The wedding....

Last post I showed how we set up the farm for the wedding and the flowers.  It was all too much for one post!   Now for the bits you probably want to see!

Chloe had my niece Georga and Harper and Scarlett as flower girls.  Their role was very casual, throwing petals and confetti and dancing a lot in fluffy dresses!  They were so beautiful and good.

So here is the happy couple...

Chloe made her own headpiece and bouquet.  I loved both!

I wanted to mention... we had a beautiful fine day.  Before the wedding day and since it has rained.  We just had one shower of rain which was just before the reception began and everyone went into the marquee.  Then as Chloe and Luke came in they were framed by a rainbow right behind them!

Then the rain cleared and the whole evening was perfect still weather and just gorgeous to be outside.  It was amazing!   As it got cooler big fires in the fire pits warmed everyone and kept bugs at bay.

Chloe's dress was just her.   Really everything represented them both so well.

The Pastor who married them was someone very special to the family who also prayed over Dad 20+ years ago when Dad was gravely ill.  Dad survived and made an amazing recovery.   The doctors told Dad he was so incredibly lucky and if he behaved he might get another five years.  That is now over 21 years ago.   Chloe wanted him to marry them.  The service was beautiful and very personal.

We don't have the photographers photos back yet.  So these are just what I have so far!

Chloe made me flowers from my wrist on velvet ribbon to go with my dress.

The girls were SO EXCITED and they danced and threw confetti for hours.  They never wore out!  

I have to show Harper's hair. Not a curl was added this is just how it is...  

I cannot wait to see more photos.  There were so many special moments.  Scarlett crashed the dance floor (and started dancing) when the bride and groom were having their first dance.  She wasn't being left out.  Harper danced and danced with Mum (Great Grandma) and me... her dress twirled which she thought was just wonderful.  She thought she was a princess I think.   She is still talking about it all!

So many of you are good friends to me and have prayed for everything from our house sale to a fine wedding day!  This is so wonderful thank you.  This is what we all need.  We can have great friends and family around us but we can also have friends and Christian sisters far and wide and support each other.  

I hope your week is going well!   I will have a load to report on Friday!  xxx

The wedding. Part 1!

Thank you everyone who prayed for the wedding day!  It was quite miraculous as we had a week of rain leading up to the wedding and a storm and rain since.... but the wedding day was perfect.  There was one small shower but I will tell you about that later...

Where to start?  I want to share it all with you so I will just tackle one thing at a time so here is how we got ready for the day....

As you know this was a farm wedding and it was very much DIY!
Chloe married farmer Luke on Saturday.

Last week for me was getting ready.  I was the florist.  With Mum's help we gathered all the flowers ourselves from the farm.  Mostly from Mum's garden.  The total cost of the flowers for the wedding was zero dollars and zero cents lol.

At one stage there I did feel that I had taken on the job of several florists.  But it worked out!

So we really began Thursday with picking a vast amount of flowers and foliage.  I drove over to Mums and we picked and loaded up.

This was the back of my car at one stage and this was another...

By now we had a marquee set up for the reception and I started unloading flowers in there and just stuck them in buckets...

We also had huge amounts of foliage... and long bits that were five to six feet in length.  These were draped on sheets on the ground.   Chloe had wanted just foliage on the fence posts leading the the wedding site. This was a challenge as they were over five feet tall.  

So these led into the wedding site with one on each side.  They were huge!

The wedding was going to be under a huge gum tree.  This is the location before we made an isle lined with jars of native flowers (will show this sometime later...)

On Friday we had a day of setting up and I arranged flowers.  Everyone helped.

This is Chloe and Allie putting up bunting.  There was miles of bunting.  I sourced lace tablecloths, doilies etc from op shops, my friends helped from far and wide until we had enough. Chloe sewed it.  It was gorgeous.  All the marquee ropes etc were covered in bunting.

The seating was hay bales.  

