.

WELCOME HOME!

The housewarming party is yet to come :)

Green Kitchen

Due to the overwhelming numbers of requests, I’ve uploaded some photos of the new kitchen – long-time readers might remember my occasional outbursts of stress around the design and planning of the new kitchen.

I had to search around for ages to find photos of how it was before – seems I totally spaced out taking “before” shots; very unlike me! But finally I found some – ones I took of the house before we first moved in!

So here’s before:

And After:

So you can see we knocked out the ‘stupid’ wall that created a useless, dark corridor to the front door, opened everything up, ripped out the old lino and saggy particle-board subfloor and put in timber boards.

It’s not *completely* finished – I still have to do the tiling/ splashback on the wall above the benchtop, but I haven’t decided exactly what it’s going to be (it will, of course, be green), and the hanging light fixtures need to be moved to be above the island. But It’s all essentially finished, and I’m LOVING IT!

Here’s the view you see from entering the front door:

And a view of the island from the other side:

I have my laundry machine installed in the kitchen, in the place most people would put a dishwasher. But I don’t like dishwashers, and I got used to the washing-machine-in-the-kitchen style in Europe – makes sense to me, and I figure any possible future inhabitants of the house can still put a dishwasher in the space should they so desire.

Little features I love are: the Kids’ Cooking Space – one cupboard opens out horizontally to create a bench-top at small-person height, with the little mini toaster-oven stowed inside. Littletree loves this space, and she often opens it up when preparing food for herself. Makes sense, since I frequently have many small people in my kitchen!

And the semi walk-in pantry with masses of storage space fits all our food :) Yay!

I love love love the white quartz crystal bench tops, we very nearly went for a green marble top, but in the end, it was a lot more expensive, and this looks so much brighter and cleaner. Since we saved so much on the labour (getting friends to do it in return for living in our basement), and we were lucky enough to get all the cabinets and materials at trade cost, we splurged on custom-made hardwood doors from the most local, sustainably-grown timber we could source. They came up looking fantastic :)

We have an awesome, deep double sink, which I actually enjoy washing up in! And the extra little sink on the corner of the island was a fantastic idea. I also got a shiny stainless steel gas cooktop and new oven. Which means I’m cooking up a storm of decadent delights!

Back in the Rhythm

We’ve been home for a week now, and starting to feel “back to normal”. I’ve finally got the house in some sort of order; unpacked our bags, did a billion loads of laundry, cleaned so much dust from the kitchen renovation (which isn’t quite finished), caught up with some friends, spent some time with Ariad, went to Capoeira group, and did a lot of resting and acclimatising to the COLD. brrrr

We went to homeschool group this week, Littletree was so happy to catch up with her friends again

The kids had a blast, we met up at a friend’s house and made pizzas

Littletree decided to make hers heart-shaped (which started a trend)

Yum!

And so educational too…

Phone a Friend

Okay, I need help, Quick!

As some of you may or may not know, I’m actually crap at making decisions. I um and ahhh over things for *hours*. okay, for days and days, irritating everyone around me.

My tried and true method of making decisions (other than the multitude of craziness we all remember from when I won the iPad) is to ask my friends. The few friends I now have left will attest to this. I go over and over stuff, weighing up pros and cons ad nauseum.

And in this very moment, I have a massive choice to make… and no friends around to ask! Purple is off at a rainbow gathering somewhere in Queensland, no one else seems to be online… and I’m in Malaysia!

So, I’m asking the help of the internet-at-large: please please please help me design my new kitchen! (not sure if I mentioned it, but while we’re away, our kitchen is getting re-build).

The builder just Skyped me to say there’s a question about the size of the island. Here’s the diagram:

(click to see a bigger version)

The actual walls are in thick black. Don’t worry about the thing that looks like we have 2 ovens – one of them is mis-labelled and will actually be a “dishwasher”, but I’m installing the laundry machine there instead, just because I’m cool and European like that.

The question is about THE ISLAND. (ignore all the faint green lines that indicate the sizes of things, and focus on THE ISLAND! it’s to be 1350mm wide (53” for Americans) (not 1300 as shown) and 2100mm long (82”), and yes, it’s curved on one side, with barstool seating around the curved edge.

So, See how the island sticks out past the dotted line that represents where the edge of the kitchen *was* (there was a half wall and bench here before, but now it’s gone – just lovely open space).

The choice is: Do the island as shown, OR cut out the “300 base” (which is 300mm – 11.8”) and shorten the whole thing to 1500mm (60”) OR change the 300 base to a 400mm base (15.75”), thus making the whole island 2200mm (86.5”).

Less island, which doesn’t stick out so much, but I just loose storage space and seating space, or more island, more cupboards and more seating space, but it sticks out past the “kitchen” space and into the “living/ dining” space 640mm-740mm (25”-30”).

I can also change the configuration of all the cupboards in the island, but let’s don’t go there!

Help!!!

