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To the many friends that stopped by in my last post and offered me some encouraging words and ideas for winter serenity - thankyou! 

I am touched by your caring words and amazed once again by this blogging community - from all over the place, people I have never met are happy to spend a few minutes of precious time to write me a few words of wisdom. Beautiful. 

I've been meaning to write a post about our little home for some time, but have been a bit embarrassed to post pics of this tiny cluttered space....... although the clutter might a be a bit more understandable when I tell you how small it actually is! I'm not posting about our home to elicit sympathy (well, maybe just a little!) but rather to share a bit about our circumstances and how we live. 

Okay, so here are the specs.......... your lounge/dining area is possibly as big as my entire house - 6 metres x 8 metres! Yep, thats right, we sleep 6 people in here, as well as eat, learn and play. Oh and for me, wash, cook and clean and sometimes create a little bit!! 

This is how it looked when we bought it......cute and muraled! That little add-on is the bathroom. We added a new room in the corner spot in the foreground.

This one's a year and a half later. Thats the new room with the diamond paned window and you can see the existing bathroom under the new roof line. It will be removed and a bigger bathroom put in there. At the moment it still looks like this.

We bought here for a couple of reasons and are intending to extend, but somehow the extension just seems to get put off in favour of other things. Life is busy. The extension will be on the right hand side of the pic above; a duplicate of the existing house. 

This bright and funky place is the living area. We have a table, bench and chairs for eating and schooling and sometimes a couple of lounge chairs, depending on the season! The front door is right there on the left - where the heavy artillery is pointing - and stairs go up to the tiny loft which is my bedroom/creative space, and on the right is the door to the kitchen/walkway.  

Sorry, this is a bit dark and messy! My space - mattress on the left - wall to wall - and sewing machine under the cover on the desk. All the rest is Stuff! It's about 3m x 2m in size. 

The latest fashions are being modelled here in front of the barrel heater and this also shows the opening through to the kitchen. If I remember correctly I was out that day and the children had a lovely time dressing up and watching videos! 

 This one is looking from the stairs towards the kids bedroom - two double bunks on either side and when Miss 18 was here we had a trundle bed as well. This room is that new one that I mentioned in the first photo. 

And here we have the kitchen which doubles as a walkway to the laundry/bathroom. It's about 1.7 metres wide and what you see here is all the bench space there is. We must have been having a very carroty dinner that day ;o) 

As I am writing this and searching the archives for photos, I have come to two interesting conclusions. One - all of these spaces double up as dual purpose spaces, and two - while looking through the pics I noticed that we have a lot of large (for this house) parties considering that it's always a bit of a squeeze!! 

Christmas 2010

Easter 2011

Easter 2012

Winter Solstice 2011

Right, so there it is...... one teeny, tiny house and sometimes, one very squashed mama!
Your thoughts were very much appreciated and I am sorry I didn't get to reply to any in my last post. I'm hearing you all on 'trying to embrace the cold' and I certainly agree, even if the sunny months are my preference! So, on that note, I have come to a realisation that I can do something to alleviate the feelings of dullness and gloom that threaten to over whelm me when we are all squeezed together on a cold and windy day!!

Collectively, you sowed a seed that brought forth an idea that I will be putting into practise. I really need to reclaim peace and tranquillity, so firstly some of the shelving and general clutter will be moving out into the new loft in the shed. This will mean that we need to go outside if we want to find any books, sewing things or toys but it will also mean that it is 'cleaner' inside.

And we'll be painting the inside white!! Now this is a big occasion because I am not a white person. I like colour, strong colour and bold walls. In this case I am liking white though! (the woody walls are the originals) I'm hoping that white will allow me to take clearer photo's of any indoor bits that we do over winter. I am also writing out a list of affirmations......... they'll be just above me, on the ceiling, so that they're the first thing I see when I wake each morning!

Once again thank you all so much for stopping by and letting me know you were here. I appreciate each and every comment left and am pretty excited to think that there are so many lovely people out there that choose to read my rambling!

In gratitude.....