Some were placed in huge circles and in the middle were the flower fire pits made by Luke and Andy from tractor disks.   Then they piled up wood to burn in these into the night.  To me even the wood piles looked lovely.  

I began arranging.  I was remembering my Nana who was a wonderful florist.  She collected flowers and foliage wherever she went.  She would have loved to have seen all of this!  Truly she would have thought it was heavenly.

All tables had flowers.   Some were kind of arranged and some really just stuck in buckets.  Mainly I just stuck to casual and abundant...

This went on and on until I was wondering about a blood transfusion lol!

I was also doing a mental Vicky Challenge.  I wonder how much city florists would charge for the flowers and the arrangements etc?  I am guessing a lot.  As I get to next stages you will see we also had no hair dressers, make up artists etc.  Chloe made her own bouquet.  And headpiece... can't wait to show you that!  

By Friday night we were ready and walked away.  All we could do now was hope and pray for tomorrow....  

(Part 2 coming as soon as I can manage.  Also I have not replied to most of Fridays comments but I will!  Have a wonderful week! xxx) 

The world within your walls.

Last year I found myself feeling heartbroken. The world around me seemed to have gone mad.

During my life so far Christian persecution was something that happened overseas and we were very lucky to be free here.  But all of that has gradually changed.
I felt like I would like to stop the world and get off if this is how it is going to be.
I also feel like get me out of the city and on to a farm away from some of this!

My heart and peace were really disturbed.  I just never have seen such a fast decline of many things all at once!

I decided to read my Bible and do some study every day.  And from day one I started to feel better.
From that day I saw this has always been the way.  We are not meant to conform or fit into the world. We are meant to have the Word of God as the light for our feet and keep to that.   What the world thinks doesn't matter.

I read and re read Laines Letters.  Years ago she shared a story of how her son was the only young man in the Christian Youth Group who would take a stand against pornography!  And later how he was given a terrible time at his place of work because he was a Christian.  It was awful.  You expect it in the world but you don't expect it at Church!
The other day when I saw a Church near us with a sign out the front openly promoting sin that I finally thought... this is it.  All is lost.

Now I have had time to think about this.  No, it is not new.  It is just more up close and personal that it has ever been in my life.  So that is confronting.  But so far at least we are still free inside our own
homes and no one can take away from you what you believe  in your heart.   Peace in the home and peace in our hearts give us rest.

Even if you don't relate to this you will probably relate to feeling the news is depressing and that you see things in society you find downright scary.  Or that when things are running smoothly at home you feel so much better, happier, calmer.   From any perspective the atmposhere in your home matters a lot.

From all of this I know that keeping our homes a place where we feel safe, peaceful, nurtured and relaxed is so important!  Our home is our sanctuary!  So this year we are going to have a series on keeping your home feeling beautiful, comfy, calm and welcoming.  We need that.  Our families need it too.  

I started by reading my Bible.  I immediately was reminded "do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed"  and plenty on the subject that tells us if we follow along and agree with the world we are on the wrong path!

It is also plenty on coming away and having nothing to do with terrible things.  Instead we are advised "whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (Philippains 4:8-9)

So this is my mission or one of them!   If I keep to thinking of good things, reading encouraging and beautiful books,  leaning new skills and working on something lovely then I feel happy.

I started my daily Bible and study.
I began re reading Laines Letters.

Immediately I felt better.
I read where Laine said "I don't listen to the worlds words much anymore"  and how she found so much peace just trusting the word of God to be true forever.

If you need peace and encouragement just read your Bible every single day!
If you haven't read Laine's Letters they can be found here.  They are the best encouragement and guidance I have ever found!  They also serve as a very easy way to do a Bible study.

I also have found Jenny of Elefantz (see my favourite blogs on the side) is a place of peace an beauty. There is a Facebook group called Gentle Domesticity that is just lovely and fits the bill for the above verse about whatever is beautiful, whatever is lovely. It is so peaceful!  This gives me a daily lift.

