thankful

Today I am thankful for
* yummy tea at the beach
*splashing in waves
*wonderful parents that love me unconditionally
*finding almonds on a side of the road tree
*Fresh nectarines while dad watered a friends beautiful garden

I went to the beach yesterday afternoon with my parents. It was great fun, we had good chats and I feel ready to face another buisy week. I didn't take photos then, these are photos from a trip during my last holidays (same beach, different adventure:)

Looking at the sparkling waves always brings about a peace within me. My mind forgets the everyday life bits and pieces it was jitting back and forth between and is lulled into calm happiness

Nature is my 'happy place'

2 weeks holidays! Day one

 For my very first day of holidays I went to visit Mum
It was a fun day full of opp shopping, last minute present buying and lunch in the park
After tea we went to the beach until it was time to look at Christmas lights

 The water was dark and moody looking, the weather unseasonably cold

 We saw lots of pretty lights

 It was nice to drive around my old town and see all the farmilliar lights that we see each year and of course some new ones.

Im glad to be on holidays but I dont feel as relaxed as id hoped. Ive taken my second lot of clomid (fertility medication) and its making me feel stressed out.

 I figured that with my work increasing and my day care anual re-approval coming up that I had reasons to feel stressed but now that im on holidays and have nothing to stress about for two weeks I can see that realy im stressed about nothing!

 I hate feeling like this and im considering not taking clomid next month to give myself a break but I hate the thought of missing an oporturity to get pregnant.

 Anyway, my mum gave me a nice relaxing massage and im planning to meditate and have a restful break and hopefully feel good and enjoy my time off.

eco beach wondering and our new favourite toys

 On Sunday morning me and Dad beat the hot weather to the beach for an early morning walk. We went back to the 'sea glass' beach and I found some more treasures for our Summer nature table.

 Along the way we saw quite a bit of rubbish so we deciced to pick up as much as we could carry on the way back to put in the bin. The whole way we were feeling like banana pancakes so eventually we went home to make some.

As soon as we turned around and began looking for rubbish I found a worn out holey bucket, perfect for carying more rubbish! Moments after I said the bucket had as much as it could fit, Dad happened to find a shopping bag that would carry more! Doesnt it feel like when were doing what were supposed to be doing the world just flows and helps us! 

Incase your wondering the banana pancakes were realy good (yum)

 Today I got a rather special package in the mail, some beautiful wooden farm animals that I bought with the money from working a weekend a few weeks back. It was a hot day so we made them a pond and they did lots of swimming and splashing!

the wave stacker made a great  water slide

 They ate some rather large carrots and bananas!

I think I love the toys even more than the kids:)

Im off to Jack Johnson concert tonight, my Christmas present from Dad. Im soo excited!!! Today is a realy great day!

Beach wondering with some of my favourite people!

Sunday morning I made it to my happy place... the beach! 

Its right where i needed to be, the cool salty water.
Mum and I had fun getting stranded at the end of a sand bar! The water suddenly got oh so deep!
We walked down the beach and had fruit smoothies

Two of our favourite shops were open so we browsed through the Moonta craft co op and the antiques and salvage shop. After a Sunday like this I was almost ready for another busy week. almost...

Guess what finally landed in my mail box this morning? A $350 cheque, the grant money for my day care that I was offered months ago!
 The $350 that inspired me to think about what I wanted for my day care. It was because of this money that I took the plunge to fill our days with natural toys, crafts and experiences.
I am so thankful for this cheque, it helped so much before it even got here. It made me feel like this change that i wanted was possible. I feel so much more forfiled in my work because of these changes. Truly the actual money is just a bonus.  

A weekend full of my favourite things

Me and Benny went to visit my wonderful Sammy sister on the weekend. We had an absolute blast checking out a new supermarket sized opp shop near her house (see her overflowing basket? We could have filled it 10x with stuff we loved!) Im fairly sure we would have spent the whole day there if hunger didnt get the better of us!

After making toasties for lunch we went to the beach in our new opp shop shorts (no it wasn't really warm enough but we had fun pretending!)

And then the next day after walking mia to the beach and back we went to markets and and had lunch infront of another pretty beach. Yep, thats my idea of a good weekend!

