"It's not called 'the land' any more Oski - now it's called 'our home'!"

On our first night in our little tiny home, we all lay in our "roof bed" and watched the moon rise. It was a big, orange full moon, and it seemed to be saying "welcome home". We were snug and exhausted. 

After the kids were asleep Pearl and I put in a few hours carrying furniture from the storage container up on the hill down into our little house, just to make it feel a bit more like a home. The next morning, when we woke and saw the sun rise in the exact spot we'd watched the moon the night before, then climbed down our loft ladder into our little 'lounge room', Olive explained to Oski what was going on, and they played with their newly-rediscovered-toys. It felt like christmas.

That day, Brett and I had tackled the not-insignificant task of hoisting our king size 100% organic wool futon mattress up into the loft. I reckon the thing weighs about 80kg, and it's pretty bloody unwieldy, so we were pretty stoked with our efforts. 

Cap'n Brett - heave ho!

Our hoisting rig, partially inspired by my ever-inspiring friend Vanessa, involved ropes, the rafters and a whole heap of "heave ho". We felt like modern-day pirates (for some reason) and were very excited when the mattress finally made it into the roof.

Other than the mattress the move in's been pretty easy, mostly on account of the fact that the house itself is so tiny, and has very little furniture or other fillers in it. 

So far, we're loving it. We're enjoying the no-power-or-running-water scenario (yes - I know - it's still a novelty which will inevitably wear off), and the white-washed walls and cracked earth floors and washing in a hand basin and drinking red wine out of little glasses are making it feel like we're living in a 15th century french peasant house. Or a bothy, whichever you prefer.

The major coup so far has been the transformation of our butt-ugly LVL trusses into 'hardwood' beams, thanks to a thin coat of Porter's Palm Beach Black.

'hardwood' on left, LVL on the right, on the underside of the "roof bed"

Also loving our new storage solution, a set of shelves made out of a ladder from the tip and more and more fence palings. Seriously you can do ANYTHING with fence palings. They're hot. Easier and cheaper than Ikea, for sure, and much more suited to a French peasant cottage/bothy any day of the week.

In any small space you need to carefully plan your storage solutions to accommodate all of your storage needs, such as cast iron cookware, art supplies and cats

Work-related craft learnings continued this weekend with a mosaic workshop, where I took the opportunity to make a top-of-the-door-dodgy-bit-coverer out of a broken plate, a broken teapot and a broken mirror. 

It was super-fun, and I'm pretty keen to embark on some more mosaic action, though we probably don't want to overdo it given that French peasants were probably not so into mosaic - don't want to ruin our themed decor…

While it has been awesome to reunite with our special things that had been in storage for the last few months, a few new arrivals in the bothy are also tickling our fancy, most notably this AMAZING crocheted rug I found in the dog blanket section of Merimbula Vinnies for 2 bucks. 

OK so I realise that there are in fact several crocheted rugs in this picture - I'm talking about the main, big one that Olive is sitting on. It had a few squares missing, which my ma lovingly replaced for me, but it's pure wool, and it's enormous and beautiful. When I bought it, the woman who sold it to me said "Oooh… your dog's going to love that". Ahem. Yeeeeah.....

Mummy also made us this super-spesh torte. Old-school baking learned from my Oma. LOVE it.

Nothin' like a piped-custard-cream rendering of a little love-cottage to brighten your day.

So yeah. We're in, and even though it's kind of overwhelming to be living in an unfinished tiny cottage surrounded by dirt and building rubbish, we're in our little house. And it's cosy and warm (freakishly warm!) and we made it ourselves, with people we love. How could we not be happy??