Some of the ways we can create a peaceful haven in our homes include:
Deciding what to say yes to and deciding what to say no too!  Being too busy is guaranteed to ruin peace in the home.
Your organisation and decor.  If you feel a mess and overwhelmed you are getting no relaxation at all!
Keeping beautiful things to look at everyday.  This might be flowers,  family photos, beautiful words to think on,  things you love as part of your decor, childrens drawings...

The way your house smells!  haha this sounds bad!  But I like things to smell clean and good!
The way your house sounds.  Happy music while you work.  I mostly hate background noise and never have the TV on in the day.  Give me birds chirping any day!
Interruptions. If I let it I would have to answer the phone during dinner every night to someone trying to sell me something. Just no way!
A routine.  I like a routine of chaos.

The garden and plants.  They are part of my surroundings and give a lot of peace and calm.

We need to work out how to get time for reading good things,  learn new things and create beauty?  I know I am much happier if I have time to work on something creative.   This really increases my contentment!  And something else... I find I am thinking lovely thoughts as I work away.

How can each person have a space of their own that makes them feel nurtured and happy?
How can we carve out for ourselves a quiet space or a craft/sewing/writing space in a full and busy household?
If we love feminine things how can we have these for ourselves in a house full of boys!?
Do you feel you should decorate in a certain way because it is fashionable but your don't even really like it?  Did you inherit or somehow get stuck with decor that bugs you?
Are there small changes you could make that would make a big difference to how you feel at home?
We are going to consider all these things!

I have known for a long time just what I like and some of what I need.  I like light, white, calm.

Quiet, flowers, pantries, baking, the house to smell good.  Clutter or a big mess unsettle me.
I struggle to get the "being home and doing things out of the house" balance right.  If I am out too much everything suffers.   The wheels fall off! haha!

My home is far from perfect.  I get in a mess.  My spare room is terrible at the moment!  The dining room table is my sewing centre right now.
I am really lucky to have a nice house.  But I have made each home nice, ordered, clean and pretty.   I have painted four houses top to bottom.  I have wallpapered, stencilled,  gilded, decoupaged, you name it!   The truth is most of my furniture is really old.  My lounge was Mum and Dad's fifty years ago. My dining table was Nan's.  A lot of my stuff came from the side of the road!   I have a beautiful dressing table found in an old farmhouse.  I paint everything white so completely random things kind of go together!   I have collected many mirrors free and I use them to hide bad bits and reflect the good stuff!   I do all this knowing that my surroundings affect me so much.

We wake up to, walk into, breathe and absorb it all.  So does our family.  And it just seems that as women we have a lot of power to set the scene,  create a home,  set an atmosphere.   The world within our walls is mostly up to us.

What is it that makes you feel nested at home?  How can you make things feel more like "you" as well as a haven for each member of the family?   Maybe I better take some photos of Andy's havens.  I will do that as he has a large music room, an office and a "man shed" haha!  But these are his personal spaces and he is not drowned out by feminine stuff.

For both of us we need a retreat from the world and we are going to have to have less media or a shoe will go through the televisions screen sometime soon!

How do you quieten things down and feel restored when the world is too much?

The next post in this series will be about choosing what to say yes to and what to say no to!  We have to say no sometimes and be good at it.  I used to find it awfully hard to say no!

And so ends week one and me posting everyday!  I hope we got off to a good start for the year.  We have set the scene for several challenges and set up our plans.  Tomorrow I will have a slow day,  plan the new week and keep myself on track!   A little planning on the weekend makes a world of difference!  xxx

Not a usual post today.

Dear Friends,
There is no post today. My Dad is in intensive are and yesterday was a terrible day and the longest day ever.
For anyone who will pray I would appreciate that so much. His name is Tom.
I hope you all had good weeks and have a lovely weekend. With lots of love, Annabel.xxx

The farm.