Wondering Wednesday

Ive joint Garden Mama and many others again for Wondering Wednesday. Because what can i say, i like to wonder.

 I'm a little bit of a cheater, I work on Wednesdays and don't wonder real far, so this was actually on a beach adventure yesterday.

Wondering, wondering across pointy rocks, to the perfect flat rock to sit and just be...

Here I sat, breathing in salty air and enjoying having the whole beach to my self.

Feeling thankful for my solo journeys that I'm able to take on days off work, when most of the world is at work or at school or doing what they 'should' be doing, practical tasks.

This is when my spirit truly feels free, I can go wherever i like, feel the wind in my hair, adventure, explore.  

I truly treasure these days

Art changes people, people change the world

Just a few more art journal pages, and many more to come. I like the thought of them being safe here on my little blog in case of fire or whatever because they realy are very special to me. Some of them are easier read by clicking on them              

Love this little water colour garden plan from when i lived with mum still that i never quite finished. The colours arent so hypo in real life, my scanner just made them look brighter than they are. For the record i only finished about half of that to do list before i moved house!

The character 'Summer' in this little story was me, except i never had the combi. One day perhaps. (Yep I hate showering, I can always think of things id rather be doing with those few minutes every day!)

Ah my benny babe, i wrote this soon after we met and im happy to say its all still true

Theres just something about this page, it takes me back to that day at the beach with my toes in the water. The toe ring was a present that my cousin lil got me at markets i do believe. I still have it somewhere.

our crazy camping trip

On the weekend me and Benny went camping with my family.

We had an 'interesting' start to the weekend, i was truly starting to wonder if we were 'meant' to go if you know what i mean. heres why-

*The day before there were warnings of severe weather. No problem... if necissary we could stay at Anneke's which was close by.

*Just before we left home, the caravan park manager told us we were supposed to be booked in by 6pm (it was 5.30 and we were 2 hours away!) No problem... he was able to come back to let us in.

*Dad and Mum left before us. 5mins after they left Dad called to say we might want to keep an eye out on the highway as his van's back door had come open! oops .No problem... nothing had fallen out.

So off we went, happily driving along for almost the whole journey and then on the express way a few minutes from our destination...

*A car three or four places in front of us suddenly rolled AROUND 10 TIMES! The two people in the car were lucky to survive! The girl had a horrible foot injury so we stayed with her until the ambulance came, and then ever so carefully drove the rest of the way feeling rather shaken.

Finaly we made it, the guys put up the tent and me and Anneke went to get pizzas for tea (because by this time it was9pm and even the thought of our cute little camping stove wasnt enough incentive for anyone to feel like cooking.)

After that our weeknd was much less 'eventfull', very relaxing and pleasant (except our tent threatning to blow away in the middle of the night with us still in it! especially the first night)

Hanging out in the van where mum and dad slept.

(This photo went a little something like this, 'oops i already pressed self timer, quick everyone, dive NOW!)

We loved the camp kitchen. Even though there were quite a few people at the caravan park no one seemed to ever be there so we took it over and made it our own (think our stuff spread over around 4 large picnic tables at any given moment)

We went for walks at the beach and wondered to opp shops

All weekend we kept super cozy with a million layers of clothing. No im not exagetating...

We walked down a windy little path that led us up a hill to a beautiful view of Annekes beach. Her doggie Mia was most happy to come along

I decided that seems id been drinking green smoothies for two weeks straight and lots of people in blog land seem to be doing month long green smoothie chalanges i might as weal bring my stick mixer along for some camping green smoothies, so i wouldnt miss two days. Dad tried one too

Heres our tenty-tent, full of beautiful life long camping memories (Ma and pop gave it to my parents when i was a baby)

 The old girl is still going strong. Because of the strong winds i woke up lots of times at night, but i was happy to just lay their feeling cozy in this big farmilliar tent, remembering sleeping in it every night during our two month long family adventures to Queensland and Darwin during primary school, and many other special trips.

I didn't mind the weather flapping the tent about, but im glad those old metal poles stood tall and refused to fall. 

I love this photo, its perfectly imperfect. I crept up behind him after hed decided 'no more photos until tomorrow' (there had been many photos!), and im glad i snuck this last one . Sorry Benny but i win:)

I hope you had as great a weekend as we did!!!