Tag: home

domesticating children

‘washing dishes can be a meditation…

i have placed a small sticky note above our sink with these words roughly scribbled on it. since the unfortunate dying of our beloved dishwasher it is taking some great convincing in our house hold that this could be an opportunity presenting itself. Thich Nhat Hanh, a practicing zen buddhist monk, uses washing the dishes as an opportunity to practice prayer and meditation. Here, looking out the kitchen window from our simple home front, I see children learning to cooperate, the sharing in household tasks,learning life skills, growing up. It seems though that the only person i have been able to successfully persuade in this new approach to washing up is our Georgie, at 16 months she’ll happily do the rounds of dishes morning, noon and night. Thank god for my little domestic goddess.

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kitchen tale

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“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life
― Picasso

Every now and again life can temporally turn you up side down.  We are in a moment like that now. There seems to be a few things that i do during these moments, without much thought. Maybe unconsciously thats what Im needing to do. Most of the time I renovate or change something, make something new, leaving behind our world for a while. Fortunatly we have an old house with plenty of spaces to do this to. My latest creation is a kitchen wall. I painted it with chalkboard paint on a spur of the moment thing. I was only really intending to put a fresh coat on our babies chalk board and well just kept going. Surprisingly it’s turned out well. I added an old plank of wood as a shelf and filled a few wine bottles with olive oil. I feel better.

 

 

this day in march…

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We spent this welcomed Sunday simply hanging out at home reading, playing and reluctantly tending to the laundry, oh and eating an abundance of left over cake from a friday night birthday gathering for our two oldest girls. The whole family is enjoying our new pre loved couch that is so comfortable it’s almost impossible to get up off, which is not such a bad thing. We set up an outdoor room on our back decking that is providing a nice little hide away, one day we’ll transform it into another room and then we can all argue about who needs the space more. Nash, our 12 year old spent some much needed playing time with the babies which was really nice to see, this is a tough age to be, for us all.

home spaces

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i have a habit of changing things around a lot, you could say on almost a weekly basis. my family knows this well about me and have gracefully accepted this trait of mine. there is the occasional frustration of not being able to find something, or the missing of bench space after i moved our island bench out of the kitchen,  however, most of the time, the changes are pleasantly welcomed by our large household and happily embraced.  it may sound funny but i find a new space or a fresh coat of paint on the humble wooden chair can often inspire creative new ideas to arise in all of us, even my two year old got excited about his toys again when one day they appeared on a new red shelf.