I always find it so interesting to see pictures of everyone's kitchens and pantries, cooking etc. And I find the US ladies lives and ways of doing something fascinating. So it dawned on me that maybe others would find the farm interesting?

This time I will post about the farm house, kitchen etc. as I stayed home and we didn't go out and around the paddocks. It rained a lot of the time. Previously I have posted at Christmas about the deer. Next time I will go for an evening drive and post pics of kangaroos and emus, stock etc. (It is a sheep and cattle farm.) 

So this is about the homestead.

It is also a nice time of year, the end of winter and just spring. Too early for many flowers yet.

The family moved to this farm when I was about 19. The site where the house is was nothing, barely any trees. We planted the garden from tiny plants and there was no hose, we watered hundreds of trees with buckets. My youngest brother was a baby then. The garden is surrounded by native trees and it blends in so you don't obviously see where the scrub ends and where the garden starts.

As you drive up the driveway on the left there is a large pond. The kids have a little canoe they paddle on the pond. Mum and Dad have always had little dogs and they hop in too. There are usually ducks here. In the evening and during the night there is the lovely sound of frogs. From my room I listen to the frogs in the night, I love that!

The front door is like a fortress and is huge and solid. No flimsy doors allowed! Also the whole veranda is made of posts that are the trunks of the local gum trees. That was Dad's idea.

This is the largest post on the corner of the garage. If I stand and put my arms around it I can reach half way. The house isn't going to blow away anytime soon.

In the garden there is an "arbour" that Dad had built of trees as well.

That is out the front so you can see the house behind it. There are hollow logs in this and they are always full of nesting parrots. Where there are not enough hollow logs Dad straps extra hollow logs! The birds nesting in these are Rosella's. Eastern Rosella's to be exact.

Mum and Dad each have a kitchen! Mum wins on cleanliness though. This is Mum's stove which is an Aga.

Mum has a large pantry, a very large chest freezer...

They are about an hour from the nearest small town and it is all dirt roads. So everything is kept on hand at all times.

Dad has a stove he uses all the time and this stove he is currently not using but it works. He got it from an old homestead that was falling down...

He has shelves all long a wall in the kitchen stocked with his favourite stuff. 

He also has a big freezer. It is the size of a bedroom! It is full of sheep, cows, venison, rabbits, fish and who knows what he has in there!

The garden is very peaceful. I really like it.

This is the Bay Leaf tree... I would guess it's about 6 meters/yards tall (roughly)... When I told Dad Bay Leaves are 40 or 50c he said that tree must be worth $10.000!

A Grey Shrike Thrush had built a nest on the back veranda which I was thrilled about! I stood on a chair to look inside and there were three eggs. She sat there singing away while on the nest, multitasking!

Over the next weeks I will work in a lot more photos but that's enough for one day! 

I find the farm really relaxing, sitting near the fire, the bird life is beautiful and around the house they are all so  friendly. Blue Wrens sit on the windowsills and sing. They are my favourite bird and also Grey Fantails. I saw five of those this trip.

 I am glad to have the farm in the family. And the girls grew up between the farm and the beach as we lived nearby right near the sea. That made for lovely childhoods. I came home with wildflowers, a duck, good op shopping, Bay Leaves and bunches of lavender.

Have a prudent and diligent week! I am heading out the door to stop and have washing on the line. xxx

Made with love.

Last week I had a very special day. Lucy and I had an afternoon going through the baby things that I have kept stored away since the girls were babies. These things have moved houses numerous times and have been kept here up in my high cupboards.

A row of boxes contain baby cards from when both the girls were born, precious baby clothes, the outfits the girls came home from hospital in, special dresses they wore and all kinds of little treasures. It includes the hand made things of five generations! The oldest things I have were made by my Great Grandmother Annie Susannah Pratt. But she is Lucy's Great Great Grandmother of course. And the babies Great Great Great Grandmother!