Landing in Paradise

Littletree and I arrived to Malaysia safe and sound :) We left Bangkok for the airport early, to pick up my luggage which finally arrived – just in time to take our flight to Kuala Lumpur. I was so glad to get my backpack back, intact, with all my birth kit!

We landed in KL at around 9:30pm, then the slow dawdle through customs and immigration, waiting at the luggage carousel (thankfully, lightning doesn’t strike twice and all our stuff was there)!

Then it was an hour on the shuttle bus to the city, we got slightly lost and waited a while for our ride, and finally another hour to drive back to the place we’re staying. It was nearly 1am when we arrived – exhausted!

In the dark we crossed over a little footbridge with the sound of water rushing underneath. In the darkness, a little bamboo “chalet” was dimly lit, and we were ushered up the stairs into our room. Mmmmm a lovely, soft bed encased in mosquito netting. Ah the bliss that is horizontality!

We slept like a pair of logs to the sound of the river below, and only woke up around noon. Slowly stretching, I threw back the shutters to see:

Paradise!

The river rushing by right below our chalet and the little bridge we’d crossed over in the dark

Beautiful gardens all around and other little chalets and huts across the way

Littletree was incredibly excited to see treehouses and rope bridges

Our room is lovely; simple and comfortable.

Here is the chalet from the outside with it’s little living area downstairs.

Such a beautiful place, and the smell of fresh durian wafting on the breeze!

Luscious Visits

*for some reason, this post didn’t go through last week when I sent it originally, so I’m re-posting*

We’ve had such a steady stream of friends, visitors, houseguests, couch surfers and random hippie folk staying at our house since we got back from the last Australian Rainbow Gathering!

Last weekend we had Luscious over to stay with A, her 2 year old boy, which was great, we even got to celebrate her birthday! (Naturally I made some decadent yummies)

It was great to get to connect, and share life in our village

 

and share hanging out by the Laundromat while we dried laundry, since it rained about the whole time they were here

Though we didn’t get to do all that much since I came down with a yucky head cold and spent half their visit in bed feeling miserable.

At least A had lots of fun with Littletree’s rollerskates

Fun times!

New Floor

We’re replacing the floors in the bedrooms – when we bought our house it had mouldy seagrass carpeting, which would be okay except for the mould. We ripped that stuff up – it makes great mulch for the garden! But under the seagrass was warped, crumbling particle board.

At first I thought we could repair the old sub-floor – I sealed it,

and tried to level it with a levelling compound so we would have a flat surface to install a floating floor on

But in the end, it wasn’t saveable, and we ripped out all the sub floor

and had a friend of ours put in new boards

Then we started installing bamboo floating floorboards

It was hard work learning how to bang the planks in properly – they snap together – no nails or glue required. The instructions say “tap lightly with a hammer”, but we had to bang them in really hard.

Littletree did some of the measuring

and finally the finished product!

We love it; it looks great :) It’s now become Littletree’s favourite room – probably because the floor is smooth and there’s no furniture in there yet, so she puts on Abba songs and dances like crazy in there.

Guinea Pigs

Introducing the newest members of the majikfaerie family:

The white one is called Snowy (Snowflake for short) and the Ginger one is called Shyly.

Littletree has been bugging us to have a pet since… well, since forever. My longtime readers (yes, both of you) might remember we did once have a pet, Estrella the Hermit Crab, who mysteriously died after just a few months.

Since then, I’ve been nixing the idea of pets, saying that we can’t have dogs or cats because we live in a small cabin in the bush with lots of wildlife, no mice or rats because we have enough problems with wild rodents and I set out traps, and no rabbits because feral rabbits are such a problem in Australia and I don’t want to add to it.

Finally, we narrowed it down to say Littletree could have a Guinea Pig.

Only I still had one excuse up my sleeve – we lived in a tiny one-room cabin with no place for a pet. I promised Littletree that we could get one as soon as we got a house of our own because then we will be done with travelling and settled down.

And yes, it’s true. we bought this house just over a year ago *hangs head in shame* but at first we were still moving in, then we were going to Tasmania. Then we were going to Thailand. Then we were going to Far North Queensland. Then Littletree and Purple were going to Israel. Then we were all going to New Zealand. (This is me settled down; not travelling any more!)

I finally ran out of excuses, so Purple and I capitulated and bought Littletree a couple of Guinea Pigs, as well as a nice hutch for them to live in (which I spent an afternoon painting and will soon be moved out onto the grass).

Littletree plays with them loads since she got them (let’s see how long that lasts *rolls eyes*). She brought them to Life Drawing Class, and decided to draw the Guinea Pigs rather than the model

Today Littletree built the Guinea Pigs a little castle with her blocks

She hand-feeds them

As much as I’m not really convinced having pets is such a great idea (I don’t remember this being in the brochure when I signed up for this parenting gig!), at least Shyly and Littletree are colour-coordinated

And if it really doesn’t work out, I hear Guinea Pigs are quite tasty ;)