Annie Susannah is the Great Grandmother who's Bible I have with all her markings and notes and the unbelievably beautiful letter she received from a friend when my Great Grandfather died. She had 13 children and my Nan was the youngest one. When Nan was born she slept in a shoe box lined with cotton wool she was so small. Annie Susannah was also tiny. She was 4 foot 8. Lucy is almost as tiny at just 5 foot exactly. So there is plenty of Annie Susannah in Lucy I think!

Here are some silk crochet garments she made. The little booties are just beautiful. I don't know where she got the silk thread from and this must have been very special as they didn't have money... they were farmers and hard workers. The silk things in the middle you can see, have sheen to them.  The blanket (Winnie the Pooh) I made, the cardi on the top left Mum made, the dress Nan made.

Next I have things made by Nan (her daughter) Cora Jean. Nan had black hair, fair skin and blue eyes. She sewed, knitted and made so many things always for us all. She also spun her own wool and dyed her own yarns. She provided so many things for us and everyone she knew.

Also Nan's friends made me things when the girls were born. I have talked about Loris Smith and Mrs. Mann before and how wonderful they were. This is a little dress Mrs. Mann made for Chloe which she wore and wore.  Then Lucy wore. I could cry at the sight of it now!

Out came Lucy's baby album. She could see what she wore when she came home from hospital and then there it all was kept for her. Over and over she could see her little dresses in the album and then see them in real life. Here is the album with Lucy in a little dress Great Gran made and the dress next to it.

Then there are so many things made by Mum, Patricia Ann. Mum made things from newborn right through their childhood. Mostly knitting but some sewn dresses as well. I still have most of it and even though it was all worn constantly it all is in great shape.

There there are things I made. One of Chloe's favourite things is when she was at kindy she went dressed to something as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. I painted a little pair of shoes bright red then layered them with red glitter to make ruby red slippers. At the time she could hardly walk in them as she had to stop and admire them so constantly that progress was slow. She has these on display in her home now as they pretty much set the standard of her love of shoes!

Over the years as I have sewn, embroidered, knitted and crocheted, I've stashed away things for one day for the girls. I used to sew for a baby boutique and I made a set of everything for both the girls. Pram sets, sheet sets, baby rugs, embroidered blankets... singlets, muslin wraps and wash cloths... piles of stuff.

It was so much fun getting all this out!

Then there was a box of things that were little dresses worn through childhod. Lovely smocked liberty print dresses, knitted dresses and more! A little velvet dress I wore when I was four in a wedding!

I think Lucy was surprised by how much of it she loved and thought she can use. Of course if she has a girl there are more things but I have made things suitable for boys as well as girls so there is lots there.

Everything represents love to me. I appreciated it all at the time but even more now.
If Great Gran and Nan were here now they would be so excited! Mum is and you guessed it she is probably knitting as we speak! Luckily Lucy adores knits and cute things. Her baby will be wrapped in things made with love from the minute its born.

The things these women did everyday so influenced me so much.  And the girls and now a new baby. I am so glad I kept these little treasures. And my line has been filled with sweet things as I have washed it all up and hung it in the sun. This was my line today... I'm up to the bigger dresses! Lucy is set if she has a girl. But if the baby is a boy Mum and I will create a new supply!

Really this was an afternoon of loveliness. Gran and Nan kept us company as we thought of them and all they did.

I took over 80 photos of mostly differnet things. Another day I might post more of my embroidery as there are little outfits with Winnie the Pooh themed stories on them and mice getting married and pushing prams and all things I made up!

It makes you wonder what are we making that will be handed down the generations and treasured? Not only that but just how much we are remembered and how much we influence our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren and so on...

We have the opportunity to be a great blessing to them all!

There is the saying that some days are diamonds. This day was one of them! xxx

A Fig at the Gate.

Growing up my Nana B seemed to me to live a beautiful life surrounded by flowers. She had tables covered in flowers as she was arranging huge vases for one thing or another.  Her  home always had giant vases of flowers, greenery and whatever she had found lately. There were misting bottles (which I loved) and then her garden which had chickens and was lovely to play in. Nan had also been a beautiful seamstress and had a very creative eye. She also was a natural gatherer, wherever she went she returned home with armfuls of greenery or something she thought was interesting and could go in an arrangement. She didn't over look dry materials, seed pods, sticks and anything that could be used as an interesting container. Nan was just very creative and adored flowers.

Nan also loved lemon trees and fruit trees in general and cooked up everything she could lay her hands on.

Interestingly I grew up loving lemon trees and know the locality of every lemon tree in a huge radius! It is just my business to KNOW where every lemon tree is! And I come home from everywhere with flowers and interesting things. I guess it is in my blood.

Nan's love of gathering, of cooking, flowers, gardens, chickens... it is all in me and as I do many things I think of her. Recently I posted pictures of bunches of native flowers I gathered at the farm. I said they were not my first choice of flowers but they were WHAT I HAD so I made the most of them. As I played with flowers that day I thought of Nan and her influence on me. I almost always think of her when I am picking flowers or gathering something I have found.

Today I had a letter arrive from my Aunt to say how my flowers on that blog post reminded her of Nan her Mum)  and how I am so like her! I felt this was a compliment as Nan was always busy,  happy, always constructive and could make beautiful things from just about nothing. She saw the beauty in the everyday. It was all art to her. Nan was appreciating Sarah Ban Breathnatch style Simple Abundance long before the book was written. Thats how she lived.

And so it is no surprise that my Aunt is an author and writes about simple joys and observations. The beauty of gardening, of life and seasons. I realised my Aunt was famous when I understood they study her in Australian school classes in English and at University.  But growing up she was my Aunt who always wrote us a poem at Christmas and this was always read out at the dinner table. I was in a poem once too which included me yelling out to the girls when they were coming out of school on a hot afternoon that I have ice blocks! My Aunt was with me that day and it became a poem.

 A couple of years ago my Aunt came to the family Christmas at the farm. Mum and my Aunt had a Christmas morning unlike any other chasing (in their nighties) a fox out of the yard. I missed this spectacle that involved one of them ending up in the pond...  It would have been good though!

The latest book is called The Fig at the Gate (by Kate Llewellyn) It is a book of observations of beauty, gardens and ageing. The end of it contains the story of Christmas day, the chasing of the fox, and Christmas dinner at the farm. I got to read it as sheets of paper from a type writer before it was finished. And at the end I am in it! Yep, I experience a tiny moment immortalised in literature! And better still not for anything dodgy or regrettable but for something really lovely.

Between my Nan and my Aunt I feel there was an artistic side to the family and that many of my loves have come from them. There is no need to prove how much we influence our children and their children, it is undeniable. What we do now affects the generations, I feel and see the proof of this everyday.

And as Nan loved the seasons, the flowers, the produce that came with them, my Aunt puts these things into words through details of gardens and life.  Finding beauty and purpose in the season we are in stops us from wasting it! It might be the season ie the season of spring or a life season ie the time you have small children or the time you have Grand children... but accepting the season you are in and making the most of it is such a key to happiness. Nan knew how to extract every last drop of joy from every season. That is what I want to do. I am coming into a new season now and am blessed beyond words to welcome it.

My new season is that Lucy having a baby! Now everything I learned from my Grand Mothers (and from Laine) I can put into practice!

How lucky I am. This is a Christmas gift for us all. And today I saw my first "photo" and the baby is a thumb sucker. A precious little thumb sucker lol like Lucy was! 

On top of all this it is another season... Christmas!

My Nan's ways and things she loved live on in me and as my Aunt could see them in the bunches of flowers I made up I can see them in her book.

So I am caught up in plans for Christmas, summer, a new baby and so many good things!
I hope you are having a wonderful week! xxx